#2475 - Andrew Jarecki
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Guest: Andrew Rossi, documentary filmmaker and investigative director.
“It's sort of a question of why people don't know about things that are happening with our tax dollars in our backyards. You know, are there things that we don't want to know?”
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Recognize prisons as opaque 'black sites' that evade public accountability despite significant tax-dollar funding.
“Because of the secrecy that surrounds prisons, you know, we treat them sort of like black sites. There's no way for us to really look inside.”
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Identify the market failure in corrections: low guard wages create a lucrative, guard-led drug and contraband monopoly inside facilities.
“I've spoken to guards who said, you know, we make $36,000 a year without the drugs... Of course, we got to sell the cell phones and the drugs because that takes us up to 70 or 75,000.”
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Audit the human and financial cost of 'tough on crime' policies that prioritize punitive measures over rehabilitation and safety.
“He got arrested and was charged with murder because that's how the felony murder statute works. And so here you have a drug addict who goes to prison in Alabama and is in the highest security prison there... and is just beaten to death.”