Zachary Psick
Description: Zachary Psick is a lecturer of Sociology at UC Davis. His research and teaching focus on the causes and consequences of crime and punishment, specifically examining mass incarceration and the wars on drugs and crime. Before graduate school, he worked in the non-profit sector designing reentry programming for formerly incarcerated people, teaching in prisons, and examining policies and practices that support crime victims. He has won numerous awards for his academic work; regularly presents at leading conferences in sociology, criminology, and law; and has served as a reviewer for multiple journals and publishers. He is the co-founder of the Underground Scholars Initiative at UC Davis, which serves formerly incarcerated students across the UC system. In this episode Zach talks about his story as someone who went from being incarcerated to a leading researcher on crime and punishment, the history of mass incarceration to the role of vocabulary in the rehabilitation process as well as the wide scale failures that led us to our current system and what can be done to reform
Website: Zachary Psick
Recent Publications:
Older and Incarcerated: Policy Implications of Aging Prison Populations
Opportunities to Get Involved:
The Age of Mass Incarceration Research Group (Research Project)
The Underground Scholars Initiative at UC Davis (Student Organization)
First Year Seminar - Health, Inequality, and the Wars on Drugs and Crime
Reading and Resources:
“There is something hauntingly unreal about a scholarly discipline dedicated to the study of crime, the criminal, and the criminal law that focuses almost exclusively upon the actions of law-breaking individuals, while turning a blind eye to the mass terrorism imposed upon innocent people by slavery, colonialism, and their continuing legacies.”
Show Notes:
[1:53- ] Background/Life Story
[9:30] How do you go about studying prison reform and the carceral state
[11:48] Overlap between institutional systems in relation to incarceration
[12:54] School to Prison Pipeline
[14:20-] Mental health and prisons
[18:15-] Prisons as a problem solving mechanism for the government
[19:00] Who’s in our prisons?
[[22:00]] How do we deal with delinquent people without causing them more harm
[24:42] -You don't have to do something about every bad thing in the world all the time
[25:44] What is the carceral state and the idea of mass incarceration/History of mass incarceration
[36:35] How would you like to see school systems changed to better support the youth?
[40:00] Prisons as centers for rehabilitation?
[46:25] Psychedelic therapy options
[48:41] Christian Program Background
[56:35] Role of Vocabulary in rehabilitation
[59:48] What are some steps we should take
[1:05:35] White collar crime trickling down
[1:10:00] Comparing the US prison system to Nordic prison system
[1:16:00] California justice system
[1:21:27] Generational reform
[1:25:00]] Don’t be indifferent
[1:27:08] How can people get involved?
[1:31:16:00] Underground Scholars
We are all students
[1:33:20] Rat Park Study (Carl Hart)
[1:36:18] if you give people attractive options, they take the attractive option
[1:39:14] Parting thoughts, “we’re all in this together”