Decarceration Nation Podcast (with Josh and Joel)

Welcome to the new podcast "Decarceration Nation" which I am co-hosting with my friend Joel.

We will be focusing on the need for serious criminal justice reform and prison reform. We attempt to answer the question, do we want to live in an Incarcerated Nation or create a Decarceration Nation.

This week we discussed Pre-Sentencing Investigations and Indigent Defense.

Josh and Joel talk about pre-sentencing investigations and indigent defense in depth.

The book "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee is available at bookstores and the movie starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch is considered a modern classic.

When I discuss Pre-Sentencing Investigations with other formerly incarcerated folks, they had similar experiences to the ones we discuss. PSI's are incredibly under-covered in the criminal justice literature. This CJCJ overview does a good job of covering the basics.

This St. John's Law Review article talks about many of the prejudicial elements in a pre-sentencing investigation.

Here is the Ogletree article that Joel references throughout the episode.

And this Burkhart article does a good job of explaining how overworked and understaffed public defenders are.

The sociological study "American Apartheid" and the book "When Affirmative Action Was White" are available at bookstores.

You can subscribe to Decarceration Nation from iTunes or Stitcher or anywhere podcasts are aggregated (and if you like the Pod please leave ratings and reviews). Most exciting, we are now available on Spotify too.

If you want to support the Decarceration Nation podcast, become go to my Patreon page and sign up for being a Decarceration Nation-Builder (kind of corny, I know). Running the podcast costs us money, so every dollar helps us get the news out about what needs to change in our criminal justice system.

Thanks for listening, next week will be an episode about Pre-Sentencing Investigations and Indigent Defense.