113: In Studio

Life of the Law

America is a nation that locks up more people per capita than any other country in the world. The Sentencing Project reports 2.2 million people are incarcerated in America's prisons. That's a 500% increase over the past 40 years. The Institute for Criminal Policy Research in London reports America locks up 670 people per 100,000. Russia locks up 439 per 100,000. Rwanda 434 per 100,000. China 118 per 100,000. How in the world did this happen? Are Americans criminally prone? Or has America's desire for security and tough sentencing policies lost its way?

This week on Life of the Law we ask scholars who have studied the history and changing conditions of prisons, and a man who was incarcerated for more than 20 years, to join us in the studios of KQED in San Francisco -- to talk about the social, financial and cultural impact of mass incarceration and what change would look like. Osagie Obasogieis Professor, School of Public Health, UC Berkeley, author of Blinded by Sight: Seeing Race through the Eyes of the Blind and is a member of Life of the Law's Advisory Board Ashley Rubinis Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto and is author of the soon to be published book, The Deviant Prison: Eastern State Penitentiary and the Advantage of Difference, 1829-913.

Keramet Reiter is Assistant Professor of Criminology, Law and Society and Law at UC Irvine and is author of 23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement. Keramet Reiter has a forthcoming book with Oxford Press, Keynotes in Criminology and Criminal Justice: Mass Incarceration (2017). She is currently conducting research in Danish prisons, about prison culture and solitary confinement practices, and in Washington State, about solitary confinement reforms.http://cls.soceco.uci.edu/

Troy Williamsis a journalist and the new editor of SF Bay View and while incarcerated founded the San Quentin Prison Report.

Rebecca McClennanis Associate Professor of History at UC Berkeley and is author of Becoming America: A History for the 21st Century and The Crisis of Imprisonment: Protest, Politics and the Making of the American Penal State, 1776-1941.

Heather Ann Thompsonis Professor of History at the University of Michigan and won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in History for her book Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy.

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