UConn law school unveils policing center
HARTFORD — Law professors and students at UConn have goals to shape the local, state and national conversation about policing.
Last week, the University of Connecticut School of Law announced the creation of the Center of Community Safety, Policing and Inequality to rethink community safety and the goals of law enforcement institutions.
The new center has plans to research policy, advise legislative and judicial reform efforts, and host related talks and events.
“Police reform is ripe at this political, historical moment,” said Kiel Brennan-Marquez, center director and law professor of constitutional law, policing, evidence, and law and technology.
“We’re heading into this in a truly open-minded way, without a specific set of policy objectives in mind,” he said, and described the academic hub as “a vehicle” to have hard but productive conversations about reform.
The center, he said, was inspired by conversations throughout summer 2020 with legislators and local groups to draw up policing reform legislation, and with the then-incoming law school dean. BrennanMarquez said they realized the conversation should continue.
“We should have a more structured mechanism for giving our input into reform efforts, in a way that’s informed by trickledown scholarship that makes an impact in the world,” the director said.
Several projects are already in the works at the center, according to its website, including one on police funding trends relative to department size and crime rates, and another on how law enforcement institutions can silence the communities they mean to protect.
Student fellows represent a range of ideologies and backgrounds, including an active-duty police officer, and an organizer with the Black Lives Matter movement.
“I am very excited about the establishment of this new center, especially at this critical time in our country’s history,” said Eboni Nelson, dean of the law school.
“It reflects not only UConn Law’s broad expertise in criminal law and related fields,” she said, “but also our commitment to be engaged in local, national and global efforts to help bring about a more just and equitable society.”
Brennan-Marquez suggested that is one of the center’s main tenets: to have an impact off of UConn’s campus, including in Hartford, where the law school is located.
“We’re also starting to think about all the different forms community engagement might take,” he said. “I would love for it to feel like more of an open door, a porous boundaries, between the law school,” and its surrounding areas.
The director said in the long term the center could find ways to create pipelines for students, especially in Connecticut’s cities, to law school.
Meanwhile, the team at the center is interested in revamping criminal justice curriculum and the types of degrees available to those pursuing the subject at the law school. Brennan-Marquez said the center might rethink not only its JD program, but also consider degrees and certificates for non-lawyers and undergraduate students.
The center will host a kickoff event, an online lecture and Q&A session with a retired Connecticut Supreme Court justice on Nov. 16. Brennan-Marquez is also planning for the spring and next year, including monthly colloquiums and workshops, conferences and large events, such as a possible 10-year retrospective of Floyd v.
New York, the landmark challenge to New York City’s stop-and-frisk program.
“These are hard questions — let’s think about them collaboratively,” Brennan-Marquez said.
“It’s not that we’re going to shy away from controversy, and I don’t think we could if we tried,” he said. “But we have a unique opportunity working in this state, in this climate, and with a student-base that is going to become the next generation of legislators, judges, and leaders of all kinds of public and private institutions.”
The center will host a kickoff event, an online lecture and Q&A session with a retired Connecticut Supreme Court justice on Nov. 16.