Podcast | How power and prejudice have shaped the American incarceration system

Implicit bias and overzealous prosecutors have resulted in an unfair system. Emily Bazelon and Jennifer Eberhardt offer some solutions to fix it.

Jennifer Eberhardt

Jennifer Eberhardt talks about her book, Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do. (Image from video by Michael Fox/Crosscut)

The United States incarcerates more people per capita than any other country in the world. And a vastly disproportionate number of the people we lock up are people of color. A growing bipartisan movement wants reform, but how do we transform our nation's corrections system with an eye toward justice? For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we've invited two authors with expertise in the fields of criminal justice and racial bias to discuss the many ways our incarceration practices impact some communities more than others, and what it will take to change that system. Jennifer Eberhardt is a professor of psychology at Stanford University and the author of Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do. Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine and the author of Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration. This conversation was recorded on May 4, 2019, at Seattle University as part of the Crosscut Festival.

Topics:

About the Hosts