The Truth about Police Accountability: An Evening with Joanna Schwartz

The Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School was pleased to welcome Joanna Schwartz, Professor of Law at UCLA Law, to discuss her new book SHIELDED: How the Police Became Untouchable at Penn Carey Law.
Professor Schwartz is one of the nation’s leading experts on police misconduct litigation, and has written extensively on the systemic issues with police accountability and possible solutions to create and sustain a just culture in policing across the country that will support good police practices while ensuring that police misconduct is not minimized or ignored.
In Shielded, Professor Schwartz exposes the myriad ways in which our legal system protects police at all costs, with insightful analyses about subjects ranging from qualified immunity to no-knock warrants. The product of more than two decades of advocacy and research, Shielded is a timely and necessary investigation into why civil rights litigation so rarely leads to justice or prevents future police misconduct. Weaving powerful true stories of people seeking restitution for violated rights, cutting across race, gender, criminal history, tax bracket, and zip code, Schwartz paints a compelling picture of the human cost of our failing criminal justice system, bringing clarity to a problem that is widely known but little understood.