Premieres Sunday, Oct. 7, at 9 p.m. ET/PT
What does the California prison system have in common with Harvard University? It costs precisely as much to house, feed and guard one prisoner for one year in a California state prison as tuition, meals and housing cost for a student enrolled for one academic year at Harvard. As far as California taxpayers are concerned, it gets even worse. Their prison system is so overcrowded that it's reached a breaking point. Either the state finds a long-term solution or the federal courts have warned they'll begin ordering the release of inmates, just to ease the crush.
In this two-hour broadcast, Ted Koppel examines how California got to this point and presents an inside view of the crisis through in-depth interviews with inmates, guards and prison officials at California State Prison Solano in Vacaville.
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/koppel/highlights/highlights.html