Podcasts about Prison Legal News

Send us a textShoresides explores life in coastal North Carolina through the lens of resilience, justice, and community action. In this episode, host Nicolas Magrino examines the implications of President Trump's second term, focusing on the private prison industry's role in mass deportations and the human cost of immigration policies. Featuring insights from immigration defense lawyer Martin Rosenbluth and Prison Legal News editor Paul Wright, we uncover how systemic practices affect families, communities, and the economy—highlighting the resistance and the profit motives driving these policies. Listen to understand the stories behind the statistics and the people fighting for change. Note: Paul Wright is the board chair of Narrative Arts, the publisher of Shoresides.Support the showwww.shoresides.org

Bobby teases us with a story about 3 new Bunkies that arrive in the cube...needless to say issues are certain. We also get updates on prison reform by way of https://www.mi-cure.org please check them out. For information on Prison Legal News: https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/subscribe/print/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI4-25-avqgAMVOCatBh3wHgJTEAAYASAAEgKAJfD_BwE You can read more about Bobby and prison reform on our website:  notesfromthepen.com GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/j3khzk-help-for-a-new-start Twitter: https://twitter.com/NotesFromThePen Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CJYuOh4pKxa/?igshid=y8lo9kbdifvq Threads: https://www.threads.net/@notesfromthepen Shout-out to JD and Ashely Bell for all their behind the scenes support. Intro and Outro music created just for Notes From The Pen by PJ Trofibio and Jeff Quintero and used with permission. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/r-caldwell/message

On this Hacks & Wonks midweek show, Crystal has a robust conversation with Damon Petrich about his research at the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. As lead author of the seminal work “Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Damon performed an extensive analysis of 116 research studies looking at the effect of incarceration on reoffending. The review's finding that the oft-used policy of imprisonment does not reduce the likelihood of recidivism sparks a discussion about how the United States ended up as the world leader in mass incarceration and the disconnect between conventional assumptions about what prisons provide versus reality. Noting that the carceral system does a poor job of rehabilitation - while eating up budgets across the country and exacting significant societal costs - Damon and Crystal talk about how to design and evaluate programs that do work to deliver greater public safety for everyone. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and reach Damon for more information about his research at petricdm@ucmail.uc.edu   Resources  “Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review” by Damon M. Petrich, Travis C. Pratt, Cheryl Lero Johnson, and Francis T. Cullen for Crime and Justice: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/715100   Scott Hechinger Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/ScottHech/status/1447596444886523911   “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022” by Wendy Sawyer and Peter Wagner from the Prison Policy Initiative: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html   “Risk-need-responsivity model for offender assessment and rehabilitation” by James Bonta and D. A. Andrews for Public Safety Canada: https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/rsk-nd-rspnsvty/index-en.aspx   “Let's Take a Hard Look at Who Is in Jail and Why We Put Them There” by Alea Carr for the ACLU-WA blog: https://www.aclu-wa.org/blog/let-s-take-hard-look-who-jail-and-why-we-put-them-there   Book - “Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect” by Robert J. Sampson: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/G/bo5514383.html   Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation Program - “Police Legitimacy and Legal Cynicism: Why They Matter and How to Measure in Your Community”: https://www.lisc.org/media/filer_public/05/0b/050ba3aa-044f-4676-bc1e-6e2b6c48412c/091317_bcji_resources_police_legitimacy_fundamentals.pdf   “Polls Show People Favor Rehabilitation over Incarceration” by Matt Clarke for Prison Legal News: https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2018/nov/6/polls-show-people-favor-rehabilitation-over-incarceration/   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Well, I am excited to welcome Damon Petrich, who's a doctoral associate in the School of Criminal Justice at University of Cincinnati and incoming assistant professor at Loyola University Chicago. He was the lead author of a recent article, "Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review," along with Travis Pratt, Cheryl Lero Johnson, Francis T. Cullen. Damon's research focuses on the effectiveness of corrections and rehabilitation programs, desistance from crime, and the impact of community violence on youth development. Thank you so much for joining us, Damon. [00:01:13] Damon Petrich: Thank you very much for having me on, Crystal. I'm excited to talk a little bit about my work and the implications of that and all that, so thanks again. [00:01:20] Crystal Fincher: I'm very excited to talk about this and it's extremely timely - has been for a while. We have conversations almost every day in the public sphere having to do with public safety - this is such a major component of it. And so I'm hoping as we have this conversation, it'll help us to better assess what the costs and benefits are of custodial sanctions and incarceration, and alternatives to that - to have a conversation that kind of orients us more towards public safety. Sometimes we're so concerned with metrics around police and how many they are, and what the length of a sentence should be. And sometimes we focus on things that take us off of the overall goal of keeping us all safer and reducing the likelihood that each of us are victimized and to hopefully prevent people from becoming victims of crime. And just to have accurate conversations about how we invest our public resources - what we're actually getting from them, and then how to evaluate as we go along - what we should be tracking and measuring and incentivizing. As so many people talk about taking data-driven approaches and create all these dashboards - that we're really doing it from an informed perspective. So just to start out - what actually were you studying and what were you seeking to find out? [00:02:47] Damon Petrich: Yeah, so the main purpose of our meta-analysis, which I can explain exactly what that is later on if you have questions, but the main purpose was to understand what happens when you take one group of offenders and you sentence them to something custodial like prison or jail, and then you sentence another group of similar offenders to something non-custodial like probation. How do those two groups differ in terms of whether they reoffend? So does prison actually deter recidivism, or does it make people more likely to commit crime afterwards? So that's sort of what we were looking at and so we considered all of the available research on that, in this review. [00:03:29] Crystal Fincher: Got it. So right now we have gone down the path of mass incarceration - that is the default punishment that we, as society, have looked to for crime. Hey - sentence them and many times it's, Hey, they're going to jail. Sometimes they get out of jail and they have supervision that continues, but jail is really focused, where we focus a lot of our effort and where we put people and hope that that'll straighten them out and they come out and everything is fine. How did we get here and where are we in terms of how we're approaching incarceration in our society, in our country? [00:04:11] Damon Petrich: Yeah, so there is a lot of public uproar around a lot of issues, like race issues, and there was crime spikes and concerns over social welfare - and there's all this confluence of issues in the '60s and early '70s. And we decided to - as a country, not everyone, but politicians decided that we should tackle the crime problem by A) incarcerating more people, and then B) once they get there, keep them there for longer. So we enacted things like mandatory minimum sentences, where the judge really has no discretion over what happens - the person gets automatically a sentence of incarceration if they've committed a certain type of crime. You had habitual offender laws where if you're - like California's three strikes policy - where if you have two prior felonies and you get a third, no matter what it is, you're going to jail for life. Michigan had the "650 Lifer Law," where if you get caught with 650 grams of heroin or cocaine, you're automatically going to prison for life. And then we got rid of parole and stuff like that in a lot of states. So all these things lead to more people going to jail and then for longer, and those laws came to be in the '70s and '80s. And over that time, our incarceration rate ballooned up by about 700%, so by the early 2000s, we were at over 2 million people incarcerated and another 7-8 million people on probation or parole. So it's a pretty big expansion - the United States has 5% of the world's population and a quarter, or 25%, of the prisoners, so it's a little ridiculous. The crime rate here isn't nearly as high, or nearly high enough to justify that huge disparity. So yeah, it's a whole confluence of factors led us to be the world leader in incarceration. [00:06:14] Crystal Fincher: And what attitudes or what justifications are the people who have the power to enact these policies and continue these policies - how are they justifying them? [00:06:25] Damon Petrich: So there's a few reasons why you might want to incarcerate somebody. One is just because you want to punish them or get revenge on them, so that's more of a moral reason. But the main focus of politicians were twofold - one was incapacitation, so that one means that because you're keeping somebody locked up in a cage, obviously they can't be out in the community committing crimes. So the thought is that you're going to reduce crime that way. The research on that is a little squishy even now, and I can talk a little bit more about that later if you want. But the other reason, and the one that we focused on in our review, was that prison deters people from going back to crime after they get out. So the idea there is that prison sucks - you go in there, you're cut off from your job, from your family, from your friends, or from just having hobbies or things to do. And you're not going to want to go back, so when you get out of prison - you think real hard, and you think how much prison sucks, and you decide not to go back to crime. That's the thinking behind that deterrence hypothesis anyway. So those two - incapacitation and deterrence - were the main drivers of those increase in laws and stuff during the '70s, '80s, and '90s, but there really wasn't any evidence for either of them - in the '70s and '80s in particular. So most of the research evaluating whether prison actually does deter recidivism has popped up over the last 25 years or so. [00:08:05] Crystal Fincher: And as you took a look at it - all of the studies that have popped up over the past 25 years had varying degrees of rigor and scientific validity. But as that body of research grew, people began to get a better idea of whether incarceration actually does reduce someone's likelihood of reoffending. How big was that body of work, in terms of studies, and what were you able to look at? [00:08:40] Damon Petrich: So in our particular review, we looked at 116 studies, which is a pretty sizable number. Most people - when you read through an article and a literature review might have 10 studies or something that they just narratively go through, but we looked at 116. And then within those 116 studies, there were 981 statistical models. So 901 different comparisons - or 981 different comparisons - of what happens to custodial versus non-custodial groups. So we looked at a pretty big chunk of literature. [00:09:20] Crystal Fincher: And in that, in the reliance of - that's a really big number - and I think, people now are maybe more familiar, just from a layperson's perspective, of just how big that number is. As we've seen throughout this pandemic that we're in the middle of, studies come out - people are looking at one study, and wow - study number two comes out and we're feeling really good about it. And man, we get to five studies and people are like, okay, we know what's going on. To get beyond a hundred is just a real comprehensive body of study and analysis. What were you able to determine from that? [00:10:05] Damon Petrich: So I should probably explain upfront what a meta-analysis is and why it's useful. So like you were just saying - like in the COVID pandemic, for example - one study will come out and it'll say, oh, Ivermectin reduces symptomatic COVID cases by X percent. And then the next study will come out and say, Ivermectin makes people way worse. So any individual study can be kind of misleading. A good analogy for what a meta-analysis does would be to look at baseball, for example. So let's say you're interested in some rookie player that's just come out, he's just joined Major League Baseball and you go to his - you want to know how good this player actually is? You've never seen him play, you've only heard rumors. So you go out to his first game, he gets up to bat four times and he gets no hits. So you walk away from that game thinking, wow, this player is terrible, the team wasted all their money recruiting and paying this guy's salary. But that could have just been an off game for many reasons - it's his debut game so maybe there's just first-game nerves, maybe the weather was bad, maybe he was having personal problems in his life, or he had a little bit of an injury. So there's a number of reasons why looking at his performance from that one game is not going to be representative of who he is as a player. Ideally, you'd want to look at all the games over a season where he might go up to bat 250 times. And over those 250 times, he gets 80 hits, which is a pretty good batting average - it's over .300. So with that amount of data, you could come to a more solid conclusion of whether he's actually a good player or not. And with that amount of data, you could also look at what we call moderating characteristics. So you could look at, for example, whether he plays better when it's an away game or in a home game, whether it's early or late season - you could look at all these sorts of things. So this is essentially what we're doing with research as well, in a meta-analysis. So if you look at studies on incarceration - one might show increases in recidivism after people go to prison, the next might show decreases, and the next might show that probationers and prisoners reoffend at about the same rates. So just like in the baseball analogy, in a meta-analysis, we're looking at all of the available research. We're combining it together and determining A) what the sort of overall or average effect of incarceration is, and then B) whether these moderating characteristics actually matter. So in other words, is the effect of incarceration pretty much the same for males as it is for females, or for juveniles as adults, or when the research design is really good versus when it's not so great. So that's basically what we did in this meta-analysis is again - looked at 116 studies and from those 981 statistical estimates. [00:13:13] Crystal Fincher: Very helpful. Totally makes sense with the baseball analogy, and I especially appreciate breaking down with all the statistical models and not just kind of thumbs up, thumbs down - the binary - it either increases or reduces the likelihood of recidivism. But under what conditions are - might it be more likely, less likely that someone does? What are some of those influencing effects on what happens? And so you were just talking about the justification that people used going into this, and now that we have data coming out - does it turn out that people go into prison or are incarcerated in jail, they think - wow, this is horrible. Some in society are like the more uncomfortable we make it in jail, the better we want to make sure it's a place that they never would want to come back to - that it's so scary and such a bad experience that they are just scared straight for the rest of their lives. Does it actually turn out to be that way? Do they take a rational look at - this was my experience, I don't want to go back again, therefore I will not do any of the things that I did going in. [00:14:28] Damon Petrich: I would not say that's the conclusion - no. So again, based on the 116 studies that we looked at, which is again a lot, people who are sentenced to incarceration - so jail, prison - they commit crime, they reoffend at about the same rates as if you'd sentence those same people to probation. So in other words, they're not being deterred by being sent to prison. These effects are the same for both males and females. So in other words, prison doesn't reduce reoffending for one group versus the other. It's the same whether we look at adults versus juveniles, it's the same regardless of what type of recidivism we're interested in - rearrests or convictions. It's pretty much the same across the board. There's some slight variations in research designs, but even within those, prison either has no effect or it slightly increases recidivism. We don't find any conditions under which prison is reducing reoffending or deterring these people from going back to those lives. [00:15:35] Crystal Fincher: So from a societal perspective, a lot of people kind of make the assumption that, Hey, we arrest and we incarcerate someone - whew, our streets are safer. They get out, and now they can choose to reintegrate themselves into society hopefully - they do and we're all safer because of it. But it looks like impressions that some people may have that, Hey, we're letting someone off easy. And suggestions - there's so much media coverage around this - and suggestions that because we're letting people off easy, that we're making it easier for them to reoffend, or they don't feel sufficiently punished enough and so that becomes an incentive to reoffend. Does that seem like it tracks with what the studies have shown? [00:16:33] Damon Petrich: Not really - so there's some studies that actually ask prisoners and offenders whether they'd prefer going to prison or probation. And a lot of them will say, oh, I'd rather do a year in prison than spend two or three years on probation. So it's not like they view probation as just being super easy. And they're not saying this because they received time off their sentence for being in the study or anything like that. Probation's not easy either - and you have to also think that while these people are on probation, they're able to stay in close touch with their family, they're able to maintain connections with work or find work, they're able to participate in the community, they can pay taxes - that I know a lot of people who are pro-prison love. So there's all sorts of reasons why - beyond just them reoffending at the same rates as if they'd gone to prison - there's a lot of reasons why we might want to keep these people in the community. And it's not like we're saying, let everybody out of prison - so the nature of this research - you want to compare apples to apples. So in this research, comparing prisoners to probationers - these have to be people who are getting - they could either legitimately get a sentence of jail or probation, or prison or probation. So these are going to be first-time offenders, people who are relatively low-level - they've committed low-level crimes and all that. So we're not saying - there's not going to be a situation where a murderer just gets probation - that sort of thing. So I know that might be a concern of some people - they think that's a natural argument of this analysis, but it's really not. [00:18:24] Crystal Fincher: Well, and to your point, we're really talking - if we're looking at all of the crime that gets people sentenced to prison time, a very small percentage of that is murder. A very small percentage of it is on that kind of scale - you can wind up in jail or prison for a wide variety of offenses - many of them, people perceive as relatively minor or that people might be surprised can land you in prison. Or if someone has committed a number of minor offenses, that can stack up - to your point in other situations - and increase the length of detention or the severity of the consequences. As we're looking through this and the conversation of, okay, so, we sentence them, we let them out - it's not looking like there's a difference between jail or community supervisions, things like probation - what is it about jail that is harmful or that is not helpful? What is it about the structure of our current system that doesn't improve recidivism outcomes for people? [00:19:42] Damon Petrich: Probably the main one is the rehabilitation is not the greatest. So just as an example, substance abuse is a very strong predictor whether people are going to reoffend, unsurprisingly. About 50% of prisoners at the state and federal level in The States meet the DSM [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders] criteria for having a substance use abuse disorder - so they meet the clinical criteria for substance abuse disorder. So half of them, and then more than that just use substances, but they don't meet the criteria for a disorder. But of that 50% who has a substance abuse disorder, only about 20% of those actually receives treatment for it while they're incarcerated. So, you're not dealing with a root cause of reoffending while they're in prison - so you're not deterring them, but you're also not rehabilitating them - so you're really not doing anything. And then in the rare cases where these people are provided with rehabilitation or reentry programming, it's often not based on any sort of evidence-based model of how you actually change people. So there's a lot of psychological and criminology theory and research on how you actually elicit behavioral change, and these programs really aren't in line with any of that. And I could give examples if you wanted, but - [00:21:17] Crystal Fincher: Sure. I think that's helpful, 'cause I think a lot of people do assume, and sometimes it's been controversial - wow, look at how much they're coddling these prisoners - they have these educational programs, and they get all this drug treatment for free, and if they don't come out fixed then it's their own fault because they have access to all of these treatment resources in prison. Is that the case? [00:21:43] Damon Petrich: No, I wouldn't say so - first of all, they don't have access, a lot of them, to any programs. And then, like I said, the programs that they do get really aren't that effective. So the big one that everybody loves to argue for is providing former inmates with jobs. If you look at any federal funding for program development, like the Second Chance Act or the First Step Act - I think that was one under Trump - and then under Bush, there was a Serious [and] Violent Offenders Reentry Initiative - pretty much all of these federal bills will be heavily focused on just providing offenders with jobs. And almost all of the evaluations of these programs show that they don't reduce reoffending. And it's not really that hard - again, if you go back to the literature on behavioral change and, criminology literature - it's not really that hard to understand why just providing a job isn't going to reduce or lead somebody away from a life of crime. A lot of these people have spotty work histories where they've never had a job at all, they believe and know that it's easier to gain money by doing illicit work than it is legal work, they have things like low self-control so they're very impulsive, they don't know how to take criticism or being told what to do by a boss. They live in neighborhoods with very poor opportunities for good jobs and education, and maybe there's a mindset around there that illegal work or whatever is just a better way to go - that's sort of ingrained. So there's a lot of different reasons why just handing somebody a job isn't going to lead them away from crime, 'cause they have all these other things that need to be dealt with first. So ideally, a rehabilitation program that's comprehensive would deal with all of those other background factors and then provide them with a job. Because if you make them less impulsive, better able to resist the influence of their antisocial friends, and get this thought out of their head that other people are being hostile towards them when they're really not - all these sorts of cognitive and behavioral biases that they have - if you deal with all of those things and then you give them a job, they're more likely to actually latch onto that job as something worthwhile doing. And then they're going to go on to get out of a life of crime. But if you just give them a job and you haven't dealt with any of those issues, you can't really expect that to work. And that is the model that we currently do - is something that we don't really expect to work that well. [00:24:28] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that's - it's really interesting and I don't know that a lot of people actually know that, Hey, giving someone a job isn't sufficient - which is why I think it's so important to talk about studies like this, because some of what has become conventional wisdom, really is not accurate or reflects what has been studied and discovered. And I guess in that vein, what are the factors - you just talked about a few - but what does increase someone's likelihood of reoffending or recidivism, and what reduces it? [00:25:08] Damon Petrich: So those are probably two ends of the same, or two sides of the same coin, but this is pretty well known in criminology - a model called the risk-need-responsivity [RNR] model was developed by a couple of fellow Canadians, named James Bonta and Don Andrews, along with some of their colleagues in the '80s and '90s. And they, through again, other meta-analyses just like we did, found certain categories of characteristics of people who are more likely to reoffend. So you have things like having antisocial peers - so that one's pretty obvious - if you have a bunch of friends that are involved in crime, it's going to be pretty hard for you to get out of that life because you're surrounded by those people. Same with family members. If you have what are called criminal thinking patterns - so again, you might have what's called a hostile attribution bias, things like that, where somebody says something a little bit negative to you and you take that as a huge insult and you retaliate with anger and aggression - things like that. Or being impulsive - so you're again quick to anger, you're swayed by small little enticements in the environment and that sort of thing - so you're easily swayed one way or the other. Things like that are strong predictors of reoffending. Substance abuse - it's what I mentioned earlier. If you don't really have any sort of proactive leisure activities, like hobbies and stuff like that. So there's a bunch of well-known things that we know are strongly associated with recidivism, and a rehabilitation program should ideally deal with them. Now this model that Andrews and Bonta and all these other people came up with - this RNR risk-need-responsivity model - the risk part says that we should give people a risk assessment when they're entering prison or leaving prison and determine what level of risk are they from reoffending. And we assess these different criteria, like criminal thinking patterns and antisocial friends and substance abuse. So we determine what those factors are and then we design them a treatment program that actually deals with those factors at the individual level. So we're not just giving a blanket rehabilitation program to everybody, and you're providing the most amount of care to the people who most need it or who are the most likely to re-offend. And then once we've done all that, we need to make sure that we're addressing these problems in some sort of a format that we know actually works. The most well-known one, but not as often used, the most well-known within the sort of psychologist and criminological literature is cognitive behavioral therapy [CBT]. So this is pretty popular for dealing with depression and all sorts of eating disorders and substance abuse problems in non-offender populations. Well, those programs also work in offender populations and they work pretty well. So the research shows - again meta-analyses - that when you deal with all these three factors - risk, need, and responsivity - you can reduce reoffending rates by about 26%. So it's a pretty sizeable amount - it's much greater than you're getting by just sentencing people to prison without doing anything. [00:28:42] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and I think you cover in your paper - those things are absolutely true. And you just talked about several administrations' attempts to implement programming and resources to try and help people get jobs, potentially - hey, there's even a CBT treatment, but if that treatment has twice as many people as are recommended being in a session and occurs over half the time that it's supposed to, you really are sabotaging the entire process or really setting it up for failure. And it just seems to be an expensive exercise that we aren't really getting anything out of. Does that seem to be consistent with how you've seen the attempts at introducing this programming within prisons and jails? [00:29:40] Damon Petrich: Yeah, for sure - this is a pretty common finding too - so it's not just about preaching that you're going to do these things. You actually have to implement them well. So just like you said, there's a number of studies that show this - so you've designed some really great program that deals with all of these risk factors that lead people back into reoffending, you give it to them in a cognitive behavioral setting. So all seems good on paper, but in practice, like you said - one of the famous studies there - can't remember the names of the authors offhand right now - but one of the famous studies there showed that they're providing it to people in groups of 30, as opposed to 15, and they're delivering it in a really short amount of time. And they're not maybe giving it to the highest-risk people - so they're just mixing random people in there at varying levels of risk. So when you do all these sorts of things - you implement the program poorly - you can't really expect it to work. And this is often the case - is the government pays people to come up with these great programs, and then not enough funding is provided to actually make sure that they're implemented and evaluated well. So the amount of funding that actually goes into that - developing the programs to begin with - is small, but when you do do that, you're not making sure that you're actually implementing things well. So it's just sort of shooting yourself in the foot, and probably making people come to the conclusion that these things don't work - when they do work, if you just implement them well. [00:31:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and there's also a lot of rhetoric - and you discuss this - there's a lot of rhetoric coming from the government, even coming from leadership within the Bureau of Prisons or leadership in our carceral system, saying we do want to rehabilitate people. We are trying to implement programming that does this. You see - we have these educational opportunities and we are doing evaluations of people. And it may be happening while they're understaffed or other challenges, but one of the biggest, I guess, red flags is that none of the evaluation of their programs and none of the incentives that arise are in any way tied to what is the actual result of what happens. Are you actually succeeding on reducing someone's likelihood for reoffense? It does not seem like any compensation is tied to that, any kind of evaluation of positions or regular reporting - to say, is this program having its intended effect? And if not, what do we need to do to correct for that? Is that what you found? [00:32:33] Damon Petrich: I would say that's probably a pretty fair assessment. A lot of the programs that are implemented are never evaluated at all. And then the ones that are - it's usually once - there's one evaluation of those programs. And then, like you said, there doesn't really seem to be a lot of self-reflection - I don't know what other word you would use - but these programs don't really change on the basis of these evaluations. So, it's kind of disheartening to hear about, I guess. [00:33:14] Crystal Fincher: It feels very disheartening to live in the middle of - and one of the big things about this is that this - we have these conversations and we talk about these studies and we're saying, yeah, it actually - we're not doing anyone any favors right now when it comes to reducing recidivism. And having these conversations oftentimes detached from the cost associated with what we're paying for these. And my goodness are we paying to incarcerate people? It's not just, well, we do lock them up and we keep them away. Or we do a good job of keeping them in - they reoffend, they go back to jail. And lots of people are like, we did our job, they went back to jail - boom, everything is fine. But we are paying through the nose and out the ear for this - just here, we're in the state of Washington, and right now the state spends about $112 per day, or over $40,000 annually, to incarcerate one individual - that's the cost per inmate. In King County - the county that we're in - they spend $192 a day, or $70,000 annually, to incarcerate an individual. That is a huge amount of the tax dollars that we spend - these come out of our general fund, meaning that these are dollars that every service, everything that is not a dedicated source of revenue, is competing for. So when we talk about things and have conversations like, well, we don't have the budget for that and we don't have the money - that is related to how much of that money we're spending on other things. And my goodness, I would think that we want to get our money's worth for that level of expenditure. And it really appears that if we're saying the goal of jail is to get people on the straight and narrow path and becoming contributing members of society and all of the implications of that, it doesn't seem like we're getting our money's worth. And so, if those aren't the goals and if we just want to punish people, it's not like we're punishing people for free. We're punishing people at the cost of $70,000 per day [year], and at the cost of all the other services and infrastructure needs that we have. So it really seems like we're punishing ourselves as much, or more, as others - particularly if we're bringing people back into society that are likely to reoffend in one way or another. And so if our goal is to keep our community safe and that is the North Star, it looks like we need to realign our processes and our expenditure of resources. I guess my question to you, after all that, is - how should we be moving forward? What should we be looking to do? What is shown to work? [00:36:24] Damon Petrich: Well, I would say - yeah, $70,000 a year as just a revenge cost per person seems like a lot. $80 billion in the country as a whole, for a revenge cost, seems like a pretty high price to pay, given we're not reducing reoffending. You could make the argument that these people aren't offending while they're in prison, but that's - there's other reasons why that might not be completely accurate, which I could talk about too, but - [00:36:59] Crystal Fincher: Well, I'm interested in that. Why might that not be accurate? [00:37:03] Damon Petrich: So, obviously the person - if you incarcerate a particular individual, obviously they can't be out in the community committing crimes. So that's obvious, but there's a number of reasons why that might not, en masse, actually reduce crime a whole lot. The research on it - this is a little bit squishy - in terms of whether incarcerating more people leads to lower crime rates, because one influences the other. But for example, if you look at illegal drug markets - a lot of the homicides in the United States and other violent crime that people are really concerned about, and it's plastered all over the media is - homicides, gang-related stuff. So if you take key gang members out and you put them in prison, what ends up happening is that there's competition in that market to take over that person's place, either within the gang or other gangs coming in. So what ends up happening oftentimes is a spike in violence. So that's one reason why just incapacitating, particularly high-crime individuals, might not actually lead to lower crime rates overall. Again, you're lowering crime for that one person, but you might be increasing crime on a more systemic level. Beyond that, these things have broader societal and community level impacts - incarcerating a lot of people. Again, research shows that when you're incarcerating a lot of people in a particular community - so there's a bunch of really good work by Robert Sampson - he has a book that came out a few years ago called Great American City. And he looked at these individual neighborhoods in Chicago over time, and what he finds is that in communities where there's a higher number of people incarcerated in a particular community, this ends up increasing what's called "legal cynicism." And this is done in some other work as well with David Kirk and Andrew Papachristos - but they show that this increases legal cynicism, which means people are skeptical of police helping them out, the police doing a good job. And what ends up happening after that - when people are more cynical of the legal system, they're less likely to report crimes to the police, they're less likely to cooperate with the police. So what ends up happening? You incarcerate more people and people in that community end up being less willing to cooperate with law enforcement. And this leads to sort of an endless cycle where things sort of get out of hand. So there's all these unintended and nonfinancial consequences of incarcerating a lot of people that could potentially end up leading to more crime. [00:40:03] Crystal Fincher: Well, and - speaking as a Black woman - obviously, looking at the impacts of mass incarceration in the Black community and in neighborhoods around the country - where it is almost like the community is responding to the actual outcome and that, Hey, this actually isn't making my community any better. I'm experiencing traumatic impacts from this - whether it's my relative went to prison or a sole breadwinner in the family and now we're thrown into poverty, or I'm in a situation where I don't have a parent who used to be there - who now is no longer there. Or causing instability and impacting the education that people get and the kind of job opportunity, watching someone who's come out have to struggle and be ostracized. And it looks like, Hey, this is just the first step on a long cycle of traumatic and undesirable events - and I don't want to participate in a system that is doing that. With that, as we look forward, and I think this is also related to conversations about just fundamental trust in our criminal legal system and relations with police and throughout the system. It's - if we think about how to turn that around - to me, seems related to thinking about the question of how do we get better outcomes for everyone? 'Cause it seems like right now where we're investing a lot in poor outcomes for people who were already, usually, in pretty poor spots leading to themselves being incarcerated, coming out and not necessarily improving, definitely not improving. And if anything, a chance that it gets a little bit worse. How do we change that entire outcome? And I know you're looking specifically in the incarceration space, but what should be, what could be done differently? Or do we just need a fundamental restructuring of the way we do this? [00:42:17] Damon Petrich: I don't know about a fundamental restructuring - I don't, I'm not great at that high-level thinking stuff, but what I do know is that - we're probably going to continue to incarcerate people. That's something that's done in every country and people seem to love here. So if we actually want to use prison for public safety - because 95% of inmates eventually get out - if we actually want to use it for public safety, then let's actually try wholeheartedly to rehabilitate them while they're in there. And again, there's a lot of theory and evidence-based principles on how we can do this, like the risk-need-responsivity model that I talked about earlier, cognitive behavioral therapy more broadly. If you use these types of things and continue to work on them and develop them over time, then yeah - prison might actually be helpful if people are going there and getting the help that they need. But that's not what's happening currently. So that's one level in incarceration terms - that's the area that I know best. So that's one way you could potentially alleviate some of this stuff is - if people are actually getting resources and stuff when they're in prison, and then when once they're reintegrating, they're not only going to reoffend less, but maybe they're going to contribute to their community more. They're going to be better able to connect with their family and stuff like that. So rather than being a hindrance, it could potentially be a help. Obviously, again, it's not ideal to remove people from their communities and their family and friends. And like I said earlier, if you have the option to sentence them to something community-based instead, I think that's the better route to go. But if you are going to send people to prison, which I think we're going to continue to do a lot of the time, then let's rehabilitate them while they're in there is the main point. And do so based on what actually works to do that. [00:44:23] Crystal Fincher: It's really the investment in the people who are there, and we're - I think up against a lot of societal attitudes and resistance where it just feels wrong to a number of people to be providing services and shifting that investment to things that are seemingly helpful for the inmate, because everything about how we've been conditioned to understand our prison system has been - the punishment is kind of the key, and they'll make rational decisions afterwards to avoid prison based on how bad the punishment is. When it comes to community supervision, things like probation, what are the differences there? If there are better outcomes from that, what accounts for the better outcomes when it comes to probation versus incarceration? [00:45:23] Damon Petrich: I wouldn't say the outcomes are better - they're just pretty much the same as they would be if they're sentenced to prison. So, probation costs less and then it also enables the people to be out in the community doing community things, like being with their friends and families and all that. I mean, you can't quantify, based on a recidivism percentage, what their family members and friends and employers are getting out of it. So that's something we can't really look at - or I guess you could, but something we don't often do - but so there's intangible things that you would get by keeping people in the community. Plus it doesn't lead to all that other stuff I talked about where people become cynical of the legal system and it leads to this cycle of whatever. [00:46:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and so if we're were doing this programming in prison and helping people, I think your research shows it's extremely important to do both the structural, Hey, you need a place to live, you need to be able to pay your rent and your bills - so having a job, having housing, having healthcare, getting those very basic needs met is critical. But also addressing a number of the mental or behavioral health issues that are common among the incarcerated population - and dealing with that is as important. And basically those two things both need to happen hand-in-hand. How do we do a better job of that in our current system? [00:46:57] Damon Petrich: Well, first of all, I'd like to say that you're right there - I think maybe when I was talking earlier about employment, it might sound like giving people jobs is just a waste of time, but that's not the case. It needs - the two things need to be paired - you need to deal with the cognitive and behavioral problems in addition to giving them jobs and housing support and all that. In terms of how you actually go about doing that, there are examples in the literature of programs that do this, so there's examples out there. I think if you're a state or local or even federal correctional department and you're interested in doing this - implementing something that's evidence-based - or if you're just a concerned citizen that wants to rally your local officials to do that - go and talk to researchers like me, or people at universities that have criminology departments or criminal justice departments, because this knowledge is out there. It's widely available. You just have to go and seek it out. So at my university, for example, we have the University of Cincinnati Corrections Institute and under the guidance of Ed Latessa, he was - now passed - but he was, over the last 30 years, responsible for disseminating a lot of this evidence-based practices to some of the state and local criminal justice agencies. And they helped with implementation and evaluation in a lot of these places, so the help is out there. You just have to look for it a little bit. [00:48:38] Crystal Fincher: And another question I had - your analysis seemed to suggest that when we're talking about low-risk, medium, and high-risk offenders - or people who have done relatively minor crimes versus those who have done more serious crimes - that these interventions are particularly effective the more serious the offense or crime has been. And that perhaps even sometimes treating someone who is a really low-risk as if they're a high-risk, can worsen the outcomes for that person. Is that the case? [00:49:21] Damon Petrich: Yeah, that tends to be a finding in research - we're not exactly sure why, but providing a lot of really intensive services to people deemed to be low-risk can actually be harmful rather than helpful. We don't know based on research why, but there's a lot of pretty good hypotheses about why. So a low-risk offender is going to be somebody who's a first-timer who's committed some not-that-serious crime. So they probably have a job, they probably have pretty strong connections with their family and all that. So if you're taking them and you're putting them in a program where you have to be there 40 hours a week, they're probably going to get fired from their job, it's going to be harder to stay in contact with friends and families that are sort of tying you into a non-criminal life. And then you're probably going to be associating with all kinds of people who are high-risk, and maybe they're going to draw you towards, oh yeah, I could earn four grand going out tonight and stealing some laptops. There's a lot of reasons why just taking low-risk people and putting them in these programs is going to be harmful rather than helpful. [00:50:31] Crystal Fincher: And so with that in mind, and you talk about, Hey, if we're trying to influence local electeds - one of the interesting things about having a podcast and radio show that caters to extremely politically and civically inclined people is that we actually do have a number of policymakers and politicians who listen, and people who are enacting and in control of this policy. If you were to talk to them and give them advice about how to move forward, especially in the current environment that we find ourselves in, where over the past few years has been increasing awareness of some of the defecits of our system and pushes to change those. And also, as we have seen more recently, a real strong pushback from a lot of people who are invested in our current system saying, Hey, let's not change things too much. Maybe we need to jail more and for longer. And maybe we're just not doing enough incarceration, and that's the answer. In that kind of political environment, what would you tell people who are in charge of this policy, who may be facing pressure to keep going forward with the status quo, about how they should evaluate how they should move forward and the kinds of things that they should do? [00:52:07] Damon Petrich: I know a lot of these politicians get lobbied by correctional officer groups or whatever, and that's whatever, but ultimately you get voted in by voters. So, I'm not an expert on public opinion - I have other friends who are more into that kind of stuff, but I do know from talking with them and from reading that literature, that the public actually does support rehabilitation. So they have for a long time and it's shifted more towards being in support of rehabilitation over time. So right now, most Americans support providing rehabilitation programs to prisoners and offenders. So this is something that's going to please your constituency, people want this kind of thing. And it's not like you're going to be losing all kinds of jobs by getting rid of prison - there's going to be a need for skilled people who can provide these programs and probation officers and all these sorts of things. So it's not a net loss when you're getting rid of prisons. There's a lot of reasons to sentence people to community supervision and things like that - provide rehabilitation. There's public support for it, there's jobs involved, there's cost savings - big time, obviously - it's way cheaper to keep somebody out of prison than it is to keep them in prison. So there's a lot of different reasons why you would want to do that as a politician. [00:53:43] Crystal Fincher: I think that makes sense. Certainly it's a lot cheaper to keep someone out of prison versus in prison. I mean, we talked about the annual costs - in the state of Washington over $40,000, King County over $70,000 - comparing that to how much we invest in a student of $11,500 a year. If we focus more on investing in people, both inside and outside the system, it seems like we set ourselves up for a safer community, fewer people being victimized, and more people leading thriving, productive, tax-paying lives. And we're all happier than we are right now, I would think, I would hope - it seems like the research points in that direction. So I certainly appreciate you taking the time to speak with us about this. Is there anything else that you want to leave with us, in thinking about this study and your research? [00:54:55] Damon Petrich: I think we covered it pretty well. Just to circle back to something you just said - I know this might put me out of a job since I focus on what happens when people's lives go awry, but you really are better off to invest in early prevention programs and giving people a good start on life than trying to correct the program or the problem afterwards. So yeah - politicians spend some money on prevention programs. I know the good effects of that are a long way out, but they're actually good on a societal level. So I guess I would add that, even though it's not good for criminologists, maybe, to put themselves out of a job like that. [00:55:40] Crystal Fincher: Well, much appreciated, and thank you so much for having this conversation with us today. [00:55:45] Damon Petrich: Yeah, thank you very much for having me on. I'm glad that there are people out there interested in this stuff, so thanks again. [00:55:51] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.

Prison Profiteers brings together a formidable array of lawyers, prisoners, journalists and advocates to provide a unique look at who, exactly, is benefiting from mass imprisonment. Prison Profiteers takes readers on an investigative journey behind the bars of our nation's prisons to the front lines of its mass incarceration crisis and into the realm of its financially motivated private investors. The United States, with just five percent of the world's population, is responsible for incarcerating an astounding twenty five percent of the world's inmates. Thanks to thirty years of mass incarceration, the number of people in state and federal penitentiaries has dramatically increased from an estimated 300,000 to 2.3 million. The numbers are shocking, yet while much research has focused on the social issues that surround incarceration in the U.S., until now, little attention has been given to the individuals and commercial enterprises that profit from prisons and their related services. Prison Profiteers approaches the subject from a unique angle-not who is being harmed by current policies of mass imprisonment but rather who benefits from such policies. From investment banks that issue bonds for prison construction, to the companies that staff and manage prisons, and the organizations that provide medical care, we learn how they benefit and how much they profit. Paul Wright is the founder and editor of Prison Legal News, an independent monthly magazine that reports on the criminal justice system. He co-edited Prison Nature with Tara Herivel and The Celling of America with Daniel Burton-Rose. He is a 2005 Petra Foundation Fellow and the 2007 recipient of the James Madison Award from the Washington Coalition for Open Government. Now listen to all our XZBN shows, with our compliments go to: https://www.spreaker.com/user/xzoneradiotv*** AND NOW ***The ‘X' Zone TV Channel on SimulTV - www.simultv.comThe ‘X' Chronicles Newspaper - www.xchroniclesnewpaper.com

In this episode we interview Ed Mead. Mead is a veteran of the revolutionary underground organization the George Jackson Brigade which operated in solidarity with prisoner, anti-racist, and anti-imperialist struggles. A prolific organizer and participant of prisoner struggles both inside and outside of prisons, Ed also co-founded the prisoner organization Men Against Sexism. He also worked with a number of other organizations and struggles over the years including work with the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, the Attica Brothers Legal Defense Committee, the National Lawyers Guild, Prison Legal News, and California Prison Focus.  In this conversation we talk about some lessons along the way of Ed's political development, from social prisoner to jailhouse lawyer to organizer to revolutionary to political prisoner.  Ed offers unvarnished reflections from a life in struggle, characteristically with no holds barred for what he refers to as “the tamed left.”  Our conversation was informed by Ed Mead's autobiography Lumpen and by Daniel Burton-Rose's books on the George Jackson Brigade. We will include a full list of sources in the show notes. Links: Lumpen: The Autobiography of Ed Mead Theory and Practice of Armed Struggle in the Northwest: A Historical Analysis Creating A Movement With Teeth: A Documentary History of the George Jackson Brigade Guerilla USA: The George Jackson Brigade and the Anticapitalist Underground of the 1970's Sundiata Acoli's Support Fund Washington Prison History Project Oral Histories

Prison Profiteers brings together a formidable array of lawyers, prisoners, journalists and advocates to provide a unique look at who, exactly, is benefiting from mass imprisonment. Prison Profiteers takes readers on an investigative journey behind the bars of our nation's prisons to the front lines of its mass incarceration crisis and into the realm of its financially motivated private investors. The United States, with just five percent of the world's population, is responsible for incarcerating an astounding twenty five percent of the world's inmates. Thanks to thirty years of mass incarceration, the number of people in state and federal penitentiaries has dramatically increased from an estimated 300,000 to 2.3 million. The numbers are shocking, yet while much research has focused on the social issues that surround incarceration in the U.S., until now, little attention has been given to the individuals and commercial enterprises that profit from prisons and their related services. Prison Profiteers approaches the subject from a unique angle-not who is being harmed by current policies of mass imprisonment but rather who benefits from such policies. From investment banks that issue bonds for prison construction, to the companies that staff and manage prisons, and the organizations that provide medical care, we learn how they benefit and how much they profit. Paul Wright is the founder and editor of Prison Legal News, an independent monthly magazine that reports on the criminal justice system. He co-edited Prison Nature with Tara Herivel and The Celling of America with Daniel Burton-Rose. He is a 2005 Petra Foundation Fellow and the 2007 recipient of the James Madison Award from the Washington Coalition for Open Government. Now listen to all our XZBN shows, with our compliments go to: https://www.spreaker.com/user/xzoneradiotv*** AND NOW ***The ‘X' Zone TV Channel on SimulTV - www.simultv.comThe ‘X' Chronicles Newspaper - www.xchroniclesnewpaper.com

Prison Profiteers brings together a formidable array of lawyers, prisoners, journalists and advocates to provide a unique look at who, exactly, is benefiting from mass imprisonment. Prison Profiteers takes readers on an investigative journey behind the bars of our nation's prisons to the front lines of its mass incarceration crisis and into the realm of its financially motivated private investors. The United States, with just five percent of the world's population, is responsible for incarcerating an astounding twenty five percent of the world's inmates. Thanks to thirty years of mass incarceration, the number of people in state and federal penitentiaries has dramatically increased from an estimated 300,000 to 2.3 million. The numbers are shocking, yet while much research has focused on the social issues that surround incarceration in the U.S., until now, little attention has been given to the individuals and commercial enterprises that profit from prisons and their related services. Prison Profiteers approaches the subject from a unique angle-not who is being harmed by current policies of mass imprisonment but rather who benefits from such policies. From investment banks that issue bonds for prison construction, to the companies that staff and manage prisons, and the organizations that provide medical care, we learn how they benefit and how much they profit. Paul Wright is the founder and editor of Prison Legal News, an independent monthly magazine that reports on the criminal justice system. He co-edited Prison Nature with Tara Herivel and The Celling of America with Daniel Burton-Rose. He is a 2005 Petra Foundation Fellow and the 2007 recipient of the James Madison Award from the Washington Coalition for Open Government. Now listen to all our XZBN shows, with our compliments go to: https://www.spreaker.com/user/xzoneradiotv*** AND NOW ***The ‘X' Zone TV Channel on SimulTV - www.simultv.comThe ‘X' Chronicles Newspaper - www.xchroniclesnewpaper.com

On this Hacks & Wonks midweek show, Crystal has a robust conversation with Damon Petrich about his research at the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. As lead author of the seminal work “Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Damon performed an extensive analysis of 116 research studies looking at the effect of incarceration on reoffending. The review's finding that the oft-used policy of imprisonment does not reduce the likelihood of recidivism sparks a discussion about how the United States ended up as the world leader in mass incarceration and the disconnect between conventional assumptions about what prisons provide versus reality. Noting that the carceral system does a poor job of rehabilitation - while eating up budgets across the country and exacting significant societal costs - Damon and Crystal talk about how to design and evaluate programs that do work to deliver greater public safety for everyone. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and reach Damon for more information about his research at petricdm@ucmail.uc.edu   Resources  “Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review” by Damon M. Petrich, Travis C. Pratt, Cheryl Lero Johnson, and Francis T. Cullen for Crime and Justice: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/715100   Scott Hechinger Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/ScottHech/status/1447596444886523911   “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022” by Wendy Sawyer and Peter Wagner from the Prison Policy Initiative: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html   “Risk-need-responsivity model for offender assessment and rehabilitation” by James Bonta and D. A. Andrews for Public Safety Canada: https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/rsk-nd-rspnsvty/index-en.aspx   “Let's Take a Hard Look at Who Is in Jail and Why We Put Them There” by Alea Carr for the ACLU-WA blog: https://www.aclu-wa.org/blog/let-s-take-hard-look-who-jail-and-why-we-put-them-there   Book - “Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect” by Robert J. Sampson: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/G/bo5514383.html   Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation Program - “Police Legitimacy and Legal Cynicism: Why They Matter and How to Measure in Your Community”: https://www.lisc.org/media/filer_public/05/0b/050ba3aa-044f-4676-bc1e-6e2b6c48412c/091317_bcji_resources_police_legitimacy_fundamentals.pdf   “Polls Show People Favor Rehabilitation over Incarceration” by Matt Clarke for Prison Legal News: https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2018/nov/6/polls-show-people-favor-rehabilitation-over-incarceration/   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Well, I am excited to welcome Damon Petrich, who's a doctoral associate in the School of Criminal Justice at University of Cincinnati and incoming assistant professor at Loyola University Chicago. He was the lead author of a recent article, "Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review," along with Travis Pratt, Cheryl Lero Johnson, Francis T. Cullen. Damon's research focuses on the effectiveness of corrections and rehabilitation programs, desistance from crime, and the impact of community violence on youth development. Thank you so much for joining us, Damon. [00:01:13] Damon Petrich: Thank you very much for having me on, Crystal. I'm excited to talk a little bit about my work and the implications of that and all that, so thanks again. [00:01:20] Crystal Fincher: I'm very excited to talk about this and it's extremely timely - has been for a while. We have conversations almost every day in the public sphere having to do with public safety - this is such a major component of it. And so I'm hoping as we have this conversation, it'll help us to better assess what the costs and benefits are of custodial sanctions and incarceration, and alternatives to that - to have a conversation that kind of orients us more towards public safety. Sometimes we're so concerned with metrics around police and how many they are, and what the length of a sentence should be. And sometimes we focus on things that take us off of the overall goal of keeping us all safer and reducing the likelihood that each of us are victimized and to hopefully prevent people from becoming victims of crime. And just to have accurate conversations about how we invest our public resources - what we're actually getting from them, and then how to evaluate as we go along - what we should be tracking and measuring and incentivizing. As so many people talk about taking data-driven approaches and create all these dashboards - that we're really doing it from an informed perspective. So just to start out - what actually were you studying and what were you seeking to find out? [00:02:47] Damon Petrich: Yeah, so the main purpose of our meta-analysis, which I can explain exactly what that is later on if you have questions, but the main purpose was to understand what happens when you take one group of offenders and you sentence them to something custodial like prison or jail, and then you sentence another group of similar offenders to something non-custodial like probation. How do those two groups differ in terms of whether they reoffend? So does prison actually deter recidivism, or does it make people more likely to commit crime afterwards? So that's sort of what we were looking at and so we considered all of the available research on that, in this review. [00:03:29] Crystal Fincher: Got it. So right now we have gone down the path of mass incarceration - that is the default punishment that we, as society, have looked to for crime. Hey - sentence them and many times it's, Hey, they're going to jail. Sometimes they get out of jail and they have supervision that continues, but jail is really focused, where we focus a lot of our effort and where we put people and hope that that'll straighten them out and they come out and everything is fine. How did we get here and where are we in terms of how we're approaching incarceration in our society, in our country? [00:04:11] Damon Petrich: Yeah, so there is a lot of public uproar around a lot of issues, like race issues, and there was crime spikes and concerns over social welfare - and there's all this confluence of issues in the '60s and early '70s. And we decided to - as a country, not everyone, but politicians decided that we should tackle the crime problem by A) incarcerating more people, and then B) once they get there, keep them there for longer. So we enacted things like mandatory minimum sentences, where the judge really has no discretion over what happens - the person gets automatically a sentence of incarceration if they've committed a certain type of crime. You had habitual offender laws where if you're - like California's three strikes policy - where if you have two prior felonies and you get a third, no matter what it is, you're going to jail for life. Michigan had the "650 Lifer Law," where if you get caught with 650 grams of heroin or cocaine, you're automatically going to prison for life. And then we got rid of parole and stuff like that in a lot of states. So all these things lead to more people going to jail and then for longer, and those laws came to be in the '70s and '80s. And over that time, our incarceration rate ballooned up by about 700%, so by the early 2000s, we were at over 2 million people incarcerated and another 7-8 million people on probation or parole. So it's a pretty big expansion - the United States has 5% of the world's population and a quarter, or 25%, of the prisoners, so it's a little ridiculous. The crime rate here isn't nearly as high, or nearly high enough to justify that huge disparity. So yeah, it's a whole confluence of factors led us to be the world leader in incarceration. [00:06:14] Crystal Fincher: And what attitudes or what justifications are the people who have the power to enact these policies and continue these policies - how are they justifying them? [00:06:25] Damon Petrich: So there's a few reasons why you might want to incarcerate somebody. One is just because you want to punish them or get revenge on them, so that's more of a moral reason. But the main focus of politicians were twofold - one was incapacitation, so that one means that because you're keeping somebody locked up in a cage, obviously they can't be out in the community committing crimes. So the thought is that you're going to reduce crime that way. The research on that is a little squishy even now, and I can talk a little bit more about that later if you want. But the other reason, and the one that we focused on in our review, was that prison deters people from going back to crime after they get out. So the idea there is that prison sucks - you go in there, you're cut off from your job, from your family, from your friends, or from just having hobbies or things to do. And you're not going to want to go back, so when you get out of prison - you think real hard, and you think how much prison sucks, and you decide not to go back to crime. That's the thinking behind that deterrence hypothesis anyway. So those two - incapacitation and deterrence - were the main drivers of those increase in laws and stuff during the '70s, '80s, and '90s, but there really wasn't any evidence for either of them - in the '70s and '80s in particular. So most of the research evaluating whether prison actually does deter recidivism has popped up over the last 25 years or so. [00:08:05] Crystal Fincher: And as you took a look at it - all of the studies that have popped up over the past 25 years had varying degrees of rigor and scientific validity. But as that body of research grew, people began to get a better idea of whether incarceration actually does reduce someone's likelihood of reoffending. How big was that body of work, in terms of studies, and what were you able to look at? [00:08:40] Damon Petrich: So in our particular review, we looked at 116 studies, which is a pretty sizable number. Most people - when you read through an article and a literature review might have 10 studies or something that they just narratively go through, but we looked at 116. And then within those 116 studies, there were 981 statistical models. So 901 different comparisons - or 981 different comparisons - of what happens to custodial versus non-custodial groups. So we looked at a pretty big chunk of literature. [00:09:20] Crystal Fincher: And in that, in the reliance of - that's a really big number - and I think, people now are maybe more familiar, just from a layperson's perspective, of just how big that number is. As we've seen throughout this pandemic that we're in the middle of, studies come out - people are looking at one study, and wow - study number two comes out and we're feeling really good about it. And man, we get to five studies and people are like, okay, we know what's going on. To get beyond a hundred is just a real comprehensive body of study and analysis. What were you able to determine from that? [00:10:05] Damon Petrich: So I should probably explain upfront what a meta-analysis is and why it's useful. So like you were just saying - like in the COVID pandemic, for example - one study will come out and it'll say, oh, Ivermectin reduces symptomatic COVID cases by X percent. And then the next study will come out and say, Ivermectin makes people way worse. So any individual study can be kind of misleading. A good analogy for what a meta-analysis does would be to look at baseball, for example. So let's say you're interested in some rookie player that's just come out, he's just joined Major League Baseball and you go to his - you want to know how good this player actually is? You've never seen him play, you've only heard rumors. So you go out to his first game, he gets up to bat four times and he gets no hits. So you walk away from that game thinking, wow, this player is terrible, the team wasted all their money recruiting and paying this guy's salary. But that could have just been an off game for many reasons - it's his debut game so maybe there's just first-game nerves, maybe the weather was bad, maybe he was having personal problems in his life, or he had a little bit of an injury. So there's a number of reasons why looking at his performance from that one game is not going to be representative of who he is as a player. Ideally, you'd want to look at all the games over a season where he might go up to bat 250 times. And over those 250 times, he gets 80 hits, which is a pretty good batting average - it's over .300. So with that amount of data, you could come to a more solid conclusion of whether he's actually a good player or not. And with that amount of data, you could also look at what we call moderating characteristics. So you could look at, for example, whether he plays better when it's an away game or in a home game, whether it's early or late season - you could look at all these sorts of things. So this is essentially what we're doing with research as well, in a meta-analysis. So if you look at studies on incarceration - one might show increases in recidivism after people go to prison, the next might show decreases, and the next might show that probationers and prisoners reoffend at about the same rates. So just like in the baseball analogy, in a meta-analysis, we're looking at all of the available research. We're combining it together and determining A) what the sort of overall or average effect of incarceration is, and then B) whether these moderating characteristics actually matter. So in other words, is the effect of incarceration pretty much the same for males as it is for females, or for juveniles as adults, or when the research design is really good versus when it's not so great. So that's basically what we did in this meta-analysis is again - looked at 116 studies and from those 981 statistical estimates. [00:13:13] Crystal Fincher: Very helpful. Totally makes sense with the baseball analogy, and I especially appreciate breaking down with all the statistical models and not just kind of thumbs up, thumbs down - the binary - it either increases or reduces the likelihood of recidivism. But under what conditions are - might it be more likely, less likely that someone does? What are some of those influencing effects on what happens? And so you were just talking about the justification that people used going into this, and now that we have data coming out - does it turn out that people go into prison or are incarcerated in jail, they think - wow, this is horrible. Some in society are like the more uncomfortable we make it in jail, the better we want to make sure it's a place that they never would want to come back to - that it's so scary and such a bad experience that they are just scared straight for the rest of their lives. Does it actually turn out to be that way? Do they take a rational look at - this was my experience, I don't want to go back again, therefore I will not do any of the things that I did going in. [00:14:28] Damon Petrich: I would not say that's the conclusion - no. So again, based on the 116 studies that we looked at, which is again a lot, people who are sentenced to incarceration - so jail, prison - they commit crime, they reoffend at about the same rates as if you'd sentence those same people to probation. So in other words, they're not being deterred by being sent to prison. These effects are the same for both males and females. So in other words, prison doesn't reduce reoffending for one group versus the other. It's the same whether we look at adults versus juveniles, it's the same regardless of what type of recidivism we're interested in - rearrests or convictions. It's pretty much the same across the board. There's some slight variations in research designs, but even within those, prison either has no effect or it slightly increases recidivism. We don't find any conditions under which prison is reducing reoffending or deterring these people from going back to those lives. [00:15:35] Crystal Fincher: So from a societal perspective, a lot of people kind of make the assumption that, Hey, we arrest and we incarcerate someone - whew, our streets are safer. They get out, and now they can choose to reintegrate themselves into society hopefully - they do and we're all safer because of it. But it looks like impressions that some people may have that, Hey, we're letting someone off easy. And suggestions - there's so much media coverage around this - and suggestions that because we're letting people off easy, that we're making it easier for them to reoffend, or they don't feel sufficiently punished enough and so that becomes an incentive to reoffend. Does that seem like it tracks with what the studies have shown? [00:16:33] Damon Petrich: Not really - so there's some studies that actually ask prisoners and offenders whether they'd prefer going to prison or probation. And a lot of them will say, oh, I'd rather do a year in prison than spend two or three years on probation. So it's not like they view probation as just being super easy. And they're not saying this because they received time off their sentence for being in the study or anything like that. Probation's not easy either - and you have to also think that while these people are on probation, they're able to stay in close touch with their family, they're able to maintain connections with work or find work, they're able to participate in the community, they can pay taxes - that I know a lot of people who are pro-prison love. So there's all sorts of reasons why - beyond just them reoffending at the same rates as if they'd gone to prison - there's a lot of reasons why we might want to keep these people in the community. And it's not like we're saying, let everybody out of prison - so the nature of this research - you want to compare apples to apples. So in this research, comparing prisoners to probationers - these have to be people who are getting - they could either legitimately get a sentence of jail or probation, or prison or probation. So these are going to be first-time offenders, people who are relatively low-level - they've committed low-level crimes and all that. So we're not saying - there's not going to be a situation where a murderer just gets probation - that sort of thing. So I know that might be a concern of some people - they think that's a natural argument of this analysis, but it's really not. [00:18:24] Crystal Fincher: Well, and to your point, we're really talking - if we're looking at all of the crime that gets people sentenced to prison time, a very small percentage of that is murder. A very small percentage of it is on that kind of scale - you can wind up in jail or prison for a wide variety of offenses - many of them, people perceive as relatively minor or that people might be surprised can land you in prison. Or if someone has committed a number of minor offenses, that can stack up - to your point in other situations - and increase the length of detention or the severity of the consequences. As we're looking through this and the conversation of, okay, so, we sentence them, we let them out - it's not looking like there's a difference between jail or community supervisions, things like probation - what is it about jail that is harmful or that is not helpful? What is it about the structure of our current system that doesn't improve recidivism outcomes for people? [00:19:42] Damon Petrich: Probably the main one is the rehabilitation is not the greatest. So just as an example, substance abuse is a very strong predictor whether people are going to reoffend, unsurprisingly. About 50% of prisoners at the state and federal level in The States meet the DSM [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders] criteria for having a substance use abuse disorder - so they meet the clinical criteria for substance abuse disorder. So half of them, and then more than that just use substances, but they don't meet the criteria for a disorder. But of that 50% who has a substance abuse disorder, only about 20% of those actually receives treatment for it while they're incarcerated. So, you're not dealing with a root cause of reoffending while they're in prison - so you're not deterring them, but you're also not rehabilitating them - so you're really not doing anything. And then in the rare cases where these people are provided with rehabilitation or reentry programming, it's often not based on any sort of evidence-based model of how you actually change people. So there's a lot of psychological and criminology theory and research on how you actually elicit behavioral change, and these programs really aren't in line with any of that. And I could give examples if you wanted, but - [00:21:17] Crystal Fincher: Sure. I think that's helpful, 'cause I think a lot of people do assume, and sometimes it's been controversial - wow, look at how much they're coddling these prisoners - they have these educational programs, and they get all this drug treatment for free, and if they don't come out fixed then it's their own fault because they have access to all of these treatment resources in prison. Is that the case? [00:21:43] Damon Petrich: No, I wouldn't say so - first of all, they don't have access, a lot of them, to any programs. And then, like I said, the programs that they do get really aren't that effective. So the big one that everybody loves to argue for is providing former inmates with jobs. If you look at any federal funding for program development, like the Second Chance Act or the First Step Act - I think that was one under Trump - and then under Bush, there was a Serious [and] Violent Offenders Reentry Initiative - pretty much all of these federal bills will be heavily focused on just providing offenders with jobs. And almost all of the evaluations of these programs show that they don't reduce reoffending. And it's not really that hard - again, if you go back to the literature on behavioral change and, criminology literature - it's not really that hard to understand why just providing a job isn't going to reduce or lead somebody away from a life of crime. A lot of these people have spotty work histories where they've never had a job at all, they believe and know that it's easier to gain money by doing illicit work than it is legal work, they have things like low self-control so they're very impulsive, they don't know how to take criticism or being told what to do by a boss. They live in neighborhoods with very poor opportunities for good jobs and education, and maybe there's a mindset around there that illegal work or whatever is just a better way to go - that's sort of ingrained. So there's a lot of different reasons why just handing somebody a job isn't going to lead them away from crime, 'cause they have all these other things that need to be dealt with first. So ideally, a rehabilitation program that's comprehensive would deal with all of those other background factors and then provide them with a job. Because if you make them less impulsive, better able to resist the influence of their antisocial friends, and get this thought out of their head that other people are being hostile towards them when they're really not - all these sorts of cognitive and behavioral biases that they have - if you deal with all of those things and then you give them a job, they're more likely to actually latch onto that job as something worthwhile doing. And then they're going to go on to get out of a life of crime. But if you just give them a job and you haven't dealt with any of those issues, you can't really expect that to work. And that is the model that we currently do - is something that we don't really expect to work that well. [00:24:28] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that's - it's really interesting and I don't know that a lot of people actually know that, Hey, giving someone a job isn't sufficient - which is why I think it's so important to talk about studies like this, because some of what has become conventional wisdom, really is not accurate or reflects what has been studied and discovered. And I guess in that vein, what are the factors - you just talked about a few - but what does increase someone's likelihood of reoffending or recidivism, and what reduces it? [00:25:08] Damon Petrich: So those are probably two ends of the same, or two sides of the same coin, but this is pretty well known in criminology - a model called the risk-need-responsivity [RNR] model was developed by a couple of fellow Canadians, named James Bonta and Don Andrews, along with some of their colleagues in the '80s and '90s. And they, through again, other meta-analyses just like we did, found certain categories of characteristics of people who are more likely to reoffend. So you have things like having antisocial peers - so that one's pretty obvious - if you have a bunch of friends that are involved in crime, it's going to be pretty hard for you to get out of that life because you're surrounded by those people. Same with family members. If you have what are called criminal thinking patterns - so again, you might have what's called a hostile attribution bias, things like that, where somebody says something a little bit negative to you and you take that as a huge insult and you retaliate with anger and aggression - things like that. Or being impulsive - so you're again quick to anger, you're swayed by small little enticements in the environment and that sort of thing - so you're easily swayed one way or the other. Things like that are strong predictors of reoffending. Substance abuse - it's what I mentioned earlier. If you don't really have any sort of proactive leisure activities, like hobbies and stuff like that. So there's a bunch of well-known things that we know are strongly associated with recidivism, and a rehabilitation program should ideally deal with them. Now this model that Andrews and Bonta and all these other people came up with - this RNR risk-need-responsivity model - the risk part says that we should give people a risk assessment when they're entering prison or leaving prison and determine what level of risk are they from reoffending. And we assess these different criteria, like criminal thinking patterns and antisocial friends and substance abuse. So we determine what those factors are and then we design them a treatment program that actually deals with those factors at the individual level. So we're not just giving a blanket rehabilitation program to everybody, and you're providing the most amount of care to the people who most need it or who are the most likely to re-offend. And then once we've done all that, we need to make sure that we're addressing these problems in some sort of a format that we know actually works. The most well-known one, but not as often used, the most well-known within the sort of psychologist and criminological literature is cognitive behavioral therapy [CBT]. So this is pretty popular for dealing with depression and all sorts of eating disorders and substance abuse problems in non-offender populations. Well, those programs also work in offender populations and they work pretty well. So the research shows - again meta-analyses - that when you deal with all these three factors - risk, need, and responsivity - you can reduce reoffending rates by about 26%. So it's a pretty sizeable amount - it's much greater than you're getting by just sentencing people to prison without doing anything. [00:28:42] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and I think you cover in your paper - those things are absolutely true. And you just talked about several administrations' attempts to implement programming and resources to try and help people get jobs, potentially - hey, there's even a CBT treatment, but if that treatment has twice as many people as are recommended being in a session and occurs over half the time that it's supposed to, you really are sabotaging the entire process or really setting it up for failure. And it just seems to be an expensive exercise that we aren't really getting anything out of. Does that seem to be consistent with how you've seen the attempts at introducing this programming within prisons and jails? [00:29:40] Damon Petrich: Yeah, for sure - this is a pretty common finding too - so it's not just about preaching that you're going to do these things. You actually have to implement them well. So just like you said, there's a number of studies that show this - so you've designed some really great program that deals with all of these risk factors that lead people back into reoffending, you give it to them in a cognitive behavioral setting. So all seems good on paper, but in practice, like you said - one of the famous studies there - can't remember the names of the authors offhand right now - but one of the famous studies there showed that they're providing it to people in groups of 30, as opposed to 15, and they're delivering it in a really short amount of time. And they're not maybe giving it to the highest-risk people - so they're just mixing random people in there at varying levels of risk. So when you do all these sorts of things - you implement the program poorly - you can't really expect it to work. And this is often the case - is the government pays people to come up with these great programs, and then not enough funding is provided to actually make sure that they're implemented and evaluated well. So the amount of funding that actually goes into that - developing the programs to begin with - is small, but when you do do that, you're not making sure that you're actually implementing things well. So it's just sort of shooting yourself in the foot, and probably making people come to the conclusion that these things don't work - when they do work, if you just implement them well. [00:31:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and there's also a lot of rhetoric - and you discuss this - there's a lot of rhetoric coming from the government, even coming from leadership within the Bureau of Prisons or leadership in our carceral system, saying we do want to rehabilitate people. We are trying to implement programming that does this. You see - we have these educational opportunities and we are doing evaluations of people. And it may be happening while they're understaffed or other challenges, but one of the biggest, I guess, red flags is that none of the evaluation of their programs and none of the incentives that arise are in any way tied to what is the actual result of what happens. Are you actually succeeding on reducing someone's likelihood for reoffense? It does not seem like any compensation is tied to that, any kind of evaluation of positions or regular reporting - to say, is this program having its intended effect? And if not, what do we need to do to correct for that? Is that what you found? [00:32:33] Damon Petrich: I would say that's probably a pretty fair assessment. A lot of the programs that are implemented are never evaluated at all. And then the ones that are - it's usually once - there's one evaluation of those programs. And then, like you said, there doesn't really seem to be a lot of self-reflection - I don't know what other word you would use - but these programs don't really change on the basis of these evaluations. So, it's kind of disheartening to hear about, I guess. [00:33:14] Crystal Fincher: It feels very disheartening to live in the middle of - and one of the big things about this is that this - we have these conversations and we talk about these studies and we're saying, yeah, it actually - we're not doing anyone any favors right now when it comes to reducing recidivism. And having these conversations oftentimes detached from the cost associated with what we're paying for these. And my goodness are we paying to incarcerate people? It's not just, well, we do lock them up and we keep them away. Or we do a good job of keeping them in - they reoffend, they go back to jail. And lots of people are like, we did our job, they went back to jail - boom, everything is fine. But we are paying through the nose and out the ear for this - just here, we're in the state of Washington, and right now the state spends about $112 per day, or over $40,000 annually, to incarcerate one individual - that's the cost per inmate. In King County - the county that we're in - they spend $192 a day, or $70,000 annually, to incarcerate an individual. That is a huge amount of the tax dollars that we spend - these come out of our general fund, meaning that these are dollars that every service, everything that is not a dedicated source of revenue, is competing for. So when we talk about things and have conversations like, well, we don't have the budget for that and we don't have the money - that is related to how much of that money we're spending on other things. And my goodness, I would think that we want to get our money's worth for that level of expenditure. And it really appears that if we're saying the goal of jail is to get people on the straight and narrow path and becoming contributing members of society and all of the implications of that, it doesn't seem like we're getting our money's worth. And so, if those aren't the goals and if we just want to punish people, it's not like we're punishing people for free. We're punishing people at the cost of $70,000 per day [year], and at the cost of all the other services and infrastructure needs that we have. So it really seems like we're punishing ourselves as much, or more, as others - particularly if we're bringing people back into society that are likely to reoffend in one way or another. And so if our goal is to keep our community safe and that is the North Star, it looks like we need to realign our processes and our expenditure of resources. I guess my question to you, after all that, is - how should we be moving forward? What should we be looking to do? What is shown to work? [00:36:24] Damon Petrich: Well, I would say - yeah, $70,000 a year as just a revenge cost per person seems like a lot. $80 billion in the country as a whole, for a revenge cost, seems like a pretty high price to pay, given we're not reducing reoffending. You could make the argument that these people aren't offending while they're in prison, but that's - there's other reasons why that might not be completely accurate, which I could talk about too, but - [00:36:59] Crystal Fincher: Well, I'm interested in that. Why might that not be accurate? [00:37:03] Damon Petrich: So, obviously the person - if you incarcerate a particular individual, obviously they can't be out in the community committing crimes. So that's obvious, but there's a number of reasons why that might not, en masse, actually reduce crime a whole lot. The research on it - this is a little bit squishy - in terms of whether incarcerating more people leads to lower crime rates, because one influences the other. But for example, if you look at illegal drug markets - a lot of the homicides in the United States and other violent crime that people are really concerned about, and it's plastered all over the media is - homicides, gang-related stuff. So if you take key gang members out and you put them in prison, what ends up happening is that there's competition in that market to take over that person's place, either within the gang or other gangs coming in. So what ends up happening oftentimes is a spike in violence. So that's one reason why just incapacitating, particularly high-crime individuals, might not actually lead to lower crime rates overall. Again, you're lowering crime for that one person, but you might be increasing crime on a more systemic level. Beyond that, these things have broader societal and community level impacts - incarcerating a lot of people. Again, research shows that when you're incarcerating a lot of people in a particular community - so there's a bunch of really good work by Robert Sampson - he has a book that came out a few years ago called Great American City. And he looked at these individual neighborhoods in Chicago over time, and what he finds is that in communities where there's a higher number of people incarcerated in a particular community, this ends up increasing what's called "legal cynicism." And this is done in some other work as well with David Kirk and Andrew Papachristos - but they show that this increases legal cynicism, which means people are skeptical of police helping them out, the police doing a good job. And what ends up happening after that - when people are more cynical of the legal system, they're less likely to report crimes to the police, they're less likely to cooperate with the police. So what ends up happening? You incarcerate more people and people in that community end up being less willing to cooperate with law enforcement. And this leads to sort of an endless cycle where things sort of get out of hand. So there's all these unintended and nonfinancial consequences of incarcerating a lot of people that could potentially end up leading to more crime. [00:40:03] Crystal Fincher: Well, and - speaking as a Black woman - obviously, looking at the impacts of mass incarceration in the Black community and in neighborhoods around the country - where it is almost like the community is responding to the actual outcome and that, Hey, this actually isn't making my community any better. I'm experiencing traumatic impacts from this - whether it's my relative went to prison or a sole breadwinner in the family and now we're thrown into poverty, or I'm in a situation where I don't have a parent who used to be there - who now is no longer there. Or causing instability and impacting the education that people get and the kind of job opportunity, watching someone who's come out have to struggle and be ostracized. And it looks like, Hey, this is just the first step on a long cycle of traumatic and undesirable events - and I don't want to participate in a system that is doing that. With that, as we look forward, and I think this is also related to conversations about just fundamental trust in our criminal legal system and relations with police and throughout the system. It's - if we think about how to turn that around - to me, seems related to thinking about the question of how do we get better outcomes for everyone? 'Cause it seems like right now where we're investing a lot in poor outcomes for people who were already, usually, in pretty poor spots leading to themselves being incarcerated, coming out and not necessarily improving, definitely not improving. And if anything, a chance that it gets a little bit worse. How do we change that entire outcome? And I know you're looking specifically in the incarceration space, but what should be, what could be done differently? Or do we just need a fundamental restructuring of the way we do this? [00:42:17] Damon Petrich: I don't know about a fundamental restructuring - I don't, I'm not great at that high-level thinking stuff, but what I do know is that - we're probably going to continue to incarcerate people. That's something that's done in every country and people seem to love here. So if we actually want to use prison for public safety - because 95% of inmates eventually get out - if we actually want to use it for public safety, then let's actually try wholeheartedly to rehabilitate them while they're in there. And again, there's a lot of theory and evidence-based principles on how we can do this, like the risk-need-responsivity model that I talked about earlier, cognitive behavioral therapy more broadly. If you use these types of things and continue to work on them and develop them over time, then yeah - prison might actually be helpful if people are going there and getting the help that they need. But that's not what's happening currently. So that's one level in incarceration terms - that's the area that I know best. So that's one way you could potentially alleviate some of this stuff is - if people are actually getting resources and stuff when they're in prison, and then when once they're reintegrating, they're not only going to reoffend less, but maybe they're going to contribute to their community more. They're going to be better able to connect with their family and stuff like that. So rather than being a hindrance, it could potentially be a help. Obviously, again, it's not ideal to remove people from their communities and their family and friends. And like I said earlier, if you have the option to sentence them to something community-based instead, I think that's the better route to go. But if you are going to send people to prison, which I think we're going to continue to do a lot of the time, then let's rehabilitate them while they're in there is the main point. And do so based on what actually works to do that. [00:44:23] Crystal Fincher: It's really the investment in the people who are there, and we're - I think up against a lot of societal attitudes and resistance where it just feels wrong to a number of people to be providing services and shifting that investment to things that are seemingly helpful for the inmate, because everything about how we've been conditioned to understand our prison system has been - the punishment is kind of the key, and they'll make rational decisions afterwards to avoid prison based on how bad the punishment is. When it comes to community supervision, things like probation, what are the differences there? If there are better outcomes from that, what accounts for the better outcomes when it comes to probation versus incarceration? [00:45:23] Damon Petrich: I wouldn't say the outcomes are better - they're just pretty much the same as they would be if they're sentenced to prison. So, probation costs less and then it also enables the people to be out in the community doing community things, like being with their friends and families and all that. I mean, you can't quantify, based on a recidivism percentage, what their family members and friends and employers are getting out of it. So that's something we can't really look at - or I guess you could, but something we don't often do - but so there's intangible things that you would get by keeping people in the community. Plus it doesn't lead to all that other stuff I talked about where people become cynical of the legal system and it leads to this cycle of whatever. [00:46:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and so if we're were doing this programming in prison and helping people, I think your research shows it's extremely important to do both the structural, Hey, you need a place to live, you need to be able to pay your rent and your bills - so having a job, having housing, having healthcare, getting those very basic needs met is critical. But also addressing a number of the mental or behavioral health issues that are common among the incarcerated population - and dealing with that is as important. And basically those two things both need to happen hand-in-hand. How do we do a better job of that in our current system? [00:46:57] Damon Petrich: Well, first of all, I'd like to say that you're right there - I think maybe when I was talking earlier about employment, it might sound like giving people jobs is just a waste of time, but that's not the case. It needs - the two things need to be paired - you need to deal with the cognitive and behavioral problems in addition to giving them jobs and housing support and all that. In terms of how you actually go about doing that, there are examples in the literature of programs that do this, so there's examples out there. I think if you're a state or local or even federal correctional department and you're interested in doing this - implementing something that's evidence-based - or if you're just a concerned citizen that wants to rally your local officials to do that - go and talk to researchers like me, or people at universities that have criminology departments or criminal justice departments, because this knowledge is out there. It's widely available. You just have to go and seek it out. So at my university, for example, we have the University of Cincinnati Corrections Institute and under the guidance of Ed Latessa, he was - now passed - but he was, over the last 30 years, responsible for disseminating a lot of this evidence-based practices to some of the state and local criminal justice agencies. And they helped with implementation and evaluation in a lot of these places, so the help is out there. You just have to look for it a little bit. [00:48:38] Crystal Fincher: And another question I had - your analysis seemed to suggest that when we're talking about low-risk, medium, and high-risk offenders - or people who have done relatively minor crimes versus those who have done more serious crimes - that these interventions are particularly effective the more serious the offense or crime has been. And that perhaps even sometimes treating someone who is a really low-risk as if they're a high-risk, can worsen the outcomes for that person. Is that the case? [00:49:21] Damon Petrich: Yeah, that tends to be a finding in research - we're not exactly sure why, but providing a lot of really intensive services to people deemed to be low-risk can actually be harmful rather than helpful. We don't know based on research why, but there's a lot of pretty good hypotheses about why. So a low-risk offender is going to be somebody who's a first-timer who's committed some not-that-serious crime. So they probably have a job, they probably have pretty strong connections with their family and all that. So if you're taking them and you're putting them in a program where you have to be there 40 hours a week, they're probably going to get fired from their job, it's going to be harder to stay in contact with friends and families that are sort of tying you into a non-criminal life. And then you're probably going to be associating with all kinds of people who are high-risk, and maybe they're going to draw you towards, oh yeah, I could earn four grand going out tonight and stealing some laptops. There's a lot of reasons why just taking low-risk people and putting them in these programs is going to be harmful rather than helpful. [00:50:31] Crystal Fincher: And so with that in mind, and you talk about, Hey, if we're trying to influence local electeds - one of the interesting things about having a podcast and radio show that caters to extremely politically and civically inclined people is that we actually do have a number of policymakers and politicians who listen, and people who are enacting and in control of this policy. If you were to talk to them and give them advice about how to move forward, especially in the current environment that we find ourselves in, where over the past few years has been increasing awareness of some of the defecits of our system and pushes to change those. And also, as we have seen more recently, a real strong pushback from a lot of people who are invested in our current system saying, Hey, let's not change things too much. Maybe we need to jail more and for longer. And maybe we're just not doing enough incarceration, and that's the answer. In that kind of political environment, what would you tell people who are in charge of this policy, who may be facing pressure to keep going forward with the status quo, about how they should evaluate how they should move forward and the kinds of things that they should do? [00:52:07] Damon Petrich: I know a lot of these politicians get lobbied by correctional officer groups or whatever, and that's whatever, but ultimately you get voted in by voters. So, I'm not an expert on public opinion - I have other friends who are more into that kind of stuff, but I do know from talking with them and from reading that literature, that the public actually does support rehabilitation. So they have for a long time and it's shifted more towards being in support of rehabilitation over time. So right now, most Americans support providing rehabilitation programs to prisoners and offenders. So this is something that's going to please your constituency, people want this kind of thing. And it's not like you're going to be losing all kinds of jobs by getting rid of prison - there's going to be a need for skilled people who can provide these programs and probation officers and all these sorts of things. So it's not a net loss when you're getting rid of prisons. There's a lot of reasons to sentence people to community supervision and things like that - provide rehabilitation. There's public support for it, there's jobs involved, there's cost savings - big time, obviously - it's way cheaper to keep somebody out of prison than it is to keep them in prison. So there's a lot of different reasons why you would want to do that as a politician. [00:53:43] Crystal Fincher: I think that makes sense. Certainly it's a lot cheaper to keep someone out of prison versus in prison. I mean, we talked about the annual costs - in the state of Washington over $40,000, King County over $70,000 - comparing that to how much we invest in a student of $11,500 a year. If we focus more on investing in people, both inside and outside the system, it seems like we set ourselves up for a safer community, fewer people being victimized, and more people leading thriving, productive, tax-paying lives. And we're all happier than we are right now, I would think, I would hope - it seems like the research points in that direction. So I certainly appreciate you taking the time to speak with us about this. Is there anything else that you want to leave with us, in thinking about this study and your research? [00:54:55] Damon Petrich: I think we covered it pretty well. Just to circle back to something you just said - I know this might put me out of a job since I focus on what happens when people's lives go awry, but you really are better off to invest in early prevention programs and giving people a good start on life than trying to correct the program or the problem afterwards. So yeah - politicians spend some money on prevention programs. I know the good effects of that are a long way out, but they're actually good on a societal level. So I guess I would add that, even though it's not good for criminologists, maybe, to put themselves out of a job like that. [00:55:40] Crystal Fincher: Well, much appreciated, and thank you so much for having this conversation with us today. [00:55:45] Damon Petrich: Yeah, thank you very much for having me on. I'm glad that there are people out there interested in this stuff, so thanks again. [00:55:51] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.

(note: time stamps are without ads & may be off a little) This week Beth and Wendy discuss the case of Apollo Keith Ortega, a Tucson, Arizona man who raped three women and killed two of them. He then told authorities that he did it because Satan told him to. This case was suggested to us by Brandy Nicole. We dive into the setting (10:48), the killer's early life (28:45) and the timeline (32:12).  Then, we get into the investigation & arrest (35:54), and "Where are they now?" followed by our takeaways and what we think made the perp snap (41:21).   As usual we close out the show with some tips on how not to get murdered and our shout outs (50:49).  This episode was researched & scripted by Wendy & Beth Williams. Thanks for listening! This is a weekly podcast and new episodes drop every Thursday, so until next time... look alive guys, it's crazy out there! Sponsors  Help support Fruitloops by supporting our sponsors below: Better Help - 10% off your first month! 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You can make a donation on the Cash App https://cash.me/$fruitloopspod Or become a monthly Patron through our Podbean Patron page https://patron.podbean.com/fruitloopspod Footnotes Articles/Websites Smith, Kim. (12/19/2009). Rapist-killer of 2 in '08 gets 2 life sentences. Tucson.com. Retrieved 03/18/2022 from https://tucson.com/news/local/crime/rapist-killer-of-in-gets-life-sentences/article_b6905b4b-7f75-59cf-8f3f-dcf4c96cdb19.html Suspect in killing, sexual assault is tied to 2nd death. Tucson.com. Retrieved 03/18/2022 from https://tucson.com/news/local/crime/suspect-in-killing-sexual-assault-is-tied-to-2nd-death/article_b683c397-cf18-54a0-9b96-c1d1700a61ae.html Kornman, Sheryl. (11/07/2008). Cops: Man in jail on murder charge admits to other killing. Tucson Citizen. Retrieved 03/18/2022 from http://tucsoncitizen.com/morgue/2008/11/07/101944-cops-man-in-jail-on-murder-charge-admits-to-other-killing/ Berdine, Alexis. (02/15/2017). Convicted murderer likely was killed in Arizona prison, officials say. AZ Central. Retrieved 03/19/2022 from https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/pinal/2017/02/15/convicted-murderer-apollo-ortega-likely-killed-arizona-prison/97944604/ Legacy.com (08/03/2008). Norma Conner. Retrieved 03/19/2022 from https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/tucson/name/norma-conner-obituary?id=24197554 Watson, Joe. (July 2013). Arizona Prison System Plagued by Politics, Privatization and Prisoner Deaths. Prison Legal News. Retrieved 03/19/2022 from https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2013/jul/15/arizona-prison-system-plagued-by-politics-privatization-and-prisoner-deaths/ Culture Corner  Callaway, Ewen. (12/01/2013). Fearful Memories Passed Down to Mouse Descendants. Nature Magazine. Retrieved 03/28/2022 from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fearful-memories-passed-down/ Native Hope. (n.d.). How Trauma Gets Passed Down Through Generations. Retrieved 03/28/2022 from https://pages.nativehope.org/how-trauma-gets-passed-down-through-generations History Visittucson.org. (n.d.). Visit Tucson. Retrieved 03/25/2022 from https://www.visittucson.org/plan-your-visit/about-tucson/history/ Tucson Indian Center. (n.d.). Tucson Indian Center History. Retrieved 03/26/2022 from https://www.ticenter.org/history/ Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (10/14/2021). Tucson. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 03/26/2022 from https://www.britannica.com/place/Tucson Arizona Historical Society. (n.d.). From “El Presidio San Agustín Del Tucsón” To The City Of Tucson. Retrieved 03/26/2022 from https://arizonahistoricalsociety.org/education/esperanza/early-tucson/ History.com Editors. (09/20/2021). Geronimo Surrenders. History.com. Retrieved 03/26/2022 from https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/geronimo-surrenders Downtowntucson.org. (n.d.). History of Downtown Tucson. Retrieved 03/26/2022 from https://downtowntucson.org/explore/history-of-downtown-tucson Rodriguez, Nadine Arroyo. (02/14/2014). Did You Know: It Took Arizona 49 Years To Become A State. KJZZ. Retrieved 03/26/2022 from https://kjzz.org/content/19682/did-you-know-it-took-arizona-49-years-become-state Pima County Public Library. (n.d.). Dillinger Captured in Tucson. Retrieved 03/26/2022 from https://www.library.pima.gov/content/dillinger-captured-in-tucson/ Pima County Public Library. (n.d.). Health Seekers Haven: Tucson and Tuberculosis. Retrieved 03/26/2022 from https://www.library.pima.gov/content/tucson-tuberculosis/ TMC HealthCare. (n.d.). Our History. Retrieved 03/27/2022 from https://www.tmcaz.com/about-tmc/our-history Sivri, Gizem. (December 2020). Desert Fever: Harvesting the Sun, Colonizing the Land. e-flux Architecture. Retrieved 03/27/2022 from https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/sick-architecture/363730/desert-fever-harvesting-the-sun-colonizing-the-land/ Yuko, Elizabeth. (10/30/2018). How the Tuberculosis Epidemic Influenced Modernist Architecture. Bloomberg. Retrieved 03/27/2022 from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-30/what-architecture-learned-from-tb-hospitals Video First 48, S8E7: Devil Inside / Rattlesnake https://www.aetv.com/shows/the-first-48/season-8/episode-7 Music “Abyss” by Alasen: ●https://soundcloud.com/alasen●https://twitter.com/icemantrap ●https://instagram.com/icemanbass/●https://soundcloud.com/therealfrozenguy● Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License "Too Much Ice" & “Picture Perfect” by Yung Kartz https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Yung_Kartz Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License “Bleepin Demo” & “Furious Freak” by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3791-furious-freak License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Connect with us on: Twitter @FruitLoopsPod Instagram https://www.instagram.com/fruitloopspod Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Fruitloopspod and https://www.facebook.com/groups/fruitloopspod  

Paul Wright, from Prison Legal News, joins Pat Thurston to explain why prisoners are being charged to read their own letters. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Paul Wright, from Prison Legal News, joins Pat Thurston to explain why prisoners are being charged to read their own letters. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At the top of the show, George Szamuely calls in to break down reaction to the sanctions the U.S. announced on Tuesday. They also talk about opposition within the Republican Party as Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) is calling for Russia's economy to be destroyed, while Donald Trump praises Putin for being a canny operator. Next, Ford Fischer, a primary source documentarian whose works include Oscar, Emmy and Golden Globe-winning films and editor-in-chief of News2Share (@N2Sreports), calls in to talk with the Misfits about the truckers Freedom Convoy that is leaving from different parts of the U.S. and rolling into DC. Protesters say they plan to jam the beltway outside of DC today, and converge at the U.S. Capitol by March 1, 2022. Then, Kevin Gosztola, journalist, writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, joins the show. They talk about the recent announcement that Kyle Rittenhouse is launching a “Media Accountability Project." Rittenhouse has also filed lawsuits against reporters, saying he was defamed and wants to help others in his situation. Rittenhouse is the man who shot and killed two people during racial justice protests in Wisconsin in 2020, but who was found not guilty by virtue of having acted in self defense, the jury concluded.John and Michelle also discuss with Gosztola the litigation resulting from the opioid crisis. The Wall Street Journal reports that Purdue's Sackler family has increased their opioid settlement offer to as much as $6 billion. The new settlement offer comes after the company's prior Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan was overturned. For the last segment, Paul Wright, executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center and the editor of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News magazines, joins the show to talk about the crisis at New York's Rikers Island jail that houses thousands of people awaiting trial in New York City. Last month, news broke that over 2,800 guards were conspiring to skip work for so-called “sick leave” at any given time. On some days, as many as 35 percent of guards called in sick, claiming diarrhea or just not bothering to call in at all. This is a crime called time and attendance fraud, and it resulted in the city paying out millions of dollars in overtime for other guards to cover the missed shifts. In the meantime, prisoners missed more than 7,000 medical appointments because there was nobody to escort them.

(note: time stamps are without ads & may be off a little) This week Beth and Wendy discuss the Waddell Buddhist Temple Massacre. It occurred in August of 1991 in Waddell, Arizona, and there were 9 victims, including 6 monks and a nun. We dive into the setting (11:22), the killers early life (20:39) and the timeline (23:55).  Then, we get into the investigation & arrest (28:03), "Where are they now?" (01:00:50) followed by our takeaways and what we think made the perp snap (01:03:04).   As usual we close out the show with some tips on how not to get murdered and our shout outs (01:13:57).  Thanks for listening! This is a weekly podcast and new episodes drop every Thursday, so until next time... look alive guys, it's crazy out there! Sponsors  Better Help https://www.betterhelp.com/Fruit Best Fiends https://apps.apple.com/us/app/best-fiends-puzzle-adventure/id868013618 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Seriously.BestFiends&hl=en_US&gl=US EveryPlate https://www.everyplate.com/ Enter code fruit179 Shout Outs Framed Podcast https://framedpod.com/ The Shadow Girls Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-shadow-girls/id1603868451 The Gilded Age https://www.hbo.com/the-gilded-age Where to find us: Our Facebook page is Fruitloopspod and our discussion group is Fruitloopspod Discussion on Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/groups/fruitloopspod/ We are also on Twitter and Instagram @fruitloopspod Please send any questions or comments to fruitloopspod@gmail.com or leave us a voicemail at 602-935-6294.  We just might read your email or play your voicemail on the show! Want to Support the show? You can support the show by rating and reviewing Fruitloops on iTunes, or anywhere else that you get your podcasts from.  We would love it if you gave us 5 stars! You can make a donation on the Cash App https://cash.me/$fruitloopspod Or become a monthly Patron through our Podbean Patron page https://patron.podbean.com/fruitloopspod Footnotes Articles/Websites Martin, Philip. (01/13/1993). The Thai Connection. Phoenix New Times. Retrieved 01/08/2022 from https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/the-thai-connection-6426011 Justia Law. (03/02/2021). State of Arizona vs Johnathan Andrew Doody. Retrieved 01/08/2022 from https://law.justia.com/cases/arizona/court-of-appeals-division-two-unpublished/2021/2-ca-cr-2021-0012-pr.html Zoukis, Christopher. (05/08.2018). Newspaper Investigation Reveals Significant Problem with Life Sentences in Arizona. Prison Legal News. Retrieved 01/09/2022 from https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2018/may/8/newspaper-investigation-reveals-significant-problem-life-sentences-arizona/ Shouse Arizona Law Group. (N.D.). Parole in Arizona – Eligibility, Rules, Violation Hearings. Retrieved 01/09/2022 from https://www.shouselaw.com/az/defense/laws/parole/ Merrill, Laurie. (10/18/2013). Doody's parents stand by belief in his innocence. The Arizona Republic. Retrieved 01/09/2022 from https://www.pressreader.com/usa/the-arizona-republic/20131018/281754152054567 Montini, EJ. (08/09/2016). Nine innocent lives were lost 25 years ago, and Arpaio won. The Arizona Republic. Retrieved 01/18/2022 from https://www.newspapers.com/image/212286666/ Hermann, William. (08/14/2011). Murders' Legacy. Arizona Republic. Retrieved 01/22/2022 from https://www.newspapers.com/image/126067991/ Fitzpatrick, Tom. (01/13/1993). Dealing With a Confessed Serial Killer. Phoenix New Times. Retrieved 01/22/2022 from https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/dealing-with-a-confessed-serial-killer-6426015 History Wikipedia contributors. (11/04/2021). Waddell, Arizona. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 01/08/2022 from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Waddell,_Arizona&oldid=1053456107 Native American Tribes & the Indian History in Waddell, Arizona. Retrieved 01/08/2022 from https://americanindiancoc.org/native-american-tribes-the-indian-history-in-waddell-arizona/ O'Riordain, Aoife. (02/22/2014). Traveller's Guide: The Golden Triangle. Independent. Retrieved 01/21/2022 from https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/asia/traveller-s-guide-the-golden-triangle-9143820.html Facts and Details. (n.d.). MONKS IN THERAVADA BUDDHISM. Retrieved 01/21/2022 from https://factsanddetails.com/asian/cat64/sub415/entry-2819.html Lukehousing.com. (n.d.). Luke AFB, AZ History. Retrieved 01/21/2022 from https://www.lukehousing.com/history Waddellhistory.com. (09/25/2019). History of Waddell, Arizona. Retrieved 01/21/2022 from https://waddellhistory.wordpress.com/ Eppler, Patti. (09/16/1999). Gang Influence Runs Deep in Phoenix's Roots. Phoenix New Times. Retrieved 01/21/2022 from https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/gang-influence-runs-deep-in-phoenixs-roots-6432147 Books Stuart, Gary. (08/12/2012). Innocent Until Interrogated: The True Story of the Buddhist Temple Massacre. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press. Podcasts Habel, Aaron. (Host). (Jan-Mar 2021). Framed Podcast: Season 2, Wat Promkunaram. [audio podcast]. https://framedpod.com/ Music “Abyss” by Alasen: ●https://soundcloud.com/alasen●https://twitter.com/icemantrap ●https://instagram.com/icemanbass/●https://soundcloud.com/therealfrozenguy● Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License “40's & Shorties” & “Precinct Lulluby” by Marlene Miller. Used with permission. Find her Facebook and Instagram under SEMNCHY or marlenemiller138@gmail.com “Fake Friends” by Yung Kartz https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Yung_Kartz Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License “Furious Freak” by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3791-furious-freak License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Connect with us on: Twitter @FruitLoopsPod Instagram https://www.instagram.com/fruitloopspod Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Fruitloopspod and https://www.facebook.com/groups/fruitloopspod  

We begin with Mark Sleboda, international affairs and security analyst, who joins the show during the first segment to break down the latest in Ukraine. Hungary and Ukraine expand their deal on gas imports to alleviate dependence on Russian natural gas. Mark points out that the “lethal aid” which the Western alliance has provided Ukraine since 2014 has been used by Ukrainians to kill fellow Ukrainians. John and Michelle ask Mark about the UK, Poland, and Ukraine working on a trilateral security pact.Next, Paul Wright, managing editor of Prison Legal News and executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center, joins John and Michelle to discuss the latest news that all federal prisons are in a nationwide lockdown today following the murder of two prisoners at the US penitentiary in Beaumont, Texas. The dead are apparently both members of the MS-13 street gang. The BOP is in disarray and stressed over multiple factors, including the latest gang incident and having trouble finding people to hire and keep on staff. John explains that the eligibility to be a prison guard is remedial and problematic, which is exacerbating the problem of hiring qualified prison workers.For the first segment in the second hour, we are joined by Jon Jeter, author and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist with more than 20 years of journalistic experience. He is a former Washington Post bureau chief and award-winning foreign correspondent on two continents. Jon catches up with the Misfits to talk about the impact of the pandemic economy and recent news from the New York Times highlighting Paycheck Protection Program fraud and missing money. More resources should have been given to workers who create consumer demand rather than fund a trickle-down economics approach to stimulus that emerged, which supplies the rich and draws down on the consumer, according to Jeter.For the last segment, Keean Bexte is on the ground in Ottawa, Canada. He's reporting on the latest developments from the Freedom Convoy, and checked in with Michelle and John to talk about the truckers protest over the weekend. Keean clarified their demands: since the Justin Trudeau administration implemented pandemic mandates, ten to fifteen percent of truckers lost their jobs. The convoy is demanding an end to all pandemic related mandates. The group has amassed a whopping $10 million. Keean says the convoy has enough cash to idle at the capital of Ottawa for about two and half years.Michelle and John end the program by sharing news about the killing of Peter Spencer, a Jamaican immigrant living in Pittsburgh who went on a trip in the woods with his white coworkers and was discovered dead a few hours later. No charges have been filed. More about this story on tomorrow's broadcast.

International affairs and security analyst Mark Sleboda joins Misfit hosts John Kiriakou and Michelle Witte to discuss the newfound “unity” US President Joe Biden has supposedly achieved among European powers in facing down Russia. Mohammad Marandi, professor of English Literature and Orientalism at University of Tehran, updates us on the status of talks between Iran and Western powers on the country's nuclear program, and identifies the stumbling blocks in the way of any new accord. Author and journalist Dan Lazare breaks down the shambolic reaction of the US legal system to mask mandates and asks how much former President Donald Trump should fear the investigation into his election pressure in Georgia. He also outlines the affirmative action cases soon to be heading to the Supreme Court. Paul Wright, executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News magazines, discusses the punitive use of solitary confinement and “communication management” in prisons, and talks about what it would take to reform the Bureau of Prisons.

First up, RT correspondent Peter Oliver describes the situation in Ukraine as dire. Russia is making it clear that Ukraine joining the Western Alliance is unacceptable and a non-starter for negotiations. Russia has indicated a willingness to deploy military to Venezuela and Cuba if tensions with the United States continue to escalate, prompting a possible second Cuban Missile Crisis.Garland Nixon, co-host of the Critical Hour on Radio Sputnik and also a retired police officer, stopped by to talk about Washington DC's Metropolitan Police Department's database of alleged drug gang members. A story in The Intercept recently noted that the database has almost tripled in size over the past eight years, and nearly nine out of ten entries with a race listed are Black people, who make up 46 percent of D.C.'s population. Garland explains that many who are listed in the database have no idea until arrested. In federal prison, those on the list are precluded from early release and other penalties. Once on the list, it's nearly impossible to be freed from the database dungeon.Next, Ted Rall, an award winning political cartoonist, columnist, author and co-host of the DMZ America podcast with Ted Rall & Scott Stantis, calls in to discuss Biden's filibuster fall out. Biden, after years of supporting the filibuster, does a 180 degree turn. Ted prognosticates: what happens when Dems lose in the midterms and the GOP holds the majority? Biden knew he did not have the votes, then he set an unreasonable deadline and it failed. They also discuss an effort to placate progressive voting rights, which many protested in Georgia. Additionally, Foreign Affairs is making the case for a more "just drone war." Drone attacks can be more "just" if fewer people are killed. Ted emphasized that flying drones over foreign air space assassinating targets is an invasion and an act of war.Paul Wright, executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center, editor and publisher of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News magazines, meets up with the Misfits over the current chaos at Rikers Island Jail. The New York Times reported inmates at New York City's notorious Rikers Island Jail have been staging "fight nights" where prisoners are forced to fight each other, with the victor winning a cigarette. Paul says that the problematic jail's population has decreased from 20,000 to 7,000 in recent years. Prisoners remain at risk not only from guards, they are at risk when seeking medical care from physicians with suspended licenses who remain eligible for employment at jails and prisons across the country.

Prison Profiteers brings together a formidable array of lawyers, prisoners, journalists and advocates to provide a unique look at who, exactly, is benefiting from mass imprisonment. Prison Profiteers takes readers on an investigative journey behind the bars of our nation's prisons to the front lines of its mass incarceration crisis and into the realm of its financially motivated private investors. The United States, with just five percent of the world's population, is responsible for incarcerating an astounding twenty five percent of the world's inmates. Thanks to thirty years of mass incarceration, the number of people in state and federal penitentiaries has dramatically increased from an estimated 300,000 to 2.3 million. The numbers are shocking, yet while much research has focused on the social issues that surround incarceration in the U.S., until now, little attention has been given to the individuals and commercial enterprises that profit from prisons and their related services. Prison Profiteers approaches the subject from a unique angle-not who is being harmed by current policies of mass imprisonment but rather who benefits from such policies. From investment banks that issue bonds for prison construction, to the companies that staff and manage prisons, and the organizations that provide medical care, we learn how they benefit and how much they profit. Paul Wright is the founder and editor of Prison Legal News, an independent monthly magazine that reports on the criminal justice system. He co-edited Prison Nature with Tara Herivel and The Celling of America with Daniel Burton-Rose. He is a 2005 Petra Foundation Fellow and the 2007 recipient of the James Madison Award from the Washington Coalition for Open Government. Now listen to all our XZBN shows, with our compliments go to: https://www.spreaker.com/user/xzoneradiotv*** AND NOW ***The ‘X' Zone TV Channel on SimulTV - www.simultv.comThe ‘X' Chronicles Newspaper - www.xchroniclesnewpaper.com

Prison Profiteers brings together a formidable array of lawyers, prisoners, journalists and advocates to provide a unique look at who, exactly, is benefiting from mass imprisonment. Prison Profiteers takes readers on an investigative journey behind the bars of our nation's prisons to the front lines of its mass incarceration crisis and into the realm of its financially motivated private investors. The United States, with just five percent of the world's population, is responsible for incarcerating an astounding twenty five percent of the world's inmates. Thanks to thirty years of mass incarceration, the number of people in state and federal penitentiaries has dramatically increased from an estimated 300,000 to 2.3 million. The numbers are shocking, yet while much research has focused on the social issues that surround incarceration in the U.S., until now, little attention has been given to the individuals and commercial enterprises that profit from prisons and their related services. Prison Profiteers approaches the subject from a unique angle-not who is being harmed by current policies of mass imprisonment but rather who benefits from such policies. From investment banks that issue bonds for prison construction, to the companies that staff and manage prisons, and the organizations that provide medical care, we learn how they benefit and how much they profit. Paul Wright is the founder and editor of Prison Legal News, an independent monthly magazine that reports on the criminal justice system. He co-edited Prison Nature with Tara Herivel and The Celling of America with Daniel Burton-Rose. He is a 2005 Petra Foundation Fellow and the 2007 recipient of the James Madison Award from the Washington Coalition for Open Government. Now listen to all our XZBN shows, with our compliments go to: https://www.spreaker.com/user/xzoneradiotv*** AND NOW ***The ‘X' Zone TV Channel on SimulTV - www.simultv.comThe ‘X' Chronicles Newspaper - www.xchroniclesnewpaper.com

Prison Profiteers brings together a formidable array of lawyers, prisoners, journalists and advocates to provide a unique look at who, exactly, is benefiting from mass imprisonment. Prison Profiteers takes readers on an investigative journey behind the bars of our nation's prisons to the front lines of its mass incarceration crisis and into the realm of its financially motivated private investors. The United States, with just five percent of the world's population, is responsible for incarcerating an astounding twenty five percent of the world's inmates. Thanks to thirty years of mass incarceration, the number of people in state and federal penitentiaries has dramatically increased from an estimated 300,000 to 2.3 million. The numbers are shocking, yet while much research has focused on the social issues that surround incarceration in the U.S., until now, little attention has been given to the individuals and commercial enterprises that profit from prisons and their related services. Prison Profiteers approaches the subject from a unique angle-not who is being harmed by current policies of mass imprisonment but rather who benefits from such policies. From investment banks that issue bonds for prison construction, to the companies that staff and manage prisons, and the organizations that provide medical care, we learn how they benefit and how much they profit. Paul Wright is the founder and editor of Prison Legal News, an independent monthly magazine that reports on the criminal justice system. He co-edited Prison Nature with Tara Herivel and The Celling of America with Daniel Burton-Rose. He is a 2005 Petra Foundation Fellow and the 2007 recipient of the James Madison Award from the Washington Coalition for Open Government. Now listen to all our XZBN shows, with our compliments go to: https://www.spreaker.com/user/xzoneradiotv *** AND NOW *** The ‘X' Zone TV Channel on SimulTV - www.simultv.com The ‘X' Chronicles Newspaper - www.xchroniclesnewpaper.com

Prison Profiteers brings together a formidable array of lawyers, prisoners, journalists and advocates to provide a unique look at who, exactly, is benefiting from mass imprisonment. Prison Profiteers takes readers on an investigative journey behind the bars of our nation's prisons to the front lines of its mass incarceration crisis and into the realm of its financially motivated private investors. The United States, with just five percent of the world's population, is responsible for incarcerating an astounding twenty five percent of the world's inmates. Thanks to thirty years of mass incarceration, the number of people in state and federal penitentiaries has dramatically increased from an estimated 300,000 to 2.3 million. The numbers are shocking, yet while much research has focused on the social issues that surround incarceration in the U.S., until now, little attention has been given to the individuals and commercial enterprises that profit from prisons and their related services. Prison Profiteers approaches the subject from a unique angle-not who is being harmed by current policies of mass imprisonment but rather who benefits from such policies. From investment banks that issue bonds for prison construction, to the companies that staff and manage prisons, and the organizations that provide medical care, we learn how they benefit and how much they profit. Paul Wright is the founder and editor of Prison Legal News, an independent monthly magazine that reports on the criminal justice system. He co-edited Prison Nature with Tara Herivel and The Celling of America with Daniel Burton-Rose. He is a 2005 Petra Foundation Fellow and the 2007 recipient of the James Madison Award from the Washington Coalition for Open Government. Now listen to all our XZBN shows, with our compliments go to: https://www.spreaker.com/user/xzoneradiotv *** AND NOW *** The ‘X' Zone TV Channel on SimulTV - www.simultv.com The ‘X' Chronicles Newspaper - www.xchroniclesnewpaper.com

Prison Legal News v. Charles Ryan

Prison Profiteers brings together a formidable array of lawyers, prisoners, journalists and advocates to provide a unique look at who, exactly, is benefiting from mass imprisonment. Prison Profiteers takes readers on an investigative journey behind the bars of our nation's prisons to the front lines of its mass incarceration crisis and into the realm of its financially motivated private investors. The United States, with just five percent of the world's population, is responsible for incarcerating an astounding twenty five percent of the world's inmates. Thanks to thirty years of mass incarceration, the number of people in state and federal penitentiaries has dramatically increased from an estimated 300,000 to 2.3 million. The numbers are shocking, yet while much research has focused on the social issues that surround incarceration in the U.S., until now, little attention has been given to the individuals and commercial enterprises that profit from prisons and their related services. Prison Profiteers approaches the subject from a unique angle-not who is being harmed by current policies of mass imprisonment but rather who benefits from such policies. From investment banks that issue bonds for prison construction, to the companies that staff and manage prisons, and the organizations that provide medical care, we learn how they benefit and how much they profit. Paul Wright is the founder and editor of Prison Legal News, an independent monthly magazine that reports on the criminal justice system. He co-edited Prison Nature with Tara Herivel and The Celling of America with Daniel Burton-Rose. He is a 2005 Petra Foundation Fellow and the 2007 recipient of the James Madison Award from the Washington Coalition for Open Government.

On the 1,000th episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Sputnik News analysts and producers Walter Smolarek and Nicole Roussell. Friday is Loud & Clear’s weekly hour-long segment The Week in Review, about the week in politics, policy, and international affairs. Today they focus on the Iowa caucus fiasco, Donald Trump’s acquittal in the impeachment trial, the State of the Union address, charges in Brazil dropped against journalist Glenn Greenwald, and more. Today is Loud & Clear’s 1,000th show. The team has been proud to provide listeners with a progressive take on the news that doesn’t exist in the mainstream media. Brian and John celebrate the milestone with some of the most esteemed guests and friends who have been regular guests on the show: · Max Blumenthal, a bestselling author, most recently of “The Management of Savagery,” the senior editor of The Grayzone, and co-host of the podcast “Moderate Rebels”· Paul Wright, the Executive Director of the Human Rights Defense Center and the editor of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News magazines· Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure· Ted Rall, an award-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist at www.rall.com· Joe Lauria, editor-in-chief of Consortium News, founded by the late Robert Parry, and author of the book "How I Lost, By Hillary Clinton”· Professor Gerald Horne, a professor of history at the University of Houston and the author of many books, including “Race to Revolution: The U.S. and Cuba during Slavery and Jim Crow”· Heidi Boghosian, the executive director of the A. J. Muste Memorial Institute and the former Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild· Lee Camp, a writer, comedian, activist, journalist, and host of the television show “Redacted Tonight,” on RT America, whose latest book is called “Bullet Points & Punch Lines,” and at leecamp.com· Ann Wright, a retired United States Army colonel and former U.S. State Department official in Afghanistan, who resigned in protest of the invasion of Iraq and became an anti-war activist· Professor Mohammad Marandi, an expert on American studies and postcolonial literature who teaches at the University of Tehran· Professor Simone Chun, a fellow at the Korea Policy Institute and a member of the Korean Peace Network· Professor Jodi Dean, a professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and a commentator on political issues, whose latest book is called Comrade· Isabel Garcia, co-founder of Coalición de Derechos Humanos· Anya Parampil, a journalist for The Grayzone who hosts the new show Red Lines· Leonardo Flores, a member of the peace group Code Pink, where he is a Latin America campaign coordinator· Coleen Rowley, a former FBI special agent who in 2002 was named Time Magazine person of the year along with two other whistleblowers· Mike Wong, the Vice President of the San Francisco chapter of Veterans for Peace· Ambassador Peter Ford, the former UK Ambassador to Syria· KJ Noh, a peace activist and scholar on the geopolitics of Asia, and a frequent contributor to Counterpunch and Dissident Voice· Mark Sleboda, an international affairs and security analyst· Diani Barreto, independent journalist · Dan Kovalik, a human rights and labor lawyer & author of the book “No More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using 'Humanitarian' Intervention to Advance Economic and Strategic Interests”· Steve Patt, an independent journalist whose critiques of the mainstream media have been a feature of his site Left I on the News, at lefti.blogspot.com

Today we are talking with Joseph Dole. A Man serving a natural life sentence after being convicted of a double murder in 1998, via a theory of accountability (in other words, aiding others who allegedly committed the crime). It was his first felony conviction for crimes he maintains he is innocent of. Joe is a co-founder of Parole Illinois, an organization dedicated to fighting against the over sentencing and over monitoring of people convicted of crimes, and the abolition of life without parole sentences. He has written two books; as well as been included in several anthologies, including Lockdown Prison Heart, Two Cruel, Not Unusual Enough and Hell Is a Very Small Place: Voices from Solitary Confinement. He also has been published in Prison Legal News, TruthOut, Justice, Power & Resistance, and numerous other places, including academic journals, and has written several legislative proposals. Mr. Dole wants to bring Illinois a fair, inclusive, and retroactive parole system. By building a grassroots movement and working with legislators to promote parole legislation that is inclusive and that prioritizes rehabilitation and return to full citizenship. Visit www.lifeofalifer.com

Today we are talking with Joseph Dole. A Man serving a natural life sentence after being convicted of a double murder in 1998, via a theory of accountability (in other words, aiding others who allegedly committed the crime). It was his first felony conviction for crimes he maintains he is innocent of. Joe is a co-founder of Parole Illinois, an organization dedicated to fighting against the over sentencing and over monitoring of people convicted of crimes, and the abolition of life without parole sentences. He has written two books; as well as been included in several anthologies, including Lockdown Prison Heart, Two Cruel, Not Unusual Enough and Hell Is a Very Small Place: Voices from Solitary Confinement. He also has been published in Prison Legal News, TruthOut, Justice, Power & Resistance, and numerous other places, including academic journals, and has written several legislative proposals. Mr. Dole wants to bring Illinois a fair, inclusive, and retroactive parole system. By building a grassroots movement and working with legislators to promote parole legislation that is inclusive and that prioritizes rehabilitation and return to full citizenship. Visit www.lifeofalifer.com

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Jim Kavanagh, editor of thepolemicist.net.The House today voted to move forward on a formal impeachment inquiry against President Trump. The inquiry will include public hearings and will end with a formal vote on impeachment. Meanwhile, Republican senators are adopting a more sober tone on impeachment.Twitter announced yesterday that it was banning all political ads on its platform as the public debate over the role of social media in politics continues. The company presented their move as a way to protect democracy, but will this end up shutting out grassroots organizers who would have no choice but to rely on much more expensive traditional media outlets? Ted Rall, an award winning journalist and editorial cartoonist, joins the show. Protesters in Lebanon continue to take to the streets as the political elite are thrown into a state of deep uncertainty following the resignation of Prime Minister Hariri. What’s in store for the next phase of the Lebanese uprising? Brian and John speak with Rania Masri, a professor, writer and environmental scientist who has been active in the protest movement. The peace process in Colombia between the government and the former rebel FARC continues to be deeply imperiled as paramilitary assassinations of former combatants and social leaders continues. But the recent local elections dealt a blow to far-right President Ivan Duque, who is an avowed opponent of peace. James Jordan, a member of the Alliance for Global Justice and has been deeply involved in supporting the Colombian peace process, joins the show. We continue our weekly segment dealing with the ongoing militarization of space. As the US continues to withdraw from international arms treaties, will the weaponization and militarization of space bring the world closer to catastrophe? Karl Grossman, space expert and professor of journalism at the State University of New York, College at Old Westbury, joins Brian and John. The hosts dig into one of the most pressing issues facing the people of the United States: the domination of the media by a tiny handful of corporations. From the 2020 election to climate change and perhaps in the most glaring way war and international events, the corporate media serves as a mouthpiece for the rich and powerful and the Pentagon. Lee Camp, host of the television show “Redacted Tonight,” joins the show.The hosts continue our weekly series “Criminal Injustice,” where we talk about the most egregious conduct of the courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country. Brian and John speak with Kevin Gosztola,a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, and Paul Wright, Executive Director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News magazines.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Brian Terrell, a long time peace activist and a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Taliban and U.S. negotiators have drafted an initial agreement paving the way for peace in the country and the withdrawal of U.S. troops. However, fierce fighting continues to take place across the country. As Hurricane Dorian bears down on the southeastern coast, what happens to prisoners who are in harm’s way? And with federal and state laws saying that convicted sex offenders--even those who have done their time--are not permitted in shelters, what happens to them. Paul Wright, the Executive Director of the Human Rights Defense Center and the editor and publisher of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News magazines, joins the show. As tense negotiations over the future of the Iran nuclear deal continue, French President Emmanuel Macron has reportedly offered a $15 billion loan to the country to compensate for the harm done by the Trump administration’s unilateral withdrawal. Meanwhile, Israel escalated regional tensions with an attack on Hezbollah, prompting an exchange of fire along the Lebanese border. Brian and John speak with Massoud Shadjareh. He is the founder of the Islamic Human Rights Commission. The three-year-old peace deal between the Colombian government and the FARC rebels has been beset by problems stemming from a wave of right wing repression and murder. One faction of the FARC led by FARC commander Ivan Marquez and other high-ranking demobilized rebel leaders have returned to the armed struggle while the majority of the FARC leadership has stayed with the Peace agreement. The latest move follows a wave of violence that has left 137 former FARC combatants assassinated along with over 700 progressive social movement leaders. James Jordan, a member of the Alliance for Global Justice who has been deeply involved in supporting the Colombian peace process, joins the show. Most Americans agree that the country is in the grip of an opioid epidemic. Federal and state authorities are working to address it, but they don’t always agree on the causes or the solutions. And at the same time, many solutions are chosen because they’re politically expedient, not because they work, especially over the long term. Corey Davis, staff attorney at the National Health Law Program, joins Brian and John. Tuesday’s weekly series is False Profits—A Weekly Look at Wall Street and Corporate Capitalism with Daniel Sankey. Brian and John speak with financial policy analyst Daniel Sankey.Today’s regular segment that airs every Tuesday is called Women & Society with Dr. Hannah Dickinson. This weekly segment is about the major issues, challenges, and struggles facing women in all aspects of society. Hannah Dickinson, an associate professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and an organizer with the Geneva Women’s Assembly; Nathalie Hrizi, an educator, a political activist, and the editor of Breaking the Chains, a women’s magazine; and Loud & Clear producer Nicole Roussell join the show.

Josh interviews Tonya Riley of Mother Jones, Alex Friedmann of Prison Legal News, and Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative You can find full episode notes at DecarcerationNation.com

We give an update on the nationwide prison strike which has been ongoing since August 21st. August 21st is also the anniversary of the murder of George Jackson in San Quentin prison in Marin County, California. We will get a brief update on the strike from Amani Sawari, who joined us last month on Indigo Radio to talk about the prison strike and prison divestment, and then we will speak with Paul Wright, the Director of Human Rights Defense Center and the Editor of Prison Legal News who will discuss the prison conditions and slavery in the US.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by international affairs and security analyst.The latest round of sanctions targeting Russia is already taking a toll, as forces in the U.S. military and foreign policy establishment continue their campaign to ensure that the two countries remain on a collision course. Dozens of people, including many children, were killed in Yemen today by an airstrike launched by the Saudi-led coalition waging war on that country. The bombing, which hit a school bus, is causing outrage around the world. Medea Benjamin, an anti-war activist who is the co-founder of Code Pink, joins the show. Thursday’s weekly series “Criminal Injustice” is about the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country. Brian and John speak with Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, and Paul Wright, the founder and Executive Director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News. Besieged Gazans fired on Israel last night, and received massive rocket fire in return. This happened as a ceasefire was in the works. So what happened? Daoud Kuttab, an award-winning Palestinian journalist, joins the show. Venezuela’s Supreme Court has ordered the arrest of former head of the National Assembly Julio Borges, who currently lives in exile in Colombia. Paul Dobson, a writer for VenezuelaAnalysis.com, joins Brian and John. The initial count of fatalities in Puerto Rico during Hurricane Maria was initially assessed at 64. But according to a revised report submitted to Congress today, the number of fatalities is actually 1,427. Dr. Adriana Garriga-López, Department Chair and Associate Professor of Anthropology at Kalamazoo College, joins the show.Brazil’s Workers Party nominated imprisoned former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as its presidential candidate despite the fact that the Supreme Court will likely seek to keep him off the ballot. Meanwhile, far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro, who is a frontrunner, chose an outspoken general as his running mate. General Hamilton Murao has spoken in favor of a military coup in Brazil. Brian and John speak with Brazilian-British activist Victor Fraga with Democracy Brazil UK. Periodic series Stories from the National Museum of African American History and Culture is where Dr. Alice Bonner highlights some of the most important episodes in Black history. This installation is about Ida B. Wells’ legacy. Dr. Alice Bonner, a volunteer docent at the newly opened National Museum of African American History and Culture, retired professor at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, and a longtime journalist at the Washington Post who wrote her dissertation on a history of press desegregation, joins the show.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Walter Smolarek and John Kiriakou are joined by Daniel Lazare, a journalist and author of three books—”The Frozen Republic,” “The Velvet Coup,” and “America's Undeclared War,” and John Wight, the host of the weekly Sputnik Radio show Hard Facts.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo yesterday strongly defended the Trump Administration’s policy on Russia and North Korea in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In response to tough questioning from both Democrats and Republicans, Pompeo said that the US “does not and never will recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea.” Pompeo also said that North Korea would begin repatriating the remains of US soldiers tomorrow. Meanwhile, House Republicans are beginning the process of impeaching Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. On the regular Thursday series “Criminal Injustice,” the hosts discuss the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country. Today they talk about the illnesses that prisoners get from poor environmental conditions in and around jails and prisons, similarly to other marginalized communities, and they address a fight club in a Colorado facility where guards get points and the winner gets a party for the most frequent violence toward prisoners. Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, Alex Friedmann, the Associate Director of the Human Rights Defense Center and managing editor of Prison Legal News, and Loud & Clear producer Nicole Roussell, join the show.The European Union and United States have pulled back from the brink of an intensified trade war, with President Trump and EU Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker coming to an accord yesterday. Brian and John speak with Richard Wolff, a professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst and founder of the organization Democracy at Work. Prof. Wolff’s latest book is “Capitalism's Crisis Deepens: Essays on the Global Economic Meltdown.” It appears unlikely that the federal government will meet its court mandated order to reunite migrant families who were separated at the border under the Trump Administration’s Zero Tolerance policy. Of the 2,551 children separated from their parents, only 1,187 have been returned to their families. Isabel Garcia, co-founder of Coalición de Derechos Humanos, joins the show. Imran Kahn and his PTI party appear to have won the Pakistani election, promising an end to corruption, foreign dependency, and joblessness. What does his election mean for the country and the region? Taimur Rahman, general secretary of the Pakistan Mazdoor Kisan Party or the Workers Farmers Party, and Medea Benjamin, an anti-war and anti-torture activist who is the co-founder of Code Pink, join Brian and John. A flotilla of boats carrying peace activists protesting Israel’s occupation and bombing of Gaza has left Palermo, it’s final stop in Europe, to begin the voyage to Gaza. Ann Wright, a retired United States Army colonel and former U.S. State Department official in Afghanistan, who resigned in protest of the invasion of Iraq and became an anti-war activist, and also is one of the participants of the flotilla, joins the show.Mainstream capitalist economic theory has increasingly been called into question since the global economic crisis of 2008 exposed the gaping holes in neoliberal orthodoxy. One new school of thought that’s emerged in recent years is modern monetary theory. The hosts talk with experts on the theory. This is part two of two interviews. Brian and John speak with Stephanie Kelton, a prominent economist who advised Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign, professor of public policy and economics at Stony Brook University, and former chief economist on the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, and Jim Kavanagh, editor of thepolemicist.net.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined from Managua, Nicaragua, by Max Blumenthal, the senior editor of Grayzone Project, bestselling author whose latest book is “The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza,” and co-host of the podcast “Moderate Rebels,” and Dan Kovalik, a human rights and labor lawyer who is the author of “The Plot to attack Iran.”Nicaragua is in deep crisis since protests began three months ago as opponents of the government set up barricades and clash with authorities. 280 people have been killed and more than 1,800 injured. The demonstrations began following changes in the country’s social security system and have now become a full-fledged effort to overthrow the Sandinista government. On the regular Thursday series “Criminal Injustice,” the hosts discuss the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country. Today they talk about the high costs of prison phones and the updates from the coalition working to lower them, a Native nation running an ICE detention facility, and a top North Carolina prison officer hiding shanks in his ceiling. Brian and John speak with Paul Wright, the founder and executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News. US-Russian relations are on the rocks, not because of President Trump’s foreign policy. It’s because members of both parties on Capitol Hill are demanding that Trump walk back his public statements supporting an easing of tensions with Moscow and say publicly that the Russians interfered in the 2016 presidential election. Brian and John speak with Dr. Jeremy Kuzmarov, an author and historian. The British Press Association reported today that Metropolitan Police detectives have identified the alleged perpetrators of a poison attack against a Russian defector and his daughter. Media reports say that Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned by “several Russians.” UK Security Minister Ben Wallace called the reports “ill-informed and wild speculation.” Daniel Lazare, a journalist and author of three books, “The Frozen Republic,” “The Velvet Coup,” and “America's Undeclared War,” and Alexander Mercouris, the editor-in-chief of The Duran, join the show. Israel’s parliament yesterday passed a highly controversial law that defines Israel as the national home of the Jewish people, says that only Jews have the right to self-determination, downgrades Arabic from an official language to a “protected” one, and promotes the establishment of new Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Israel is virtually alone in the world in not guaranteeing equality for all of its citizens. Ali Abunimah, the co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of the book “The Battle for Justice in Palestine,” joins Brian and John. A Spanish Supreme Court judge on Thursday dropped an extradition request for six politicians on charges of rebellion for their roles in promoting independence for Catalonia, including former president Carles Puigdemont. The decision was a major setback for Spain’s central government, which has sought to crack down on the region’s secessionist movement. Dick Nichols, the correspondent for Spain and Catalonia for Green Left Weekly, joins the show.Consumers should expect to pay higher prices for imported cars if President Trump’s auto tariffs are enacted. Car sellers say they will pass on all new costs to consumers. The prices of top-selling cars could rise between $1,400 and $7,000. Brian and John speak with Dr. Jack Rasmus, a professor of economics at Saint Mary's College of California whose most recent article in the World Review of Political Economy is titled “Trump’s Déjà vu China Trade War.”

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Leo Cuello, an attorney and the director of health policy for the National Health Law Program.In June, Arkansas became the first state to require that able-bodied Medicare recipients do some combination of work, volunteering, job training, or education to keep their benefits. A nearly identical law in Kentucky, however, was just struck down by a federal judge. Now states are considering simply throwing people off the Medicaid roles and denying them health care.On the regular Thursday series “Criminal Injustice,” the hosts discuss the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country. Brian and John speak with Paul Wright, the founder and executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News, and Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure.President Trump arrived in the UK this morning for trade talks with British Prime Minister Theresa May. He dismissed large-scale protests against his visit and said, “The Brits like me a lot. They agree with me on immigration.” The visit comes two days after Trump said that the UK was “in turmoil.” Brian and John speak with legendary anti-war activist and former British parliamentarian George Galloway.A defiant Peter Strzok told the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees that continued scrutiny of his anti-Trump text messages amounted to “another victory notch in Vladimir Putin’s belt.” The FBI agent said that during the 2016 campaign he had information that would have derailed Donald Trump’s candidacy, but that he never considered releasing it. Alex Rubenstein, a Sputnik news analyst and journalist, whose work is on Twitter at @RealAlexRubi, joins the show.The annual summit of NATO heads of state ended yesterday with President Trump saying that member countries had agreed to increase their defense spending, perhaps even doubling it. But French President Emmanuel Macron was quick to say the President’s statement was untrue. Meanwhile, Trump reiterated as he was boarding Air Force One that he is a “very stable genius.” Alexander Mercouris, the editor-in-chief of The Duran, joins Brian and John.Israel struck three Syrian government targets overnight after an unarmed Syrian drone strayed over Israeli territory. The Syrian media reported that there was material damage, but no casualties. Ambassador Peter Ford, the former British Ambassador to Syria, joins the show.Monsanto is in court this week—because a California landscaper has terminal cancer after using Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer for decades. And Monsanto has been accused of covering up evidence that Roundup is carcinogenic. Brian and John speak with Alexis Baden-Mayer, the political director for Organic Consumers Alliance.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Max Blumenthal, senior editor of the Grayzone Project, bestselling author whose latest book is “The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza,” and co-host of the podcast “Moderate Rebels.”Andriy Parubiy is Ukraine’s Speaker of the Parliament. He’s also arguably the country’s leading neo-Nazi figure. Parubiy wears his fascism on his sleeve, but there hasn’t been a word of complaint from western governments. Now Parubiy is visiting Washington and meeting with members of Congress. On the regular Thursday series “Criminal Injustice,” the hosts discuss the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country. Brian and John speak with Paul Wright, the founder and executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News, and Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure. A British couple in the town of Amesbury was found unconscious and in critical condition yesterday after apparently being exposed to the nerve agent Novichok. Police said there was no evidence that the couple was targeted, but that didn’t stop British politicians from calling the town “a dumping ground for Russian poisons.” Brian and John speak with Alexander Mercouris, the editor in chief of The Duran. The Senate Intelligence Committee released a report late Tuesday afternoon saying that it had determined that Russia had interfered—or had attempted to interfere—in the 2016 presidential election. The finding was consistent with statements made by the FBI, CIA, and NSA, but was exactly the opposite of the findings of the House Intelligence Committee, which found no evidence of interference. Joe Lauria, the editor-in-chief of Consortium News, founded by the late Robert Parry, and the author of the book "How I Lost, By Hillary Clinton," joins the show. An unnamed senior White House official told CNN yesterday that President Trump last year asked several top foreign policy advisors about the possibility of invading Venezuela. Those advisors were reportedly vigorous in their opposition to such an invasion. Paul Dobson, a writer for Venezuelanalysis.com, joins Brian and John. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is on his way to Pyongyang for talks with North Korean officials, his third trip in as many months. Pompeo is under the gun to produce tangible evidence of forward progress in denuclearization talks in the shadow of reports from anonymous US intelligence sources that Pyongyang is not serious. Author and professor Tim Beal, whose most recent book is “Crisis in Korea,” joins the show.A court in Ecuador has ordered the arrest of former President Rafael Correa on charges that he was involved in the 2012 kidnapping of a political opponent. Correa dismissed the arrest warrant as “a government plot.” Correa is currently in self-imposed exile in Brussels. Brian and John speak with Dr. Francisco Dominguez, a senior lecturer at Middlesex University and the head of the Centre for Brazilian and Latin American Studies.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Professor Zachary Wolfe, a lawyer and activist who teaches at George Washington University, Chip Gibbons, policy and legislative counsel for Defending Rights & Dissent as well as a journalist, and Julie Hurwitz, a civil rights attorney and partner at the law firm Goodman & Hurwitz, P.C.Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced yesterday that he would retire effective immediately. Washington immediately lurched into its next crisis, with Republicans and the right wing gloating about controlling the Supreme Court. On the regular Thursday series “Criminal Injustice,” about the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country, the hosts discuss a new bipartisan bill in Congress that would expand the president’s ability to detain American citizens without a trial, and why “police union” is a misnomer. Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, Alex Friedmann, the Associate Director of the Human Rights Defense Center and managing editor of Prison Legal News, and Loud & Clear producer Nicole Roussell, join the show. President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet in Helsinki, Finland on July 16. This will be the first meeting between the two leaders. Trump said that Syria, Ukraine, and “many other subjects” would be on the agenda, and he added that “getting along with Russia, China, and everybody else is a good thing.” Brian and John speak with Jim Kavanagh, the editor of thepolemicist.net whose most recent piece is “Sacrificing Gaza: The Great March of Zionist Hypocrisy.” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before the House Judiciary Committee this morning about the DOJ Inspector General’s report of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server. Republicans demanded access to sensitive documents used in the investigation and Democrats demanded that the Republicans be denied. In the middle of the testimony, they broke to vote on a House Resolution demanding the documents. Ted Rall, an award-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist whose work is at www.rall.com, joins the show. Two new reports by the UK’s parliamentary intelligence and security committees reveal that Britain’s MI-6 foreign intelligence service and MI-5 domestic intelligence service were linked to hundreds of cases of rendition and torture along with the United States in the years following the September 11 attacks. Former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw will likely face tough questions about what he knew and when he knew it. Francis Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law and author of the book “Destroying World Order: US Imperialism in the Middle East Before and After September 11,” joins Brian and John. Angela Merkel is in trouble. The German Chancellor’s coalition partner has threatened to withdraw from the government if she doesn’t solve Germany’s immigration crisis by this weekend, while Italy’s new populist government said it would not accept any refugees back from Germany. Merkel said today that if an immigration agreement isn’t hammered out this weekend, the very future of the European Union is in doubt. Berlin activist and journalist Diani Baretto joins the show.Chinese President Xi Jinping told visiting US Defense Secretary James Mattis that China will “not give even one inch of territory” in the Pacific Ocean. Mattis’s meeting with Xi comes as relations between the two countries have been marred by a trade war and by both militaries viewing each other with suspicion. Brian and John speak with Alfred McCoy, the Harrington Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of the book “In the Shadows of the American Century—The Rise and Decline of US Global Power.”

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Juan José Gutiérrez, the executive director of the Full Rights for Immigrants Coalition.President Trump yesterday signed an executive order reversing his policy of separating migrant children from their parents. The policy drew across-the-board condemnation from Democrats and Republicans alike, although it was also seen as a political sop to Trump’s right-wing base. The hosts look at what’s next for asylum seekers, immigrants, and their families. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un completed his third trip to China in as many months, where he consulted with Chinese leaders on next steps with the United States. President Trump said that since his summit with Kim in Singapore, North Korea has returned the remains of 200 US soldiers missing from the Korean War. And in the United States, a new poll shows that 55 percent of Americans support Trump’s North Korea policy, the single most popular policy of his presidency. John Ross, Senior Fellow at Chongyang Institute, Renmin University of China, and an award-winning resident columnist with several Chinese media organizations, joins the show. On the regular Thursday series “Criminal Injustice,” about the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country, the hosts discuss Prison Legal News under fire in Florida and the skyrocketing “gang database” in New York City under Mayor Bill de Blasio. Brian and John speak with Paul Wright, the founder and executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News, and Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure. Nine months after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, the island’s government has moved to privatize and upgrade its outdated electrical grid. Dr. Adriana Garriga-Lopez, associate professor and chair of the anthropology and sociology department at Kalamazoo College, and Freddyson Martinez, the vice president of UTIER, or the Electrical Industry and Irrigation Workers Union, which represents workers with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, join the show. Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Israel’s prime minister, was charged today with felony counts of fraud and breach of trust. She’s accused of spending more than $100,000 on meals at the prime minister’s residence, and $10,000 on private chefs for herself. The charges carry a maximum sentence of eight years in prison. Miko Peled, the author of “The General’s Son - A Journey of an Israeli in Palestine” and "Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five,” joins Brian and John. An East Pittsburgh police officer is being accused of shooting and killing 17-year-old Antwon Rose after the youth fled a car the officer had pulled over. Video of the incident shows Rose being shot in the back. He was unarmed. Protests against police violence continued in Pittsburgh today. Native Pittsburgher and Sputnik News analyst Walter Smolarek joins the show.“Church and State: The Israel Experiment” is an upcoming film by Netra Halperin. Brian and John speak with Netra Halperin, a Hollywood producer and director with a concern for peace and equality to talk about the film.One year after Muhammad bin Salman Al Saud was elevated to Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, as well as Defense Minister, his war in Yemen rages on. While MBS, as he is known, maintains an ongoing charm offensive in the west, his policies threaten the lives of millions of Yemenis, at least eight million of whom are currently at risk of starvation. And all of this is in the name of curbing Iranian influence in the region. Independent political analyst Marwa Osman joins the show.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, John Kiriakou and Walter Smolarek (sitting in for Brian Becker) are joined by Coleen Rowley, a former FBI special agent who was named Time Magazine person of the year with two other whistleblowers, and Joe Lauria, the editor-in-chief of Consortium News, founded by the late Robert Parry and the author of "How I Lost, By Hillary Clinton." A highly anticipated FBI Inspector General’s report released today found that former FBI director James Comey deviated from official procedures in handling the probe into Hillary Clinton. The Inspector General found that Comey was not motivated by bias, but his actions damaged the FBI’s image of impartiality. On the regular Thursday series “Criminal Injustice,” about the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country, the hosts discuss Prison Legal News under fire in Florida and the skyrocketing “gang database” in New York City under Mayor Bill de Blasio. Paul Wright, the founder and executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News, and Loud & Clear producer Nicole Roussell join the show. A federal judge today refused to dismiss a lawsuit by an American journalist challenging his apparent placement on a “kill list” by US authorities in Syria. The ruling clears the way for Bilal Abdul Kareem to seek answers and try to clear his name after what he says were five near misses by US airstrikes in Syria after he was mistaken for a militant. Brian and John speak with Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law where he specializes in national security law, especially as it relates to the prosecution of war crimes, and a regular contributor to CNN. The United Nations General Assembly voted 120-8 with 45 abstentions to condemn Israel for its lethal use of force against Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza. Only the United States, Israel, Australia, and five tiny Pacific island countries opposed the measure, which also called on the UN to make recommendations on how to protect Palestinians. Ambassador Manuel Hassassian, the Palestinian Ambassador to the United Kingdom, joins the show. Four major human rights groups said today that the government of Ukraine is failing to respond adequately to attacks by far-right groups against marginalized communities in the country. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, and Front Line Defenders said in a report that ethnic minorities, women’s activists, and LGBTQ groups are particularly targeted. John Wight, the host of the weekly Sputnik Radio show Hard Facts, joins Brian and John. A storage site holding half of Baghdad’s ballot boxes from Iraq’s recent parliamentary election in May caught fire this week in what appears to have been an act of arson ahead of a countrywide vote recount. Many parliamentarians are now even calling for the election to be re-run. Meanwhile, negotiations for the formation of a new government move forward as Iraqi leader Muqtada al-Sadr announces an alliance with a coalition associated with the Shiite militias that fought ISIS and are close with Iran. Massoud Shadjareh, the founder of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, joins the show.Saudi and Emirati military forces continued to attack the Yemeni port city of Hudaidah today, pushing the country closer to a humanitarian crisis. The port of Hudaidah is the only way that millions of Yemenis can get food and medicine. The United Nations estimates that eight million people are at risk of starvation. Brian and John speak with Cindy Sheehan, an anti-war activist and journalist whose son Casey was killed during the Iraq War.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Jim Kavanagh, the editor of thepolemicist.net whose most recent piece is “Sacrificing Gaza: The Great March of Zionist Hypocrisy;” Ariel Gold, a peace activist and the national co-director of Code Pink; and longtime peace activist and member of Code Pink, Tighe Barry. Argentina yesterday canceled a pre-World Cup soccer match with Israel that was scheduled to take place in Jerusalem, after worldwide outcry from the BDS movement and a Palestinian Authority spokesman called for Palestinians to burn Argentine soccer jerseys. Meanwhile, Israeli authorities have denied parole for Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi, who is serving eight months in jail for slapping an Israeli soldier. Her cousin Ezzadine Tamimi was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers yesterday.On the regular Thursday series “Criminal Injustice,” about the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country, the hosts discuss a prison journalist, Kevin “Rahid” Johnson, who has been punished for talking to the press and Trump’s pardon of Alice Marie Johnson. Paul Wright, the founder and executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News, and Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure. Former President Bill Clinton said yesterday that his wife Hillary lost her presidential bid only because the Russian government preferred Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Clinton claimed, disingenuously, that without Stein, Hillary would have won the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, and with them, the presidency. Brian and John speak with Ajamu Baraka, the National Organizer, Black Alliance for Peace, a longtime human rights activist, organizer, and political activist, and the 2016 Green Party nominee for Vice President of the United States. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani today announced an unconditional week-long ceasefire with the Taliban to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. This is the first time that a ceasefire has been called without preconditions. Ghani specified, however, that it does not apply to other groups, including ISIS. Kathy Kelly, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Non-Violence, who just got back from Afghanistan, joins the show. Democrats are taking a very hard line on the North Korea summit, requiring “complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear program” in order to remove the crippling US economic sanctions. Meanwhile, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is visiting the White House today for meetings with President Trump. Abe reportedly is expressing his concerns over North Korea in advance of next week’s summit there. Patrick Lawrence, the author of “Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century” and a columnist at The Nation whose work you can support at www.patreon.com/thefloutist, joins Brian and John. The White House’s top economic advisor said today that President Trump is not backing down from his hard line on trade, setting the stage for a showdown with top allies at the G7 summit in Canada this week. The meetings on Friday and Saturday will be the first time that allied leaders have had to confront Trump in person since he instituted steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, Mexico, and the European Union. Sputnik News analyst and producer Walter Smolarek, who is in Quebec City, joins the show.Russian President Vladimir Putin is visiting Austria today as part of a policy to improve relations with the European Union. He’s also working to improve economic and trade relations with Europe in the aftermath of tariffs imposed on steel and aluminum by President Trump. Brian and John speak with legendary anti-war activist and former British parliamentarian George Galloway.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Vijay Prashad, the Director of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and Chief Editor of LeftWord Books. He is the author—most recently—of “The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution” and “Red Star Over the Third World.”The Trump Administration today announced stiff new tariffs on steel and aluminum produced by three of the country’s biggest trading partners—Canada, Mexico, and the European Union, all of which vowed to retaliate. The decision will likely raise prices on a wide array of products for Americans and may presage a similar move soon against China. On the regular Thursday series “Criminal Injustice,” about the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country, the hosts discuss a New Hampshire bill eradicating the death penalty that the governor vetoes, citing police and victims. Paul Wright, the founder and executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News, and Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure. The European Court of Human Rights has found that both Lithuania and Romania violated the EU’s prohibition on torture. The two countries were found to have violated the rights of terror suspects who were tortured in CIA-operated black sites that were set up during the Bush administration. Brian and John speak with Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst turned political activist and journalist. The Virginia state senate approved a bill yesterday expanding Medicaid coverage to 400,000 low-income residents, putting an end to years of Republican opposition. The state assembly had already approved the measure, and Governor Ralph Northam said he would sign it into law as soon as it reaches his desk. Leo Cuello, an attorney and the director of health policy for the National Health Law Program, joins the show. The hosts continue the discussion on electronic monitoring on recently released prisoners. Electronic monitoring is a popular government alternative to prison, but it discriminates against the poor, who simply can’t afford to pay for the service. And if they don’t pay, they go right back to prison. James Kilgore, a research scholar at the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) who also focuses on electronic monitoring and supervision at ChallengingECarceration.org, wrote the book “Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People’s Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time,” and spent six-and-a-half years in federal and state prisons, joins Brian and John. President Trump today pardoned conservative political commentator Dinesh D’Souza who was convicted in 2014 of violating campaign finance laws. Trump said that D’Souza was “treated very unfairly by our government.” The move was applauded by conservatives on Capitol Hill. He is also reportedly considering a pardon for Martha Stewart and a commutation for Rod Blagojevich. Ted Rall, an award-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist, joins the show.Karl Marx famously wrote that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, and then as farce. The Cold War was a tragedy. The new Cold War is playing out as farce. That’s the thesis of Dr. Jeremy Kuzmarov in his new book, “The Russians are Coming, Again” which you can get from Monthly Review Press. Brian and John speak with Dr. Jeremy Kuzmarov, an author and assistant professor of American history at the University of Tulsa.

Donald Trump today cancelled the historic planned summit between the DPRK and the US next month in Singapore. This came hours after the DPRK destroys their nuclear test site, in one of many one-sided shows of good faith. The hosts address what happened, how western media is spinning this, and what happens from here. On the regular Thursday series “Criminal Injustice,” about the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country, the hosts discuss how to organize a prison strike. Paul Wright, the founder and executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News, and Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure. After revelations this week that intelligence agencies had a spy in the Trump campaign, the White House arranged two briefings on classified documents this afternoon, one for two Trump-allied Republicans, and, after pressure, one for the Gang of 8. Brian and John speak with Daniel Lazare, a journalist and author of “The Frozen Republic,” “The Velvet Coup,” and “America's Undeclared War.” The Israeli government says that it carried out a strike last night in eastern Syria that killed 12 “foreign fighters.” The Israeli press says that it killed Iranians. The Syrian government says that it was a dozen of their soldiers. And the American government says that it had no knowledge of any strike. Ambassador Peter Ford, the former British Ambassador to Syria, joins the show. The Associated Press is reporting that more than a dozen Air Force airmen faced disciplinary actions, including courts martial, in 2016 after they were found operating a drug ring. The airmen, who were responsible for maintaining the US nuclear weapons arsenal, apparently did so while taking LSD. Steven Starr, a professor at the University of Missouri, who teaches in the Peace Studies Program on the environmental, health, and social effects of nuclear weapons and a senior scientist for Physicians for Social Responsibility, joins Brian and John. The National Football League has passed a new rule saying that players who kneel during the national anthem will cause their teams to be penalized 15 yards on the opening kickoff. Players who kneel also will be fined and could face additional penalties from the league. Team owners also announced that players could remain in the locker room for the anthem. Constitutional experts, however, say that the rule is likely a constitutional violation of freedom of speech. Kofi Ademola, an activist and organizer with the Black Lives Matter movement, and Jaimee Swift, a PhD candidate at Howard University’s political science department and a freelance journalist, joins the show.The United States yesterday kicked the Chinese navy out of the 2018 Rim of the Pacific drills—the largest regular naval exercises in the world. China participated in RIMPAC 2016 and 2014, but relations between the two countries have deteriorated as the U.S. government declares an era of “great power competition.” Brian and John speak with David Ewing, the chair of the San Francisco chapter of the US-China People’s Friendship Association.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Jim Kavanagh, the editor of ThePolemicist.net, and Ted Rall, an award-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist.Today marks the one-year anniversary of the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel. Mueller was supposed to investigate allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. There hasn’t been any such evidence, but the investigation has broadened into a case that has implicated dozens of people.On the regular Thursday series “Criminal Injustice,” about the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country, the hosts discuss how to organize a prison strike. Paul Wright, the founder and executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News, and Nicole Roussell, producer for Loud & Clear, join the show.Twenty thousand teachers across the state of North Carolina have gone on strike, shutting schools in 40 districts to cancel classes for more than one million students. In a familiar refrain, the teachers want better benefits and higher salaries, which have declined 9.4 percent in the past decade. Brian and John speak with Liz Davis, president of the Washington Teachers Union who has taught in DC public schools for 41 years.Dramatic changes are underway in Malaysia as new Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad takes office. Police raided Mahathir’s predecessor Najib Razak’s home, and long-time opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has been released from prison. Nile Bowie, a writer and journalist with the Asia Times covering Singapore and Malaysia, joins the show. President Trump and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin will meet with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He to discuss trade. The meetings are meant to prevent trade tensions from spiraling into a trade war, a possibility since the Administration imposed sanctions on Chinese goods. John Ross, the first non-Chinese citizen to be appointed to a full-time post at a leading think tank in China--Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China, joins Brian and John. A Ukrainian diplomat in Hamburg, Germany has been suspended after posting virulently anti-Semitic remarks on Facebook. Vasyl Marushchinets wrote that Jews were responsible for World War II and ended the post with “death to the anti-fascists!” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko condemned the remarks, but he recently signed into law a measure that glorifies Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazis. Alexander Mercouris, the editor in chief of The Duran, joins the show.The Senate yesterday passed a non-binding resolution nullifying the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rollback. The 52-47 vote is a symbolic blow to the FCC, as the net neutrality remains on track to take effect next month. Brian and John speak with web developer and technologist Chris Garaffa.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Mark Sleboda, an international Affairs and Security Analyst, and Rick Sterling, an investigative journalist and member of the Syria Solidarity Movement.Syria responded to Tuesday’s Israeli missile strikes with missiles of their own today, firing at least 20 targets in Golan Heights, the Syrian territory that Israel seized in 1967. Israel then attacked almost all Iranian infrastructure in Syria. Germany, France, and Russia have called on both sides to exercise restraint, but Middle East observers say this is just the beginning of what could be major hostilities between Iran and Israel. On the regular Thursday series “Criminal Injustice,” about the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country, the hosts discuss how to organize a prison strike. Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, and Paul Wright, the founder and executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News, join the show. The state of Louisiana is set to evict about 37,000 elderly and disabled people from nursing homes after the state legislature slashed the budget for Medicaid. Rolling back the Medicaid expansion implemented under the Obama Administration has been a longtime goal of the Republican Party. Notices are being mailed out starting today, and this will literally kick the elderly out on the street. Brian and John speak with Leo Cuello, an attorney and the director of health policy for the National Health Law Program. A group of senators have filed a discharge petition in an effort to reinstate net neutrality regulations. The move aims to force a vote that could lead to the reversal of the FCC’s decision in December to repeal net neutrality. Tim Karr, the senior director of strategy and communications at Free Press, joins the show. Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is a major setback for Iranian leaders who put their reputations and political careers on the line to negotiate the deal. Has the president doomed any liberal or internationalist bent in Iran? Mohammad Marandi, an expert on American studies and postcolonial literature who teaches at the University of Tehran, joins Brian and John. Former CIA officer, peace activist, and frequent guest on this show Ray McGovern, as well as Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin and several others, were arrested yesterday for allegedly disrupting the Senate Intelligence Committee’s hearing on Gina Haspel’s nomination to be CIA director. They were protesting Haspel’s past history as a high-level CIA officer who was integral to the Agency’s torture program. Medea Benjamin, an anti-war and anti-torture activist who is the co-founder of Code Pink, joins the show.Pakistan’s parliament has passed a law guaranteeing basic rights for transgender citizens and outlawing discrimination in employment, a move hailed by activists as “historic” for the conservative South Asian country. Brian and John speak with transgender activist Morgan Artyukhina.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, and Alex Friedmann, the Associate Director of the Human Rights Defense Center and managing editor of Prison Legal News. On the regular Thursday series “Criminal Injustice,” about the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country, the hosts discuss a new bipartisan bill in Congress that would expand the president’s ability to detain American citizens without a trial, and why “police union” is a misnomer.For Loud & Clear’s regular weekly segment covering the upcoming midterm elections, Brian and John take a look at Senate races nationwide. Jacqueline Luqman and Abdus Luqman, the co-editors-in-chief of Luqman Nation, join the show. Iowa’s state legislature yesterday passed the most extreme abortion ban in the country, eliminating women’s right to carry a child past the time when a fetus has a heartbeat, which can be as early as six weeks. Six weeks is often earlier than a woman knows she is pregnant. The bill now goes to the Republican governor, who has said she’s not yet sure whether she will sign it. Is the right trying to get abortion rights back into the Supreme Court, in the hopes the court will reverse Roe v. Wade? Brian and John speak with Danielle Norwood, a reproductive rights activist and a therapist specializing in treating adult and adolescent survivors of trauma. Despite the Pentagon saying for years that the US was not fully involved in the Yemen war and did not have troops in Yemen, several top US and European officials told the New York Times today that the Green Berets actually arrived late last year on the Saudi/Yemeni border—a big escalation in military assistance. Why is the US assisting the egregious Saudi government in their war? Catherine Shakdam, a political commentator and analyst focusing on the Middle East, and the author of “A Tale Of Grand Resistance: Yemen, The Wahhabi And The House Of Saud,” joins the show. Today is World Press Freedom Day, as proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly. In a media landscape dominated by a handful of corporations, what can be done to truly guarantee the free expression and communication of ideas? Tim Karr, the senior director of strategy and communications at Free Press, joins Brian and John. Cambridge Analytica, the controversial data mining firm that has found itself in the middle of the Facebook data scandal, announced yesterday that it would close immediately. The company’s CEO said that rebranding the firm was “futile.” Dr. Robert Epstein, the Senior Research Psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, joins the show.Dramatic developments have raised hopes for peace and reunification in Korea, but there is still much to be done. As the Chinese foreign minister visits North Korea, and the North agrees to release three detainees, how could this complex diplomatic process unfold? Brian and John speak with Sputnik news analyst Walter Smolarek.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Kani Xulam, founder of the American-Kurdish Information Network, and Sputnik News analyst Walter Smolarek.Since the end of March, the Turkish military has quietly been building outposts inside Iraqi territory to attack the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, in the nearby Qandil Mountains. The move is, of course, a violation of Iraqi sovereignty. And it points to Turkey’s obsession with fighting Kurds no matter where they are. The weekly series “Criminal Injustice” continues, where the hosts discuss the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country, including the systematic abuse of prisoners across the system. Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, and Paul Wright, the founder and executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News, join the show. In March, Loud & Clear reported about the case of Alejandra Pablos, a prominent local reproductive health activist. Alejandra is a permanent resident of the United States. But when she went to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Arizona for a routine check-in, she was arrested and held incommunicado. She has been released, but is now facing deportation. Brian and John speak with Alejandra Pablos, an organizer with the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, a member of the immigrant rights organization Mijente, and a delegate to the People’s Congress of Resistance held last year in Washington, D.C. French President Emmanuel Macron said last night that he did not believe he changed President Trump’s mind on the Iran nuclear deal and that he expects the US to pull out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action next month. He added that doing so would be bad for everyone--Iran, the European Union, and the United States. Catherine Shakdam, a political commentator and analyst focusing on the Middle East, and the author of “A Tale Of Grand Resistance: Yemen, The Wahhabi And The House Of Saud,” joins the show. Teachers in Arizona walked out today in nearly 100 school districts across the state. The teachers are striking to reestablish education funding to the level where it was years ago (it has dropped 14% just since 2008 in Arizona, measured per student) and to stop passing tax cuts on the backs of public education. Nathalie Hrizi, a teacher and librarian and a teachers union organizer, joins Brian and John. The CIA is actively tweeting its support for deputy director Gina Haspel’s elevation to lead the Agency. It routinely retweets articles supporting or endorsing Haspel, while ignoring those that don’t. This would seem to be an ethical violation. Isn’t any federal agency supposed to be neutral on who may or may not lead it? Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst under seven presidents who was also the personal morning briefer for President George H. W. Bush, joins the show.President Trump told the hosts of Fox & Friends this morning that CIA Director Michael Pompeo was not supposed to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un when he traveled to North Korea over the Easter weekend. But Kim walked into the room and the two spoke for more than an hour. Pompeo later said that Kim was very smart, a revelation for US policymakers. Why does the US really know nothing about the North Korean leader?

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and Walter Smolarek are joined by Arnold August, a lecturer, journalist, and author of the book “Cuba and the US in the Age of Trump,” and Gloria La Riva, the director of the Cuba and Venezuela Solidarity Committee. Miguel Diaz Canal has been elected by the National Assembly to be the new President of Cuba. As the country embarks on a historic leadership transition as Raul Castro steps down, what does the future hold for Cuba and its socialist system?The weekly series “Criminal Injustice” continues, where the hosts discuss the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country, including the murder by NYPD of Saheed Vassell, a man known by cops and the community to be mentally ill. Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, and Paul Wright, the founder and executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News, join the show. Cancer is not only traumatic and deadly, but it can be incredibly expensive to treat. One organization, Value in Cancer Care Consortium, has been working on cutting those costs to make cancer treatment more readily available, and for one treatment, the researchers were able to confirm that just one-third of a drug for blood cancer was just as effective as the previously recommended dose. This would, of course, cut the treatment cost by a third—until Janssen and Pharmacyclics tripled their prices in response. Brian and Walter speak with Dr. Allen Lichter, an oncologist and chair of the board of directors of the Value in Cancer Care Consortium. The Department of Health and Human Services is reportedly planning to issue regulations that will further restrict undocumented people's ability to access health care. The hosts take an in-depth look today and tomorrow at this latest attack on immigrants and the barriers to healthcare access that already existed. Leo Cuello, an attorney and the director of health policy for the National Health Law Program, joins the show. Yesterday evening, Charles County, Maryland residents rallied at the town council building to protest fracking and a potential new fracked gas compressor station. Fracking is a problem nationwide that is hazardous to the environment and to people living nearby. Maryland anti-fracking organizer with Amp Creeks Council, who was a key organizer in the rally yesterday, joins Brian and Walter. Puerto Rico suffered a huge blackout yesterday leaving the entire island without power, which has still not yet been fully restored. Months after Puerto Rico was hit with a devastating hurricane, critical infrastructure is still yet to be repaired. Camilo Punsoda, spokesperson for Juventud Trabajadora, the youth wing of the Working People’s Party of Puerto Rico, joins the show.The Syrian army has given ISIS a 48-hour deadline to vacate areas south of the capital Damascus, primarily the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, which has suffered under ISIS’ brutal rule since the spring of 2015. Meanwhile, controversy continues to swirl over the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma. Brian and Walter speak with Massoud Shadjareh, the founder of the Islamic Human Rights Commission.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and Walter Smolarek and Nicole Roussell, sitting in for John Kiriakou, are joined by Rick Sterling, an investigative journalist and member of the Syria Solidarity Movement, and Francis Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. On Friday night, as Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons investigators were headed to Syria to examine evidence of an alleged chemical attack, the U.S., UK, and France bombed Syria with more than one hundred missiles. The Syrian air defenses shot down much of the barrage, but the damage done was still intense. What will the consequences be of this major escalation in an already dangerous and complex war. For decades, the U.S. Navy used the Puerto Rican island of Vieques as a testing and dumping ground for highly dangerous weapons and materials. Huge protests and brave acts of civil disobedience alongside a determined battle in the courts led to victory in 2003, and this struggle is remembered as a key part of the broader struggle for freedom for Puerto Rico. Scott Edwards, co-director of the Food & Water Justice project at Food & Water Watch and an attorney who has prosecuted U.S. energy companies for contamination of waterways and worked against factory farms in both North Carolina and the Chesapeake region, joins the show. Seven people have died and at least 17 are injured inside a South Carolina prison that has been plagued with dire problems. One inmate reported to the Associated Press that the officers did nothing to stop the violence and let bodies “literally stack on top of each other.” Brian and Nicole speak with Paul Wright, the founder and Executive Director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News. Former FBI Director James Comey is releasing a book tomorrow, though excerpts have leaked out and are enraging Trump as Comey embarks on a media blitz. What comes next in the battle between the former FBI Director and the sitting president? Dan Kovalik, a human rights and labor lawyer who is the author of the soon to be released book “The Plot to Attack Iran,” joins the show. Monday’s regular segment “Education for Liberation with Bill Ayers” looks at the state of education across the country. What’s happening in our schools, colleges, and universities, and what impact does it have on the world around us? Today focuses on a recent report on discriminatory racial discipline disparities and the teacher strikes across the nation with Bill Ayers, an activist, educator and the author of the book “Demand the Impossible: A Radical Manifesto.” According to reports released this afternoon, contrary to expectations, the announcement about planned sanctions against Russia will be postponed at least temporarily. Nikki Haley, US ambassador to the United Nations, had promised that new sanctions would be announced today. Earlier this afternoon the hosts spoke with Professor Steve Keen and Dmitri Babich about what a new sanctions regime against Russia might look like, what its’ impacts might be on the Russian economy and how it could impact global trade. Dmitry Babich, journalist and commentator with Sputnik International, and Steve Keen, the author of “Debunking Economics” and the world’s first crowdfunded economist, whose work is at patreon.com/ProfSteveKeen, join the show.The Justice Department Inspector General issued a report that paints former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe as having released information to the press against FBI practices and having lied to and misled investigators about the Clinton email scandal. Brian and Walter speak with Ted Rall, an award-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Professor Alfred de Zayas, a retired high-ranking UN official and the UN Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order. He has been a leading voice against indefinite detention, torture, and nuclear pollution.Officials from organizations ranging from the Pentagon to the United Nations to the British Parliament have backtracked on earlier statements that the Syrian government was responsible for a recent chemical attack on civilians. The hosts look at the evidence—or lack of evidence—and what it means for a possible military strike on Syria. To address the urgent need to stop a war on Syria, Cindy Sheehan, an anti-war activist and journalist whose son Casey was killed during the Iraq War, and Gerry Condon, the president of Veterans for Peace, a Vietnam-era veteran, and a war resister who spent six years in Sweden and Canada after refusing orders in Vietnam, join the show. Confirmation hearings for CIA Director Mike Pompeo to become Secretary of State began today on Capitol Hill. The right-wing hardliner is attempting to soften the public perception of his record as the hearings go forward. Brian and John speak with Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of Codepink and author of the book “Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection.” Although he’s presented himself as a leader of the anti-Trump resistance, California Governor Jerry Brown has announced that he’s going along with the Trump administration’s border militarization and will be deploying 400 members of the state’s national guard. Juan José Gutiérrez, the executive director of the Full Rights for Immigrants Coalition, joins the show. The first half of our weekly series Criminal Injustice, which is about the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country, focuses on the police shooting in Portland of a mentally ill man who was stabbing himself with a knife in a homeless shelter. Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, and Paul Wright, the founder and Executive Director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News, join Brian and John.The second half of today’s Criminal Injustice addresses new information about prison phone call exploitation. Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, and Paul Wright, the founder and Executive Director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News, join the show. Republican former House Speaker John Boehner has a new job. He’s a lobbyist for the marijuana industry. Brian and John speak with Kevin Zeese, the co-coordinator of Popular Resistance, you can check out their work at popularresistance.org.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, and Paul Wright, the founder and executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News.Today, the weekly series “Criminal Injustice” continues, where the hosts discuss the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country, including the murder by NYPD of Saheed Vassell, a man known by cops and the community to be mentally ill. Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. After he was killed, there were uprisings in dozens of cities, though these powerful rebellions have been falsely portrayed as opportunistic and materialistic looting and rioting. What were the social movements at the time of the assassination of Dr. King and what kind of oppression caused the Black community to rise up after this assassination? Malik Rahim, a former Black Panther and a longtime housing and prison activist in Louisiana who gained widespread attention as an important community organizer in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, joins the show. Yulia Skripal, who last month was poisoned in the UK with her father, a Russian double agent, is finally recovering. She said she feels stronger each day, but is still disoriented. The British government has said the Skripals were poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok. Absent any proof, however, British scientists and politicians have backed off that claim. Brian and John speak with Dr. Piers Robinson, the chairman of the politics, society, and political journalism department at the University of Sheffield and the author of “Routledge Handbook of Media, Conflict and Security.” The Brazilian Supreme Court ruled last night that former president Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva can be sent to prison while he appeals his conviction on corruption charges. Lula said that the 6-5 ruling was an underhanded ploy to keep him off the ballot. He is currently leading in presidential preference polls. Earlier yesterday, a Brazilian general threatened a military coup if Lula was not imprisoned. Ada Siqueira, a member of Brazilian Expats for Democracy and Social Justice, joins the show. Major teachers strikes continue in Oklahoma and Kentucky, even though the Oklahoma state legislature has agreed to increase teachers salaries. The teachers are striking due to pensions, class sizes, classroom supplies, up-to-date textbooks, and respect. Liz Davis, President of the Washington Teachers Union who has taught in DC public schools for 41 years, joins Brian and John. Facebook executives announced yesterday that at least 87 million users had their personal data harvested secretly by data firm Cambridge Analytica. The number is far higher than Facebook had previously admitted. The company responded by saying that it would adopt Europe’s stricter privacy policies for the US. But Congress wants CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify. Dr. Robert Epstein, the Senior Research Psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, and Bill Binney, a former NSA technical director who became a legendary national security whistleblower, join the show.A group of retired veteran intelligence, law enforcement, and military professionals yesterday delivered a letter to the Ecuadorian Ambassador to the United States asking that his country allow Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to have internet access and permission for him to receive visitors. Assange has been cut off from the outside world for two weeks now after he commented on Twitter about Catalonian elections. Brian speaks with John about delivering the letter to the embassy yesterday.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Walter Smolarek (sitting in for Brian Becker) and John Kiriakou are joined by Alexander Mercouris, the editor in chief of The Duran, and Daniel Lazare, a journalist and author of “The Frozen Republic,” “The Velvet Coup,” and “America's Undeclared War.”Russia has closed a US consulate and expelled 60 US diplomats, along with 90 diplomats from other countries, matching the US and EU actions earlier this month over the Sergei Skripal case. Meanwhile, British authorities say they’ve pinpointed the location where Russian double agent Skripal and his daughter were poisoned. The front door of the family’s home shows the highest concentration of a nerve agent in the class of Novichok. We’ll also look at developments in the Russiagate investigation. Today, the weekly series “Criminal Injustice” continues, where the hosts discuss the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country. Today’s segment focuses on the school-to-prison pipeline and police killings. Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, and Paul Wright, the founder and executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News, join the show. A historic meeting between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is set for April 27 on the southern side of the Demilitarized Zone. This is the first time since 2007 that leaders of the two countries have met. No agenda has yet been agreed upon. Brian and John speak with Tim Shorrock, a Washington-based investigative journalist who grew up in Japan and South Korea and who is the author of “SPIES FOR HIRE: The Secret World of Outsourced Intelligence.” President Trump fired Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin and replaced him with Admiral Ronny Jackson, the president’s personal physician. Jackson has no management experience whatsoever, but will be charged with cleaning up a department in crisis. Shulkin was the only cabinet holdover from the Obama Administration. Ryan Endicott, an anti-war Iraq veteran and a graduate clinical intern mental health counselor for veterans. A judge in Massachusetts has found a group of 13 pipeline protesters not guilty of crimes related to a protest in which they climbed into holes that had been dug for a high-pressure gas pipeline. The 13 were the first of 198 people set to go on trial, including the daughter of former Vice President Al Gore. The judge said protest against climate change was a legal necessity. Kevin Zeese, the co-coordinator of Popular Resistance whose work is at popularresistance.org, joins Walter and John. The group Health Over Profit for Everyone, in partnership with the Backbone Campaign, is offering the first Single Payer Action Camp to build participants’ skills in strategy, messaging, and direct action to win improved Medicare for all. The camp will take place from April 7-10 in Washington. Mike Pappas, an organizer with the Single Payer Action Camp and a Georgetown University medical student, joins the show.A review of public documents by Politico reveals that the Trump Administration made a conscious decision to focus almost exclusively on Houston after it was hit by Hurricane Harvey last year, and to ignore Puerto Rico, which was harder hit three weeks later by Hurricane Maria. Politico said that disaster recovery experts have expressed shock at the double standard. Brian and John speak with Ruth Beltran, an organizer with Black Lives Matter Tampa.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Jim Kavanagh, the editor of ThePolemicist.net, and Alexander Mercouris, the editor in chief of The Duran. British Prime Minister Theresa May will ask all European Union member countries to expel Russian diplomats in the wake of the poisoning of a Russian double agent in the UK. So far, no other country has agreed to do that, absent any evidence that Russia was involved in the poisoning. Meanwhile, UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said in an interview with Deutsche Welle that the UK laboratory Porton Down has samples of Novichok, rather than the nerve agent being solely in the hands of Russia.Today, the weekly series “Criminal Injustice” continues, where the hosts discuss the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country. Today’s segment focuses on private prisons and prison profit. Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, and Paul Wright, the founder and executive eirector of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News, join the show. Congressional leaders finalized details of the federal budget last night, and a vote could be scheduled as early as today. The agreement does nothing to help Dreamers, those undocumented immigrants brought to this country as children. Meanwhile, President Trump announced that the US will impose new tariffs on China worth $60 billion, raising further fears of a trade war. Brian and John speak with Dave Lindorff, an investigative reporter and a columnist for CounterPunch, and Sputnik news analyst Walter Smolarek. John Dowd, the head of President Trump’s legal team, resigned abruptly this morning, saying that the president was increasingly ignoring his advice. Specifically, Dowd recommended that Trump not agree to be interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller. Is this the beginning of a major strategy shift towards the Mueller investigation? Dan Kovalik, a human rights and labor lawyer who is the author of the soon to be released book “The Plot to Attack Iran,” joins the show. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that he is “really sorry” that Cambridge Analytica, a data firm with ties to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, accessed information from 50 million Facebook users without their knowledge, and may have kept the information even after Facebook insisted they delete it. Zuckerberg now faces a Congressional inquiry, as well as a lot of angry Facebook users. Web developer and technologist Chris Garaffa joins Brian and John. Demonstrations and strikes paralyzed France today as labor unions organized dozens of marches across the country. Transportation, schools, and public services were all impacted. Strikers were answering the call of seven French unions to reject President Emmanuel Macron’s economic policies. Gilbert Mercier, Editor in Chief of News Junkie Post and the author of “The Orwellian Empire,” joins the show.Tuesday’s primary election in Illinois saw a greatly rejuvenated Democratic Party. But it also highlighted potential challenges for the left. Meanwhile, former presidential candidate and senator Bernie Sanders hosted an inequality town hall. Brian and John speak with Jacqueline and Abdus Luqman, co-editor-in-chiefs of Luqman Nation.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Jim Kavanagh, the editor of ThePolemicist.net, and Dr. Piers Robinson, the chairman of the politics, society, and political journalism department at the University of Sheffield and the author of, “Routledge Handbook of Media, Conflict and Security.” Today, the US announced sanctions against Russia for the alleged meddling in 2016 elections, where a year-long investigation has yet to garner hard evidence. And in a reaction to the poisoning of a Russian double agent and his daughter, allegedly using the nerve agent Novichok, Prime Minister Theresa May announced the expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats, whom she called “undeclared intelligence officers.” But what is Novichok? And is it the exclusive domain of the Russians? Where will this anti-Russian fear mongering lead? Today, the weekly series “Criminal Injustice” continues, where the hosts discuss the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country. Today’s segment focuses on private prisons and prison profit. Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, and Paul Wright, the founder and Executive Director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News, join the show. A measure to greatly weaken regulations on big banks has passed the Senate overwhelmingly, rolling back key provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act passed in the wake of the 2008 world economic crisis. 16 Democrats joined Republicans in voting in favor of the bill that now proceeds to the House of Representatives. Brian and John speak with Jack Rasmus, a professor of economics at Saint Mary's College of California and author of “Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression” and jackrasmus.com. Hundreds of thousands of students walked out of their classrooms all across America yesterday. They stayed out for at least 17 minutes to commemorate the 17 lives lost in the Parkland, Florida shooting last month and to protest gun violence, mass incarceration, immigration, and many other issues. Kofi Ademola, an activist and organizer with the Black Lives Matter movement, joins the show. Australia is considering emergency visas “on humanitarian grounds,” for South African white farmers who may have some of their land redistributed post-apartheid. Australia’s home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, said that this group “deserves special protection” in a “civilized country.” , Dr. Gerald Horne, a professor of history at the University of Houston and author of many books, including “From the Barrel of a Gun: The United States and the War against Zimbabwe 1965-1980,” joins Brian and John. Regulators are reportedly on the verge of imposing major penalties on Wells Fargo for misleading practices related to the sale of auto insurance. Will the big banks ever be truly held accountable for their abuses? Steve Keen, the author of “Debunking Economics” and the world’s first crowdfunded economist, whose work is at patreon.com/ProfSteveKeen, joins the show. Cubans voted this weekend in the first round of national elections for parliament. The winners of those elections will go on to choose Cuba’s next president as the country makes a historic leadership transition. Brian and John speak with Gloria La Riva, the director of the Cuba and Venezuela Solidarity Committee.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Anoa Changa, the director of political advocacy and a managing editor of Progressive Army and host of the show The Way With Anoa, and Ted Rall, an award-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist.Pro-gun control protests that began in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida after the mass shooting there have begun to spread to other parts of the country, and politicians are beginning to notice. Florida Senator Marco Rubio found himself scrambling to respond to voters who say he has been consistently weak on gun control. Even President Trump conceded yesterday that he would support several gun control measures, albeit minor ones.Today, the weekly series “Criminal Injustice” continues, where the hosts discuss the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country. Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, and Paul Wright, the founder and Executive Director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News, join the show. The food charity Oxfam is reeling after reports that some of its senior staff members in Haiti trafficked prostitutes, including underage girls. The allegations are not new. Oxfam had earlier been accused of similar behavior in Chad, South Sudan, and Liberia. And just this afternoon, the Haitian government suspended all Oxfam activities in the country. Brian and John speak with Kim Ives, an editor of the newspaper Haiti Liberte. With the 2018 Winter Olympics ending on Sunday, North and South Korea are looking at what could be a breakthrough in their relations. But will pressure from the Trump Administration end any chance of peace talks? Dr. Emanuel Pastereich, director of The Asia Institute in Seoul, Korea, joins the show. Manufacturing giant 3M agreed yesterday to pay the state of Minnesota $850 million for water quality programs after it was found to have illegally dumped dangerous chemicals in Twin Cities waterways. Those chemicals made their way into the groundwater. Deanna White, the State Director for Clean Water Action, and Sean Gosiewski, the executive director of Alliance for Sustainability, join Brian and John. An Idaho lawmaker has introduced a new bill that would allow health insurance carriers to offer non-Obamacare-approved plans, while also imposing new requirements for Medicaid recipients. If passed, many health insurance plans in Idaho would not meet the bare minimum requirements set by Obamacare, plans that some have called “junk insurance.” Leo Cuello, an attorney and the director of health policy for the National Health Law Program, joins the show.Senator Mike Enzi, a conservative Republican from Wyoming and the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, has sent a letter to the Pentagon saying that if the Defense Department can’t manage its own accounting, then perhaps Congress may have to withhold that huge budget increase it just passed. Brian and John speak with Dr. Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a senior adviser to the Center for Defense Information, formerly Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Reagan Administration.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Mike Prysner, a veteran of the Iraq War who became a leading anti-war activist, and Cindy Sheehan, an anti-war activist and journalist whose son Casey was killed during the Iraq War.In our first hour, fifteen years ago yesterday, more than 10 million people around the world participated in mass demonstrations in opposition to the US decision to attack Iraq. It was the largest mass one day mass anti-war mobilization in history. All these years later, the US military is still in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it has armed troops in countless other countries around the world. The hosts take a look at militarism and war and the global forces that are trying to changing course.Then, we continue our weekly series “Criminal Injustice,” where we talk about the most egregious conduct of courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country. Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, and Paul Wright, the founder and Executive Director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News, join the show.Special Counsel Robert Mueller issued indictments today against 13 Russian citizens and three entities, and he announced one charge against an American as part of the Russia probe. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said that there is no evidence of Russia influencing the outcome of the 2016 election. And no American was wittingly involved. Brian and John speak with Jim Kavanagh, the editor of ThePolemicist.net and Jim Jatras, a political analyst and former US diplomat.The bipartisan immigration bill failed in the Senate yesterday, as did President Trump’s unpopular immigration bill, dooming prospects for reform and casting doubt on the future of Dreamers in the country. Angie Kim, community engagement and advocacy coordinator at the National Korean American Service & Education Consortium, and Matt Adams, the legal director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, joins the show.Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrived in Turkey today in an attempt to repair relations between the two NATO allies. Those relations have frayed over allegations that the US supported a coup against Turkish president Erdogan last year, as well as Turkish demands that the US end support of Kurds in Turkey. Shabbir Razvi, he is an economist and political analyst, joins Brian and John.Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai is being investigated by the FCC Inspector General over allegations that he improperly scrapped regulations to benefit conservative Sinclair Broadcasting in its purchase of rival Tribune Media. Tim Karr, the senior director of strategy at Free Press, joins the show.John and Brian look at the worst and most misleading headlines of the week with Steve Patt, an independent journalist whose writings can be found Left Eye on the News.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic Policy and Research.The stock market plunged again losing more than one thousand points at the same time as Congress raced to avert another government shutdown. Instability within the government and in the larger economy has become a hallmark of the crises looming in the United States.In this segment, “Underreported America,” the hosts look at some of the less widely covered stories from around the country. A few days ago, a livery driver in New York City committed suicide in front of City Hall, apparently as a result of his inability to make a living under current taxi and livery regulations. The hosts look at regulations and the advent of ride-sharing. Johnice Earle, a business agent with the Washington DC Taxicab Association, a part of Teamsters Local #922, and the President and Secretary of the DC Taxicab Association, join the show.Today is another installment of “Criminal Injustice,” where the hosts talk about the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country. Brian and John speak with Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, and Paul Wright, the founder and Executive Director of the Human Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News.The US and its allies struck Syrian government forces with air and artillery fire last night, killing more than 100 Syrians. This is the deadliest confrontation in Syria so far that involved the US military. Ambassador Peter Ford, the former UK Ambassador to Syria, joins the show.Negotiations between the Venezuelan government and opposition in the Dominican Republic were indefinitely suspended, as the opposition meets today to decide whether to participate in a controversial presidential election in April, despite the barring of its two strongest candidates. Lucas Koerner, an activist and writer for VenezuelAnalysis.com, joins Brian and John.A federal judge in Oklahoma recently gave a woman guilty of passing bad checks and possessing drugs a choice: Be sterilized or go to prison for a longer stretch. She was sterilized. Eesha Pandit, a writer, activist, and co-founder and managing partner at The Center for Advancing Innovative Policy, joins the show.House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi spoke for eight hours on the floor of the House yesterday about the Dreamers, the longest House speech in American history. Regardless, they still will not be protected in the proposed bipartisan budget deal. Meanwhile, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said that most Dreamers never got their citizenship because they were “lazy.” Brian and John speak with Isabel Garcia, co-founder of Coalición de Derechos Humanos.The Department of Homeland Security’s Cyberwarfare chief said unequivocally yesterday that Russia hacked into the election systems of a number of US states in 2016. The state election commissions, however, said that was simply not true and there was no evidence of any hacking, from Russia or from anywhere else. Joe Lauria, a journalist, political commentator, and author of the book "How I Lost, By Hillary Clinton," joins the show.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by author and journalist Mazda Majidi and Phil Wilayto of the Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality. Demonstrations throughout Iran have been heavily praised by Donald Trump. Who are the demonstrators, what are they fighting for. Is this a spontaneous uprising, or is there something more sinister behind it?South Korea today offered talks with North Korea amid a standoff over its weapons program a day after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said he was open to negotiations, but that his country would push ahead with the production of nuclear weapons. Brian and John speak with Professor Simone Chun, a fellow at the Korea Policy Institute and Hyun Lee, a writer for Zoominkorea.org.California yesterday became the largest state in the country to allow the recreational use of marijuana. The state also enacted one of the most progressive sentencing and criminal justice reforms related to marijuana ever. Alex Friedmann, managing editor of Prison Legal News, joins the show.President Trump ripped Pakistan in his first tweet of 2018, accusing the US ally of “lies and deceit” in its counterterrorism work. Marvin Weinbaum, the Scholar-in-Residence for the Middle East Institute’s Center for Pakistan Studies, joins Brian and John.Congress is back in town and Congressional leaders are at the White House to discuss their legislative agenda. Sputnik News analyst Walter Smolarek, joins the show.The Central Committee of Israel’s governing Likud Party passed a resolution on Sunday calling for the annexation of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank. Journalist and filmmaker Dan Cohen joins Brian and John.Donald Trump took to twitter to implore the Justice Department to pursue charges against top Clinton aide Huma Abedin for mishandling classified information.

Today on Hempresent we are joined by Alex Friedmann Associate Director of Prison Legal News. Alex is the Associate Director of HRDC and managing editor of Prison Legal News. He is responsible for news research, investigative research, editing, advocacy campaigns and other tasks, including litigation support as a paralegal. Alex served 10 years in prisons and jails in Tennessee, including six years at a privately-operated CCA facility. While incarcerated he litigated his own cases in state and federal court; served as the resources editor of Prison Life magazine, a national publication; self-published the Private Corrections Industry News Bulletin; and founded and directed a non-profit prisoner organization called the Pledge Program. He is based out of Nashville, Tennessee.