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"No democracy has ever incarcerated as many people as the United States. To get its incarceration rate down to the global average, the US would have to release 3 in 4 people in its prisons today.

The effects on Black Americans have been especially severe — Black people make up 12% of the US population but 33% of its prison population. In the early 2000’s when incarceration reached its peak, the US government estimated that 32% of black boys would go to prison at some point in... their lives, 5.5 times the figure for whites.

Contrary to popular understanding, nonviolent drug offenses account for less than a fifth of the incarcerated population. The only way to get its incarceration rate near the global average will be to shorten prison sentences for so-called ‘violent criminals’ — a politically toxic idea. But could we change that?

According to today’s guest, Professor James Forman Jr — a former public defender in Washington DC, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, and now a professor at Yale Law School — there are two things we have to do to make that happen.

First, he thinks we should lose the term ‘violent offender’, and maybe even ‘violent crime’. When you say ‘violent crime’, most people immediately think of murder and rape — but they’re only a small fraction of the crimes that the law deems as violent.

In reality, the crime that puts the most people in prison in the US is robbery. And the law says that robbery is a violent crime whether a weapon is involved or not. By moving away from the catch-all category of ‘violent criminals’ we can judge the risk posed by individual people more sensibly

Second, he thinks we should embrace the restorative justice movement. Instead of asking “What was the law? Who broke it? What should the punishment be”, restorative justice asks “Who was harmed? Who harmed them? And what can we as a society, including the person who committed the harm, do to try to remedy that harm?”...

That’s just one topic of many covered in today’s episode, with much of the conversation focusing on Forman’s 2018 book Locking Up Our Own — an examination of the historical origins of contemporary criminal legal practices in the US, and his experience setting up a charter school for at-risk youth in DC.

Rob and James also discuss:

• The biggest problems in policing and the criminal legal system today
• How racism shaped the US criminal legal system
• How Black America viewed policing through the 20th century
• How class divisions fostered a ‘tough on crime’ approach
Important recent successes
• How you can have a positive impact as a public prosecutor

Producer: Keiran Harris."

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Contrary to popular understanding, nonviolent drug offenders make up less than a fifth of the prison population. Ending mass incarceration will require shorter prison sentences for so-called 'violent criminals' — a politically toxic idea. But could we change that?
80000hours.org
James Forman Jr on reducing the cruelty of the US criminal legal system
Contrary to popular understanding, nonviolent drug offenders make up less than a fifth of the prison population. Ending mass incarceration will require shorter prison sentences for so-called 'violent criminals' — a politically toxic idea. But could we change that?
Contrary to popular understanding, nonviolent drug offenders make up less than a fifth of the prison population. Ending mass incarceration will require shorter prison sentences for so-called 'violent criminals' — a politically toxic idea. But could we change that?

"...Today’s guest, Ben Garfinkel, Research Fellow at Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, supports the continued expansion of AI safety as a field and believes working on AI is among the very best ways to have a positive impact on the long-term future. But he also believes the classic AI risk arguments have been subject to insufficient scrutiny given their level of investment.

In particular, the case for working on AI if you care about the long-term future has often been ma...

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