The Elsinore Bennu Think Tank for Restorative Justice: An Oral History

Voiceover

Presenter(s)

Sarah Babcock, Katie Burch, Megan Wetherington

Abstract or Description

           The Elsinore Bennu Think Tank for Restorative Justice was founded by Dr. Norman Conti and his Inside Out class in 2007. The Think Tank began as a group of professors, university students, and incarcerated men and met inside of a prison where many of the incarcerated members were serving life sentences. Since then, the Think Tank has begun meeting on Duquesne University’s campus and serves the local Pittsburgh community. It is currently made up of citizens returned from incarceration, professors, students, and local professionals. Meeting each week, members exchange ideas on how to achieve restorative justice and give back to the community through service projects, such as distributing food and information pertaining to COVID-19 to local returned citizens during the pandemic. The Think Tank as it is today invites the stranger to come converse about the difficult topics that encompass restorative justice and incarceration.

           As a part of a graduate class project under the advisement of Dr. Jennifer Taylor, we are conducting an oral history of the Think Tank. The goal of this project is to produce an archive that will be useful to both the members of the Think Tank as well as historians researching a variety of topics. Through this oral history, we hope to give voice to those who are often systemically and societally ignored. We hope to disseminate this piece to a large audience through a digital platform where anyone will be able to listen to clips of the audio recordings with the hopes that this will reach a larger community and create a dialogue surrounding the goals of the Think Tank. One potential outcome is that this project will inspire others to create similarly structured groups in order to expand the impact of the Elsinore Bennu Think Tank for Restorative Justice. The oral history class is committed to maintaining co-ownership over this project so that the final product meets the goals of the Think Tank and best serves this organization and the community it represents.

Mentor

Dr. Taylor, Department of History