Punishment or rehabilitation? Why America locks people up.

Polls from the past few years have found that a majority of Americans – as much as 85% – say the focus of prison should be rehabilitation. But data also shows that there are still a lot of people who support punitive responses to crime. How can we reconcile these two, often competing, objectives? Is it possible to do both at the same time?

In this episode, our reporters explore the different purposes of incarceration, where the system succeeds and fails, and the gap between what we say we want prison to do and what it actually does.

Episode 5 of a six-episode podcast series. Click here to listen.

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