The rate of incarcerations in Texas is on the decline since the implementation of a new program that redirects money from the prison system to rehabilitation programs. Adam Gelb, of the Pew Center on the States, and Jim Marquart, a former sergeant in the Texas Department of Corrections, explain how the program works.

With state governments around the country under increasing budget pressure, some are looking to save money on prisons by releasing prisoners before their term ends. Early releases began last month in Colorado when the Department of Corrections set free 10 felons, including a convicted sex offender and a drunk driver put away for vehicular homicide. Michigan, Illinois, Texas and Mississippi are just a few of the other states planning early releases.

We talk with Ari Zavares, executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections; Christine Donner, executive director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform coaltion; and Robert, a convicted felon who was released on parole earlier this year.

The Justice Department recommended yesterday that Attorney General Eric Holder re-open and examine cases of alleged abuse of suspected al-Qaeda members.  The abuse allegedly took place in secret CIA prisons during former President George W. Bush's administration. To go over the details, we have Vijay Padmanabhan, visiting assistant professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York City, and Mark Danner, author of the book “Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror.”

Read the Inspector General's report on interrogations (via NYTimes)

We're looking ahead to today's release of a 2004 report by the CIA inspector general that details harsh interrogation techniques used in CIA prisons. The report is said to contain details of techniques used in  secret CIA prisons, including threatening an al-Qaeda inmate with an electric drill and a gun. We speak to former CIA Director James Woolsey about what he thinks the CIA will do as the reporrt is released, as well as his post-CIA interest in green energy and the national security implications of "oil's monopoly over transportation."

In 2004, CIA Inspector General John Helgerson completed a report looking at abuses inside CIA prisons.  The report has been kept a secret until today, when portions of the report are expected to be made public. 

For more on the details of that report, we speak to Siobhan Gorman, intelligence correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and Art Keller, a former CIA case officer who served in Pakistan in 2006.

You can read Siobhan's article, "CIA Faulted for Conduct at Prisons," at the Wall Street Journal, and Art Keller's blog post on secrecy and political accountability around Washington and the CIA, "The Buck Stops Where?"

President Obama's pledge to shut down the infamous federal detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, by January 2010 means the administration needs to quickly find a place for the 229 detainees still housed there. After federal officials took a tour of the facility on Thursday, speculation mounted that the new Guantánamo might be a maximum security prison in Standish, Michigan (population 1,581). We speak to Detroit Free Press reporter Kathleen Gray, who was at the prison during the tour, and to the mayor of Standish, Kevin King, about what this might mean for the town.

Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been sentenced to another 18 months of house arrest after an American man swam out to her lakeside home back in May. BBC Asia expert Jill McGivering tells us about the sentence and the uninvited lakeside visitor.

The Takeaway follows up on a story the show covered in February: the tale of hundreds of children and teenagers sentenced to juvenile detention centers in Pennsylvania. Local judges were participating in a multimillion-dollar kickback scheme for sending teens to privately run youth detention centers. One of those children is 17-year-old Hillary Transue. Her mother Laurene Transue joined The Takeaway in February and is on the show again to talk about the latest events in the case.

Bernie Madoff was sentenced yesterday to the maximum term of 150 years, but what happens to any remaining wealth, and what can his victims do to get some of their money back? Diana Henriques, a senior financial writer for The New York Times has been following this story and joins The Takeaway.

Five years ago, in the FRONTLINE documentary, The New Asylums, filmmakers Karen O’Connor and Miri Navasky, documented how the Ohio prison system struggled to provide care to thousands of mentally ill inmates. This year, in the new FRONTLINE documentaryThe Released, they return to Ohio to investigate what happens to mentally ill offenders when they leave the prison system. Typically, these offenders leave prison with a bus ticket, $75 in cash, and two weeks’ worth of medication. Studies show that within 18 months, nearly two-thirds of mentally ill offenders are re-arrested. The Takeaway is joined by filmmaker Karen O’Connor for a look at how the prison system has changed since she first captured it on film five years ago.

Here's a sneak peek at the film:

A new report from The Sentencing Project reveals a changing demographic of prisoners who are incarcerated for drug charges. The report shows that for the first time in 25 years, since the start of the so-called War on Drugs, incarceration rates for black men has dropped. The report shows that over a six-year period, the rate of black men in jail on drug-related charges dropped 21% while the imprisonment for white men spiked by 42%. Is this racial disparity a sign of the changing prison demographic? To guide us through what these numbers mean, The Takeaway is joined by David Fathi, director of Human Rights Watch in the U.S.

Read The Sentencing Project's report, The Changing Racial Dynamics of the War on Drugs.