The Center on Transnational Policing’s Police Torture and Community Healing Project team has been selected as one of the Group Winners of the 2024 New Directions Award of the General Anthropology Division. The team leaders, Laurence Ralph, the William D. Zabel '58 Professor of Human Rights, professor of anthropology and public affairs, and co-director of the Center on Transnational Policing, and Chelsey Carter, assistant professor of public health and anthropology of Yale University, also have been awarded the Setha Low Engaged Anthropology Award of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). 

“The Police Torture and Community Healing Project demonstrates a deep commitment to social justice and community engagement by applying anthropology to address the urgent issue of police violence and racialized governance,” said Lucas Bessire, visiting professor of anthropology and the Stanley Kelley, Jr., Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching, who was the nominator for the New Directions award. “The project promotes awareness and discussion of the issues of police violence and community healing in public forums by utilizing ethnographic tools aimed at catalyzing collective reflections about self, world and justice — with a social focus on educational outreach for school-aged youth.”

The project was driven by Ralph’s research on police torture in Chicago and his book and animated short film “The Torture Letters” (2020). The Center on Transnational Policing has organized several community engagement events focused on issues of policing and police violence in Chicago since 2022.

Ralph and Carter, a 2021 Princeton Postdoctoral Research Fellow, will receive the Setha M. Low Engaged Anthropology Award during the upcoming AAA annual meeting from Nov. 20-23.

“I am deeply honored to receive the GAD New Directions Award and the Setha M. Low Engaged Anthropology Award from the American Anthropological Association. I'm grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with organizations like the Invisible Institute, the DuSable Black History Museum, the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial Foundation, and the Chicago Torture Justice Center,” said Ralph. “Together, we have worked to educate Chicago public school students about the history of police violence and to support survivors. I hope this work serves as a model for what community-engaged anthropology can look like.”

Within the project, Ralph and the team held a series of screenings of “The Torture Letters” and public conversations about the city’s history of police abuse through a mandated curriculum in Chicago public schools and the greater community in the city, with funding from the Field Foundation of Illinois and in partnership with the Invisible Institute. 

For the student-focused events in the project, Ralph and Carter trained graduates and undergraduates from Princeton, Yale, University of Chicago and Northwestern to facilitate small-group discussions and led letter-writing activities for Chicago Public School students, providing them opportunities to engage in conversations about the critical topic of police violence while learning anthropological methods. University students were able to learn from survivors and activists, collaborate with students across universities, and participate in civic engagement by participating in the project. 

“Professor Ralph's research on police torture in Chicago is crucial for deepening our society’s understanding of how law enforcement violence and carceral logics affect the lives of Black and Brown communities, particularly the youth,” Carter said. “As we observe local governments and academic institutions attempting to silence those who speak out against injustice and erase uncomfortable truths from history, it becomes all the more vital to spotlight these darker chapters of American history and culture.” 

She added, “Working with Dr. Ralph and CTP to create meaningful, hands-on interventions that help reclaim this history and empower students to process their experiences and feelings with police violence has been an honor.” 

“When I wrote ‘The Torture Letters,’ my goal was not only to advance scholarly understanding of police violence but to create a tool for lasting impact within communities most affected by it. This work has been part of a broader movement toward systemic change for survivors of torture in Chicago,” said Ralph. 

The Center on Transnational Policing is a research initiative that is based in the Department of Anthropology in partnership with the School of Public and International Affairs. It brings together scholars at different levels, including undergraduate, graduate, and members of the professoriate, to understand policing in the U.S. and internationally.