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Today, the U.S. today has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. With over 2.3 million men and women living behind bars, our imprisonment rate is the highest it鈥檚 ever been in U.S. history. And yet, our criminal justice system has failed on every count: public safety, fairness and cost-effectiveness. Across the country, the criminal justice reform conversation is heating up. Each week, we鈥檒l feature our some of the most exciting and relevant news in overincarceration discourse that we鈥檝e spotted from the previous week. Check back weekly for our top picks.

A group of formerly incarcerated and convicted people convened this week in Alabama to offer their voice in a larger conversation about prison reform, including tough issues like the high cost of overcrowded prisons and barriers to reentering society.

At a time when our budgets are already dangerously dwindling in every state, California taxpayers are paying approximately $800,000 a year to 鈥減rotect themselves鈥� from the unlikely escape of Edward Ortiz, a 57 year-old semi-paralyzed inmate in the Bay Area. There are at least two dozen other incarcerated people racking up massive medical bills locked up in the state.

In a landmark legislative moment, Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear signed into law this week a bipartisan bill that will divert more nonviolent drug offenders into treatment instead of prison, which will save the state a significant amount of cash.

Gov. Tom Corbett recently decided against funding? a new $200 million prison. His decision wasn鈥檛 popular with everyone in the state, but it does signal some exciting news: Pennsylvania鈥檚 prison population is decreasing, thanks in no small part to sentencing changes made in 2008 that shortened prison terms for nonviolent offenses, offering treatment or other therapeutic programs as a constructive alternative to lengthy sentences. Prison population trends like these are promising, and may encourage similar legislative movement in other states.

The Washington Post reports that 40 percent of people on probation and parole will return to prison for a later offense after their release. It would be easy to adopt the 鈥渙nce a criminal, always a criminal鈥� mindset in response to this statistic, but the situation is not so simple. As this editorial notes, some facets of our probation and parole systems actually inhibit, rather than facilitate, successful reentry to society after prison.

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