Downsizing the Prison-Industrial Complex

Abstract

THE CALIFORNIA Journal of Politics & Policy Commentary Downsizing the Prison-Industrial Complex Barry Krisberg* Berkeley Law Center for Criminal Justice Adapted from an interview with Cathy Cockrell of the UC Berkeley NewsCenter. I came to criminology by a rather indirect route. My dad ran the proverbial New York City candy store, in Brooklyn in the ’50s. A lot of the local gangsters used to hang out, and I found them interesting people. I knew them in a multidimensional way. The store was in Coney Island, so our clientele were people who worked in the amusement areas and lived near- by. I got to know people who were in the carnival business, even some who were in the freak shows. These early expe- www.bepress.com/cjpp Volume 2, Issue 1, 2010 riences helped me to be more accepting of people whose backgrounds were different from my own. I went as an undergrad to the University of Pennsylva- nia, where I had the incredible opportunity to study with two leading American criminologists—Thorsten Sellin and his student (and ultimately my mentor) Marvin Wolfgang. I didn’t go to Penn with the idea of becoming a criminolo- gist. But I fell in love with these people and the subject matter. The late 1960s and early 1970s was a period of ma- jor U.S. Supreme Court cases on criminal justice and the Barry Krisberg joined Berkeley Law’s Center for Criminal Justice in January as a distinguished senior fellow and lecturer- in-residence. A well-known researcher and advocate for juve- nile-justice reform, he served as president of the National Coun- cil on Crime and Delinquency for more than 25 years. He led the 2003 investigation in California of what is now the Division of Juvenile Justice. After the panel issued a devastating report, Krisberg was asked to help monitor state compliance with the resulting consent decree, a role he continues to play today.