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CANCELLED: Live Chat: Can America Kick Its Addiction to Incarceration?

CANCELLED: Live Chat: Can America Kick Its Addiction to Incarceration?
An inmate is extracted from his segregation cell at the Maine state prison.

By

Patrice Taddonio

April 29, 2014

UPDATE: Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, we are unable to hold today’s chat. Please visit our Locked Up in America website to watch Solitary Nation and Prison State, and to read FRONTLINE’s related reporting.

For decades, the United States has been fixated on incarceration, building prisons and locking up more and more people.

But at what cost — and has it really made a difference?

Over the last two weeks, FRONTLINE filmmaker Dan Edge has explored this question in two films: Solitary Nation, for which he spent six months filming in a Maine prison’s solitary confinement ward, and Prison State, which closely examines the cycle of incarceration in America, and one state’s — Kentucky’s — effort to reverse the trend.

What’s next in the raging debate over prison reform in America? Can our country break the cycle of mass incarceration? What’s it like to live in a neighborhood where almost everyone has been locked up? And what was it like to experience life in a solitary confinement ward, up-close?

We’ve asked Edge and Huffington Post justice reporter Ryan Reilly to join us for a live chat on Wed. April 30 at 2 pm EST to explore these questions — and take yours.

You can leave your questions for Edge and Reilly below. You can also submit questions on Twitter using #LockedUp. We’d like to thank the Huffington Post for partnering with us on this chat.

Criminal Justice
Patrice Taddonio.
Patrice Taddonio

Senior Digital Writer, FRONTLINE

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