Hi, I'm Jonathan Kapart, and welcome to Cape Up.

Carol Mason is the president of the prestigious John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

The former Obama Justice Department official and I got into the specifics of criminal justice reform.

What does it mean? What does it mean?

What should it mean?

And what should states in the federal government

really be doing to truly reform the system?

The problem we have now is we think prison is the only way

to hold people accountable when they break the law.

This conversation took place at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen, Colorado on June 29th and

has been edited for content and clarity.

Carol Mason, thank you very much for being on the podcast. Thank you for having me.

So as I said in my introduction, you are the president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Before that, you were at the Department of Justice.

Talk about what you did there.

Well, my prior job was I was assistant attorney general of the Office of Justice Programs, which

is the part of the department that

deals with state and local criminal justice and victims issues and all of the

statistical work and the research work for the Department of Justice. What I used to say is I had at that point a $4 billion purse

to work with state and local governments

in helping create safer communities

and deal with their criminal justice and victims issues.

...