Originally aired on December 5, 2007.
Tom Fudge: The United States stands out among countries of the world in many ways. We're called the world's most powerful country. We have one of the world's most liberal democracies. But we are also distinguished in a way that most people are unlikely to brag about. We have one of the highest rates of prison incarceration of any country in the world.
This is a relatively new phenomenon. Tough-on-crime policies have caused our prison population to rise from 196,000 people in 1970 to more than 1.5 million today. If you add people locked up in jail to that figure, there are now more than two million people behind bars in the United States. To some extent, this seems like a logical response to the increase in crime we experience at the end of the 20th century. But one report indicates that prison populations really skyrocketed in the 1990s – the very time when crime was really dropping in the United States.
A group called JFA Institute is well known for studying the criminal justice system. And it's just come out with a report on the state of our prison system. It recommends a dramatic reduction in our incarceration rates which, they say, will save a huge amount of money and may actually make us safer.
Guests
- James Austin, president of the JFA Institute , a non-profit agency that evaluates criminal justice practices and designs policy solutions.
- Alan Mobley, assistant professor in the School of Public Affairs at San Diego State University.
- Paul Pfingst , served as San Diego County District Attorney for eight years. He is a partner in the law firm of Higgs Fletcher & Mack .
