The Right to Hug

This event examines how carceral bureaucracies and corporate telecommunications interests have turned family contact into a profit-driven system, drawing on Michigan’s groundbreaking “Right to Hug” litigation to challenge the erosion of in-person visits amid mounting pressures on due process. It situates this litigation within broader jail and prison policies across the United States that replace physical visits with costly, unreliable, and highly surveilled video calls.

The following questions frame the core issues addressed during the conversation, drawing on legal strategy, human rights analysis, and systemic critique:

Drawing on recent litigation by Civil Rights Corps, investigative journalism 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, and what does this litigation mean for fundamental rights amid growing authoritarian profiteering?

• How video visitation bans generate millions in "kickbacks" for sheriffs and counties while extracting wealth from poor families
• The documented psychological harm of severing physical contact between children and incarcerated parents
• How corporate surveillance systems (voice biometrics, AI monitoring) turn family communication into data extraction
• Comparative questions for Canadian constitutional and human rights law: what would a "right to hug" look like in Canada's legal framework?
• The role of media narratives in normalizing or challenging these practices
   

Alec Karakatsanis

Founder and Executive Director, Civil Rights Corps

Alec Karakatsanis is the Founder and Executive Director of Civil Rights Corps. He is a leading civil rights attorney who has pioneered constitutional cases challenging the size, power, profit, and everyday brutality of the punishment bureaucracy across the United States.

His legal challenges have secured immense relief, helping to free hundreds of thousands of people from jail. His work has notably returned tens of millions of dollars to indigent people and families and prevented the separation of thousands of families, transforming the way the U.S. criminal punishment bureaucracy handles fines, fees, and bail. His litigation includes the "Right to Hug" cases challenging video-only jail visitation policies that separate children from incarcerated parents while generating millions in corporate profits.

Alec graduated from Yale College and Harvard Law School (2008), where he was 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 was recognized with the 2016 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award and the 2023 New Frontier Award. Please find his official bio here.

Moderators

Aurélie Lanctôt

DCL candidate (McGill Faculty of Law) and assistant professor (Département des sciences juridiques, UQAM)

Ricardo Lamour

Alumnus, OHCHR Fellowship Programme

Gladue Writer and Summer 2025 intern (CHRLP / Department of Justice and Correctional Services of Cree Nation Government)