Black History Panel: Race, Disability, and the Criminal Justice System

In honor of Black History Month, 2022, the MRC Black Employee Resource Group (BERG) presents a distinguished panel of professionals, including a public policy scholar, an MRC practitioner, and a consumer, to shed light on the intersections of disability, race, and ethnicity, and involvement in the criminal justice system. These panelists will discuss how black individuals with a disability have been disproportionately impacted by contact with the U.S. criminal justice system and propose solutions to support MRC consumers in achieving educational and employment success.

The program panelists are:
Sarah Jalbert, MA, MS, is the Executive Director of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and a doctoral candidate in Public Policy at the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at Massachusetts Boston. Ms. Jalbert is responsible for ICH’s operations, including research and evaluation projects, staffing, budget and finance, and business development. Her research interests include reform justice system, behavioral health, learning disorders, and health equity. She also enjoys learning about new research and evaluation methods and applying them to real-world problems. Sarah’s dissertation research addresses the connection between the ADHS diagnosis, race and ethnicity, and criminal justice system involvement for young men of color. 

David Rose is an Area Director for the MRC Hyannis and Plymouth offices. He is a former manager at the M.A. Department of Youth Services (DYS). He has 24 years of experience working in the Plymouth/Cape Cod areas, servicing court adjudicated youth in the M.A. juvenile court system. Some of these youth have been individuals with disabilities who became involved in the criminal justice system.