Voice for Justice System Reform to Speak

02/24/2015 

Glenn E. Martin, who spent six years in New York state prisons before becoming a national leader and advocate for reform of the criminal justice system, will speak on Thursday, March 5, at SUNY Cortland.

Martin, whose personal journey has helped shape his unique and groundbreaking approach to criminal justice reform, will discuss the growth of mass incarceration in America at 7 p.m. in Sperry Center, Room 105.

  The talk, titled “From Convict to Conviction: A Grassroots Vision for Criminal Justice Reform in America,” represents the eighth Charles N. Poskanzer Lecture sponsored by the College’s Health Department. A reception will follow in the Sperry Center lobby. The events are free and open to the public.

The presentation is supported by the Charles N. Poskanzer Fund, an endowment named in honor of the late SUNY Distinguished Service Professor emeritus who taught in the College’s Health Department for 40 years.

Named an America’s Leaders of Change National Urban Fellow, Martin regularly contributes his expertise to national news outlets on topics such as policing, de-carceration, alternatives to incarceration and reentry issues.

Martin most recently founded JustLeadershipUSA, a national non-profit organization dedicated to cutting the prison population in half by 2030 while reducing crime.

He has also served for several years as vice president of the Fortune Society and co-director of the National HIRE Network at the Legal Action Center. Martin co-founded the Education from the Inside Out Coalition and the David Rothenberg Center for Public Policy. He serves as a member of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Council on Reentry and Reintegration and the governing boards of the College and Community Fellowship, Prisoners’ Legal Services, New York Foundation, the Petey Green Program, California Partnership for Safe Communities and the Reset Foundation. He also serves on the advisory board of the National Network for Safe Communities.

The Poskanzer Fund was established through the Cortland College Foundation as an endowment to support an annual, public lecture offered by the College’s Health Department in honor of its former colleague. Since Poskanzer’s death in 2010, the fund has continued to grow through donations made in his memory. The Poskanzer Lecture allows the Health Department to bring national leaders in public and community health to campus to meet with students and faculty and to deliver a public lecture on a current public health issue.

The talk also is part of the College’s yearlong “R/Evolution” event series presented by the Cultural and Intellectual Climate Committee (CICC). The series includes a number of book readings, film screenings and discussion topics all questioning the notion that evolution represents positive change.

 Event sponsors also include the Health and Sociology/Anthropology departments and the CICC.

For more information on the Poskanzer Lecture, contact Barbara Barton, assistant professor of health, at 607-753-2976, or Al Sofalvi, assistant professor of health, at 607-753-2980. For more information on the CICC’s R/Evolution series, contact Jena Curtis, associate professor of health, at 607-753-2979.