Incarceration

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• *Psychiatrist: America's 'Extremely Punitive' Prisons Make Mental Illness Worse
  Fresh Air, July 16, 2020, with host: Dave Davies
  Psychiatrist Christine Montross has spent years treating people with serious mental illnesses — sometimes in hospitals, other times in jails or prisons. Montross is a 2015 Guggenheim fellow and an associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University's medical school. In her new book, Waiting for an Echo: The Madness of American Incarceration, she writes that in the U.S., people with serious mental illnesses are far more likely to be incarcerated than they are to be treated in a psychiatric hospital — despite the fact that incarceration often makes mentally ill people worse.
• Aizer and Doyle - Juvenile Incarceration, Human Capital and Future Crime: Evidence from Randomly-Assigned Judges
  Juvenile Incarceration, Human Capital and Future Crime: Evidence from Randomly-Assigned Judges, by Anna Aizer, Joseph J. Doyle, Jr. NBER Working Paper No. 19102; Issued in June 2013 forthcoming in the Quarterly Journal of Economics Abstract "Over 130,000 juveniles are detained in the US each year with 70,000 in detention on any given day, yet little is known whether such a penalty deters future crime or interrupts social and human capital formation in a way that increases the likelihood of later criminal behavior. This paper uses the incarceration tendency of randomly-assigned judges as an instrumental variable to estimate causal effects of juvenile incarceration on high school completion and adult recidivism. Estimates based on over 35,000 juvenile offenders over a ten-year period from a large urban county in the US suggest that juvenile incarceration results in large decreases in the likelihood of high school completion and large increases in the likelihood of adult incarceration. These results are in stark contrast to the small effects typically found for adult incarceration, but consistent with larger impacts of policies aimed at adolescents."
• Alabama Sheriff Legally Took $750,000 Meant To Feed Inmates, Bought Beach House
  Camila Domonoske, NPR, March 14, 2018 Alabama has a Depression-era law that allows sheriffs to "keep and retain" unspent money from jail food-provision accounts. Sheriffs across the state take excess money as personal income — and, in the event of a shortfall, are personally liable for covering the gap. Etowah County Sheriff Todd Entrekin told the News that he follows that practice of taking extra money from the fund, saying, "The law says it's a personal account and that's the way I've always done it."
• Angola for Life
  Video by The Atlantic, Sep 09, 2015 There are more than 6,000 men currently imprisoned at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola—three-quarters of them are there for life, and nearly 80 percent are African American. It's the end of the line for many convicted criminals in Louisiana, which has the highest incarceration rate of any state in the U.S. In this Atlantic original documentary, national correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg goes inside Angola to speak with inmates and with warden Burl Cain, who has managed the prison for two decades. Cain and his colleagues grapple with the crucial question: What does rehabilitation look like when you're locked away for life?
• Bard Prison Initiative
  Has links to two articles and two videos
  
  10th Anniversary Film
  A milestone was marked in 2011 as the Bard Prison Initiative celebrated its 10th year of providing meaningful higher education and opportunity to incarcerated men and women. To document a decade of student and alumni achievements in New York and through the national Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison, BPI produced a twelve-minute film, made by filmmaker Frank duPont.
  
  Celebrating BPI's 11th Commencement
  The Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) held its 11th commencement at the Woodbourne Correctional Facility in Woodbourne, New York, on Saturday, May 31. BPI awarded associate in arts degrees to 36 students. The commencement speaker was Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, D–New York, who was honored with Bard College’s John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service. (http://bpi.bard.edu/)
• College Behind Bars
  College Behind Bars, a four-part documentary film series directed by award-winning filmmaker Lynn Novick, produced by Sarah Botstein, and executive produced by Ken Burns, tells the story of a small group of incarcerated men and women struggling to earn college degrees and turn their lives around in one of the most rigorous and effective prison education programs in the United States – the Bard Prison Initiative.
  Shot over four years in maximum and medium security prisons in New York State, the four-hour film takes viewers on a stark and intimate journey into one of the most pressing issues of our time – our failure to provide meaningful rehabilitation for the over two million Americans living behind bars. Through the personal stories of the students and their families, the film reveals the transformative power of higher education and puts a human face on America’s criminal justice crisis. It raises questions we urgently need to address: What is prison for? Who has access to educational opportunity? Who among us is capable of academic excellence? How can we have justice without redemption?
  The series airs on PBS on November 25th and 26th.
• CORRECTION: Private prisons are back
  2001 documentary. "Outlawed at the beginning of the 20th Century, private corporations are once again owning and operating prisons for profit. A controversial issue which dates back to the days that followed the Emancipation Proclamation, CORRECTIONS examines its re-appearance today amidst globalization and the most awesome growth of prisons in all of modern history, painting a complex portrait of what many are calling the 'prison industrial complex.'"
• Criminal Record - Clean Slate Strategy of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice
  Executive Summary (excerpt): Through collaboration with a network of community partners across the Triangle and the state, the Clean Slate Project of the Criminal Justice Initiative of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ) provides direct reentry legal services and advocacy to individuals impacted by the criminal justice system. Unresolved legal matters impede an individual’s ability to get a driver’s and/or employment license, or access to public benefits. A policy statement issued by the Department of Justice noted, “Civil legal assistance often plays a critical role in addressing barriers to successful reintegration”. Providing important services such as job training programs are not enough if the criminal record still acts as a barrier to employment. To combat this problem, SCSJ’s Clean Slate Program will supplement the important services provided by our partner organizations with direct legal services and advocacy in the following areas: expungment and Certificates of Relief (COR), employment or occupational licensing hearings and driver’s license restoration. Results for Durham NC: http://www.southerncoalition.org/clean-slate-success-durham/
• Diane Rehm Show - Journalist, Author And MacArthur Fellow Ta-Nehisi Coates
  Journalist, Author And MacArthur Fellow Ta-Nehisi Coates Diane Rehm Show, Dec 30 2015 (rebroadcast) "Journalist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates grew up in West Baltimore during the crack epidemic of the 1980s. As a young man, Coates faced the constant risk of violence on a daily basis. He later enrolled at Howard University, where he began to pursue a passion for history and writing. Coates, now a national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine, argues in his latest piece that mass incarceration of African-Americans exacts a devastating financial and psychological cost on black families. Diane talks with recent MacArthur fellow Ta-Nehisi Coates on mass incarceration, his memoir and America’s long struggle with issues of race. "Ta-Nehisi Coates national correspondent, The Atlantic; author of 'Between the World and Me'" Includes transcript
• Diane Rehm Show - Piper Kerman On Her Story That Inspired The Netflix Series “Orange Is The New Black”
  Piper Kerman On Her Story That Inspired The Netflix Series “Orange Is The New Black” Rebroadcast Dec 28 2015 Piper Kerman was 24 and a new graduate of Smith College when she smuggled a suitcase of drug money across international borders. A decade later, that day came back to haunt her, tearing her away from a privileged life and landing her in a Connecticut prison. Kerman’s memoir “Orange Is The New Black: My Year In A Women’s Prison” documented her 13 months behind bars and became the basis for the popular Netflix series. Drawing from her own experience, Kerman now dedicates much of her time to advocating for prison reform and awareness about female incarceration. Piper Kerman joins Diane in studio. Piper Kerman author, "Orange Is The New Black". Her memoir inspired the Netflix series of the same name. The second season of "Orange Is The New Black" is released on June 6.
• Frank Stasio's Fondest Shows: 19 Years Wrongfully Imprisoned: Meet Darryl Hunt
  Darryl Hunt served 19 years in prison for a rape and murder he did not commit. The crime committed against him by the state — his wrongful conviction and wrongful imprisonment — stands as one of the most egregious examples of the injustice built into our penal system. His prison guards plotted to murder him, but he was cleared of all charges in 2014. The interview with Darryl Hunt and his attorney Mark Rabil was recorded in July 2007.
• Fresh Air - Is America Engaged In A 'Vicious Circle' Of Jailing The Poor?
  Fresh Air, May 11, 2016 According to a report by the Vera Institute for Justice, there are more than 3,000 local jails in America, holding more than 730,000 people on any given day. Nancy Fishman, a project director at the Vera Institute, tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that jails "have impacted a huge number of Americans ... many more than are impacted by state prisons."
• How San Francisco's D.A. Is Decreasing The Jail Population Amid COVID-19 (39 min)
  Fresh Air, with Terry Gross, April 9, 2020 (includes transcript)
  Chesa Boudin's radical leftist parents were imprisoned when he was a toddler. Now he's working to reduce the inmate population in San Francisco — and worrying about his dad, who remains in prison.
• Locked up in America - 2 films: Solitary Nation, Prison State
  PBS Frontline, April 22 and 29, 2014
• NY Times Opinion - Alabama’s Cruel and Unusual Prisons
  By The Editorial Board, April 6, 2019
  William Barr’s Justice Department faces a test in how it oversees the state’s deplorable prison conditions.
  
• Opening Minds Behind Bars
  James S. Kunen, Columbia Magazine, Summer 2017 What happens when you bring college classes to incarcerated men and women?
• Pregnancy and childbearing while incarcerated
• Reveal - Development arrested (55 min.)
  From Reveal, the Center for Investigative Reporting. Co-produced with PRX. Nov. 16, 2019.
  In Mississippi, Jim Crow era laws result in a high rate of black kids charged as adults
  Written by Ko Bragg; reported by Ko Bragg and Melissa Lewis. Includes transcript and Ko Bragg’s article: Bound by Statute: In Mississippi, Jim Crow era laws result in a high rate of black kids charged as adults.
• Rikers: Where Mental Illness Meets Brutality in Jail
  Michael Winerip and Michael Schwirtz, NY Times, July 14, 2014 Brutal attacks by correction officers on inmates — particularly those with mental health issues — are common occurrences inside Rikers, the country’s second-largest jail, a four-month investigation by The New York Times found. Reports of such abuses have seldom reached the outside world, even as alarm has grown this year over conditions at the sprawling jail complex.
• SPLC - 18 things you should know about mass incarceration
  Infographics from the Southern Poverty Law Center
• SPLC court filing details barbaric conditions at private prison in Mississippi
• Ta-Nehisi Coates articles in The Atlantic
• The New Jim Crow: mass incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
  Michelle Alexander's insightful and powerful analysis of mass incarceration in the U.S.
• Two films: The War on Kids and Kids for Cash
  Kids for Cash is about the case in Pennsylvania that led to the imprisonment of two judges who were accepting “finder’s fees” from a private juvenile detention facility to which they were frequent referrers.
• Violence and Corruption in a Prison Union
  NY Times Editorial Board, June 8, 2016 The effort to root out the corruption and violence that have long plagued the Rikers Island jail complex in New York City entered a new phase on Wednesday when Norman Seabrook, the politically powerful leader of the 9,000-member corrections officers union, was arrested on federal fraud charges.
• Washington Post - The painful price of aging in prison
  The painful price of aging in prison Sari Horwitz Washington Post, May 2, 2015
• ‘A Nightmare’: Inside the Brooklyn Jail With Little Heat or Electricity
  By Annie Correal, NY Times, Feb. 2, 2019
  In the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal jail on the Brooklyn NY waterfront, more than 1,600 inmates have been largely confined to their freezing, dark cells for nearly a week, since an electrical fire partially cut off power to the jail.