Dickinson College to Host Conversation on Mass Incarceration
Provost and Dean of Dickinson College Renée Cramer (left) and journalist Keri Blakinger. Photo of Cramer by Dan Loh. Photo of Blakinger by Ilana Panich-Linsman.
A Conversation on 'Corrections in Ink'
by Isa Mester '26
Keri Blakinger, investigative journalist and author, will discuss her memoir and her work as a reporter covering mass incarceration in a conversation with Renée Cramer, Dickinson College’s provost and dean. The event, “A Conversation on Corrections in Ink,” will take place Thursday, Oct. 5, at 7 p.m. in the Anita Tuvin Schlechter (ATS) Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public and will be livestreamed on the Clarke Forum website. A book sale and signing will follow the event.
Blakinger will discuss her memoir, Corrections in Ink, which follows her life story from her youth in competitive figure skating to struggles with an eating disorder and addiction, to her arrest and her two-year prison sentence in New York. The talk will bring Blakinger’s experiences, and her investigative work as a reporter covering mass incarceration, into conversation with Cramer’s scholarly expertise in American law and address the issues of the American prison system.
Blakinger is a staff reporter at the Los Angeles Times, where her work focuses on the sheriff’s department and jails. Previously, she served as an investigative reporter at The Marshall Project, focusing on incarceration, as well as the death penalty and prisons for The Houston Chronicle. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, on the BBC and in The Washington Post Magazine, and she has appeared on PBS News Hour and HBO's Real Sports. Her 2018 feature on women’s jail for the Post helped win a National Magazine Award.
Cramer became Dickinson’s provost and dean of the college in July. She previously served as deputy provost for academic affairs at Drake University in Iowa after having been faculty senate president and department chair of law, politics and society for more than a decade. Cramer is an interdisciplinary sociolegal scholar whose work has focused on reproductive justice, legal mobilization and the governance of women’s bodies.
The event is part of the celebration of 150 years of Dickinson’s student newspaper, The Dickinsonian. The conversation is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and The Dickinsonian and co-sponsored by the Department of Sociology.
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Published September 26, 2023