Parole and Prison's Revolving Door

Parole and Prison's Revolving Door

Top of Mind with Julie Rose - Radio Archive, Episode 696 , Segment 4

Episode: Gay Wedding Cake Case, Lack of Innovation, Better Auto-Focus

  • Dec 5, 2017
  • 20:30 mins

Guest: Shawn Bushway, PhD, Professor, Public Administration and Policy, University of Albany, State University of New York Prison has a revolving door. More than half of people released from prison in a given year in the US will return within five years. Why is that? Are felons just criminal by nature and inclined to reoffend no matter what? Or is there something about going to prison that makes it harder to keep on the straight and narrow after release? Both are explanations sociologists have looked into. Now a group of them has come up with a different answer – the parole system that prisoners enter when they leave prison is what drives the revolving door back behind bars.

Other Segments

Predicting Rainfall During Climate Change

14 MINS

Guest: Michael Bliss Singer, PhD, Researcher, Earth Research Institute, UC Santa Barbara and Lecturer, School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Cardiff University All across the arid West, there are dry streambeds that are pretty much always dry. You’ve probably walked over them without noticing, if you’ve spent much time in Nevada or Arizona. But, if you’ve ever been caught in the desert during a summer thunderstorm, you know how fast that dry streambed can turn into a rush of water. These “runoff events” can cause lots of damage if there are homes nearby, but they’re also a critical part of the desert ecosystem and important for rivers downstream.  Hydrologists at UC Santa Barbara’s Earth Research Institute have been trying to understand how drought and climate change are affecting this thunderstorm-runoff equation in the American West.

Guest: Michael Bliss Singer, PhD, Researcher, Earth Research Institute, UC Santa Barbara and Lecturer, School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Cardiff University All across the arid West, there are dry streambeds that are pretty much always dry. You’ve probably walked over them without noticing, if you’ve spent much time in Nevada or Arizona. But, if you’ve ever been caught in the desert during a summer thunderstorm, you know how fast that dry streambed can turn into a rush of water. These “runoff events” can cause lots of damage if there are homes nearby, but they’re also a critical part of the desert ecosystem and important for rivers downstream.  Hydrologists at UC Santa Barbara’s Earth Research Institute have been trying to understand how drought and climate change are affecting this thunderstorm-runoff equation in the American West.