(Cabán for Queens District Attorney Re-release) 1 - Chloe Cockburn on Ending Mass Incarceration

NOTE: This is a re-release of my discussion with Chloe Cockburn. At the beginning of the episode, I make the following endorsement of Tiffany Cabán, a candidate for Queens District Attorney:

On Tuesday June 25th, Queens will hold an election for District Attorney. The DA is the top prosecutor for Queens, a borough of nearly 2.4 million people. If you are inspired by this episode, I would encourage you to support Tiffany Cabán. Cabán is the only public defender running in the race- the other six candidates are career prosecutors and politicians. She is also the only candidate who is refusing corporate PAC money. The other front-runner, Melinda Katz, has taken over $150,000 from real estate players. Chloe doesn’t make endorsements as a matter of policy, but a number of organizations she has directed funding towards have endorsed Caban, including Real Justice PAC, the Working Families Party, and VOCAL New York, a group that organizes formerly incarcerated people. Cabán has also received endorsements from congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, and activists Cynthia Nixon and Zephyr Teachout. This will be a low-turnout election, so each donation, volunteer, and voter will have a big impact on the outcome. Prosecutors are the group most responsible for mass incarceration, but their enormous amount of power and discretion also makes them most able to end it.  

You can learn more and get involved at www.cabanforqueens.com 

Chloe Cockburn leads Open Philanthropy's strategic grant-making aimed at ending mass incarceration in the US. Prior to joining Open Phil, she oversaw state policy reform work for the ACLU’s Campaign to End Mass Incarceration. Previously, Chloe worked with the Vera Institute and the civil rights law firm of Neufeld, Scheck and Brustin, and clerked for Judge Sifton of the Eastern District of New York. Chloe can be found on Twitter at @chloecockburn

We cover:

• An overview of mass incarceration in the united states
• Open Philanthropy’s approach to criminal justice reform
• The importance of criminal justice reform relative to other problems like global poverty and factory farming
• The role of rehabilitation and deterrence
• Why we think punishment should play no role

Show notes:

Wage theft vs. all other theft

Books discussed:

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

The Collapse of American Criminal Justice by William Stuntz