ISSUED: 16 February 2017
MEDIA CONTACT: Valerie Owens
SHEPHERDSTOWN, WV — The Shepherd University Common Reading Program, the George Washington Institute of Living Ethics, and the Shepherd University Foundation are sponsoring a panel discussion titled “Sick Behind Bars: The Ethics of the Incarceration of the Mentally Ill” on Thursday, March 2, at 7 p.m. at the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.
Panelists include Richard Dieter, former executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center; Jim Auxer, vice president of West Virginia Mental Health and mayor of Shepherdstown; Don Patchell, a clinical psychologist at the Hope Center at the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Martinsburg, and Michael Lorensen, 23rd Judicial Circuit Court judge. The discussion will be moderated by Amy Garzón Hampton, lecturer in the Department of Social Work.
The Common Reading Program will sponsor a second presentation titled “Youth and Crime Recidivism” on Monday, March 20, at 6 p.m. in the Byrd CHE auditorium. Both presentations tie into Shepherd’s common reading book “Just Mercy.”
— 30 —