Justice Think Tank

The 2023 Colby College Justice Think Tank included 12 scholars from across all 5 Maine prisons selected through a competitive application process and stipended by the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison. During 2023, the Justice Think Tank Fellows conducted a research of their own design, supported by Colby faculty and staff ‘walkalongs’ who helped with document access, interview arrangements, and general support. The selected topic for 2023 was on the restorative alternatives that Maine could develop to keep emerging adults out of the criminal legal system, that could reform the Maine Criminal Code to be more restorative and less punitive, and that could support a more restorative pathway to reentry from prison. 

The  2023 Colby College Justice Think Tank Policy Papers are available here: 

• Implementing Emerging Adult Diversion in Maine
• Implementing Alternative Sentencing, Community Reintegration and Record Expungement in Maine

The 2023 Colby College Justice Think Tank offered two public presentations to showcase their research and methodology. The first, From the Inside Out: Systemic Political Transformation in Action, took place on Thursday November 9, at the National Conference on Higher Education in Prison in Atlanta, Georgia. The second, sponsored by the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs at Colby College, was held on November 28 and hosted by the Goldfarb Center Student Executive Board, with introductions by Catherine Besteman, Justice Think Tank Founder, and Ved Price, Executive Director of the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison.

Watch the presentation sponsored by the Goldfarb Center below: