Sasha Abramsky Interview 2007

An interview with Sasha Abramsky author of American Furies: Crime, Punishment, and Vengeance in the Age of Mass Imprisonment. In this expose of U.S. penitentiaries and the communities around them, Abramsky finds that prisons have dumped their age-old goal of rehabilitation, often for political reasons. The new "ideal," unknown to most Americans, is a punitive mandate marked by a drive toward vengeance. Surveying this state of affairs-life sentences for nonviolent crimes, appalling conditions, the growth of private prisons, the treatment of juveniles — Abramsky asks: Does the vengeful impulse ennoble our culture or demean it? What can become of people who are quarantined for years in a violent subculture? California's Three Strikes law typifies the politics that exploit the grief of victims' families and our fears of violent crime. American Furies shows that the ethos of "lock 'em up and throw away the key" has enormous social costs. Abramsky has written for The Atlantic, The Nation, & Rolling Stone. The author of Conned: How Millions Went to Prison, Lost the Vote, and Helped Send George W. Bush to the White House and Hard Time Blues: How Politics Built a Prison Nation, he has also reported on U.S. prisons for Human Rights Watch. Recorded June 26, 2007