This event occurred in the past
36th Nathanson Memorial Lecture: Charles Barber and William Outlaw III
This event occurred in the past
Date and Time
- Thursday, February 25, 2021 from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Location
Zoom (please register to receive the meeting link)
Cost
0
Details
The USD School of Law invites you to join us for the 36th annual Nathaniel L. Nathanson Memorial Lecture Series Thursday, February 25 at Noon (pacific). Charles Barber and William Outlaw III will discuss the book Citizen Outlaw: One Man's Journey from Gangleader to Peacekeeper.
Charles Barber and William Juneboy Outlaw III
Citizen Outlaw: One Man's Journey from Gangleader to Peacekeeper
12pm - Welcome and Introductions
12:05pm - Lecture
12:40pm - Q&A and Discussion
12:55pm - Closing Remarks
Citizen Outlaw: One Man's Journey from Gangleader to Peacekeeper – Book Excerpt
When he was in his early 20s, William Juneboy Outlaw III was sentenced to 85 years in prison for homicide and armed assault. The sentence brought his brief but prolific criminal career as the head of a forty-member cocaine gang in New Haven, Connecticut, to a close. But behind bars, Outlaw quickly became a feared prison “shot caller” with 150 men under his sway.
Then everything changed: his original sentence was reduced by 60 years. At the same time, he was shipped to a series of the most notorious federal prisons in the country, where he endured long stints in solitary confinement—and where transformational relationships with a fellow inmate and a prison therapist made him realize that he wanted more for himself.
Upon his release, Outlaw took a job at Dunkin’ Donuts, volunteered in the New Haven community, and started to rebuild his life. He now is an award-winning community advocate, leading a team of former felons who negotiate truces between gangs on the very streets that he once terrorized. The homicide rate in New Haven has dropped 70 percent in the decade that he’s run the team—a drop as dramatic as in any city in the country.
Written with exclusive access to Outlaw himself, Charles Barber’s Citizen Outlaw is the unforgettable story of how a gang leader became the catalyst for one of the greatest civic crime reductions in America, and an inspiring argument for love and compassion in the face of insurmountable odds.
About William Juneboy Outlaw III
William Outlaw is an award-winning community advocate in New Haven. He co-directs the Connecticut Violence Interruption Project, which seeks to reduce youth violence in New Haven, and is also a Senior Community Advocate at Good Will where he helps returning prisoners reenter the community.
As a young man, William was a violence creator, as opposed to a violence interrupter. As a teenager, he co-ran the largest cocaine gang in New Haven and was making a million dollars a year. In his early twenties, he was sentenced to 85 years in prison for homicide and armed assault. However, his original sentence was modified after an appeal to the Connecticut Superior Court, and he ended up serving 20 years. In the first part of his prison odyssey he was incorrigible and placed in the most notorious federal prisons in the country, including nine months in solitary confinement in Kansas.
Transformed by his relationship with a therapist and a desire to redeem his old life, Outlaw was released and returned to New Haven in 2008. He got a job at Dunkin Donuts and has since dedicated himself to mentoring young people and promoting non-violence.
About Charles Barber
Charles Barber is a Writer in Residence at Wesleyan University and a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Yale. In addition to Citizen Outlaw, he is the author of Songs from the Black Chair, a memoir, and Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry is Medicating a Nation. He has written widely on mental health and criminal justice issues in popular and scholarly publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Salon, The Nation and Scientific American Mind. He was educated at Harvard and Columbia.
As a criminal justice researcher at The Connection Institute, he co-designed a study funded by the Department of Justice involving the hiring of former prisoners as counselors in a halfway house. The intervention resulted in dramatically lower criminal recidivism and was named the Outstanding Criminal Justice Program in the Northeast by the National Criminal Justice Association.
Charles and William met weekly for five years to create Citizen Outlaw.
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