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How did America's prison system evolve into what it is today?

Question: What country has the highest percentage of its people imprisoned? Answer: The United States of America. For those paying attention, the answer shouldn’t be surprising. A staggering 1 out of every 100 adults, about 2.4 million people are behind bars. But if America has turned incarceration into an art form, then the state of Texas is Picasso. In Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison System, Robert Perkinson covers 150 years of American history told through the experience of the country’s most locked-down state, Texas. With racially mixed demographics mixed with Texas’ own unique history, Texas was the epicenter of the prison revolution. They are credited with the evolutions of the assembly-line executions, isolation based supermaxes, private prisons, executing the disables, to sentencing juveniles as adults. Patt talks to Robert Perkinson about how Texas’ profit-driven plantation-based penal system became the template for the nation.

Guest:

Robert Perkinson, author of Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire