CSRPC Justice Fellow Jimmy Soto in Conversation with UChicago Professor Reuben MillerOn His Path to Freedom and Advocacy After Serving 42 Years for A Wrongful Conviction

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 10, 2024
Contact: Anaga Dalal, adalal@uchicago.edu, 201.600.4718 (c)

Chicago, IL. Next Wednesday, April 17 from 6 to 7:30 p.m., newly appointed CSRPC Beyond Prisons Justice Practitioner Fellow James “Jimmy” Soto will speak at the offices of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture (CSRPC) on the campus of the University of Chicago (5733 S. University Ave.)

Soto, who served 42 years for a wrongful conviction, will speak with UChicago Associate Professor Reuben Miller, author of Halfway Home: Race, Punishment and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration.

CSRPC’s Beyond Prisons Initiative is a teaching and learning initiative that interrogates, disrupts, and works to move beyond carceral logics and systems. The Justice Practitioner Fellowship is designed to advance practices, knowledge, and skills for fellowship recipients as well as broaden engagement for Beyond Prisons programming on the UChicago campus and beyond. Jimmy has lived experience on issues of incarceration, reentry, and system-impacted trauma.

“In prison, I lived in a building that should have been condemned,” Soto reflects. “My fellowship with CSRPC provides a platform from which I can speak about the many injustices of the carceral system, highlighting our shared humanity."

“By illuminating the central role that race and racism play in so many systems of oppression such as mass incarceration, we can start moving toward justice, toward a paradigm shift,” says Soto.

“It has been incredible working with Jimmy since he's been home,” says Beyond Prisons Director of Practice Alice Kim. “His brilliance and passion for justice were palpable inside the prison classroom, and now, after forty-two years of wrongful incarceration, he is making the most of his hard-fought for freedom to shine a light on the injustices of the criminal punishment system.”

Jimmy hit the ground running when he walked out of prison just before Christmas 2023. While incarcerated he earned his bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University’s Prison Education Program (NPEP) and was an active member of the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project’s (P+NAP) Think Tank which explores long-term sentencing practices in Illinois and nationally and is supported, in part, by CSRPC’s Beyond Prisons initiative. Jimmy is a paralegal with Northwestern Law School’s Community Justice and Civil Rights Clinic and a research assistant with the university’s Epistemic Reparations Global Working Group. He is planning to attend law school next year.

“Jimmy’s passionate advocacy and tireless work for justice inside and now outside of prison walls is a powerful representation of our core mission: To advance public dialogue about the centrality of race and racism in the systems we inhabit,” says CSRPC Executive Director Tracye Matthews.

“We are honored to welcome Jimmy onto our campus and to be working with him as our inaugural Beyond Prisons Justice Practitioner Fellow,” adds Kim.

Register to attend at bit.ly/sotomiller.
Doors open at 5:30 p.m. for a reception.
The program begins at 6 p.m.