Election Participation Guide: Your Vote Matters! Register, Vote, Work The Polls, Get Out The Vote.
Loading Events

« All Events

  • This event has passed.
Thu 3

March 3, 2022 @ 8:00 am - 5:00 pm CST

Finding Common Ground on Re-Entry From Prison

Common Ground Committee

Location: Online

CAN WE BALANCE PUBLIC SAFETY AND RE-ENTRY FROM PRISON? TWO LEADERS IN PRISON REFORM AND CORRECTIONS EXPLORE SOLUTIONS.

America has the highest rates of incarceration in the world. Once people leave prison, the hope is that they’ll be law-abiding, productive members of society. But all too often this isn’t the case – four in 10 prisoners are back behind bars within three years of release.

In this episode of Let’s Find Common Ground, we meet two men who want to fix the flawed re-entry process in the U.S.

They come to the problem from very different backgrounds. A former prison warden and overseer of regional prisons, Daren Swenson has spent his career in corrections. Georgetown University professor Marc Howard is a reformer who has long campaigned for the rights and humanity of incarcerated people.

They joined a diverse group of leaders and experts brought together by Convergence Center for Policy Resolution to come up with solutions that take into account both the dignity of the person re-entering society and the public safety implications of that person’s release.

Initially, each man was nervous and a little wary of the other. But as they tell us in the podcast, they had much more in common than they realized. Several years after their initial meeting and their work on re-entry reform, they’ve become good friends.

This podcast was co-produced in partnership with Convergence Center for Policy Resolution and is one of a series of podcasts that Common Ground Committee and Convergence are producing together. Each highlights the common ground that resulted from one of Convergence’s structured dialogues-across-differences.

Register