Behind Barrs (with Steve Martin, the prison reformer)

Steve Martin is a leading prison reform advocate who served as the court-appointed monitor of Rikers Island prison complex in New York. He’s also the co-author of “Texas Prisons: The Walls Came Tumbling Down.”


Q&A
-       Attorney General Bill Barr’s letter summarizing Mueller’s principal conclusions
-       SDNY’s criminal complaint filed against Michael Avenatti
THE INTERVIEW
The other Steve Martin
-       Steve Martin, the actor
-       Steve Martin’s iconic arrow hat
Rikers Island
-       An article from the NYT, “What is Rikers Island?”
-       An article from the New Yorker on the plan to close Rikers
SDNY & Rikers
-       SDNY’s 2014 report on the excessive use of force against adolescent inmates housed at Rikers Island
-       An article from the NYT on SDNY’s decision to join a lawsuit against New York City over the conditions at Rikers
-       The consent decree Nunez v. City of New York
-       An article in the WSJ reporting Steve Martin’s appointment, plus a list of his monitor reports
The Stanford Prison Experiment
-       Background on the Stanford Prison Experiment  
Death penalty
-       Furman v. Georgia, 1972
-       A 1997 article from Mother Jones on conditions at Texas death row prisons, including the Work Capable Program
Solitary confinement
-       An article from the NYT detailing a report that compares solitary confinement policies in Texas to torture, plus the report
Books
-       David Garland, “Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory”
-       Mikhail Khodorkovsky, “My Fellow Prisoners”
-       Shane Bauer, “American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey Into the Business of Punishment” and a report from NPR about the book
-       Gresham Skyes, “The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison”
First Step Act
-       The First Step Act, and an article from Vox on the law
-       An article from the ACLU on women’s health in prisons, and the proposed reforms through the First Step Act
Corrections Officers
-       A California study that found correctional officers at high risk of PTSD
Violence and mortality in jails
-       A 2016 study by NYC comptroller that found violence is increasing in city jails, despite a shrinking population
-       Bureau of Justice Statistics 2016 report on Mortality in Local Jails, 2000-2014.
Private prisons
-       2018 report from The Sentencing Project on private prisons
Sentencing disparities
-       The Sentencing Project on racial disparity in the criminal justice system, plus a 2017 report from the United States Sentencing Commission on demographic differences in sentencing
Recidivism
-       2018 update from Bureau of Justice Statistics on recidivism rates
BUTTON
-       www.DoingJusticeBook.com