Punishment and Legal Activism: Contesting Derek Twyman’s 160 – year US prison sentence

Derek Twyman, a Canadian citizen, was 25 years-old when he was sentenced to 160 years in a North Carolina prison after being convicted of a string of non-violent burglaries in 1989. In November 2017, Twyman finally returned to Canada as a free man after more than 27 years behind bars. Twyman was freed thanks to a group of Canadian lawyers who spent a decade fighting against Twyman’s excessively harsh sentence. This event features Derek Twyman and his Toronto-based lawyer Shane Martinez. They will discuss the case, experiences in prison, the challenges of reintegration, and similar challenges faced by hundreds of Canadian citizens that are stuck in prisons abroad.

Fall colloquium of the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice in conjunction with the Criminalization and Punishment Education Project (CPEP), the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, the Department of Law and Legal Studies, and the Faculty of Public Affairs.