Crosscut Tout: 'Inequality in the Age of Mass Incarceration' at Town Hall, Oct 13

Harvard professor Bruce Western (Punishment and Inequality in America) and a panel of local speakers discuss the impact of the "prison boom" that has placed 2 million Americans behind bars and 5 million more under correctional supervision.

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Harvard professor Bruce Western (Punishment and Inequality in America) and a panel of local speakers discuss the impact of the "prison boom" that has placed 2 million Americans behind bars and 5 million more under correctional supervision.

About criminal justice in the U.S., Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy (hardly a liberal) has said, “Our resources are misspent, our punishments too severe, our sentences too long.” Bruce Western, professor of sociology at Harvard, put flesh on the bones of such generalizations in his award-winning study, Punishment and Inequality in America.

Western will speak at Town Hall this Thursday on “Inequality in the Age of Mass Incarceration.” His book, which was praised in reviews for general readers as well as for academics, documents the high social, political, and economic costs of today’s incarceration policies and practices.

With 2 million Americans behind bars and 5 million more under correctional supervision, Western explores the ways in which the surging rate of incarceration in the U.S. (the highest rate in the world) deepens poverty, widens racial divisions, and permanently wounds vast numbers of American children left to grow up far away from an imprisoned parent.

A panel discussion will follow Western’s talk, featuring Larry Gossett, King County Council chair; Doug Merlino, author of The Hustle; Leno Rose-Avila, Latino Community Fund; Eileen Farley, Northwest Defenders Association; Cheryl E. Strange, Washington Department of Corrections; and several other participants.

Seattle’s Post-Prison Education Program is hosting the evening. Co-sponsors include Real Change and the League of Education Voters.

Thursday, October 13, 2011, 7:30 – 9:00 p.m., Town Hall Seattle, 1119 8th Avenue, Tickets $5 at Brown Paper Tickets or (800) 838-3006, or at the door starting at 6:30.

  

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