Prisons, Power and Policy

Paul Wright, who founded Prison Legal News while serving 17 years in the Washington State Reformatory and directs the Human Rights Defense Center, argued that the U.S. carceral system is not failing but succeeding at social control. He walked through prison labor-market effects, roughly a trillion dollars in prison construction bonds, private-prison profit, felony disenfranchisement, solitary confinement, and the elimination of prison education and drug treatment. Fall 2013 series "Rethinking Security: Beyond Mass Incarceration." Audience Q&A covered wrongful convictions, disabled prisoners, supermax litigation, and school funding.