Mass Incarceration and the Prospects for Reform
THURSDAY, 4/5, 5:00pm, Cohen Hall G17 at the University of Pennsylvania
The Urban Studies Program invites you to its twenty-eighth annual lecture:
“Mass Incarceration and the Prospects for Reform”
Bruce Western, Sociology, Director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard
Bruce Western’s research finds that the penal system has become a common presence in the lives of poor Americans, with lasting effects on their life chances, showing how serving time in prison reduces earnings, skews statistics on wages and employment, and destabilizes families. His talk will focus on the imperative and dilemmas of reforming incarceration policy. In his book “Punishment and Inequality in America” (Russell Sage Foundation, 2006), Western examines the role that incarceration plays in the increasing economic and racial inequality in America, and the impact of inequality on mass incarceration.