MILWAUKEE — Sharon Dolovich, professor of law and director of the Prison Law and Policy Program at UCLA, will deliver Marquette University Law School’s Barrock Lecture on Criminal Law, titled “Prisons, Punishment, and Correctional Officers,” on Tuesday, May 13, at 5 p.m. at Eckstein Hall, 1215 W. Michigan St.
Registration for this event is available online. Media wishing to attend must contact Kevin Conway at kevin.m.conway@marquette.edu.
The experience of the incarcerated is undeniably central to any adequate understanding of the carceral project. Whatever one thinks of the particular shape imprisonment takes in the United States, the nation today has more than 6,100 prisons, jails, and detention centers. Yet surprisingly little attention is paid to the toll working in prison takes on the approximately 350,000 men and women we rely on to make these institutions function.
Dolovich’s lecture will highlight some of the many ways working inside prisons negatively impacts the physical and mental health of correctional officers—and, by extension, their families and communities. It will also consider how expanding the lens to include the many harms experienced by correctional officers might help change and enlarge our collective critical picture of the prison and the use of incarceration as punishment.
Dolovich is widely published on criminal law, the constitutional law of prisons, and other post-conviction topics. She also is recognized for her teaching—receiving, for example, the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award, the university’s highest honor for excellence in this sphere. She holds a B.A. from Queen’s University in Ontario, a Ph.D. from Cambridge University, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.
The Barrock Lecture is supported by a bequest of the late Mary Barrock Bonfield to honor her parents, George and Margaret Barrock. George Barrock was a 1931 graduate of the Law School.
Through public programming such as the Marquette Law School Poll, “On the Issues” conversations with newsmakers, public lectures by leading scholars, conferences on issues of public significance, and the work of its Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education, Marquette Law School serves as an important venue in this region for civil discourse about law and public policy matters.
