The U.S. has the highest rates of incarceration in the world.

Once people get out of prison, the hope is they'll be productive members of society.

But all too often, that doesn't happen.

In this episode, we meet two men who want to fix America's flawed reentry process.

This is Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Richard Davies.

And I'm Ashley Melntite.

Darren Swenson is a former prison warden who has spent his career in corrections.

Georgetown University Professor Mark Howard is a reformer who has long campaigned for the rights of incarcerated people.

They were brought together by the Policy Resolution Group Convergence.

You'll find out more about them later.

At first, each man was nervous and a little wary of the other.

But they actually had much more in common than they realised.

Richard kicks us off.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of people are released from jails and prisons in this country.

And at the current rate, about four in ten former inmates are back again behind bars within three years.

That's a very sad statistic that represents an enormous amount of failure in pain, doesn't it, Mark?

Absolutely. I think it's very troubling and I think we all need to think about solutions to the problem.

I think that the initial reaction that many people have is to blame the people themselves who wind up going back.

And perhaps in some cases, that's true and I never want to take away a person's responsibility for a crime that's committed.

But I also think that we need to think about the conditions of confinement so that when people are incarcerated,

we can find better solutions that will help them succeed when they come home.

Yeah, I would totally agree with Mark. I think that it's a very sad statistic that we're not achieving the outcomes that we're looking for to help people make a successful reentry when they're released from incarceration.

...