LEWISTON – A former FBI agent will deliver the keynote address for the “No More Prisons: Education not Incarceration” conference at 1 p.m. Saturday, March 24, at Bates College’s Chase Hall Lounge.

Tyrone Powers, former FBI agent and director of the Institute of Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland, will speak on “Criminal Injustice: An Exploration of Inequalities in the Criminal Justice System, Institutionalized Racism and Class Oppression in the FBI’s COINTELPRO Program and War on Drugs.”

Powers will discuss his drug war experiences in the FBI, scrutinizing how the agency focuses on street-level drug dealers, who he says are disproportionately poor people and people of color, while doing little to prevent the entrance of drugs into urban communities.

The conference also will explore how disparities in the criminal justice system feeds a profitable, fast-growing privatized prison industry.

Other sessions include: at 2:30 p.m., members of the Friends of Island Academy, of New York, discuss its work in assisting its clients to make the transition from prison to the community; and at 4:30 p.m., in “Prisons and Youth Organizing,” organizers from the NIA Project share their experiences in creating support programs for “at-risk” youth in Boston.

The conference, organized by the New World Coalition, is funded in part by an Arthur Crafts Service-Learning grant administered by Bates College Center for Service-Learning, and also in part by student organizations, such as Amandla!, the Jewish Cultural Community, Solidaridad Latina and Women of Color. For information, call 786-8272.