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GUEST: Baz Dreisinger, Associate Professor in the English Department at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, founder and Academic Director of the Prison-to-College Pipeline program.

The United States has many distinctions globally. One of its most shameful is that it imprisons the greatest number of people compared to any other country. With only 5% of the world’s population, the US is responsible for imprisoning 25% of all incarcerated people worldwide. Sadly, mass incarceration has been contagious. It was a model invented in the US, and exported to the rest of the world.

My guest Baz Driesinger, who is intimately familiar with the US prison system, spent 2 years traveling to prisons in 9 other countries to learn just how incarceration has manifested itself in other lands. But she also explored, more importantly, how other nations are finding alternatives to mass incarceration.

Follow Dreisinger’s Twitter @bazdreisinger.