The Baton Foundation will host a lecture about the day-to-day brutalities endured by Black youth growing up under constant police surveillance and the persistent threat of physical and psychological abuse. This program is free to the public, but registration is required.
About the Book
Drawing upon twenty-five years of experience representing young people in Washington, D.C.’s juvenile courts, Kristin Henning confronts America’s irrational and manufactured fears of Black youth and makes a compelling case that the nation’s obsession with policing and incarcerating Black America begins with Black children.
Unlike White youth, who are afforded the freedom to test boundaries and figure out who they are and who they want to be, Black youth are seen as a threat to White America and denied the privilege of healthy adolescent development. Weaving together powerful narratives and persuasive data, Henning examines the criminalization of Black adolescent play and sexuality, the demonization of Black fashion, hair, and music, and the discriminatory impact of police in schools.
The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2021), lays bare the long-term consequences of racism and trauma that Black children experience at the hands of police and their vigilante surrogates and explains how discriminatory and aggressive policing has socialized a generation of Black teenagers to fear and resent the police.
About the Author
Kristin Henning is the Blume Professor of Law and Director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic and Initiative at Georgetown. Professor Henning has been representing children accused of crime for more than 26 years and was the lead attorney for the Juvenile Unit of the D.C. Public Defender Service. She is currently the Director of the Mid-Atlantic Region of the Gault Center.
Professor Henning worked closely with the McArthur Foundation’s Juvenile Indigent Defense Action Network to develop the Juvenile Training Immersion Program (JTIP), a national training curriculum for youth defenders, and is the co-founder of several initiatives to combat racial inequities in the juvenile and criminal legal systems, including the Ambassadors for Racial Justice program and a Racial Justice Toolkit for defenders. Professor Henning trains state actors across the country on the impact of racial bias in the courts and the traumatic effects of policing in communities of color.
Professor Henning writes extensively about race, adolescence, and policing, and her book,
The Rage of Innocence, was featured on the front page of
The New York Times Book Review. She has served on the Board of Directors for the Center for Children’s Law and Policy, was a Reporter for the ABA’s Juvenile Justice Standards Task Force and is an Advisor to ALI’s Restatement on Children and the Law project. In addition, she has received many awards including a 2023 Embracing the Legacy Award from the RFK Community Alliance, a 2022 Women of Distinction Award from the American Association of University Women, the 2021 Juvenile Leadership Prize from the Juvenile Law Center, and the Robert E. Shepherd, Jr. Award for Excellence in Juvenile Defense by the Gault Center. Professor Henning earned her B.A. from Duke University, her J.D. from Yale Law School, and her LLM in Advocacy from Georgetown Law.
