The Carceral State, Forensic Psychology, and Black Resistance

Evan Auguste, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He completed his Ph.D. in clinical psychology with a major area of focus in forensic psychology at Fordham University in 2022. Auguste is a 2014 graduate of Middlebury College.

Dr. Auguste’s work focuses broadly on addressing the mental health consequences of structural anti-Blackness through the lens of Black liberation psychology. To this end, as a part of his forensic training, he has done assessments and mental health work with incarcerated, asylum-seeking, and institutionalized populations. His lab’s, the African-centered Sciences to Illuminate Liberatory Innovation (ASILI) Collective, research involves community participatory, qualitative, and quantitative methods to examine the effects of disparate exposure to justice contact and community violence for Black adolescents and state-induced migratory traumas for Haitian people. The ASILI Collective also focuses on developing and piloting anti-carceral and community-based health interventions, such as the Association of Black Psychologists’ Sawubona Healing Circles, which Dr. Auguste co-developed, to promote healing from an African-centered framework.

For his work, Dr. Auguste has received numerous awards and recognitions including Coalition of Racial and Ethnic Psychological Association’s Leadership Development Institute Fellowship, the Santander International Internship Fellowship, the Association of Black Psychologists President’s Service Award, selection to the American Psychological Association’s Minority Fellowship Program’s Psychological Summer Institute, and the Haitian Apostolate Inc. Distinguished Speaker Award.

This work was completed during his time as an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston.