The New York Public Library Podcast features your favorite writers, artists, and thinkers in smart talks and provocative conversations. Listen to some of our most engaging programs, discover new ideas, and celebrate the best of today’s culture.

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New York Public Library President Anthony Marx brings together criminal-justice-reform advocates from the right and left to discuss the complex issues of incarceration. Americans comprise about 5 percent of the world’s population but more than 20 percent of its prison population. The United States also leads the planet in its levels of incarcerated youth. And while the overall rate of youth incarceration in this country has declined more than 50 percent in the 21st century, the rate of Black youths put in prison has increased by 22 percent—of all young people in prison, 69 percent of them are people of color.

Anthony Marx invited Reginald Dwayne Betts and Pat Nolan to discuss how the tragedies of American incarceration started, how they persist and what action is needed for change. Betts, who spent nine years of his youth in prison for a carjacking conviction, is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Yale Law School—and was last year working as a public defender in New Haven, trying to “to do something to halt the herding of young black people behind bars.” Pat Nolan, a former member of the California State Assembly, spent over two years in federal prison on racketeering charges, and has since emerged as “the conservative spearheading criminal-justice reform.”

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