Meek Mill’s REFORM Alliance and the Promise of Probation and Parole Reform

One Woman’s Experience as a Federal Prison Inmate, and Her Return:  A Discussion with Portia Louder

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/252350/fan_mail/new] In 2007, FBI agents showed up at the home of Portia Louder and her husband Chad.  Their youngest of five children was just three months old at the time.  Seven years later, in August 2014, Louder pleaded guilty to wire fraud and conspiracy.  And on the morning of April 21, 2015, she and Chad left their home in Utah on a 14-hour drive to the facility where Louder would self-surrender in order to commence her seven-year sentence.

Meek Mill’s REFORM Alliance and the Promise of Probation and Parole Reform

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/252350/fan_mail/new] This being “Second Chance Month,” it’s a perfect time to share our discussion with Jessica Jackson and Erin Haney—respectively, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Policy Officer of the REFORM Alliance, the justice initiative founded by Philadelphia-born and Grammy-nominated rapper Meek Mill and others. When Mill was sentenced, in November 2017, to a term of two to four years in prison for technical parole violations, the sentence was a catalyst for the criminal justice reform movement.  In January 2019, Mill and fellow rapper Jay-Z together formed REFORM, following Mill’s release.  Mill and Jay-Z were joined by a group of philanthropists and activists, several of whom, including Boston Patriots owner Robert Kraft, sit on REFORM’s Board of Directors. Our guests, Jessica Jackson and Erin Haney, each have their own interesting stories to tell about their work in the criminal justice reform movement.  It was a pleasure to welcome them to the JustPod.

White Collar Talks: ABA 2026 White Collar Crime Institute

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/252350/fan_mail/new] Program Co-Chairs Maggie O’Donell and Aitan Goelman discuss the history of the ABA Criminal Justice Section’s White Collar Crime Institute [https://events.americanbar.org/event/55B10D13-E5D8-4722-8493-12269EC0DB2A/summary] and the upcoming 2026 program on March 10-13, 2026 in San Diego, CA.  "White Collar Talks" are hosted by Nina Marino and Joe Whitley. The ABA White Collar Crime Institute is the nation’s premier forum for insights, updates, and expert analysis in the field of white collar crime. This annual event brings together leading practitioners, in-house counsel, judges, academics, and enforcement officials for an in-depth exploration of the most pressing legal, regulatory, and ethical issues impacting the white collar landscape today.

Our Discussion with Josh Hoe, Senior Policy Manager at Dream.org

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/252350/fan_mail/new] Josh Hoe is Senior Policy Manager at Dream.org, and the host and creator of the Decarceration Nation Podcast.  Josh, who is himself formerly incarcerated, is the author of “Writing Your Own Best Story: Addiction + Living Hope.”  We connected to discuss Josh’s recent writing, in which he argues that the so-called “National Emergency on Crime” is not real, and why we should reject it.

The Vacation of Tom Hayes’s Conviction (Part 2 of our two-part discussion)

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/252350/fan_mail/new] This is Part 2 of our two-part discussion with Tom Hayes, the now vindicated former English banker, who we first spoke with in April 2025.  At the time of that earlier discussion with Tom, in Part 1 of this series, Tom was awaiting a decision of the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court on the appeal of his August 2015 conviction, arising from his work submitting rates, on behalf of his employer, a bank, that were used to determine the London Interbank Offered Rate (or, LIBOR)—a benchmark rate, to which many other financial instruments were connected. The allegation was that Tom, and others, had manipulated their submission of rates to benefit the financial institutions they worked for.  For that conduct—what the prosecution characterized as a “manipulation” of LIBOR—Tom was sentenced to 14 years in prison, subsequently reduced to 11 years in prison, of which he ultimately served about 5.  But a parallel prosecution in the United States against two other traders, brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, was dismissed, following a favorable decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 2022.  At the time of our discussion with Tom in Part 1, the United Kingdom remained the only jurisdiction that viewed Tom’s conduct as criminal.  That is, until his conviction—and the conviction of another trader, Carlo Palumbo—were overturned by a unanimous UK Supreme Court on July 23, 2025.  We caught up with Tom after this tremendous reprieve.