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To the Point

The politics of prison reform

To the Point

KCRW

News

4.4583 Ratings

🗓️ 31 May 2018

⏱️ 45 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Prison reform is moving in Red States, Blue States and (maybe) on Capitol Hill. But America still incarcerates more people than any other country-- including China. Meantime, the Trump White House is divided. Jared Kushner is pushing sentence reform, while Attorney General Jeff Sessions wants to stay “tough on crime.” What are the prospects for much needed change?

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello again, I'm Orban Alney.

0:04.8

The rate of incarceration in the United States is the lowest in 20 years.

0:10.1

Even so, this country has more people in prison than any of the world's other 200 countries,

0:16.4

more prisoners than China, which has a population four times as large.

0:20.7

That's a consequence of America's so-called War on Crime, which has a population four times as large. That's a consequence of America's

0:22.2

so-called War on Crime, which has gone on for several decades. Now there's a growing consensus

0:28.3

in favor of change. But that doesn't mean there's agreement on just what to do. We'll start with

0:34.1

the Trump administration. Retired Army Major General Mark Inch has been forced out recently as director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

0:43.1

He was a casualty of an ongoing battle between Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

0:50.4

Glenn Thrush is covering the story for the New York Times.

0:53.1

Glenn, good to have you with us.

0:54.7

Good to be here. You've described this as an ideological tug of war. What do you mean?

1:00.6

Well, Jared Kushner, who has a very broad portfolio. He's obviously the president's son and the son of Charles Kushner, a former federal inmate who served time for fraud and for

1:12.8

attempting to entrap his own brother in a bizarre scheme about 10 years ago, is really passionate

1:18.9

about reform and is passionate about sentencing reform, which very much puts him on the same

1:24.8

pages as the Obama administration.

1:32.7

But early on in 2017, he got together with Jeff Sessions,

1:35.2

who had been recently appointed Attorney General by the president.

1:39.0

And Sessions, who happened by coincidence to have covered in Alabama when I covered some corrections issues in Alabama, is very much the opposite.

1:43.8

Sessions is very acutely aware of the optics of being

1:47.0

too nice to prisoners. He's an old-fashioned sort of law and order person. Couldn't be any more

1:53.2

on the other end of the spectrum than Kushner. And they agreed sort of a gentleman's agreement

...

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