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Joshua B. Hoe interviews Lisa Hajjar about her book "The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight against Torture"

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First, apologies, we faced some unique technical difficulties that we have never faced before. Andy was able to deal with many of the problems, but unfortunately, there is a portion of the interview that still has some feedback and a portion of the interview that has some drift so that the tracks were not lined up correctly. Thank you for your patience and I hope you will still enjoy the interview.

This week I published my 69th recap of the television show Orange Is the New Black. I should probably mention that Kathy Morse is also joining in to help out with my Season 6 recaps.

In case you were curious, Jeff Sessions would actually be made weaker by the passage of the First Step Act (which is probably why the DOJ has come out in opposition to the bill).

I did also write this response to Boots Riley's critique of Spike Lee's movie BlackkKlansman.

Beverly Parenti's bio is incredibly impressive.

I read many articles and watched many videos about The Last Mile that lead me to ask Beverly for an interview including this presentation by Beverly and her husband Chris, this article in Wired, and this great YouTube video.

You should also explore The Last Mile's website or even more important, their web development webpage (prisoners do the work and make the money).

Kathy and I finished our most recent Orange Is the New Black recap (Season 6 Episode 3).

Jared "Jay" Ware is a prison abolitionist, freelance writer, co-host of the podcast Millennials Are Killing Capitalism and producer of the Beyond Prisons podcast. His work has been published with Shadowproof.com, The New Inquiry, In These Times, SF Bay View, Worker's World, Off Tha Record, and Hampton Institute.

Students for a Democratic Society had a storied and important history in American political activism.

Hopefully, most people remember the police and state violence that resulted in the deaths of Mike Brown, Tamie Rice, Eric Garner, and Sandra Brown as well as the situation in Ferguson Missouri.

We have talked about Michelle Alexanders book "The New Jim Crow" many times before on this podcast.

Angela Y Davis book "Are Prisons Obsolete" is a relatively quick read but very fundamental to understanding prison abolition.

The site Critical Resistance is a very good starting place for investigating stories about abolition and resistance to statist power. It is also the home to "The Abolitionist" newspaper.

I suspect Jay was referring to Elizabeth Hinton's book "From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime"

A good place to start on the thinking of Michelle Foucault is in his book "Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison."

Bryan Burrough's book "Days of Rage" discusses revolutionary violent groups in the United States.

My favorite book about John Brown is "Patriotic Treason" by Evan Carton.

W.E.B Dubois scathing critique of popular notions of slavery and of reconstruction was called "Black Reconstruction in America"

Jay's interview with prisoners after the Lee Correctional Riot provides an important counter-narrative to the "official story" of what happened in South Carolina a few months ago.

It is important to read the full list of demands around the August 21st Strike.

We have covered Restorative Justice many times on the podcast, this is the first time we have talked about Transformative Justice. This is a piece from Mariame Kaba from her site Prison Culture.

Some of the people Jay shouted out were:

Jailhouse Lawyers Speak

Kinetic Justice (Free Alabama Movement)

Mariame Kaba

Frantz Fanon

Jackie Wang's book "Carceral Capitalism"

I will try and fill in the ones I am missing over time.

The DOJ Letter I was referring to was in response to the Federal First Step Act.

Elizabeth Warren has been getting blasted by police, prosecutors, and correctional officers for her statement that our criminal justice system is racist (I suspect most of this is political posturing since what she said is factually correct).

If you want to know more about why what she said was factually correct, you can listen to all of the early episodes of this podcast or read this overview of the evidence.

The National Review article that mentions John Pfaff as an answer to Elizabeth Warren's claim can be found here.

John Pfaff's response can be found in this Twitter thread.

Tom Cotton's argument about Mass Incarceration was a real thing (can't make this stuff up).

You can read our most recent Orange Is the New Black Recap or look back through all of the recaps.

Kathy Morse was one of the inmates featured in the Bill Moyers documentary "Rikers: Am American Jail."

Our original First Step Act episode of this podcast was Episode 18 and featured Ames Grawert of the Brennan Center, Jessica Jackson Sloan of Cut 50, and Jason Pye of FreedomWorks.

Janie and Buzz founded the Prison Creative Arts Project at the University of Michigan.

The President and House and Senate Leadership moved recently to combine the First Step Act and Chuck Grassley's Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act.

In case you forgot, Prisons and Jails, as currently constructed don't make us safer.

You can read the different sections of the First Step Act to see why Jeff Sessions is not given unprecedented or unaccountable power.

Recently, the Brennan Center for Justice, a former opponent has indicated that they are likely to support the new compromise legislation.

Distance matters and this article is a good summary of the evidence for why visitation and distance are critical to better prisoner outcomes.

The Mandatory Minimums quote came from this great article by Erik Luna.

The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act included new mandatory minimums.

The Department of Justice Letter opposing the First Step Act was almost as shocking as Senator Grassley's response. My friend Jason Pye and his co-worker Sarah Anderson at FreedomWorks wrote a very detailed response to the DOJ letter.

Here is a great summary of the problems with electronic monitoring.

I do not think that John Pfaff has written an article about privatization but I have had many conversations about this issue on Twitter.

I forgot to mention that Decarceration Nation was mentioned in the online publication Bustle this week. Thanks to Taylor Maples for including us on the list of "7 Criminal Justice Podcasts to Listen to."

If you are a long-time fan of Orange Is the New Black, the guide to all of my recaps covers every season to date.

If you are just starting to watch Orange Is the New Black, the first recap covers the first episode of Season 6 from the perspective of formerly incarcerated folks.

Bianca Tylek is the Director of the Corrections Accountability Project.

Michael Crowley worked at the Office of Management budget under both the Bush and Obama Administrations, he currently works at the Brennan Center for Justice.

He was written recent articles on funding priorities for criminal justice reform and about model state movements towards criminal justice reform.

I asked the most renowned expert in prison abolition that I know the question, "if you could only suggest one book people should read if they wanted to learn more about abolition, what would you suggest?" She quickly responded, "Are Prisons Obsolete by Angela Y Davis."

I have also recently written a breakdown of my own experiences in Solitary Confinement.

Private Prisons are seeing incredible growth in immigration enforcement contracts.

Private Prisons are often shielded from FOIA requests.

Privatization of public prisons should be an equally large concern as Bianca's research at the Correction Accountability Project has proven.

The University of Pennsylvania produced a pretty good study summarizing the problems with medical contracts in prisons.

Securus has moved to acquire ICS which will create a near duopoly on telephone communication in the correctional market.

New York City just made many phone calls in jail free.

Many of the companies who operate in the private prison and prison privatization space are buying up community correction and reentry services to take advantage of the movement towards criminal justice reform.

Carl Takei's article addresses the move by private companies into mass supervision and surveillance.

Obviously, I disagree with Michael on the First Step Act but I do agree that one of the risks of the legislation is that it widens the net of supervision and surveillance.

Meek Mill is a textbook case in how expanded surveillance and supervision can be dangerous.

I have covered the evidence behind the question of violence many times, here on the podcast, on Medium, on Medium again, and on Daily Kos.

The breakdowns of prison costs were broken down in a Vera Institute of Justice study "The Price of Prisons."

My newest article is about taking a new approach to sentencing reform that ties reform directly to redressing racial disparity.

I have written recaps of all 65 episodes of Orange Is the New Black.

Reuben Jones is the Executive Director of Frontline Dads in Philadelphia.

Both Reuben and Jondhi are Just Leadership USA Fellows.

Reuben worked at the Pennsylvania Prison Society.

Reuben discussed working with both the Leon Sullivan Trust and the Pan-African Studies department at Temple University.

There is a lot of press discussing the Coalition For a Just DA that resulted in the election of Larry Krasner. Some of the press talked about how broad-based the coalition was.

I think Reuben also made reference to what has come to be called the "Krasner Memo" where Mr. Krasner ordered his prosecutors to change the ways that they charge crimes in Philly.

I was not able to find the 88.7% figure that Reuben referred to, but there is solid evidence that Pennsylvania has very high racial disparities.

Philly does still have the highest incarceration rate of a city in the USA, but the number is falling.

I believe this is the trailer for the documentary Beyond The Wall.

The Creek doesn't technically still take prisoners, and I think they have zeroed out the inmate population. This is a huge victory for criminal justice reform.

#CloseRikers is one of the most important campaigns run by Just Leadership USA.

Jondhi Harrell is the Executive Director of The Center for Returning Citizens in Philadelphia.

Jondhi and Reuben were both involved in the Change the Hustle campaign.

This is a really good article about Jondhi's approach and philosophy of reenty.

I wrote recaps of all 65 episodes of Orange Is the New Black from the perspective of a formerly incarcerated person. I will continue my series Orange, Black, or Bleak the day after Season 6 starts (July 27th).

Jeffrey Korzenik, of Fifth-Third bank, has been arguing that the hiring of formerly incarcerated folks is critical to maintaining our current economy.

The Prison Policy Institute published a recent paper arguing that employment discrimination for formerly incarcerated people is worse than it was during the great depression.

If you want to know more about Richard Bronson's past, you can find many popular press pieces and a very detailed Reddit AMA.

Richard makes references to studies that support the hiring of formerly incarcerated folks, they are detailed at the bottom of this handout.

And more can be found in this ACLU report.

Donna's book "A Little Piece of Light" is available for purchase now.

Donna helped create the ACE program at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. The ACE program helps incarcerated people in coping with HIV/AIDS.

Donna was also instrumental in the creation of the Domestic Violence Program at Bedford Hills.

Donna participated in the Bedford Writing Group created by Tony Award Winning Playwright Eve Ensler. The group was featured in the Documentary, "What I Want My Words To Do To You."

I wrote an article about Justice Kennedy's retirement.

I also wrote an article about my own experiences in Solitary Confinement.

You can watch the entire documentary "Knife Skills" on YouTube.

Brandon also did a Ted Talk.

If you want to visit Edwin's, check out their website and make a reservation the next time you are visiting Cleveland.

You can easily join Nation Outside or Nation Outside Detroit, we would love to have you on our team.

The NFL Players Coalition wrote a letter in response to President Trump's request for them to send him a list of commutations which they would like for him to carry out.

I agreed with the vast majority of their letter, my only request, in my response, was that they stop using the term "non-violent" to qualify who was worthy of relief.

If you want to watch Knife Skills, it is well worth your time, I am looking very much forward to this upcoming interview. It is about a restaurant in Cleveland that serves as a training center to teach formerly incarcerated people the skills to work in a fine dining environment.

Donna Hylton's book, "A Little Piece Of Light" is available for purchase now.

Pennsylvania recently passed Clean Slate legislation. Rebecca Vallas is also the host of the Off-Kilter podcast and a friend.

Jay Mo was quoted in the Detroit Free Press soon after his release from prison.

There are 247 people serving Juvenile Life Without Parole sentences are still waiting for new hearings in the state of Michigan.

The Supreme Court of Michigan decided mostly against people serving Juvenile Life Without Parole sentences last week in a 4-2 decision.

Almost all news outlets published this same AP wire report which leaves out a good deal of what the Michigan decision actually held.

The Main SCOTUS case that started the trend towards ending Juvenile Life Without Parole was Miller v. Alabama. The follow-up decision that allowed for new hearings was Montgomery v Louisiana.

Lisa Yun's California Interdisciplinary Law Review article talks both about the science behind calls to end Juvenile Life Without Parole sentences and about the international law surrounding the issue.

The quoted ACLU report is called "Racial Disparities in Sentencing." and it was buttressed by an article in Reentry Times.

Rashad Robinson talked about the problem with prosecutors in his New York Times op-ed about Juvenile Life Without Parole.

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 of nature behind the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and the author of the book Just Mercy (Bryan is also one of the best public speakers I have ever seen).

I make reference to the book Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive, but I would also highly recommend his book Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life.

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 is the referenced feature discussing juvenile lifers and the quote about numbness and parole.

This is the evidence I found suggesting that the Illinois DOC controls parole.

Katrina talked about her recent press conference, this Injustice Watch article was about the aftermath of that press conference.

Katrina suggested that folks make FOIA requests to the Illinois Department of Corrections about Katrina Burlet's class. Here is a guide to making an FOIA request in Illinois.

If you want to write letters to any of the inmates in the stories, you can look them up.

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 article last week as Mr. Charles was returning to prison.

The Career Offender sentencing guidelines (like the ones that forced Mr. Charles back to prison) are pernicious and are often very counterproductive.

We all hope you will join us in signing "This Petition" for clemency/commutation for Mr. Matthew Charles.

The first tweet in the amazing Twitter thread from Kevin Ring we discussed during this episode started with the linked tweet.

You can read Mr. Pfaff's book "Locked In" or any of the articles quoting his recitation of the evidence proving that people "age out" of violent crime."

Episode 2 of Decarceration Nation was entirely about this (largely fake) distinction between violence and non-violence in the law (one of my personal favorite episodes of the podcast).

Learn more about the Bureau of Prisons drug programs including RDAP from their site.

Some of the articles supporting President Trump granting a commutation to Mr. Charles include articles in The National Review, The Federalist, and The Root. I have also seen calls for his release on social media from the ACLU and Cut 50.

Please sign the Petition to free Mr. Charles!!!! The petition, at this moment, is about to break 65k signatures.

Here is a preview article about next week's episode (Statesville Correctional Debate Team).

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 is well-known for his antipathy towards criminal justice reform and for his undying commitment to mandatory minimum sentencing.

Jared Kushner's father did 14 months in a Federal facility in Montgomery.

Senator Chuck Grassley has introduced the complementary (or rival) Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, which is currently in the US Senate.

I misspoke, a President cannot "table" passed legislation but he can refuse to sign it for up to ten days. If the President does not sign a passed bill after ten days it becomes law.

The First Step has exposed splits in the left-leaning criminal justice reform community and between the right-leaning criminal justice reform community and the more conservative members of Congress. Not surprisingly, it has also created a fuss among the Grassley contingent in favor of sentencing reform.

Alex Gudich is the Deputy Director of the Cut 50 Initiative and another in my long line of criminal justice reform Twitter friends.

Robert Caro's book about Lyndon Baines Johnson, "Master of the Senate" is part of an incredible series on the late President.

Lauren-Brooke Eisen was my guest on Episode 5 of the Decarceration Nation podcast, we discussed her excellent book "Inside Private Prisons."

Ames was one of the co-authors of the report, "Criminal Justice One Year Into the Trump Administration."

Ames was talking about Jennifer Weiss-Wolf and her book, "Periods Gone Public."

More about my #Bars2Ballots initiative can be learned on episode 17 of Decarceration Nation or from this article I wrote on Medium.

Cut 50 and many other organizations, including two I volunteer with, are fighting for full passage of the Dignity For Incarcerated Women Act.

Jessica was not only invited to the FIRC event earlier this year but just two days after our interview she was on stage at the White House supporting the First Step Act.

Topeka K. Sam spoke at the White House event yesterday and is one of Cut 50's brightest lights.

Cut 50's has built a First Step Act Site where you can read the stories of people the bill would help.

Here is the article Jason wrote that first inspired me to contact Jason and the other article he mentioned that he posted the next day. Jason also wrote an article yesterday after President Trump publically endorsed the First Step Act.

Pat Nolan is a conservative advocate for Criminal Justice Reform.

Kevin Ring was both formerly incarcerated and formeLegislativelative Aide on Capitol Hill. Now he is also a supporter of Criminal Justice Reform.

The letter I respond to at the end of Episode 18 was written by Richard Durbin, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Sheila Jackson-Lee, and John Lewis. I greatly respect all of these legislators but respectfully disagree with them on the importance of passing the First Step Act.

Oddly enough, the day after I name dropped Federal Bureau of Prisons Director Mark S. Inch, he resigned.

My reference to Tom Cotton and Fentanyl refers to his attempts to increase penalties, and mandatory minimums, for the distribution of the drug fentanyl.

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 requirements and both include links to all of the important research that has been done demonstrating that Medicaid work requirements don't work. The first article was about the history of work requirements in general and the second article was about the bill inserting work requirements into Michigan's Healthy Michigan plan.

I also made reference to research from the University of Michigan published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The citation is in the two articles above.

The hashtag is #Bars2Ballots.

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 predicted something terrible was building.

Victoria, writing on assignment for CBS News, wrote one of the better articles I have seen about the Lee Correctional Riot.

The articles that angered me included this article from Newsweek and this article from Greenville Online.

I was also angered by this article quoting South Carolina's governor Henry McMaster (I believe I said his name incorrectly a few times).

There were some good details that could be gleaned from some of the great journalism, unfortunately, most of the reporting was simply a recitation of the official story about the riot.

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 discussion and for his political courage.

There are lots of conflicting stories about how the Suboxone strip came to be. From what I can discern, Invidior was trying to protect its patent by changing from pill to strip.

There is a difference between llow-level (Suboxone) opiates and low-level opiates (Heroin etc.).

The end result of Suboxone being released in strip form has been a mail crisis in America's prisons and jails.

There is persuasive evidence that America's War on Drugs has failed at its main goal (reducing the supply of drugs) since 1971 and that imprisonment is a poor indicator of drug war success.

The basic idea of Harm Reduction is that we should target our responses to drug and addiction problems to reducing negative outcomes.

Needle exchanges work, they just do. Luckily, at least one jurisdiction is implementing them.

The MDOC mail policy is really complicated and hard to follow (trust me, I have tried to follow it many times).

Many of us believe that getting mail is a really important thing to the restoration of incarcerated folks, luckily for us, the Supreme Court of the United States agrees.

There are scanners available that can detect Suboxone. So far, the MDOC argues they can't afford the scanners at every location (which is why we argue for centralization of facilities) and also argues the scanners don't detect all drugs (but they do detect Suboxone which is what caused the change in mail policy).

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 discussed Detroit's ongoing water crisis.

The crisis in public schools in Michigan accelerated after the onset of the so-called "school choice" reforms in Michigan.

Abandoned houses and how to deal with them is a huge issue in Detroit.

Michigan is one of five states in America that has not raised the age to ensure that 17-year-olds are not presumptively tried as adults. I am a volunteer at MCCD who are working to Raise the Age in Michigan.

Michigan passed a number of mental health reforms recently, including diversion programs, but mental health care inside our jails and prisons still lags far behind.

The Suboxone issue and the resulting changes in the mail policies at the Michigan Department of Correction have caused massive problems with families of inmates. The new mail policy is complicated and hard to comply with.

Cash bail is a pretty large problem all over the United States. Tens of thousands of people are arrested in America every day and every one of them will likely stay in jail unless they can afford to pay bail. Jails, particularly certain jails in Michigan, are very dangerous.

Video Visitation has been replacing in-person visits all over the country, we are experiencing this problem, for instance, at the Washtenaw County jail which no longer allows in-person visits. It is important to remember that the service provider incentivizes jails to shut down in-person visits by ensuring that jails get a cut of any profits from video visits.

Criminal justice fines & fees can be excessive and are applied liberally to virtually every person in jail or prison in Michigan.

Thanks again to Mr. Cobbs for such an open and fascinating discussion about the need for criminal justice reform in Michigan.

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 and jail I was in.

The article I referred to as "Talk Poverty" was published on many platforms, the point is that the people involved in the system are very aware that they are getting benefit from cheap labor.

The never-ending debate over if prison labor is exploitation or a way to fill dead time is discussed in this LA Times article. The article also explains the problem of having too many inmates and too few jobs.

There was a recent time when many major companies were using prison labor, many of these companies have stopped using this practice.

If you are wondering how exploitative prison labor is legal it is important to remember two things: 1) the 13th exception allows slavery in the case of criminals and 2) prisoners, for that reason, are exempt from the fair labor standards act.

We talk a lot about California inmate firefighters, this was the article I read first about the story of Shawna Lynn Jones.

Michigan's Vocational Village program has received a great deal of press coverage.

There are many primers on paid apprenticeships for prisoners, this is a decent guide from the Center for American Progress.

Yes, prisoners can learn next economy skills like programming in prison. I have long imagined a world in which every inmate has access to Kahn Academy-style classes from tablets. Just imagine the difference meaningful educational programming could make in the lives of people shut-off from the economy (often for decades).

Articles like this one about soft skills training in women' prisons can help you get a feel for the entire topic of soft skills in prison.

You can also learn more about soft skills as a concept in general in this good overview of soft skills training.

The Prison Creative Arts Project in Michigan does incredible work, the most recent Exhibition of Prisoner Art just ended.

Here is the guide to all 65 recaps that I wrote for the series Orange Is the New Black

The reason most Universities don't participate more fully in prison education probably has something to do with the ending of Pell Grants for prisoners.

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 donate the vegetables grown in their gardens to food banks, I just think the program should be expanded to include fresh vegetables for inmates too.

This is the article in the Atlantic magazine discussing the high-level of pathogens in prison food compared to food in the general population.

You can find the data the Atlantic magazine discussed in this study in the American Journal of Public Health.

There are lots of post-mortems on Michigan's privatization experiment. Here is one from the Metro Times.

This well-researched Prison Policy Initiative article makes the long-term vs. short-term argument about the health care externality in serving unhealthy prison food to inmates.

Judge Quist's decision, detailing the extensive legal barriers to getting prisoner relief for poor quality foods, is reproduced here.

Believe it or not, this article in Corrections One magazine agreed that good prison food is a safety issue.

This University of Michigan study demonstrated, through extensive interviews with Michigan Correctional Officers, that Michigan's experiment with privatization was a disaster.

I mistakenly referred to a Correctional Officer as a guard, we never call CO's guard as a general rule (because they don't technically guard anyone). This is not just snark, it is actually not their job to guard inmates.

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 minutes, he put out a really influential guide on mental health care in prisons and jails, and he also has been oddly resistant to bail reform (given some of his statements on the appropriateness of jails and prisons).

Mr. Dart also hired a psychologist as warden at Cook County Jail, which IMO makes a lot of sense.

There are a lot of popular press articles that give good summaries of the deinstitutionalization of American Mental Health facilities decades ago.

John Pfaff discusses the strange incentives that are often set up at the county level to push people to State facilities in his book "Locked In."

Some folks have suggested a wider set of solutions for people with mental health problems facing trials. For instance, adding mental health treatment options in sentencing.

Much of the resistance to better care starts in our jails and prisons themselves, the Bazelon Institute does good work in this area.

There is also resistance to treatment by prisoners, this relatively recent article discusses toxic masculinity as a core cause of this resistance.

Even the World Health Organization concludes that starting from the premise that we should treat prisoners with dignity is important to delivering good mental health outcomes.

Heather Ann Thompson wrote the Pulitzer Prize Winning book Blood in the Water (one of my favorites). The quote I read was from one of her popular press articles.

Most of the rest of the research around the different policy suggestions were extensively cited in my Daily Kos article.

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 prison or jail, the costs can be massive and often beyond their ability to pay. We quoted two reports on this topic: "Who Pays, The Cost of Incarceration On families" and "The Economic Burden of Incarceration in the United States."

The breakdown of the changes from pre to post-Jpay was provided by the Center for Public Integrity. You can also find a great deal of additional information about Jay's usurious charges on that site.

There were two sources we used for the information about release cards: a ThinkProgress article and I read a court case filing for the class action suit against Jpay.

This contact information and profitability expectations came from this Syracuse.com article.

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 occurred in the same chat rooms I discussed. All of these things were 100% wrong.

The claim that 1 in 4 people in Michigan prisons has a sex offense (Criminal Sexual Conduct) was determined by someone literally evaluating Michigan's registry. My understanding is that the number of people stays relatively flat but as reform happens for other groups the percentage increases.

When I said "Charlottesberg" I meant "Charlottesville."

There is evidence of cycles where abused become abusers, especially among men. VIctim's rights groups think the point of making this argument is to shift the blame but the point is to identify causal factors in order to help find points of intervention to reduce future offenses and to explain that trauma and shame foreground much abuse. The theme of this episode was accountability but it is also important to help people understand how this kind of thing happens.

This does not mean that "all" abused become abusers or that it is an automatic process. The research suggests that most do not become abusers. The point here is NOT that everyone who was abused will inevitably abuse. On the other hand, [research suggests that sexual addiction, risky andsexually counterintuitive behavior are often an outcome of early abuse]2.

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.

I created this easy to use guide to all 65 of the recaps that I wrote of the episodes of Orange Is the New Black.

There is a lot of popular press on the erasure of women from the national discussion about criminal justice reform. There has also been good work done clarifying the need for specific work to be done on women's issues within criminal justice reform efforts.

i made one really dumb statement. Many of the reforms for women in Michigan's DOC were created by the HARD work of the inmates (not just because of Heidi Washington). Thanks to folks like Monica Jahner and lots of other women in Michigan, we have a better system. Apologies.

In 2017 the Michigan legislature passed and Governor Snyder signed legislation allowing the Michigan Department of Corrections to hire formerly incarcerated people (under limited conditions).

Distance can be a huge barrier to in-person visits for families of incarcerated people and great research has been done on the importance of in-person familial visitation. Some of the research on contact was summarized in a 2014 meta-analysis (and usually has different outcomes based on the environment and how the contact is allowed)

As Pricilla Ocen but it in her 2012 Law Review article, the shackling and use of solitary for pregnant women in prisons and jails is "endemic."

The hygiene products dispute is ongoing at the federal level, there are vastly different stories being told depending on which sides of corrections you represent. There is a growing movement at the State level to address access to feminine hygiene products at State facilities as well.

As for gynecology, research has repeatedly demonstrated that services are inadequate in prison settings.

I am new to the discussion of Trauma-Informed Training and care in women's prisons but there has been recent reporting on the need for better training and a more informed correctional system approach.

The petition for legislative action is one route or you can write or call your Senator or Congressperson.

Holly Harris of the Justice Action Network has been a great advocate for the Dignity Act, you can watch her at Google's Defining Justice event last week.

NELP offers a really helpful primer to Clean Slate Legislation.

Suboxone is a huge problem for mail delivery in prisons and jails and is causing huge delays and problems with mail.

Okay, that is all of the notes for this week!

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 are incredibly under-covered in the criminal justice literature. This CJCJ overview does a good job of covering the basics.

This St. John's Law Review article talks about many of the prejudicial elements in a pre-sentencing investigation.

Here is the Ogeltree article that Joel references throughout the episode.

And this Burkhart article does a good job of explaining how overworked and understaffed public defenders are.

The sociological study "American Apartheid" and the book "When Affirmative Action Was White" are available at bookstores.

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-martial of two Guantanamo Bay Marines starring Tom Cruise and Demi Moore.

The Judge John Kane quote was from this Marshall Project article about Plea Bargaining and innocence.

Michelle Alexander is the author of the very influential and popular book, "The New Jim Crow."

There is a lot of evidence about why Innocent People Accept Plea Bargains. The Marshall Project piece above is a good summary. We also mention this article from the Atlantic Monthly several times during the podcast.

Professor Jenia Turner's quote comes from her extensive article on plea bargaining.

Most of the alternatives that we discuss come from the following articles:

Cynthia Alkon's Law Review Article, John Rappaport's article on unbundling rights, and the other articles cited above.

More extensive notes will be available soon on my blog OnPirateSatellite.com

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.

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 campaigns is the Close Rikers campaign. They are also now pushing bail reform (synchronicity).

Here is a good synopsis of the Kalief Browder story. I mistakenly said in the podcast that Mr. Browder committed suicide in jail. He actually committed suicide after release (RIP Kalief Browder).

I made mention of Kalief Browder and plea bargaining. Here is some more context on his brave stand.

Here is a good synopsis of the tragic story of Sandra Bland's trip to jail in Texas.

There are a LOT of things I could post about the Macomb County Jail. Here is the link to the Independent Report that was done on Macomb. In addition, there have been a lot of recent deaths at the Macomb County Jail and 18 total deaths since 2012.

Here is the Princeton study on racial bias in bail determinations we refer to during the episode. I am not sure I picked the most explanatory clip from a really important study.

The article in The Nation Joel referred to tells a pretty scary story about what is happening in Louisiana and around the nation (no pun intended) with cash bail.

When I talk about the research proving that bail makes us less safe, I am referring to research summarized and cited in the Criminal Justice Policy Project report cited above.

The Supreme Court Cases I referred to were:

Bearden v. Georgia
Williams v. Illinois
Tate v. Short

The article Joel referred to as being from the Associated Press was an AP Summary of this Pew Trusts article about proposed changes to bail around the country.

You can get a decent explanation of what we mean by Harm Reduction in this introductory piece explaining the elements of Harm Reduction.

Most of the solutions that we discuss are summarized in the articles cited above.