Decarceration Nation (with Josh and Joel)

Josh interviews Bruce Western about his book Homeward: Life in the year After Prison. Bruce Western is a professor of Sociology at Harvard, Visiting Professor at Columbia, and Distinguished Visiting Research Professor at the University of Queensland in Australia. We both mention Bryan Stevenson several times in the interview. Mr. Stevenson is the creator of the Equal Justice Initiative, the force...

Josh talks to Katrina Burlet who was the coach of the Stateville Correctional Center Debate Team (until the Illinois DOC canceled the program with no explanation). Katrina Burlet heads the Justice Debate League in Illinois . The first story I read was this overview of what happened with Katrina's class . WGN-TV did a feature on the Stateville Debate team just before the class was canceled . Here i...

Josh discusses clemency for Matthew Charles with Kevin Ring of FAMM. Thanks to The Crime Report for publishing my Op-Ed supporting passage of the First Step Act . Our new dedicated website is DecarcerationNation.com Kevin Ring is the President of Families Against Mandatory Minimums . As near as I can tell, this is the original Julietta Martinelli story from last December, she also wrote this artic...

Josh discusses the First Step Act with Ames Grawert, Jessica-Jackson Sloan, and Jason Pye The First Step Act will be voted on in the U.S. House of Representatives on 5/22/2018. Ames Grawert is a Senior Counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice. Jessica Jackson-Sloan is the co-founder of the Cut 50 initiative. Jason Pye is the Vice-President for Legislative Affairs at Freedom Works. Jess Sessions i...

Josh talks about the importance of voting as a formerly incarcerated person and the problems caused when we don't vote The 14th Amendment to the Constitution allows states to deny the vote to formerly incarcerated folks. I quoted two articles about poor folks not voting, first an article from The Guardian and second an article from The Root . I have written two pieces about Medicare work requireme...

Josh talks with guests Steve Bailey of the Post & Courier and Victoria McKenzie of the Crime Report about the Lee Correctional Facility Riot. The Lee riot was the deadliest prison riot in 25 years, resulting in 7 dead and many more injured . Steve Bailey has written many articles about the problems with the prison system in South Carolina including this article which preceded the riot but pred...

Josh and Joel talk about the effect Suboxone smuggling has on prison mail across the United States. I felt the 14th episode, where I interview Michigan's gubernatorial candidate Bill Cobbs was symbolically important. I can't imagine that many Gubernatorial candidates have sat down for an hour-long podcast interview with a formerly incarcerated registered citizen. Thanks to Mr. Cobbs for a great di...

A recent interview between Michigan Gubernatorial Candidate Bill Cobbs and Josh about criminal justice reform in Michigan. If you are not familiar with what is going on with water in Michigan. The State approved Nestle's new contract to remove even more water from the Great Lakes, Flint had State supplied water suspended while the Flint school's were and are still testing high for lead and we disc...

It is interesting to me that we are releasing this episode on equal pay day. Not because I want to distract from women's equal pay but because it is a common cause (and there are plenty of women in prison earning pennies on the hour). The Shawshank Redemption is not just a great movie, it gets a lot of the details of prison life right. Scenes from the movie were quoted every day in every prison an...

Josh and Joel discuss the problems with prison food. The story about the Alabama Sheriff who spent money allocated for food for his jail prisoners to buy a beach house is pretty unbelievable but 100% true. Yup, I was part of the lucky group of inmates who got to "brown bag it" for a few months at the Macomb County Jail . Hey Kool-Aid! I think it is awesome that inmates all over Michigan...

Josh and Joel discuss mental health care in America's Jails and Prisons. The Bureau of Justice Statistics article details the high prevalence of mental health problems in prisons and jails. The results of the Michigan House C.A.R.E.S. task force were compiled into this report . My Daily Kos article , that Joel refers to, was one of my most popular. Tom Dart is an important figure, he was on 60 min...

Josh and Joel discuss prison (and jail) service provider Jpay Technically, a regressive tax is a tax that decreases as the amount of money taxed increases. But, functionally, this means the poor are taxed more of their income (and certainly more of a percentage of their income). Nothing has ever looked as friendly and unthreatening as Jpay's website . For many of the families with a loved-one in p...

Josh and Joel discuss Josh's criminal history There won't be too many notes since this episode is mostly personal reflections but I will add some context. I said a lot of terrible things in chat but the description of where and how that happened was exactly correct. I also pled guilty to sharing adult content which was links to free and freely available web pornography during chats. All of this oc...

Josh and Joel discuss both the Dignity For Incarcerated Women Act and the National Day of Empathy (March 6th). The National Day of Empathy was created by the Cut 50 organization (created by Van Jones). The main campaigns for the 2018 Day of Empathy are to push: The Dignity For Incarcerated Women Act of 2018 and Clean Slate Legislation Cut 50 has several pages on their site about the Dignity Act ....

Josh and Joel talk about pre-sentencing investigations and indigent defense in depth. The book " To Kill a Mockingbird " by Harper Lee is available at bookstores and the movie starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch is considered a modern classic. When I discuss Pre-Sentencing Investigations with other formerly incarcerated folks, they had similar experiences to the ones we discuss. PSI's...

The problem with plea bargains. My book Writing Your Own Best Story: Addiction + Living Hope, is available on Amazon . My friend Aaron's organization is called " A Brighter Way " and we are also both involved with Michigan's Nation Outside . The Judge Rakoff quote was found in this New York Review of Books article . A Few Good Men was an American drama about a lawyer fighting the court-m...

Josh discusses Private Prisons with Lauren-Brooke Eisen of the Brennan Center, the author of "Inside Private Prisons" The Trump Administration's is investing in the privatization of the Bureau of Prisons (and the Private Prison Industry invested in his campaign). You can find Lauren-Brook Eisen's book "INside Private Prisons" here .

Explaining the problems with cash bail. Midnight Run was a movie about a bail bondsman (Robert DiNero) hunting down a bail jumper (Charles Grodin) who was on the run from the mob. Here is the full report from the Criminal Justice Policy Program at Harvard that we refer to throughout Episode 4. Just Leadership USA is a New York-based Criminal Justice Reform organization. One of their major campaign...

Josh and Joel discuss the power of prosecutors and how prosecutors often complicate criminal justice reform.

Josh and Joel discuss the many reasons why over-criminalizing violence does not enhance societal safety.

A criminal justice reform podcast that argues for a radical reimagining of criminal justice, prison, and reentry systems hosted by Josh and Joel.