Professor Meares Joins White House Meeting on Women & Criminal Justice

Professor Tracey L. Meares, the Walton Hale Hamilton Professor of Law at Yale Law School, will travel to the White House on Wednesday, March 30 to participate in a convening on Women and the Criminal Justice System. In honor of Women’s History Month and in the lead up to the United State of Women Summit, the event will bring together justice-involved women and girls, family members of incarcerated individuals, women serving in law enforcement, and other leading advocates for a more equitable and effective justice system. The event will also provide a collaborative environment to discuss and share ideas on ways to improve women’s access to justice in the community, courtroom, and cell block. 

The discussion will be live-streamed between 12:30PM ET and 4:00PM ET time. Visit www.whitehouse.gov/live to tune in. Follow the conversation at #CJandWomen and#USWomen.

Other participants include Loretta E. Lynch, U.S. Attorney General, and Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to the President and Chair of the Council on Women and Girls.

Meares is one of the leading national theorists on police legitimacy and, in particular, how racial narratives influence police relationships with minority communities and how deliberate attention to these issues can influence community compliance with the law. Her research focuses on communities, police legitimacy, constitutional criminal procedure, and legal policy. She has written in both the academic and policy realms about innovations in legitimacy-based violence reduction approaches and has collaborated with multiple jurisdictions in California, Connecticut, Illinois, and New York to implement these strategies.

In December 2014, Meares was named to a Presidential Task Force aimed at strengthening community policing and trust among law enforcement and the communities they serve. The Task Force released a report with recommendations several months later and met with President Obama to discuss its findings.

Before that, Meares was enlisted by the Department of Justice for the launch of the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice. As part of that initiative, Meares and Professor Tom Tyler launched the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School. The Justice Collaboratory brings together scholars and researchers of diverse theoretical and methodological orientations at Yale University and elsewhere to work on issues related to institutional reform and policy innovation and advancement. It infuses theory, empirical research, and targeted clinical trials in order to achieve its goal of making the components of criminal justice operation simultaneously more effective, just, and democratic.