Episode 55: Mass Incarceration and Prison Reform with Dominique Gilliard

A Year of Listening

In this episode we are continuing with a topic we first explored in episode 46: Post Incarceration Employment and Rehabilitation. Dominique Gilliard and Colleen discuss mass incarceration and prison reform. Dominique DuBois Gilliard is the Director of Racial Righteousness and Reconciliation for the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC). He is the author of Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice that Restores. Dominique and Colleen discuss the many different aspects at play when it comes to issues in our prison system, solutions that can chip away at these injustices and some countries that are having success at restorative justice.

Connect with Dominique! Check out his website and his book! Find him on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Year of Action Challenge:

If you found yourself skeptical of what Dominique was saying I encourage you to head over to the show notes for today’s episode and check out his resource from the Walk Towards Love website as well as any of the resources listed from our conversation today. There’s a lot of really great research happening right now in that field. And it’s worth researching yourself.

And if you feel spurred to action after this conversation I think a great first step is doing a little research into what banks and companies profit off of our current prison system. Can you write a letter to your bank? Choose different brands to avoid contributing to this system? Or, even better start a campaign to encourage those companies to use the profits they make to help the formerly incarcerated return to society and to employ the formerly incarcerated. It seems like there are a lot of different solutions to these issues.

Also discussed in this episode:

Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice that Restores by Dominique Gilliard

Washington Post: Five Myths about Incarceration

Walking Towards Love curriculum

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B DeBois