In our first episode with host and new BCTR Director Chris Wildeman, we hear from Bruce Western, who studies incarceration and reentry into society. They discuss

incarceration's effect on social and economic inequality; Dr Western's feeling that big datasets weren't telling the whole story about incarceration and reentry - and how his research took a different approach; and how understanding and expanding the idea of justice in the lives of disadvantaged people can improve social problems.

Bruce Western is professor of sociology, Columbia University; co-director, Columbia Justice Lab; and distinguished visiting research professor, University of Queensland, Australia. Western's research examines trends in American economic inequality and the growth of the US penal population. These topics are joined by an interest in the shifting landscape of American poverty over the last 40 years. He is the author of "Punishment and Inequality in America" (2007) and "Homeward: Life in the Year After Prison" (2018). Western is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Radcliffe Fellow and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Science and the National Academies of Science.