On Thursday, Tara Huffman, director of OSI’s Criminal and Juvenile Justice Program, participated in a panel discussion on “Building an Anti-Racist Economy” as part of the Maryland Center for Economic Policy’s (MCEP) third annual policy summit.
“None of what we’re doing is making any of us safer and it’s most certainly not making those Black communities that are being robbed of human capital ― it’s not making them any safer,” Huffman said, as quoted in a Maryland Matters story that talked about the event along with the recent MCEP report which suggested that decreasing the state’s prison budget would improve the economy and improve public safety.
In addition to Huffman, the panel included Temi Bennett, director of policy and communication at Consumer Health Foundation, Shari Davis, executive Director of the Participatory Budgeting Project, and Christopher Meyer, MCEP Policy Analyst. Dr. Khalilah Harris, MCEP’s Non-Resident Senior Fellow and managing director for K-12 Education Policy at American Progress, moderated the discussion.