2016 Diversity Colloquium

Josh Canavan will deliver a lecture on "Race, Poverty, and the Criminal Justice System: Protecting the Rights of the Accused in the St. Louis Area" for the 2016 Diversity Colloquium. Canavan works for the Arch City Defenders, a nonprofit that provides "holistic legal advocacy and combats the criminalization of poverty and state violence against poor people and people of color" by providing legal services to the indigent and through policy-oriented lawsuits, including a recent suit which alleges that several municipalities in St. Louis County have conspired to run debtors' prisons. The organization has been active in pushing for legal change in the St. Louis area since the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.