Reuben Jonathan Miller
There are over 2 million people incarcerated in the United States \u2013 but tens of millions more who are living with criminal records.\xa0 This week, we\u2019ll hear about the constraints and challenges faced by formerly incarcerated people.\xa0 Reuben Jonathan Miller\xa0is a sociologist, criminologist and a social worker who teaches at the University of Chicago in the School of Social Service Administration where he studies and writes about race, democracy, and the social life of the city. His book,\xa0Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration, shows that the American justice system was not created to rehabilitate, and how parole is structured to keep classes of Americans impoverished, unstable, and disenfranchised long after they\u2019ve paid their debt to society.
\n\nOn March 8, 2021, Dr. Miller had a conversation with Terah Lawyer, an advocate for incarcerated people for more than a decade. Ms. Lawyer is herself a formerly incarcerated person, and that experience informs her commitment to improving the justice system.