Wood for the Trees

Prof Muntingh is the Director of the Dullah Omar Institute, a human rights organisation based in Cape Town, South Africa.  He's been involved in criminal justice reform for three decades. We spoke about:

•  Wins and fails in African criminal justice 
• The cheapest way to cut crime
• Tackling torture in prisons

And even why a man was imprisoned for burying his cat. 

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Professor Mark Osler used to push for heavy sentences for narcotics trafficking as a federal prosecutor. Now he helps prisoners petition for clemency.  How's that for a plot twist? 

In this episode we discuss:
-  Whether the justice system can have an impact on drug use
- Why narcotics should be treated more like white collar crime
- The notion of compassionate prosecution.

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Prison is supposed to protect, deter,  and rehabilitate. But what if isn't a very effective way of doing those things? My guests offer two different visions of how the prison system could be re-imagined - including a glimpse of a Norwegian prison that looks nicer than most college dorms. 

Featuring

Dr David Scott - abolitionism activist and scholar from the Open University

Are Hoidal - former warden ...

Prisons don't do what we want them to do. Should we ditch them? Or perhaps reimagine them?

Cait speaks to abolitionist and criminologist David Scott about why he hopes for a world without prisons. 

Then she interviews Are Hoidal, former warden of Halden Prison in Norway, about a different approach to imprisonment that seems to yield better results. 

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Drugs kill hundreds of thousands of people a year. The war on drugs hasn't solved the problem. Could legalisation be the answer?

Featuring: 

Dr Keith Scott  - retired general practitioner and co-founder of the South African Drug Policy Initiative

Jonathan Caulkins - professor of public policy at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College and co-director at RAND's Drug Policy Research Cente...

Drugs kill hundreds of thousands of people a year. The war on drugs hasn't solved the problem. Could legalisation be the answer? 

Featuring: 
Dr Keith Scott  - retired general practitioner and co-founder of the South African Drug Policy Initiative

Jonathan Caulkins - professor of public policy at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College and co-director at RAND's Drug Policy Research Center

Supp...

The Prevent Duty is a legal obligation placed on authorities in the UK, including teachers, to identify and report signs of radicalisation. The goal is to stop people from being indoctrinated by terrorist ideologies. But activists argue that the policy infringes on civil liberties and intrudes on the lives of young people. 

Featuring:

Professor Steven Greer - a scholar of human rights and counter-terrorism

Professo...

After the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in 2020, the call from protestors was to defund the police. Since then, media coverage of this debate has waned but the problem of police violence hasn't gone anywhere. Cait interviews reformer Arthur Rizer and "defunder" Alex Vitale to unpack the arguments on both sides.

Interviewees:

Alex Vitale - Author of The End of Policing, professor of soci...

This episode comes from a discontinued podcast called Debatable.

When the South African government banned all sale of alcohol during lockdown, there were reports of blissfully empty emergency wards.  Only 31% of South Africans over the age of 15 drink alcohol but the amount of alcohol consumed per drinker per day is over double the global average.  

Cait interviews Professor Charles Parry (Director of the Alcohol,...

This episode comes from a discontinued podcast called Debatable.

The relationship between fat and health is often presented as linear but there are activists and medical professionals who argue that things are far more complex. 

In this episode, Cait asks: Does being fat always mean you're unhealthy? Should fatness carry shame? Is 'curing' obesity as simple as changing your lifestyle? Should socie...