Josh interviews Tony Platt who is a Cal Berkeley professor, activist, and author of the book “Beyond These Walls”

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My Guest

Introducing my guest, Tony Platt, for Episode 59 of the Decarceration Nation Podcast

Photo by Hasain Rasheed

Tony Platt is a distinguished affiliate scholar at the Center for the study of law and society at the University of California Berkeley. He has been the author of many books, over 150 essays, and has taught across the University of California system as well as a well known activist and public intellectual. He is the author of the recent book “Beyond These Walls: Rethinking Crime and Punishment in the United States”

Transcript

A full PDF transcript of Episode 59 of the Decarceration Nation Podcast.

Notes From Episode 59

Mr. Platt includes this short poem in emails about the book:

Beyond these walls

– walls that contain millions of our brothers and sisters,
walls that divide us,
walls that constrain our idealism,
walls that partition our ideas,
and walls that cut us off from the past
– sweet freedom still faintly calls.
The quote from Osacar Wilde was from De Profundis.

“Many men on their release carry their prison about with them into the air, and hide it as a secret disgrace in their hearts, and at length, like poor poisoned things, creep into some hole and die.”

The reference to Kafka’s penal colony was to “In the Penal Colony” by Franz Kafka.
The Orwell reference was to 1984.
The Cory Booker criminal justice reform proposal suggests broadened commutation and pardon powers.
The Elizabeth Warren criminal justice reform proposal suggests banning predatory prison privatization and would end private prisons.

Decarceration Nation is a podcast about radically re-imagining America’s criminal justice system. If you enjoy the podcast we hope you will subscribe and leave a rating or review on iTunes. We will try to answer all honest questions or comments that are left on this site. We hope fans will help support Decarceration Nation by supporting us from Patreon.

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