New York state has recently committed more funding for prison education programs, but Georgetown Professor Marc Morjé Howard says the whole nation needs to change its approach to prison sentencing and rehabilitation. Howard argues even people convicted of violent crimes should have a way to earn their release from prison.
"It's an easy case to make for non-violent drug offenders, but they only constitute 17% of the American prison population," Howard tells WNYC's Jami Floyd. "We need to look at some harder questions, at people who did commit a violent crime, but often long ago. And that brings up the question of rehabilitation and reform."
Howard's book out this summer is called Unusually Cruel: Prisons, Punishment and the Real American Exceptionalism.