监狱的目的是什么:让罪犯远离街头，教育和改造，还是惩罚?美国因更多的罪行而囚禁的公民比其他任何国家都多。美国的大规模监禁是在伸张正义，还是效率极低?约翰和肯与斯坦福法学院教授、斯坦福刑事司法中心执行主任卡拉·丹斯基(Kara Dansky)一起深入探讨了美国监狱系统的问题。约翰和肯首先介绍了围绕惩罚和刑事司法的哲学争论，概述了惩罚、威慑、改造和丧失能力的立场。他们暗指了困扰着监狱系统的道德缺陷，并回到了最根本的问题:惩罚是为了什么?

Guest Professor Kara Dansky joins the conversation. Dansky came to her current position of Executive Director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center after serving as a public defender. She poses the question: what are we doing and why do we choose to punish in the way we punish? She argues that this question is most frequently addressed in terms of social utility instead of morality. Ken agrees, questioning whether there is a shared, explicit theory behind our system of crime and punishment. Dansky describes how the American prison system was originally created as a humane rehabilitative form of punishment in contrast to the death penalty and other forms of corporeal punishment. This orientation changed in the 1970s with Nixon’s war on drugs, when society embraced the idea that rehabilitation is impossible.

Dansky emphasizes the inequities in the prison system stating that in California those incarcerated are disproportionately poor, undereducated, mentally ill, and people of color. A caller agrees, arguing that the prison system creates a permanent underclass. The conversation turns to the effectiveness of non prison punishment methods, such as social condemnation. Should prisons be abolished? Do other nations have a better system? Is there any good in our current prison system? John closes the conversation by arguing that through cowardice, incompetence, and lack of information, the prison system perpetrates societal ill.

• Roving Philosophical Report(Seek to 5:31): Devon Strolovitch speaks with two attorneys representing Debbie Peagler, a 49 year old woman wrongfully incarcerated for the past 20 years for first degree murder, now diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. UPDATE: Debbie was freed on August 22, 2009. The day following her release, she got to visit the Pacific Ocean to watch the sunset and feel the ocean water lap at her feet for the first time in 27 years.
  
• 60-Second Philosopher(Seek to 49:51): Ian Shoales describes America’s long history of obsession with prisons in the movies.