Room 18A-B

The idea that we need to reform this country’s criminal justice system is finally gaining bipartisan support in Washington, thanks in part to social movements like Black Lives Matter. But even if we agree that something must be done, we sharply disagree—even on the left—about what reform should look like. At what point must we examine the structural causes of crime? Can we reduce the number of prisoners without first addressing poverty?

In the most recent issue of Dissent, Michael Javen Fortner, Academic Director of Urban Studies at Murphy Institute and author of Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment and Marie Gottschalk, professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, author of Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics, and member of the New Labor Forum editorial board, outline opposing visions of how we created mass incarceration, and how we should think about ending it.

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