Prisoner Release Programs and Public Safety
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2010-03-08/prisoner-release-programs-and-public-safety
Across the country, states have dealt with budget pressures by reducing their prison populations. But early release and expanded parole programs have put more convicted felons back on the streets, fueling growing controversy and concerns about public safety.
Guests
Abbe Smith
professor of law and co-director of the Criminal Justice Clinic and E. Barrett Prettyman Fellowship program at Georgetown University; author of "Case of a Lifetime."
Patricia Caruso
director of the Michigan Department of Corrections. She is also the president of the Association of State Correctional Administrators.
Scott Burns
executive director, National District Attorneys Association.
Adam Gelb
director, the Public Safety Performance Project at The Pew Center on the States.
Nina Salarno-Ashford
lawyer and victims rights advocate.
Comments
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My husband and I listened to this program live on a very fuzzy connection as we drove through Northern NM this past Spring. I was happy to find it archived here. I'm a mother of a 23 year old son in prison for the second time for what for anyone else would be a minor non jail time offense for which he is now serving two years. This extreme punitive approach is very costly to taxpayers and does nothing to rehabilitate him or make the country a safer place as it ensures his unemployability and increased anger and despair when he is released. I look forward to more humane sentencing as well as quality mental health and substance abuse treatment, prerelease education and life skills training, as well as job skills and employment programs. These are real people in there with hopes and dreams and stories of trauma and tragedy of their own. This is being truly pro-life and not treating offenders as lower forms of life who are all dangerous and hopeless cases.