Don Franzen Interviews Baz Dreisinger about “Incarceration Nations”

By Don FranzenJune 8, 2016

Don Franzen Interviews Baz Dreisinger about “Incarceration Nations”
The United States stands by itself among developed nations as the foremost incarcerator of its citizenry. With more than two million people behind bars, America has more prisoners than another other nation, including China, a country with four times its population [see here and here]. What is increasingly being recognized as a “humanitarian crisis” in the U.S. justice system prompted author and educator Baz Dreisinger to embark on a worldwide odyssey visiting diverse penal systems. The resulting book, Incarceration Nations (reviewed in LARB here), documents her investigation of prison systems in countries ranging from Africa to Thailand to Australia and Norway. Notably, she omitted the United States, choosing instead to take instruction from the efforts of other nations. Fundamentally, she explores the questions at the heart of any criminal justice system: Why do we incarcerate? To punish? To rehabilitate? To deter? To redress past wrongs? Or, simply, to do justice? I was able to interview Ms. Dreisinger in Los Angeles recently on the occasion of her book tour for Incarceration Nations.

LARB Contributor

Don Franzen is a lawyer in Beverly Hills specializing in entertainment and business law. He has lectured on entertainment law at the Eastman School of Music, Santa Monica College’s Academy of Entertainment and Technology, the Berklee School of Music in Valencia, Spain, and lectures at UCLA’s Herb Albert School of Music, where he teaches two courses on the law and the music industry. He has published articles on legal issues in newspapers, magazines, and law journals. He serves on the board of the Los Angeles Opera and counts among his clients leading performers in opera, orchestral music, film, and the recording industries. He is the legal affairs editor for Los Angeles Review of Books.

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