About the Conference
The annual conference by and for people navigating the white collar criminal justice system.
The conference grew out of the White Collar Support Group, the world's first support group devoted to people navigating the white collar justice system. Since 2013, the group has served roughly 2,000 members through free weekly Zoom meetings, every Monday evening, confidential and open to justice-impacted individuals and their families.
In 2024 that community decided its conversations deserved a bigger room. The White Collar Conference became the annual public gathering: one morning a year where the justice-impacted, their families, the attorneys who defend them, the academics who study the system, and the advocates working to change it all sit at the same table.
Every session is recorded and published, on the record, free to watch. The first two stages held a bestselling legal analyst, law professors from Stanford, NYU, and Ohio State, whistleblowers, founders who rebuilt from nothing, and the people living the second sentence firsthand. On October 10 the sitting Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons takes the third.
Three years, on the record.
2026 · Ending the White Collar Life Sentence
Upcoming · October 10The third annual conference confronts the collateral consequences that outlast the formal sentence. Joshua J. Smith, Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the first person appointed to senior BOP leadership after serving time in its custody, delivers the keynote. Dickie Scruggs sits for the fireside chat, and Emily O'Brien, Rashmi Airan, and Desmond Meade join the featured panel on rebuilding a career after a justice journey.
Full 2026 program →2025 · Pardons, Expungement & Restoring Our Dignity
October 11, 2025 · 5 sessionsJeffrey Toobin keynoted on the politics of presidential mercy. Joe Bankman of Stanford Law spoke with Brent Cassity about his family's experience of a high-profile prosecution. Law professors Mark Osler, Rachel Barkow, and Doug Berman debated the future of clemency, and Yale's Dr. Erin Frey presented early findings from a restoration study conducted with the support group.
2025 recap + recordings →2024 · Starting Over: Out of Isolation and Into Community
October 19, 2024 · InauguralThe first conference opened with a fireside chat with David Israel, who went from incarceration to founding GOOD PLANeT Foods. Bill Baroni, whose conviction the Supreme Court unanimously overturned, moderated the "Out of Isolation" panel with Theranos whistleblower Erika Cheung. Panels on healing through community and on careers and reentry followed, with author Craig Stanland as emcee.
2024 recap + recordings →Who it's for
The conference welcomes everyone who intersects with the white collar justice system: people facing or recovering from prosecution, their spouses, parents, and children, the defense attorneys and consultants who guide them, researchers and academics, journalists, and the reform advocates working on what comes next.
It is virtual, held on Zoom, and open to all. No one is asked to explain why they're in the room.
The organizer
The conference is produced by the White Collar Support Group, a program of Progressive Prison Ministries, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded by Jeff and Lynn Grant in 2013. Beyond the conference, the group runs free weekly support meetings, a speaker series, and advocacy initiatives on issues like the right to banking and federal expungement.
Jeff Grant, widely described as the only attorney in the U.S. who served time in federal prison for a white collar crime and returned to practice white collar law, hosts the conference each year.
The conversation does not stop when the room closes. Many of the people on this stage have also sat down with Brent Cassity on Nightmare Success, his podcast about falling and coming back, including a conversation on second acts with Jeff Grant and Drew Chapin. Each speaker profile links their episode where one exists.