Confronting Mass Incarceration
An interview with Prof. Rachel Barkow
CLE Credit — Approved in 4 States
PODCAST STYLE 🎧
The U.S. has nearly 25% of the world’s prison population and incarcerates more people than any other country. China, with over four times as many people, comes in a distant second. In this interview, Professor Rachel Barkow of NYU Law goes beyond the numbers and discusses the root causes that have led to what some now call our “mass incarceration crisis.” Barkow takes an evidence-based approach and explains what has worked and where we, as a nation, have failed in the name of justice.
Watch Part 2 of Confronting Mass Incarceration.
About Prof. Rachel Barkow
“When you see a response to criminal activity in the United States, issues of racial bias are never far behind.”
Rachel Barkow is the vice dean and Segal Family Professor of Regulatory Law and Policy and the Director of the Center on the Administration of Criminal Law at NYU Law. Barkow is a leading expert in criminal, administrative, and constitutional law. Prior to joining the faculty at NYU, Barkow was an attorney at Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, & Figel in Washington D.C. Barkow is also a former law clerk to Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the D.C. Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2013, she was confirmed by the Senate as a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission. She is an active member of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office Conviction Integrity Policy Advisory Panel since 2010. She co-founded a clemency resource center at NYU Law that achieved sentencing commutations for 96 incarcerated people.
Barkow’s scholarship focuses on the application of administrative and constitutional law theory to the administration of criminal justice. Her latest book, published in 2019, is Prisoners of Politics: Breaking the Cycle of Mass Incarceration on the political dynamics of mass incarceration and how administrative law can be used to fix it.
