Walidah Imarisha, author of Angels with Dirty Faces, will address questions on the role prisons serve in our country, the possibility of envisioning a world where people are safe and where there is accountability without prisons, and whether our prison system actually causes rather than reduces crime.

There was a time I believed prisons existed to rehabilitate people, to make our communities safer. . . . When I saw for the first time (but not the last) a mother sobbing and clutching her son when visiting hours were up, only to be physically pried off and escorted out by guards, I knew nothing about that made me safer. This is the heart of this country's prison system. And the prison system has become the heart of America."

Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison and Redemption is a book on criminal justice issues released in 2016 by AK Press / Institute for Anarchist Studies.

Walidah Imarisha has taught at Portland State University, Oregon State University and Southern New Hampshire University. She serves as a public scholar with the Oregon Humanities’ Conversation Project, facilitating programs across the state on topics such as Oregon Black history, alternatives to incarceration and the history of hip hop.

Walidah co-founded the “Human Rights Coalition,” a Pennsylvania organization led by prisoners’ families and former prisoners. She also directed the 2005 Katrina documentary “Finding Common Ground” in New Orleans.