Reduce those social controls and then you will get, after leg an increase in violence again. So we may be looking at that type of situation again where we are reducing the social controls that may be running the risk of a new increase in violence. Host incredibly important perspective for anyone who is asking how we are going to balance the needs of justice with the needs of public safety. This has been an incredible book, the rise and fall of Violent Crime in america. A must a must read for anyone who wants to understand how American Crime has developed, what what our history is, in some perspective on where were going. Thank you so much for taking the time today. Guest it was a pleasure. Thank you so much. We are showing book tv programs during the week in prime time. In case youre not familiar with their weekend features, book tv and cspan to take some Public Affairs programming focuses on the latest Nonfiction Book releases through other interviews and book discussions. Our signature programs are indepth, alive threehour look at one authors life and questions from viewers. Indepth airs the first sunday of every month that new eastern. Afterwards is a oneonone conversations between an author of a new the release Nonfiction Book and the interviewer who is either a journalist, Public Policy maker or policymaker. Dashmac will take you across the country visiting book festivals, author events of the parties were authors talk about their latest work. Book tv is the only National Network devoted exclusively to Nonfiction Books. Book tv on cspan2. Television for serious readers. Tomorrow nights on cspan two, books by reporters in the field. At eight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern for correspondent richard angle on his book, and then all hell broke loose. Then New York Times reporter, david dendy on his book, lit up about the are he spent air he spent in three different tenth grade classrooms. And i 35, sebastian yunker on his book, tripe about, tripe about the challenges faced by returning combat veterans and the psychological leave for belonging to a group. At 1025, panel women journalists on their experiences covering the worst afghanistan and syria. Book tv in prime time, all this week on cspan2. The author of incarceration nations about prison systems are on the world. Book to be talked to her at the l. A. Times festival of books where she also answered your calls. This is halfanhour. We are now joined by the arthur of incarceration nation. The journey around the world. In your book you write that america is the worlds largeste yes we are, it is a title that we should wear shamefully. We have 5 of the world population, but 25 of the prison population. 2. 3 Million People incarcerated, we are over 50 billion per yean in corrections and when it comes to the Racial Disparities ourme system, there moreericans africanamericans under correctional supervision today than there were slaves at thee height of slavery and. Host how do we get there . Guest it all really goes back to the war on drugs to many respects which began in the late 70s and created a series of disparities in sentencing. It also goats back to since its tough on crime. Sentencing laws that made it easier for peoplepl to go to jail and easier for them to stay there and easier for them to stay there foror extended periods of time. Host your native new yorker. There is a. In the 70s where new york was pretty right with crime. People were scared. Was there different solution . Guest for one, fears a terrible is not the thing to be rolled by when you make decisions as far as government and its rise these kinds of things go. Fear makes you act rationally. What happens is the fear was played upon and prison was presented a mass incarceration was presented as healing possible alternative. The only the only way to deal with crime. We know that there was no correlation between the drop in crime rates and the rise of mass incarceration. The study has shown this and so we know that there are other routes. Its not have have to be this route for mass incarceration. Host we are in california, the home of three strikes and youre out. Has that been effective in any way . Guest hardly. Ith the californias three strikes and youre out, we have the drugso drug laws of new york, a host of other tuft sentencing laws that had landed, again millions of people in jails and prisons and under correctional supervision, training our resources and draining us of the value of these human beings. Host we are going to put the phone numbers up. The book is called incarceration nation. Around it is 7488200. 748, 8201 for those of you in the mountain, not the pacific time zone. Taking those calls in just one minute. We think you get thehe idea of what were talking about. The author is also an associate professor of english at the John Jay College of criminal justice. That is part of the City University of new york,emic dir assistant, she is also founder and academic director of a group called prison to college, p2 cp program. Guest it is a credit bearing College Program it edited prison in upstate new york that allow students to take College Classes on the inside while they are t carcerated. Ca it guarantees upon relief it College Program as i prison but also Reentry Program that makesa Higher Education the centerpiece of a total incarcerated prison in new. Host this is called incarceration nation. Which other nations did you look at why . On guest i visited nineest i s nations. Rwanda, uganda, south africa, jamaica, thailand, brazil, australia, singapore, and norway. My overall vision was twopart. One was to rethink some of the fundamentals of the criminal Justice System and specifically a prison system by way of visits to other country. We think the fundamental concept in which a prison system relies. The other the other was that i wanted to broaden our conversation which was a certain growing public conversation around massd incarceration in this crisis a prison. I wanted to broaden that conversation to include the world. Also to include especially the impact of america system upon the world in these variouspon countries. Each of these countries represented a particular issue that i wanted to explore such as solitary confinement in a federal supermac in brazil or personal reentry in singapore. Parole of any down to, and in jamaica and forgiveness and Restorative Justice which is a fundamental theme in the book i, south africa and rwanda. Osophy o host there is a special prism philosophy or special prison in norway. What is that prison . Spee2 norway has given a lot ofgu attention lately in a very good way of being progressive. It has reputation to be a very progressive as a society in general. Particularly when when it comes to social welfare and criminal justice. In norway they have something called the principle of normality. Y. That sounds very simple and yet is enormously complex. That is someone who is imprisoned in norway is incarcerated and they use lose their liberty only. There still part of the community, theyre, there still receiving social welfare from t the same community and when they come home they are to be fully reintegrated into the society that they went away from. That has resulted in some very progressive looking and sounding prisons in norway. Ia there is throughout scandinavia called the open prison modelpr where people are able to go and work jobs on the outside, spend weekends with family and then come back to prison. Really have as close to a normal incarcerated life as much of a paradox as that is, as possible. They also have other prisons that are more traditional that they have a wall. L. I visited one and it had a wall around it, its traditional that respect but it is gleaming and beautiful. It it has every form of rehabilitative programming in the from job training to a music studio to cooking classes. Really giving people an opportunity to reinvent themselves and genuinely enacted things that we call rehabilitation. Host does life sentencing around the world . Absolutely not. America is back in the way we give out life sentences. We are one of nine nations stick about life sentences in the death penalty. Our sentences are longer than any other countries in the world. Most of the countries i visited a life sentence did not even exist. It exists in theory but once you hit 25 years, years, that is considered a life sentence. That includes norway and even countries like brazil and south africa where we may think the prison conditions would be muchh harsher than ours. Theyre still serving shorter sentence sentences. Again and give the great Great Sadness of that reality is that again and u again, studies have shown us that longer sentences do not make us safer. People age out of crime, theyre theyre costing us money. Theyre stealing years of peoples lives for no good reason. Host when you say people age out of crime, what you mean . Guest another words, we know that people hit a certain point in life where they are far less likely to commit crimes. That is known known as the itching out of crime theory. Yet were still keeping peoplewn in prison in the 50s and 60s, when studies have shownie that their likelihood to commit crimes again is very low. Host what you say to a victims family who after maybe 15 years or somebody who is convicted of murder is out . Spee2. Guest im glad you asked me that. I master that that a lot. I start the journey and rwanda because i firmly believe that the first thing that we should talk about when we talk aboutndo crime is not the quote on quoten offender, but the victim. I look at look at rwanda and the way that an alternative to prison system and systems of restitution were created that benefited the victims instead of necessarily punishing the defender which is our traditional approach. I went to rwanda in the south africa to really think about this framework. Ultimately what i found again and again, and also included in the study thati i looked at is the idea that our criminal Justice System as it stands now is not benefiting victims as it should. It is actually the fundamental problem. Victims are not giving their needsctct met. Theyre not at the center of the system sending away from prison which we assume will be feelingn for the victims is more often than not not feeling for that victim. So i actually think its in common upon us to think about ways to heal the victim and to allow better opportunity to be served by criminal Justice System that is not doing a good job that now. Host incarceration nation is the name of the book. Lee is calling in from new orleans. Go ahead. Caller i was wondering what her position would be about medical icing drugs, similar to what has happened in portugal whether that could have an impact on the incarceration rates being so high in the United States. Host before we get her answer, whats your answer. Caller well i support legalization. I think i think the portugal approach would probably be the best or build on the best. To legalize all drugs and medical lies a certain portion of them, i think that would really have a major impact on incarceration. But im not sure she studied the incarceration issue better than i have. E e so im not clear. Host thank you sir. D lega guest i am in favor of the regulated regularization of most substances. I certainly think it we have seen this again and again in terms of what studies are telling us that this would reduce the incarceration rate dramatically. Not just here, but globally speaking. Its important to keep in mind that our drug policies have reverberated throughout thempepe globe. Many of the countries i visited particularly in singapore, and thailand thailand are countries that mimic the u. S. Is tough on crime policy when it comes to drugs and drug laws. I will say that its important to remember that even if we remember all of the drug offenders out of prison and change our laws around drugs which is critical we would still have an estimated approximately 1. 5 Million People in prison, still enough to make us up at the top. So the changes have to extend beyond drug laws and we have to rethink rules and regulations around a parole. We have to rethink all of the ways that we are dealing with violent offenders and not just nonviolent offenders. Host where did your interest in the topic come from . Stor guest its around about story but i was doing a lot of work for the culture of crime and it im an english professor. I have written quite a bit bit about hiphop culture andp american popular culture. And did a series of stories with me to be invited to do stories m and talks. From from the first time i did that i cannot look away. I think being in an educational context in a prison ambien among people whose enormous potential you see is not given an opportunity to flourish in the world, just depressed me that we are losing some of our best citizens and our best contributors to society. Host the next call is from portland oregon. Caller you gave a goody good overview of your pain model. What particular state in the u. S. Would be the most progressive . Guest it depends on what we are talking about with regard to what particular issue. Vermont has some progressive policies around drugs, certainly the legalization of marijuana from california to colorado makes a tremendous difference. Overall were not in a very good place in any state. The reforms that have to happen need to happen on a broad scale, nationwide. Host will from tulsa, oklahoma. Go ahead. Caller i appreciate you taking my call. I im in oklahoma and they have very stringent laws of the state of oklahoma we used a lead thefe nation on that female incarceration rate per capita. [inaudible]felony were not talking about jail, prison, felony convictions. An my question and concern is of all the different continents, the United States is a nation, oklahoma led the incarceration rate and is very stringent. Punishments are regional. Certain crimes and felonies i spent two years in prison for 2 grams of marijuana. [inaudible] for years i was shocked. I said seriously in prison, 90 days inu jail wouldnt satisfy the incarceration. And here is what my attorney told me. He said, we have to stop lucky that people were mad up and lock up people were scared of. Crimes against people, Violent Crimes, those are the people we need to be incarcerated. Stop locking. Stop locking up people for these petty crimes. But in the state of oklahoma prisons are big. Host will come i think we have the idea. What lets hear from our guest. Guest thank you will. I agree with that statement. T although i would say this. Are af we need to look harder at who we are afraid of her who we think we are afraid of. We need to remember that the people in prison are people in prison. We imagine oftentimes people say what you do with the rapist and murderer, that constitutes, someone who is habituallymm committing murder is a very, very tiny percentage of the prison population. The bulk of what i see in in the u. S. Are what we see and i have seen globally are people who are essentially, by way of povertyy and racism being produced for prison cells. As a result, it is not about their bad choices, but a nationc with the policies that are producing systemic racism and systemic poverty that creates the prison population. On and t this is mere through out the globe whether were talking about blacks and latinos in the u. S. , or blacks and colored folks in south africa, the hill people in thailand, the Aboriginal People in australia, all people who fail buyer system. So we should be careful around this non violent versus Violent Crime division. Complex it is a far more complex issue than it sounds. Host what super max. Guest a super max is a dramatically solitary confinement driven prison that is supposedly for the worst of the worst criminals. And i put that in quotation marks. America invented america invented the super max in the 1980s. Then this model became imitated around the world. It is now estimated in about ahi dozen countries. It is extreme solitary confinement. I visited a federal super max, one of five built in brazil in the past decade or so. That was was literally a kind of living hell on earth where people are going insane before your eyes because we know again from psychological studies around super maxes that level of solitary confinement damages he permanently. I also also learned something that mimics the u. S. As well which is that we say it is for the worst of their worst but it is often being used as au Political Tool to punish people. For Something Like looking at collections officer the wrong way could land someone in solitary confinement. Thereby damaged their psyche for life. And then welcoming that damage person back when they come home. Host the next call comesr gs from carol in texas. Caller hello. Host please go ahead. Caller yes, my question was, what would you recommend states do with crimes that are drug related . How should they handle those . Al host we talked about that a little earlier, but if you would guest i dont dramatically distinguish between dealing with crimes that are drug related or not. As we talked about earlier im in favor of the legalization of the most substances and a whole different policy around them. Drugs should be treated as a Public Health issue not a criminal justice issue. I can add that i think even when it comes to what categorizes Violent Crime, i dont see prison as immorally economically or socially responsible response. If we fought more in terms of theres a whole host of things that we need to redo in order to get our prison system in our criminal Justice System where it should be. If we put Community Policing and Restorative Justice and restitution in a different paradigm at the heart of our system, i think our world in the global world would look different. Host mark in seattle, go ahead with your question or comment. Caller hello. Ive been interested in the phones or have their Voting Rights taken away and im wondering how, and that is with the rest of the world just seems like an additional way to punish people. Strip them of their citizenshipc guest great question. I can honestly say that in almost every country i have visited visited that at a certain point when i was in one of most awful prisons, the most painful places, someone would look at me and say Something Like, i cant believe i cant believe in america you still have the delft kennedy. Or i that you still have life in prison. One of the things i heard it quite a bit is a cant believed someone can come home from prison and not be able to vote. That is an extremely rare thing and its shocking to many countries who believe in the idea that when you come home from prison, you have your rights restored. It is an appalling problem that is connected to the larger crisis of reentry altogether which is that we send people to prison and we stigmatize them for life. That is something that again america does very well. Host what you think of thewd recent conversation that we are having in this conversation about Prison Reform and the fact that the coke brothers have advocated for that. Guest on the one hand im excited about it. L we are s its part of the discord, its a level of bipartisan on precedented, but i keep my cynical hat on because much of the situation seems to be are gi economic in nature. That certainly certainly is true, im an advocate for not wasting our money. But i think if it is just about finding something to you per, we can find a cheaper way to mass incarcerate. Given that i believe prisons are systems of oppression, i think we can find a cheaper way to oppress people. A big part of why i wrote this book is to address this on a moral level, on a social level, on a philosophical level really. So it is not only about dollars and cents. We have to talk about the bigger issues at stake. Host the book is called incarceration nations, journey to justice in prisons around the world. The next call comes from california. Please go ahead. Caller i was wondering about the aspect of the privatization of prisons and the concepts of prisons for profit. Can you address that subject . Guest im glad to ask. I get that question a lot. I think private prisons are very much in the public eye now which is excellent. In fact fact one of our democratic candidates, Bernie Sanders now to abolish private prison. I look at that in australia which is the country that has the largest percentage of people inside thee prisons of the world. I think we know and we meaning anyone who is kinda looked at this issue in a superficial way. We know that private prisons are dangerous and that they are making money off the incarceration of human beings and warehousing of human beings. They also have tremendous lobbying power. They are billion dollar industry that have control over our legislature. They push for tough on crime sentencing to make money. This is a terrifying reality. Wt it is certainly true in australia. Again i should say that private prisons are something that we started here in the u. S. And the worldca copycatted as a model. The thing i often remind people of this issue is when it comes to intertwining a capitalism and h prison, this happens whether were talking private prisoner state prison. State prisons are making enormous money. There is a is a lot of industry in capitalismin the state system before talking about phone companies, prison labor, items that are made in prisons around the nation around the world. Its a very dangerous combination whether private oror public. Host gregory is in california, just north north of where we are here. Go ahead. Caller hello. I came in in late to the discussion. Possibly you have discussed this. Cussed thi my question concerns whether or not you have been a victim yourself of any serious crime and if you have or havent, howh this is affected your attitude and ideas on this topic. So i physically assaulted on one occasion. I was held up at gum. On another occasion and another occasion i had my home burglarized and torn to pieces. Ive also had relatives and friends of physically assaulted. One of them was permanently injured. An elderly woman in her 80s when someone tried to take her purse. I admit host that all said, how has that affected your view of incarcerations, three strikes youre out, other type issues like that . Caller ive tried to stay ar liberal and openminded on these topics as i possibly can. For example im for privatene prison for profit. Theres a terrible scandal a phone Companies Companies make moneym. Off of criminals. Colleg im full prison to college pipe by. Im for every good thing that we can do and i think scandinavia holds out the model which from the american viewpoint seems incredibly progressive. D people also admit that my attitude about criminals and people just cant behave well is harden by these terrible experiences off myself and people close to me. Im still trying to reconcile these. So i wonder if you have been ae victim or people close to have been a victim of a serious crime of the type i have described in my experience. If so host thank you sir. Lets hear from our author. Guest that is a very thoughtful response that i appreciate that. I empathize with your victimhood and what you have been through. I personally, no i have not been a victim. I victim. I talk about this in the book. Earlier i mentioned that i start the book in rwanda focusing on victims and the needs of victimt and continue that threat throughout the book. I firmly believe that victim should be at the heart of our criminal Justice System. He i would say to you that you deserve to live in a society where you are not victimizing clearly that is not the case
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