Over the last several years, UW faculty, students, alumni, and community members have worked together to implement programs based on principles of restorative and transformative justice in Washington state. Alongside incarcerated people, survivors of violence, and others, Prof. Katherine Beckett and Martina Kartman of the UWCHR and LSJ’s Rethinking Punishment project began work that has evolved into Collective Justice (CJ), an organization “harnessing the collective power of communities to build new pathways of accountability and healing.”

In 2016, the UWCHR’s Rethinking Punishment project supported research in restorative justice by Prof Katherine Beckett and third year law student Martina Kartman. Beckett and Kartman analyzed various restorative justice projects in the country, and drew conclusions that later informed the creation of an innovative restorative justice program designed for Washington State. Collective Justice (formerly

At our 10-year anniversary celebration in May 2019, the UW Center for Human Rights proudly named Professors Katherine Beckett and Heather Evans as joint recipients of our second Justice Award, in recognition of their uniquely impactful research. Their research has contributed directly to advances in human rights, most recently when the Washington State Supreme Court relied on their findings to strike down the state’s death penalty statute.

Letter from the Director I‘m not going to lie—it’s been a tough year for human rights. It seems like every day there’s another reason to be discouraged about the state of our world, whether at home or abroad. On one particularly dark day this past February as I prepared to teach my human rights class,

A few days ago, a neighbor thanked me for my work in human rights. She shook her head as she said it, as if to convey the impression that our work is a depressing act of service performed amid challenging times—but I told her it’s quite the opposite.

Mass incarceration is increasingly recognized as a major source of both inequality and human rights violations in the United States. The U.S. incarceration rate is now five to ten times higher than those found in comparable countries, and mass incarceration very disproportionately impacts young and poor people, particularly those of color. For example, an estimated

On Thursday, October 11, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the death penalty violates the Washington State constitution‘s prohibition on “cruel punishment.” In its ruling, the Court cited research by UW Center for Human Rights Faculty Associate Prof. Katherine Beckett and UW Lecturer Heather Evans, who conducted the first study regarding the impact

During 2016-2017, UW faculty, students, and alumni worked with community members and Insight Prison Project to begin facilitating restorative justice circles at the Washington State Reformatory in Monroe, WA. Many people have become aware of the challenges posed by mass incarceration. Many now know, for example, that the U.S. has the world’s largest prison population,

Rethinking Punishment project co-director Prof. Katherine Beckett is featured again on the latest installment of Cited Podcast. The episode is the first in a series of four that Prof. Beckett will co-host with Cited Podcast. Listen now! In the late 1960s, criminologists like Todd Clear predicted America would soon start closing its prisons. They couldn’t

The 2015–2016 academic year was a busy one for the Rethinking Punishment project, a UWCHR-supported initiative combining teaching, research, and public advocacy to promote human rights-focused approaches to problems of violence and mass incarceration. An ambitious agenda, and one that is setting the stage for new projects that could change the way that Washington State