“Until 2018, Florida was one of only a few states that banned felons from voting for life. But that year, a two-thirds majority of the state passed an initiative to restore voting eligibility to felons who had served their sentences. It was a major victory for voting rights — but the subsequent implementation has been…
“Reading and writing can provide a profession, a passion or an escape from reality. In Washington, D.C., the Free Minds Book Club positions the activities as mechanisms through which incarcerated people can express themselves in healthy and constructive ways. As Jeffrey Brown reports, inmates who participate in the organization have a much lower recidivism rate…
“Civil rights groups are decrying what they say is a new poll tax after the Florida Senate passed a bill Friday that would require formerly incarcerated people with felony convictions to repay all fines and fees to courts before their voting rights are restored. This comes six months after voters in Florida approved a measure…
“Albert Woodfox is a former political prisoner who was held in solitary confinement for 43 years until he won his freedom just over three years ago. Now he is traveling the world and joins us in studio to discuss his new memoir, “Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement. My Story of Transformation and…
“The former chief medical officer of New York City jails has just published a remarkable new book about the health risks of incarceration. The book is titled “Life and Death in Rikers Island.” Dr. Homer Venters offers unprecedented insight into what happens inside prison walls to create new health risks for incarcerated men and women,…
“The path to the rehabilitation of an ex-con is stacked against them. The term itself even carries a stigma. Ex-con turned Adjunct Professor Benny Lee challenges us to re-think what prisoner reform is really about. Benny Lee spent the late 60s through early 80s as a gang leader of the Conservative Vice Lord Nation, eventually…
“The U.S. incarcerates more people than any other country–over two million. Roughly 200,000 of them are female. But existing American prisons are often ill-equipped to handle the specific needs of women and girls. Amna Nawaz talks to Andrea James, a lawyer, and former federal inmate who founded the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated…
“We continue our interview with award-winning journalist Shane Bauer about his new book, American Prison, which dives deep into the profit-earning motives of U.S. prisons. Starting with convict labor in colonial-era settlements all the way to present day mass incarceration, Bauer also recounts his own stint as an undercover prison guard at the privately owned…
“California relies on thousands of prisoners, including many women, to battle the wildfires burning statewide. Prisoner firefighters gain training and earn time off of their sentences for good behavior, typically two days off for each day served. But critics of the program say the state is exploiting prisoners’ eagerness to earn time for early release….
“Yale University law professor and writer James Forman Jr. won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in the general nonfiction category for his new book, “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America.” The prize committee praised the book for its “examination of the historical roots of contemporary criminal justice in the U.S., based on…