Latin American Prisons: Challenges and Opportunities from COVID-19

Date: 

Tuesday, February 2, 2021, 12:00pm to 1:20pm


To view the recording, click here.

Speakers: Benjamin Lessing, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago; David Skarbek, Associate Professor in Political Science, Brown University; Marcelo Bergman, Professor of Sociology and Criminology, Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero (UNTREF)
Discussant: Jessie Bullock, PhD candidate, Harvard University
Moderated by: Steven Levitsky, Director, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies; Professor of Government, Harvard University

Latin American prisons have long been sites of abuse, corruption, and, in some cases, centers of criminal operations. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed many of the pathologies of prison systems in countries across the region, and at some cases, it has triggered incipient reforms. But will the public reckoning generated by the pandemic bring any real change to the way American prisons are run?

Presented in collaboration with Weatherhead Center for International Affairs