Etherton Gallery's current exhibition, Danny Lyon: Conversations with the Dead, highlights a collection of photographs that Lyon took of the grim realities that inmates in Texas prisons faced back in the late 1960s.

I'm moderating a panel discussion at the gallery tomorrow night on the increase in inmates in Arizona prisons, the rise in private prisons and the challenges that inmates face when reentering society after their release. Panelists will include:

• Longtime Tucson Weekly contributor Margaret Regan, who's newest book, Detained and Deported: Stories of Immigrant Families Under Fire, digs into what happens when undocumented immigrants end up behind bars—and often in private prisons. Detained and Deported was named one of the Pima County Public Library's Southwest Books of the Year; it has also received high praise from Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly and Booklist, which noted that "with other horrifying case studies, Regan provides discomfiting statistics to document the rise of the detention-industrial complex."

• State Sen. Steve Farley, who has long been a critic of privatized prisons.

• Lisette Flores, who serves as general counsel and policy advisor the Senate Democratic Caucus. Flores has also served as a prosecutor for the city of Phoenix and as the director of the Immigration and Legal Services Department of Friendly House, a Phoenix nonprofit that provides social and legal services.

• Grace Gámez of the American Friends Service Committee, who specializes in helping mothers readjust to society after being released from prison.

The panel is at 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 18 at Etherton, 135 S. Sixth Ave.