This week, as Trump promises to make America great again.. again, I want to find out more about the prison system. In some states, up to 10% of budgets are allocated to correctional facilities, and yet incarceration rates and the costs continue to rise, while issues around systemic racism and politics continue to plague its reputation and put question marks over its effectiveness. In this episode, I want to know… why does America have so many prisons?
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Special guest for this episode:
- Nicholas Grant, a historian of the twentieth century United States at the University of East Anglia, researching race, internationalism and transnational activism.
- Heather Ann Thompson, a historian at the University of Michigan, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy. She was also the historical consultant for the Oscar-nominated documentary ATTICA.