Prisons: The Right to Hug
Le vendredi 13 mars 2026, à 13h05.
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Maxwell Cohen Moot Court, room 100, Faculty of Law, McGill University
THE RIGHT TO HUG / Constitutionnaliser le droit aux câlins
Date: March 13, 2025
Time: 13:05 PM – 2:25 PM
Location: Maxwell Cohen Moot Court, Faculty of Law, McGill University
Format: Public conversation
Co-sponsored by: Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, McGill Faculty of Law
EN
This event explores how carceral bureaucracies and corporate telecommunications interests have transformed family contact into a profit-driven system. Drawing on Michigan’s groundbreaking “Right to Hug” litigation, it challenges the erosion of in-person visits amid mounting pressures on due process.
Grounded in recent litigation by Civil Rights Corps, investigative reporting from NBC News, and critical scholarship on punishment bureaucracy, the conversation asks: Is there—and should there be—a constitutional right to hug one’s child or parent while incarcerated? What does this litigation signal about the protection of fundamental rights in an era of expanding carceral governance and corporate profiteering?
- How bans on in-person visitation generate millions in “kickbacks” for sheriffs and counties while extracting wealth from low-income families
- The documented psychological harms of severing physical contact between children and incarcerated parents
- How corporate surveillance systems—including voice biometrics and AI-based monitoring—transform family communication into data extraction
- Comparative implications for Canadian constitutional and human rights law: what would a “right to hug” look like within Canada’s legal framework?
- The role of media narratives in normalizing or challenging these practices
Register for the event here: https://bit.ly/righttohug
Room 100, New Chancellor Day Hall, 3644 Peel Street, Montreal, QC, Canada
Alec Karakatsanis is the Founder and Executive Director of Civil Rights Corps. A leading civil rights attorney, he has pioneered constitutional litigation challenging the scale, power, profit incentives, and everyday practices of the U.S. punishment bureaucracy.
His cases have secured substantial relief, contributing to the release of hundreds of thousands of people from jail, returning tens of millions of dollars to low-income individuals and families, and preventing the separation of thousands of families. His litigation includes the “Right to Hug” cases challenging video-only jail visitation policies that separate children from incarcerated parents while generating significant corporate profits.
Alec graduated from Yale College and Harvard Law School (2008), where he served as a Supreme Court Chair of the Harvard Law Review. Prior to founding Civil Rights Corps, he was a federal public defender in Alabama and co-founded Equal Justice Under Law. He is the author of Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System (2019) and Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News (2025). He has received numerous recognitions, including the 2016 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award and the 2023 New Frontier Award.
Learn more: https://civilrightscorps.org/team/alec-karakatsanis/
Cet événement examine comment les bureaucraties carcérales et les entreprises de télécommunications ont transformé les contacts familiaux en un système axé sur le profit. S’appuyant sur le litige novateur « Right to Hug » au Michigan, il interroge l’érosion des visites en personne dans un contexte de pressions croissantes sur les garanties procédurales.
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