California Prisons

California has the most prisoners in the nation with some 160,000 people behind bars. The California jails hold more than double the designed capacity and are so overcrowded that a federal court last month ordered the state to reduce the prison population by more than 40,000 in the next two years. The ruling comes as California is in the midst of a severe budget crisis. This is a conversation with University of California, Berkeley professor Jonathan Simon, author of Governing Through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear. From the interview by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. Read More or Watch Video.