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In her award-winning entry to the Allegheny County Bar Association's Black History Month essay competition, Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney summer associate LaToya Sawyer explored the "traditional theories of punishment through the lens of the hip hop community."

Sawyer's article, "Prison Imprisons Communities," examines the impact the mass incarceration of African-Americans has on families and communities.

Read Sawyer's essay: "Prison, Imprisons Communities" (Allegheny County Bar Association Lawyers Journal, April 20, 2012)

Entrants to the competition, which was open to law students at the University of Pittsburgh and Duquesne University, had to respond to "Much Respect: Toward a Hip-Hop Theory of Punishment," a scholarly article by professor Paul Butler of the George Washington School of Law.