Between The Lines - Nicole Porter: Record number of in the U.S. prisoners incarcerated, and reform programs underway (Week Ending 3/11/11)

Award-winning Investigative Journalist Robert Parry (1949-2018)

Award-winning investigative journalist and founder/editor of ConsortiumNews.com, Robert Parry has passed away. His ground-breaking work uncovering Reagan-era dirty wars in Central America and many other illegal and immoral policies conducted by successive administrations and U.S. intelligence agencies, stands as an inspiration to all in journalists working in the public interest.

Robert had been a regular guest on our Between The Lines and Counterpoint radio shows -- and many other progressive outlets across the U.S. over four decades.

His penetrating analysis of U.S. foreign policy and international conflicts will be sorely missed, and not easily replaced. His son Nat Parry writes a tribute to his father: Robert Parry’s Legacy and the Future of Consortiumnews.

Thank you for donating

If you've made a donation and wish to receive thank you gifts for your donation, be sure to send us your mailing address via our Contact form.

See our thank you gifts for your donation.

The Resistance Starts Now!

Between The Lines' coverage and resource compilation of the Resistance Movement

"The man who predicted Trump presidential win now says Trump impeachment could happen," AM Joy with Joy Reid, MSNBC, Jan. 21, 2018
"Sketchy Kazakh money finds its way into Trump dealings," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Red flags seen in many Trump real estate deals," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Secret Money: How Trump Made Millions Selling Condos To Unknown Buyers," BuzzFeed, Jan. 12, 2018
"The Scandals of Donald Trump: Presidential Edition," The Atlantic, May 15, 2017
"Here's what we know so far about Team Trump's ties to Russian interests," Washington Post's ongoing compilation
"What Comey Was Investigating, Explained," The Moscow Project, Center for American Progress

"Donald Trump's Financial Ties to Russian Oligarchs and Mobsters Detailed In Explosive New Documentary from the Netherlands," Dutch TV documentary, Alternet.org, May 12, 2017
Ongoing compilation of Trump's creeping authoritarianism," MotherJones.com
Full resource list ...

SPECIAL REPORT: "The Resistance - Women's March 2018 - Hartford, Connecticut" Jan. 20, 2018

Selected speeches from the Women's March in Hartford, Connecticut 2018, recorded and produced by Scott Harris

SPECIAL REPORT: "No Fracking Waste in CT!" Jan. 14, 2018

Jen Siskind Jennifer Siskind, local coordinator for Food and Water Watch, describes the campaign to stop fracking waste in Connecticut, which so far has led to fracking waste bans in 34 towns around the state. Interviewed by Richard Hill on Mic Check, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT

SPECIAL REPORT: "Resistance Round Table: The Unraveling Continues..." Jan. 13, 2018

Lindsay Kanaly The panel discusses Trump's long history of racism and the Republican voter suppression juggernaut confronting Democrats leading up to the 2018 elections. Special guest: Lindsay Kanaly, a lead organizer of the Women's Marches planned for Jan. 20, 2018. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill on Resistance Roundtable, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT.

SPECIAL REPORT: "Capitalism to the ash heap?" Richard Wolff, Jan. 2, 2018

Richard Wolff, Economics professor Richard Wolff declares U.S. capitalism to be beyond repair and suggests the need for a radical alternative. Interviewed by Richard Hill

SPECIAL REPORT: Maryn McKenna, author of "Big Chicken", Dec. 7, 2017

Maryn McKenna, investigative journalist and author of Big Chicken, talks about the widespread use and dangers of antibiotics in commercial poultry, beef and fruit production. Interview by Bill Duesing, Richard Hill and Guy Beardsly on WPKN's Organic Farm Stand.

SPECIAL REPORT: Nina Turner's address, Working Families Party Awards Banquet, Dec. 14, 2017

Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, talks about the fight ahead for progressives as she receives the Working Families Organization Award for Exceptional Leadership Towards Advancing Progress. The event was held in Meriden, CT. Produced by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017

Working Families Party of CT talks strategy and issues for 2018.
Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Working Families Party of Connecticut, discusses the state's electoral landscape and lays out the issues and strategies that could lead to progressive victories in 2018. Interviewed by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Dec. 9, 2017

Disturbing developments in the Trump/Republican Agenda
Focus on the tax bill, destruction of our public lands, North Korea and Trump's private CIA. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill. Special guest: Jo Macallero of Rise and Resist.

SPECIAL REPORT: On Tyranny - one year later, Nov. 28, 2017

Professor Timothy Snyder, author of the highly acclaimed resistance manual On Tyranny, discusses his book and offers a fresh assessment of the state of our beleaguered republic. Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale, is introduced by Stanley Heller, administrator of Promoting Enduring Peace, a Connecticut-based organization that sponsored this event at the United Church Parish House in New Haven on Nov. 28. A brief interview with Snyder conducted by WPKN radio producer, Richard Hill, follows his talk.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Nov. 12, 2017

Lynne Ide, director of program and policy with the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, talks about the current state of health care coverage in Connecticut. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017

Focus on the Republican tax plan, the just-released autopsy on the Democratic Party, and Internet censorship by Google, Facebook and Youtube. Including an interview with Hilary Grant, a lead organizer with Action Together Connecticut, who discusses the local results of the recent election, with hosts Richard Hill, Scott Harris and Ruth Baumgartner WPKN producers

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Two leaders from Redneck Revolt, an anti-racist, anti-capitalist movement, talk about their work organizing with white working class people in Suffolk County, New York. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, describes the extent of -- and motives underlying -- the vast US network of military bases around the globe. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resisting U.S. JeJu Island military base in South Korea, Oct. 24, 2017

Joyakol, South Korean peace activist and singer, discusses the crisis on the Korean peninsula and focuses on the resistance to the U.S. huge military base being constructed on Jeju Island. The event was sponsored by the Greater New Haven Peace Council and this audio was recorded by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.
Joyakol discusses Americans' biggest misconceptions about the conflict between North and South Korea and the U.S., Interview by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.

SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven

John Allen, founding director of the New Haven Pride Center, Connecticut, talks about his new LGBTQ television show, Out in New Haven, which presents a range of political and cultural issues to the community. Interviewed by Richard Hill on WPKN's Rainy Day Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018.

2017 Gandhi Peace Awards

Promoting Enduring Peace presented its Gandhi Peace Award jointly to renowned consumer advocate Ralph Nader and BDS founder Omar Barghouti on April 23, 2017.

Subscribe to our Weekly Summary & receive our FREE Resist Trump window cling

(Car window cling)

Email us with your mailing address at contact@btlonline.org to receive our "Resist Trump/Resist Hate" car window cling!

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE...

who helped make our 25th anniversary with Jeremy Scahill a success!

For those who missed the event, or were there and really wanted to fully absorb its import, here it is in video

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 1 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 2 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Between The Lines on Stitcher

Between The Lines Presentation at the Left Forum 2016

"How Do We Build A Mass Movement to Reverse Runaway Inequality?" with Les Leopold, author of "Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice,"May 22, 2016, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, 860 11th Ave. (Between 58th and 59th), New York City. Between The Lines' Scott Harris and Richard Hill moderated this workshop. Listen to the audio/slideshows and more from this workshop.

Listen to audio of the plenary sessions from the weekend.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker "Dirty Wars"

Listen to the full interview (30:33) with Jeremy Scahill, an award-winning investigative journalist with the Nation Magazine, correspondent for Democracy Now! and author of the bestselling book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," about America's outsourcing of its military. In an exclusive interview with Counterpoint's Scott Harris on Sept. 16, 2013, Scahill talks about his latest book, "Dirty Wars, The World is a Battlefield," also made into a documentary film under the same title, and was nominated Dec. 5, 2013 for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category.

Listen to Scott Harris Live on WPKN Radio

Between The Lines' Executive Producer Scott Harris hosts a live, weekly talk show, Counterpoint, from which some of Between The Lines' interviews are excerpted. Listen every Monday evening from 8 to 10 p.m. EDT at www.WPKN.org (Follows the 5-7 minute White Rose Calendar.)

Counterpoint in its entirety is archived after midnight ET Monday nights, and is available for at least a year following broadcast in WPKN Radio's Archives.

You can also listen to full unedited interview segments from Counterpoint, which are generally available some time the day following broadcast.

Subscribe to Counterpoint bulletins via our subscriptions page.

BTL Blog

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Special Programming

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Progressive Resources

A compilation of activist and news sites with a progressive point of view

Share this content:

|

Subscribe to BTL

Podcasts: direct or via iTunes

Subscribe to Program Summaries, Interview Transcripts or Counterpoint via email or RSS feed

If you have other questions regarding subscriptions, feeds or podcasts/mp3s go to our Audio Help page.

Between The Lines Blog

Stay connected to BTL

Learn how to support our efforts!

Tweets by @BTLRadioNews

State Governments Implementing Reforms to Reduce Record U.S Prison Population

Posted March 2, 2011

Real Audio MP3

Interview with Nicole Porter, state advocacy coordinator for the Sentencing Project, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

prison The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, which currently stands at 2.3 million people. By comparison, the incarceration rate in China was 186 per 100,000 in 2009, while in the U.S., the rate was 743 per 100,000.

But in recent years, officials have begun seriously considering ways to reduce that number for a variety of reasons, including court orders to alleviate overcrowding, budget deficits and the introduction of more humane and effective methods of crime reduction. After decades of steady increases, 24 states achieved a decrease in their inmate population in 2009, leading to 48,000 fewer inmates in state custody from 2008 to 2009, although the number in federal custody rose 3.4 percent to 208,000 over that same year.

Between The Lines' Melinda Tuhus spoke with Nicole Porter, state advocacy coordinator for the Sentencing Project, which promotes reform in sentencing law and alternatives to incarceration. She discusses some successful prison reform programs, and considers the policy changes that are likely to reduce the prison population further in coming years.

NICOLE PORTER: We've been tracking these trends for awhile, and we've noticed since about 1999, there has been some exploration among state legislatures in some parts of the country to address their large prison systems. But certainly, in the last few years with the financial crisis and states really starting to look at where they can cut costs, looking at correctional systems is the primary way to do that because they have grown exponentially in the past 40 years and lawmakers have looked at ways to cut costs and some of that involves sentencing reform in terms of slowing down the number of people who enter prison and how long they stay there.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Can you say anything specific about the different reasons the prison population has declined at least a little in the past few years? I know California is under a court order to reduce overcrowding and it also has a gigantic budget deficit.

NICOLE PORTER: In some respects in California, it's been because of the court order, and because that discussion has been waged in the court, there's been a lot of examination of how California can address its large prison system and the overcrowding that's resulted from its sentencing policies and the fact that the state just doesn't have enough resources to manage such a large prison system. So one of the things that California is looking at is changing sentencing reform and looking for ways to cut costs. In a state like California, the reality is there are too many people in prison and many of those people aren't there because they've committed violent crimes. Sure, that's a large part of the population, but it's not the only part. California has a large number of parolees who revoke back to prison on an annual basis, not because they've committed a new crime, but because they have difficulty managing the conditions of their parole that have to do with paying fines, being employed -- there are all sorts of different conditions that someone on parole supervision has to comply with.

And many times, for the people who are on parole and get returned back to prison, it's not because they've broken a new law; it's because they haven't been able to comply with the rules of their supervison. At the Sentencing Project, it's not that we say people shouldn't be held accountable for their crimes; they should be, but states like California and other states that are really struggling with the budget deficit -- and part of that is because they have really bloated prison systems -- have to look at why are we incarcerating people? In this country, we lock people up for really long periods of time for, in many cases, low-level offenses, and for people who revoke from parole, not even necessarily new offenses.

BETWEEN THE LINES: If 24 states reduced their population, did any stand out as particularly successful at doing that?

NICOLE PORTER: We put out a report last year called, "Downscaling Prisons," that looked at four states -- New York, New Jersey, Kansas and Michigan -- a mix of administrative and legislative reforms that they had implemented since 1999. And in those states, they each decreased their prison populations as a result of different approaches. In New York, they really reformed their Rockefeller drug laws a few years ago and changed the way certain prison-bound offenders were sent to prison, so they identified alternatives for certain prison-bound offenders. New York, between 1999 and 2009, was able to reduce its prison population by 20 percent.

In Michigan, they really strengthened parole and alternatives to incarceration for people on parole who were revoking back to prison because they couldn't comply with conditions of their parole because in many states, including Michigan, a sizable population of the number of people who enter prison each year are entering because of parole revocations. So Michigan looked at that and really changed the way parole was structured in that state and as a result of that was able to reduce the number of people who were returning to prison because of parole revocation.

Kansas has a sentencing commission and they restructured their state sentencing guidelines. Not all states have sentencing commissions, but Kansas does, so that commission sought to divert the number of people convicted of drug possession to mandatory treatment rather than prison, and then they eliminated sentencing enhancements for people with prior drug possession offenses. And in New Jersey, they also strengthened alternatives for prison-bound people, so rather than sending certain people to prison, they identified alternative sanctions for them, specifically, the attorney general revised plea negotiation guidelines and allows now certain open pleas in lower level drug zone cases. Again, that gives judges discretion and really allows for alternatives to prison for certain drug offenders.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Do you think in the past two or three years, the states' fiscal crises have been a factor in reducing the prison population?

NICOLE PORTER: We were looking at this period starting in 1999 and states were certainly implementing reforms even before the recession. I would say because of the current fiscal crisis, that has sort of opened a window for reform in states that weren't looking at this prior to the current fiscal crisis. So we haven't compared post-recession era to pre-, but certainly there's been more activity in recent years among states driven a lot by fiscal concerns.

Contact The Sentencing Project's Washington, D.C. office at (202) 628-0871 or visit their website at sentencingproject.org.