“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…