Because the carceral state in the US, based on the exception clause of the 13th Amendment, is another form of slavery, the formerly incarcerated who are Black men have a much more difficult time reentering society when decarcerated. Using a first-person narrative, Flores Forbes will discuss this issue with Neni Panourgiá as he revisits the premises of this topic that he exposed and researched in his book, Invisible Men: A Contemporary Slave Narrative in the Era of Mass Incarceration. In his vivid style, he will narrate stories and experiences and suggest strategies and solutions to this problem, which has had a significant impact on the most sizable portion of the hundreds of thousands of people released from prison annually in the US.

Speakers

Flores A. Forbes was for 15 years an Associate Vice President at Columbia University in the City of New York. He is currently a Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School, where he teaches critical race theory and criminal justice change. He is the author of two books: Will You Die With Me? My Life and the Black Panther Party (Simon and Schuster, 2006) and Invisible Men: A Contemporary Slave Narrative in the Era of Mass Incarceration (Skyhorse Publishing, 2017). Flores is formerly incarcerated.

Neni Panourgiá is the Academic Adviser at the JIE Scholars Program. Her work centers on confinement in all its forms, from the benevolent (hospitals, schools) to the sinister (concentration camps and prisons). She is the author and editor of multiple award-winning books and articles on the subject, most recently Foucauld’s Node: Leros and the Grammar of Confinement. Since 2022, she has co-organized and co-directed the Leros Humanism Seminars.