Hear the Bern Episode 7: Bail, Bills, and Criminal Injustice (w/ Lara Bazelon and Akeem Browder)

On Episode 7 of Hear the Bern, host Briahna Joy Gray explores how, as AOC recently put it, "justice is purchased." Because of cash bail, thousands of low-income Americans sit behind bars without any kind of trial, conviction, or sentencing — all because they cannot afford to buy their freedom.

Lara Bazelon, a law professor at the University of San Francisco, explains how cash bail criminalizes poverty. Akeem Browder talks about how his brother Kalief spent three years in Rikers Island starting at age 16 simply because he couldn’t afford bail, and how the psychological toll of that experience led him to take his own life.