LOUISIANA - Incarceration Capital of America

"How ‘the incarceration capital of America’ embraced criminal justice reform" PBS NewsHour 8/31/2018

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SUMMARY:  For decades, the state of Louisiana has been known as the incarceration capital of America.  But over the past year, the state has been trying to shed that reputation with new reforms that decrease the prison population and save money.  William Brangham went to find how it’s playing out for former prisoners, in a story produced by Frank Carlson in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.

BROKEN JUSTICE - Reforms Falling Short

"Top civil rights lawyer says U.S. criminal justice reforms are falling short" PBS NewsHour 5/13/2016

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SUMMARY:  The Equal Justice Initiative's Bryan Stevenson has become a leading voice for criminal justice reform, and blames the U.S.'s world-leading incarceration rate on deep-seated institutional racism that goes back to slavery.  As some states move to increase probation and parole supervision, Stevenson tells Jeffrey Brown why these measures fall short of the reforms that are truly needed.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  The Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, a nonprofit founded in 1989 by lawyer and civil rights activist Bryan Stevenson to represent death row prisoners and indigent and juvenile defendants who he argues have been denied effective representation, often due to racial bias.

In recent years, which included the publication of an acclaimed memoir, “Just Mercy,” Stevenson has become a leading voice nationally for criminal justice reform.

I met him at his office in Montgomery while reporting on Alabama's overcrowded prisons and spike in prison violence.

BRYAN STEVENSON, Founder, Equal Justice Initiative:  There were less than 5,000 people in Alabama's prisons throughout most of the 1970s.

And then you had politicians like you had all over the country get captivated, I'm going to say intoxicated, by the politics of fear.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Intoxicated.

BRYAN STEVENSON:  Yes, intoxicated by the politics of fear and anger.  They began competing with each other over who could be the toughest on crime, and putting people in prison became the solution to virtually every problem.

Drug addiction and drug dependency, which could have been seen as a health issue, was seen as a crime issue.  The growing freedom that was emerging in the Deep South for African-Americans, who until just a decade earlier couldn't vote, couldn't go into schools, had to be regulated.  So we used the criminal justice system, and you saw this massive increase in the number of people sent to jails or prisons.

So, we went from about 5,000 people in the 1970s to 30,000 people today in a state with about 4.5 million people.  That's an unbelievably high rate of incarceration.

LOCKED UP - More Behind Bars Because of Poverty and Mental Illness

"How poverty and mental illness are putting more people behind bars" PBS NewsHour 2/16/2015

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SUMMARY:  More Americans than ever before are spending time in jail despite a drop in the crime rate in the past two decades.  That's according to a new report that also found that a disproportionate number of people in jail suffer from mental illness.  Judy Woodruff discusses the findings with Nicholas Turner of the Vera Institute of Justice and Margo Schlanger of the University of Michigan.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  A new report finds that more Americans than ever are spending time in jail.  The Vera Institute of Justice showed that, in the past two decades, despite a drop in the crime rate, the number of people going to jail has increased dramatically.

In addition, those behind bars are staying longer.  Some 62 percent of them have not yet been convicted of a crime, and three-quarters of those jailed now are brought in for nonviolent offenses.  The report also finds that a disproportionate number of those in jail suffer from mental illness.

Joining us are Nicholas Turner.  He’s president and director of the Vera Institute.  And Margo Schlanger of the University of Michigan.

Nick Turner, to you first.

Why are the jails and prisons of the United States so full today?

NICHOLAS TURNER, President and Director, Vera Institute of Justice:  Well, you have to go back, really, almost four decades.  We have, since the early 1970s, been on what some people describe as a binge in this country, a reliance on incarceration and on confinement as the primary strategy to keep people safe.  That’s been the argument.

And so, for the past 40 years, the number of people in jail and in prison in this country has gone up almost 400 percent.  When you look at jails now, there are additional other reasons as to why we have so many people in jail.  In the past few decades, we have increasingly arrested more and more people, not only for felonies or serious charges, but also for misdemeanors.

And we are also seeing more people who are being arrested being put in jail, so there is a general reflex within the criminal justice system still to rely on confinement.