Prison Boom News Today

University of Notre Dame professors Anna Haskins, the Andrew V. Tackes Associate Professor of Sociology and associate director of Notre Dame’s Ini...

Please join us 12/1 for a Reimagining Community Safety discussion with Professor Michelle Phelps on the political difficulty of "defunding the police."

I ran into this problem myself last week when i praised conservatives who are finally embracing criminal justice reform and i think i broke twitter, okay? you would have thought i said i was joining the clan based on the response. what he is thinking? i was thinking about the pain of 2 million people locked up in u.s. jails and prisons right now, got the biggest prison population in the world and they need champions in both parties. i was thinking about the bad old days in the 1990s when republi...

And the reason is that, you know, there has been a shift in the rhetoric but not a meaningful shift in policy. barack obamas drug czar gil kerlikowske said we should not be at war with our own people. that is right. but if you actually take a look at the obama administrations drug control budget, the obama administration invests about the same ratio of dollars in enforcement as compared to drug prevention or treatment as the bush administration. and so weve seen a shift in rhetoric but i dont th...

Know, there has been a shift in the rhetoric, but not a meaningful shift in policy. barack obamas drug czar has said we shouldnt call this a war on drugs any more because we on the not be at war with our own people and that is absolutely right, but if you actually take a look at the obama administration drug control budget, the obama administration invested the same racial dollars and enforcement as compared to drug prevention and treatment as the bush administration. so we have seen a shift in ...

There hasnt been a prison boom in this country and its coincided with the boom of looking to big state colleges as revenue producers, particular in revenue producing sports as an answer for budget woes. i remember the governor from michigan said that the auto industry in the u.s. has become a health care provider where people happen to make cars. a lot of these big institutions have become football programs where people happen to go to class in between saturday games. >> yeah. >> victoria? >> i ...

Criminals, we shifted public policy in such a way its easier to get incarcerated. >> wasnt that done out of noble causes to begin with with the population growth and the fact that crimes in this day and age are expanding to different fronts people hadnt considered then including technology crimes. does it make a difference in how we interpret these numbers? >> most people arent in jail for things like technology crimes or other white collar crimes. the prison boom comes from the war on drugs whi...