Incarceration

“Why is this kid in here?” one man says of the girl he adopted, who lived with her mom in prison until several years ago.

The number of women going to jail in Mexico is on the rise. Many are single moms trying to support their families.

Back in 1999, Aaron Glasscock was just 22-years-old and two months shy of graduating from college when he was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for a nonviolent drug offense: conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine. Nearly 20 years later, Glasscock is out of prison, as his sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama.

Charlie de Tar, PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-founder of Between the Bars: Human Stories From Prison, joins us to explain how the project hopes to give prisoners a voice and increase the transparency of the prison system.

A group of panelists at this year’s South by Southwest interactive media conference in Austin, Texas, presented an idea to improve the U.S. prison system with smart phone technology. One of the attendees says the idea could reduce the levels of recidivism among low-level criminals.