70 Million

People with intellectual and developmental disabilities, known as I/DD, are overrepresented behind bars. One reason is that police officers, lawyers, and correctional staff don’t always know how to meet their needs. Reporter Cheryl Green brings us to Oregon, where case managers translate their needs for a system that’s not set up to accommodate them -- and where the proper diagnosis is the difference between incarceration and freedom.

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For years, to fund itself New Orleans’ criminal legal system has relied on bail, fines and fees levied on the city’s poorest. But there are signs of change in the horizon, with a groundswell of community action and two landmark federal rulings in the last year. Reporter Eve Abrams takes us inside some of the big shifts happening in the Big Easy.

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As of this week, our second season is a Peabody Awards nominee!!  Reporters who take a closer look at communities and programs trying bold solutions to solve big problems in criminal justice. (70 Million is made possible by a grant from the Safety and Justice Challenge at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.)

Reporters who take a closer look at communities and programs trying bold solutions to solve big problems in criminal justice. Hear stories about cash bail reform, overturning wrongful convictions, and more from folks who make up the 70 million US adults with a criminal record and whose lives touch our own. (70 Million is made possible by a grant from the Safety and Justice Challenge at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.)

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To close out season one, we invited two legal experts, Christina Swarns, President and Attorney-in-Charge of the Office of the Appellate Defender in New York and Scott Hechinger, Senior Staff Attorney & Dir. of Policy at the Brooklyn Defender Services, to look at what it would mean for the United States to provide financial reparations for individuals who have spent most of their lives behind bars. Moderated by 70 Million’s creator and executive producer, Juleyka Lantigua-Williams, the discussion considers current and plausible pathways to bring reparations, restitution, and other types of restorative justice to the formerly incarcerated.    

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New Orleans could become the battleground for bail reform. The city has one of the highest per capita incarceration rates in the world. And most people are there because they can’t pay their bail. The current arrangement with the local bail industry gives the impression that judges there could have a financial conflict of interest when setting bail. In this episode, Sonia Paul digs into how an ongoing lawsuit, pretrial consequences of bail, and poverty, bias, and algorithms come into play.

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This episode is a special collaboration with Miami’s WLRN radio station, whose reporters Nadege Green and Daniel Rivero report on the county’s Criminal Mental Health Project which has been instrumental in diverting mentally ill people away from jail. They meet the judge to started the program and see how counselors, peer specialists, and officers are focusing on treatment and services rather than arrests.

Like in much of the country, jails in Miami-Dade County double as de facto mental health facilities for people with mental health issues cycling through the criminal justice system. But Miami-Dade’s Criminal Mental Health Project has taken the lead in addressing the needs of this population. Now it is a national model for how to tackle the interplay between mental illness and criminal justice, while driving down recidivism and jailing rates in the process. This episode is a special collaboration with Miami’s WLRN radio station, whose reporters Nadege Green and Daniel Rivero meet the judge who started the program and see how counselors, peer specialists, and officers are focusing on treatment and services rather than arrests.

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A handful of companies are making millions off ankle monitors strapped to undocumented immigrants in ICE custody. The makers pitch the monitors as an alternative to being jailed, but are they simply another form of bondage? Reporter Ryan Katz looks at what life is life while wearing one of these monitors. He untangles the complicated web of ICE, immigration bail agent companies, and the attorneys fighting them.

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In Massachusetts, Gloucester PD started an "angel program" to help people in the grip of opioid addiction get help. Instead of arresting people for opioid-related crimes, police directed them to treatment programs and resources. The angel program eventually grew into PAARI, the Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative. It’s now a national program. Reporter Maria Murriel visits the original program to see how it all works.  

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By age 17, over half of young people in foster care have already been convicted of a crime or spent a night in jail. After they age out, a quarter will go to jail or get in trouble with the law within the first two years. California is determined to keep foster youth out of jail. Reporter Liza Veale profiles two young people who are making their way out of the system, and talks with policy makers and social service workers trying to redirect the foster-care-to-prison pipeline.

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Oklahoma locks up women and girls at a higher rate than anywhere else in the US. Black mothers bear the burden of this crisis, which can curtail accessing public benefits and lower the chances of keeping their children. But a promising new public defender's office in Tulsa have found a way to change some women’s fates. Reporter Nissa Rhee goes inside a women’s jail for our story.

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