Ideas worth spreading

How to fix two of the most broken systems in the US

1,734,055 views |

Nick Turner and Whitney Pennington Rodgers |

TED Salon: American Family Insurance

• November 2021

In an engaging, insightful conversation, criminal justice reformer Nick Turner breaks down the ways the US criminal legal system perpetuates centuries-old racial and economic inequality. He joins TED current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers to outline why the best way to actually deliver justice and safety is to shrink the system and recognize the humanity of those caught in it.

In an engaging, insightful conversation, criminal justice reformer Nick Turner breaks down the ways the US criminal legal system perpetuates centuries-old racial and economic inequality. He joins TED current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers to outline why the best way to actually deliver justice and safety is to shrink the system and recognize the humanity of those caught in it.

This talk was presented at a TED Salon event given in partnership with American Family Insurance. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Read more about TED Salons.

Donate to the Vera Institute of Justice to help transform the US criminal legal system for all.

About the speakers

Nick Turner

Criminal justice reformer

See speaker profile

Nick Turner is the president and director of the Vera Institute of Justice, one of the biggest and most established justice reform organizations in the US.

Whitney Pennington Rodgers

Whitney Pennington Rodgers

TED current affairs curator

See speaker profile

Whitney Pennington Rodgers is an award-winning journalist and media professional.

Ava DuVernay | Netflix, 2016 | Watch

Ava DuVernay's 2016 documentary is a necessary primer for anyone who wants to understand how the modern criminal legal system and the mass incarceration it has produced is rooted in the country's long history of white supremacy.

Rudy Valdez | Park Pictures, 2018 | Watch

Rudy Valdez's unflinching documentary shows the collateral costs of our nation's commitment to incarceration and punitiveness, and how they are borne not just by people who are locked up, but by their families and loved ones.

Kathryn Edin, Luke Shaeffer | Mariner Books, 2016 | Book

$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America

A sociological work that tells the stories of people living in the depths of poverty in America, surfacing the deprivation and desperation that people live in and the choices they have to make. The criminal legal system unnecessarily sweeps into its grasp many people who are living in poverty, and this work provides a portrait of their challenges and makes you ask why we've invested in systems of control rather than systems of support.

Colson Whitehead | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2020 | Book

The Nickel Boys

A true-to-life work of fiction that speaks to the lifelong scars left by brutality of a 1950s juvenile work camp in Florida.

Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Ben Austen | Pushkin Industries | Listen

Some of My Best Friends Are

In episode two ("European Prisons vs. American Prisons") of this podcast, Harvard Professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad and journalist Ben Austen discuss how the American criminal legal system is internationally aberrational in terms of its thirst for retribution and punitiveness by describing their experiences visiting prisons in Europe. In episode 13 ("Crime, Fear and Alternatives to Policing"), Muhammad and Austen reflect on the spike in shootings and homicides in Chicago, where they grew up together; the power of the fear it's instilled; the political response; and offer prescriptions for how we might think about delivering public safety through means other than law enforcement.

Emily Bazelon | Random House, 2020 | Book

Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration

Bazelon follows two young people facing prosecution in two different cities to explain not only the power of prosecutors (the most powerful actors in the justice system) have historically wielded, which has led to our system of mass incarceration, but how a nascent movement of a new breed of prosecutors offers a path out of our addiction to imprisonment.

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About TED Salon

TED Salons welcome an intimate audience for an afternoon or evening of highly-curated TED Talks revolving around a globally relevant theme. A condensed version of a TED flagship conference, they are distinct in their brevity, opportunities for conversation, and heightened interaction between the speaker and audience.

Read more about TED Salons

This talk was presented at a TED Salon event given in partnership with American Family Insurance. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Read more about TED Salons.

Donate to the Vera Institute of Justice to help transform the US criminal legal system for all.