The 31st Annual Seminar of Baltic Criminologists
The 31st Annual Seminar of Baltic Criminologists took place this week at Vilnius University. Scholars from Poland, Russia, and even Hong Kong joined Baltic scholars to present on a variety of topics.
We had a very interesting conversation with a woman from Poland. In her speech, she explained some recent and troubling developments in Poland. Recently the Poles enacted a law which allows them to continue to detain criminals who have served their time, under the pretense that they might be dangerous in the future. At the moment there are 56 people who are being imprisoned after completing their sentence for not, as she phrased it, “being abiding within prison”. This was recently found to be within the bounds of the Polish Constitution.
It was fantastic, but also terrifying, to hear about the political developments happening across Eastern Europe. A Russian scholar presented on the culture of crime control in his country, in doing this he actively spoke out against Putin and the Russian government, this was exhilarating to witness. His basic premise was that repressive crime control is a means of exclusion and the more people are excluded the higher the crime rate seems to be. It was honor to be in a room with so many, for lack of a better word, revolutionaries.
However, it must be said this was nothing like any conference I have been to in the US. Besides Ariana and myself, every presenter ran at least 15 minutes over their 20-minute presenting slot. Although there was a moderator on stage they rarely told a presenter to wrap it up and even in the few instances where they did, the presenter often went on for another 5 minutes anyway. I found this incredibly frustrating, as a person who has done a lot of work as an organizer, in the non-profit and student world, I have been lucky enough to learn a lot about how to effectively facilitate discussions. On more than one occasion I wanted to jump on stage and try to manage the question and answer sessions, which can only be described as chaotic.
During one of these sessions a professor we worked with earlier this summer turned to a fellow presenter and said, “I have a very simple question for you, who owns the past?” I think we were all a little peeved by this. Not only were we running over into the lunch break, but this question did not relate to the discussion taking place within the panel.
It’s quite possible this is just how these things run in Lithuania. When we were practicing our presentations the week before Algis encouraged us to cut them down, warning us that many people would go over and we would be better off not speaking for our full allotment. I don’t think that warning prepared us, and we weren’t the only ones who were miffed by the many departures from the schedule; we met a Serb who is working on the NarcoMaps project we did GDPR research for earlier this summer. He discussed Serbia’s position in the trafficking of opiates, we enjoyed his speech and his company as most of the other presenters chatted exclusively with the other regular presenters.
While the conference didn’t go as expected it was definitely an invaluable experience. Ariana and I were the youngest presenters by at least 20 years and the only presenters from America. My presentation on artificial intelligence improving access to justice went well, despite the fact that of the 20 presenters mine was the only PowerPoint to not be set up on the computer. I persevered past the embarrassment of standing on stage trying to upload my PowerPoint to a flash drive and successfully delivered my presentation within the timeframe! I even broke up the slideshow with a live demonstration of how someone would use DoNotPay, an artificial intelligence robot lawyer, to contest a parking ticket.
To be able to give a speech in an academic conference is an experience not many people are getting this summer and I am glad we had the opportunity to be a part of it and share our ideas.
I also had an incredible red curry with tofu this week!