Punishment, and whether private prisons healthy functioning of our criminal Justice System. Prisons have been making a comeback under president trump, poised to grow under his law and order approach and his immigration policy. The trumpy, administration reversed last years of Obama Administration directive to phase out privately run federal prisons. Biggestices for the two private Prison Companies have about double to, doubled, the geo group and cca. Have a really incredible panel joining us tonight. Shane bauer spent four months as a private prison guard and brought us a firsthand account of what happened in these prisons. He is the author of sliver of light. [applause] next, we have the former warden andan quentin state prison, the former undersecretary at the California Department of corrections and rehabilitation. [applause] santos is an investigative journalist for the Marshall Project, a nonprofit News Organization covering the u. S. Criminal Justice System. She wrote an extensive piece on the business of private prison transport, and the literally horrific conditions people face as they are being driven thousands of miles on private fans or buses. Thank you for coming. [applause] to start by giving the audience some context. Population ison about 2 million. What proportion of that is private prisons . 600,000, not including the jail population, you have 1. 5 million in state or federal prisons. 126,000 or held in a private facility, federal or private operated by one of the 29 states that operate those type of prisons. Numbers dont include the number of people held in private immigration detention facilities , somewhere around 30,000 people total, with about two thirds held in private facilities. The majority of people in immigration detention are in a private facility. What are the figures in california . When i was with the California Department of state,ions, we had in 4500. Dea result of the judges cision, we had to reduce the number of inmates being held in california prisons. The state contracted with outofstate prisons to hold inmates in excess of the cap. That number has come down, but we are still in excess of a couple of thousand. What is the appeal of private prisons for state and local entities . Companies, theon argument for their existence is that they help to save money. Recently a federal study by the department of the cost is showed comparable. There are conflicting studies about this. Californiassues in whether private prison where private Prison Companies wont take seriously the medical issues of prisoners. There are a lot of hidden costs like this, when you see how much they are it really isnt fleshed out. So when they say they save 17 per inmate per day, the statistic i have seen, its a little fuzzy. Yeah. The main way they save money is through what they pay their staff. They are cutting a lot of corners, generally. Staffing is the main cost of running a prison. When you pay the staff less it cost less money. And you know that firsthand from working in a private prison, but before i get to that, i want to flesh out how private prisons get paid. Alicia santos, is it true that they get paid per inmate they house. And also that they have occupancy requirements that they put on states or local governments . As far as i am aware, that per prisoner, per bed contract, in which there have been guarantees about what that population will remain at, so obviously that can lead to lobbying for certain types of laws that would keep that level the same, such as maybe not reducing mandatory minimums, because then you will have a more steady population of people, or lowering certain criminal penalties. That is how they have often been structured. What happens if governments dont meet the occupancy requirements, and what kind of penalty exists, shane bauer . Generally the contract of the prison i worked at guaranteed and 95 occupancy rate, which means if it falls below 95 , the government will pay the rate as if 95 of the prisoners were there. So essentially taxpayers. Right, right. Basically what you are describing, alicia santos, is an industry that is incentivized to have as many people, or the demand for inmates, to keep the demand for inmates high, and it sounds like you are saying fight against laws that would reduce that prison population, such as fighting against reducing mandatory minimums or leniency or things like that. You are nodding. Yes. Included in their annual report is exactly those statements, the threat if there is any change in sentencing laws, changes in Drug Enforcement laws, changes in immigration status, would influence, would affect their bottom line. They have to put that in their annual report, because they need to let people who buy their w what their risk is. And any progressive policies, there is a risk to their bottom line. How powerful our are they as a lobby . They are incredibly powerful. They give lots of donations to candidates for office, and or there have been lots of stories during the president ial campaign about the private prisons given money to rubio and other people running to become president. Their influence is pretty great. I just wanted to point out, too, that publicly run prisons also operate on incentives. For example, i was a reporter in upstate new york at the albany times union. During the time it was reporting there, i was reporting there was a huge effort to close prisons, and private prisons arent allowed in new york state, but that didnt stop it from being a very difficult thing to try to do. The unions were fighting really hard against it, the politicians were in there. They pushed really hard against it. I just want to point it out, that those types of things exist in Public Sector prisons, too, in the same types of horrific conditions. Which then raises the question, jeannie woodford, are state run institutions better than private prisons . It absolutely depends on the state, because of how much you put into your prisons that make the system good or bad, right . I i think we are fortunate in california to have a governor who cares about Public Safety, who believes what we do inside our prisons matters to our communities. So there is an emphasis on rehabilitation. I know you mentioned earlier that you had just been in san quentin and saw the many programs there. With our Current Governor and legislation those are being put , all over california. Its better than other states, but it really depends on the public getting involved and interested in what happens inside prison systems. As the warden of san quentin, you are really focused on what you believe should be the mission of prisons, which is a rehabilitative function, correct . So what is the interests of a private prison, what impact do you think they have on the rehabilitative function of prisons . I think their bottom line is profit. I have been in some private prisons, and they only do what is in the contract. If theyre contracted to provide certain services, that is all they will provide, and they are not looking to improve Public Policy. They are not looking to evolve a system to make it better for the individuals in it, which makes it better for Public Safety in general. From my point of view, as a Public Servant having spent 30 years in the criminal Justice System here in california, i always thought of Public Safety more broadly, and i always believe that what we did inside our prisons had an impact in our communities. And i always believed that we needed to follow the science and the data, and that is why i implemented datadriven decisionmaking in the department of corrections through a program called comstat . I think that is what they should be about, evolving to follow the science of criminal justice. As a result of californias attitude toward that, we have seen some really vast improvements in our sentencing laws here in the states. As an example, keeping nonserious, nonviolent, nonsex offenders out of prison at the local level. We have a lot more to do, but that was a huge, huge step in california towards a better system. Also, we shouldnt totally create that dichotomy between the state and the private, because the states run the states are contracted and these private companies are overseeing them. From what i have seen, its not even an issue of companies doing what the contract requires. They dont even do that a lot of the time. The states dont have much of a means to enforce these contracts. Dont usually write i dont know of them writing into the contract penalties for contract they will say they can revoke contracts, but they dont do that. They are going to close the prison down. Its still the responsibility of the state that these prisoners s are running this way, generally. There was an Inspector General report that basically found that in private prisons there was a higher rate of assault, on prison staff and between inmates, and you were in a prison, you were in the correctional facility in louisiana, medium security. Did that play out in your experience . Were they unsafe . Yeah. Did, the prison i was in was very violent. There were stabbings every week. I witnessed stabbings, and there are stabbings and all prisons, there is violence in all prisons, but when i left and looked at the data, there was not just more violence, but more use of force, and it comes down to the issue that it was way understaffed, for one. There were very minimal education programs. A lot of times i didnt get to go outside. When you say understaffed, what was the ratio . I would come in to work and there would be days where there 1500t guards for 50 inmates. I worked in the unit with 350 prisoners with one other guard. We just had radios. Were not really doing much. And the medical is a lot worse. All this stuff adds up to this frustration for People Living there, living in a dorm of 44 then all day long, and people fight. Fights break out. There are a lot of drugs and contraband in prison, guards per try to make hour, ends meet selling drugs. On top of that, when i was there, i was noting whenever there was a stabbing, i would write it down, the date. When i left, i texted the department of corrections to see how many of the m the company many of them the company reported. They are required to report all of them. In a twomonth period, i knew about ten or so, and in that tenmonth period, they reported five. And this is they werent all been reported. Right. And as journalists we look for , these documents, but the people writing the documents are lying so they are worthless. We cant know that unless they are there. So a few things. Part of the reason the staffing level is so low is why . Because it is a 9 an hour job. 9 an hour to be a prison guard . Yes. N and it was in a very poor town in louisiana, really rundown. But still, even though it was so poor, there were not a lot of people willing to work there for 9 per the people that did work hour. There, many of them were single moms that needed insurance for their kids, needed a job. It paid . 50 more than mcdonalds and walmart. This was a prison run by core civic . Yeah. What you are saying is that they paid you very little and cap Staffing Levels low to maximize their profit . So the prison itself, they wanted to hire more people, but they dont get to set the pay. That is all done at the Corporate Office in nashville. It kind of create this culture where everybody who works there is frustrated with the corporation. Everyone i met, other than the top level staff, inmates and staff, hated the company. They they felt like they were all being used in some way so that these people they never meet can make money. The warden was trying to get a raise. There was a one dollar raise when i was there, but people come in, and the turnover is so great because people just it is just not worth it. It is such a dangerous job. Give an example. What did you have to do on a 9perhour wage . What was the scariest thing that happened . We would work 12hour shifts. Sometimes those turned into 14, 16 hour shifts, because there werent enough people to work, or we come in extra days. My job was basically to work in a unit and deal with the 350 prisoners. Let them out to eat, let them back in, lock them up. When they need something, they call for me, and i have to tell whoever it is, and we were supposed to count them multiple times per day. Were also supposed to, every half hour, go through these dorms and check on people. But that didnt happen, nobody did that. You mean they didnt follow through . No, no. The thing is, they are making 9 an they wont get fired unless hour. They do something really egregious. The attitude is like, theres no incentive to do this work. Why so why bother . And they will write it down in a book that it was done. It will look at the book, the books are in order, so its just perpetuated. Alicia, is what shane bauers describing a unique experience . Or do you think its fairly representative of what happens in private prisons . It is hard to say. Unfortunately i didnt have the experience shane had. [laughter] it is hard to say, really. I would guess it is probably quite typical. When we wrote about christen companies,nsport people are severely underpaid. Taking these jobs out of desperation, pushed to their limits, and a lot of bad things happen. As you report more and more, you have a sympathy for everyone involved. The people working in the people being held in custody. Talk about prison transportation. What is it and why is it privatized, and why is that so appealing to states . So lets say you live in florida, and you fell behind on your Child Support in ohio, for example, and the District Attorney wants to bring you back to face a charge on that. To go all the way to florida and bring you back would be quite a large venture that somebody who works for the Law Enforcement would have to do, so instead they contract it out to a private company that does it for a very, very low rates. The way it works, the Companies Drive all around the country,s , picking up people. Sometimes they drive for weeks on end and nobody gets out of the van except to go to the bathroom the entire time. That leads to not surprisingly really, really horrible things happening to people. Medical crises, sexual assault, multiple deaths. The guards are driving, they hardly ever get to stop. They. They are very tired. We documented over 50 crashes, 12 of them where people died. We saw that there were many times women housed right next to men, even though under federal regulations they are supposed to be separate. So many escapes. We found at least 60 escapes since 18 went on to commit new 2000. Crimes, so if you dont feel sympathy for the people in the van, maybe would concern you that people are getting out and committing new crimes once they escape the van. It was a big undertaking to figure this all out, because unlike private prisons which you can see and know exist, these drive across state lines, which makes it really hard to find, to pin whos liable. Is it the place that asked for the pickup . Is it the company itself . Like shane was saying the , Government Agencies that hire these people, they are not saying that we want any sort of standard about how these people are brought back to our custody. They hire the Cheapest Company and the company doesnt the cheapest way possible, and nobody is at fault for it. So yeah, it is similar in a lot of ways. Can you describe one of these suspicious deaths on the transport vehicle . Yeah. One of the people, stephen galec, a father of three, he owned a Home Remodeling business. He succumbed to an opiate addiction for some time, and he fell behind on Child Support payments and they locked him up. Thats the kind of person who might end up on the van. He was arrested for not paying Child Support. Thats right. He died under mysterious circumstances in the sense that there are multiple inmates on the van who say he died from a beating from the two guards driving the van, and others being held on the van. But the medical examiner came back with an inconclusive autopsy and i believe the litigation is ongoing. He was one of our main stories because we had so much detail about what had happened, we could figure out the entire route and see how they crisscrossed all over. He had been begging for help for quite a long time before he actually died. There were multiple people you wrote about who would say they were experiencing stomach pain, some kind of medical issue, but the people who are were driving the vans thought they were faking it. Sometimes, or there was one woman, denise isaacs, a woman in her 40s, a mother who had been complaining for a long time about having she was basically a lot of people are on medication and then their medication stops. It is not uncommon people start having a lot of medical distress while they are on the van. So yeah, that is the kind of thing where, in that case, the guards actually wanted to bring her to the hospital. Under their company policy, they had to call and ask for permission to bring the person to the hospital and the company said no. So they kept rising. I did the story with my coworker. It took us eight months two , fulltime reporters, to figure this out. That is how Much Research it can take to figure out this information, and these two guards, we finally found them, they were really upset that this had happened, that they didnt want it to happen. You could say they should have gone to a hospital anyway and that would have been a valid argument, but we talked to over 50 people that work for these companies, it is people in desperate situations, taking a 9 and ourys 8 or to drive for two weeks on end. No one would want to do that. And they are discouraged from using hotels because they have to pay outofpocket for that . Supposedly. The biggest obstacle is that they have to find a jail to bring all the people on the van to, and they are not going to pay the jail. They need the jail to volunteer to take all the people, which is hard to come by it sounds like. Eah. Aeah, y what kind of training to the drivers receive . They said they beefed up their training, so maybe they have, but at the time we were hearing from people who are saying that they had anywhere from two days to two weeks. When you describe your training as a private prison guard, you wrote about being tear gassed as part of it. Can you describe your training and why you are tear gassed . Yeah. The tear gassing thing was one of the more reasonable things, because the idea is that if tear gas is used, they want you to know what its like so you dont freak out the first time you experience it. What was it like . Its awful, it feels like you are going to die. And youre supposed to not freak out . Yeah. But a lot of the training was like watching videotapes. We had maybe two days of physical selfdefense training, but there were a lot of days that we sat there and there were no instructors. We literally sit all day long and it is a day of training it counts as a day we ha. We had four weeks. Most days there would be two hours, and the rest of the time we would just sit around. Did you feel equipped no, no. Everybody says once you start the job, you learn to actually do it. Sometimes a new guard will come in and try to follow the rules, you cant. You literally do not have enough people to do that. You have to make do, which often means you end up having to use prisoners to supplements. There was one prisoner we would let out of his dorm so he could go to the dorms and see what other prisoners need. He would get kicked back from them, and it made our lives easier. Just because you were so shortstaffed. Writes. And this was something, i was just following what the other guards were doing. I was not initiating it. I would also mention the medical stuff. This really similar issue in the private prisons, because medical costs a lot of money. If an inmate has a serious condition that the infirmary can t take care of, they have to send them out. By the contract, at this prison the company had to pay the cost. They were very reluctant to do that, to send prisoners out. It was a huge cost. They are making 30 per day per inmate. So there was one man i met who had gangrene, and he was making repeated complaints, going into the infirmary over and over. This is all in his records that were reviewed. They were telling him that he was lying and giving him motrin and sending him back. It wasnt until he couldnt sleep anymore sitting upright in the chair, and the other inmate got mad and said they would beat him up if he didnt go to sleep. There was a conflict that erupted, and from that he got taken to the hospital. He got his legs amputated. I met him, and he had no fingers or legs. These stories there are so many. I met so many people in those situations. People who had Heart Failure that would go to the infirmary and get put back in the dorm. It kept coming up and they werent getting taken to the hospital. You also wrote about how Corrections Officers or guards experience much higher rates of jobrelated stress. Yeah. What affect does that have on a guard . How does a high stress position like that, being so understaffed the way he is describing, what effect does that have on the treatment of prisoners . Well, you were describing your academy. I started with the department of corrections in 1978 when there werent many standards and my academy was nine days long. We have come a long way since then. It is now 16 weeks, and there are staffing standards, and there has to be a good Staffing Ratio that is approved through union negotiations, and all those things, which has really brought down the violence level within our prisons. That is what you need. If you do not have enough staff, everybody is scared. The inmates are scared, the staff is scared, everybody overreacts. It is like you are hypervigilant, up here all day long, and when you are home, your relationships with your family, your children your neighbors, they become destroyed over time. That is why Correctional Officers have the highest suicide rate of any occupation, highest divorce rate, highest lots of things. There was a study i read not long ago that officers have a 44 higher posttraumatic stress rate than people in the military, and that is some being in the kinds of situations you mentioned, where as he talks about, are not only in private prisons but some state prisons in some states. Places like california are different because they have such high standards for staffing and medical care thanks to the courts and the courts have been in every aspect of california prisons and that is really what made them evolve to what they are today. In terms of how the level of stress translates, do you feel like there is a direct link . Absolutely. I experienced that myself. Four months. Or i was going in as a journalist, i had a reason i was there, and i decided i would try to be a nice guard, as much as i could. But that didnt last very long, honestly. I felt like i just got worn down really fast. I started having a much shorter temper. I would find myself shouting at people sometimes unintentionally. Everybody does, everybody on that job loses it at different times. I had this experience where i would try to be easygoing and then a couple people took advantage of me and i realized i have to hold the line. Then you had conflicts, and you cannot manage everything, it is so stressful that it is hard not to see yourself surrounded by these people as out to get you, even when they are just wanting to get what they need and make it. But you cant give it to them, and you just get worn down. Said being a guard has a psychological effect . Absolutely. Did you ever find that, coming back on you as a guard . I mean it is hard to answer because im just me. I found that i felt like the experience as a guard was so intense, i was so present that i wasnt necessarily thinking about my experience before. I did find myself sometimes one example that comes to mind, when i had been in prison, my friend josh and i would take extra food. When they passed it out we would get extra trays and eat them. One guard one day did not want to see that, and he really went off. He almost beat me, and then when i was a guard, the prison was locked down, which it often was, because of a violent incident, or because there werent enough guards. So when the prison is locked down you had to bring food to , the unit, they cant go to the cafeteria. I was passing out food tray and one guy took an extra tray, and i was on top of him, and it hit me. Like, whoa. Here i am. And when you are with inmates like that constantly, because you dont have enough staff, that just intensifies the anger they have towards the staff. They are not thinking its the fault, they think it is your fault. They are so dependent on you for everything. I feel like they did think it was a corporations fault. We talked about it a lot. I saw them talking about it with other guards a lot. They would say we know this isnt your fault. But at the same time, its like the way i think of it is like soldiers that are in a war, they dont believe in it, but they are still there, they still have to fight each other, even if they recognize that maybe those people on the other side arent their enemy. But they are shooting at them so they have to shoot back. Alicia santos, what is the oversight like of private entities like prison transportation systems. . Is that the name of the company . Prison transportation companies, extradition companies. The one you specifically investigated was pts. Prison transportation services, yes. That is the largest prison Transportation Company specializing in extradition. What is the oversight like of these corporations . Zero. There was supposed to be oversight. There was a law passed in 2000 it is pretty vague, but it was meant to give the federal government some authority to prosecute particular types of mistreatment. But mostly, to prevent escapes. It was passed after somebody escaped from a private prison van in north dakota. He murdered a young girl and was found in texas living with a new girlfriend with young children. This may people very upset the upset. Ssed the law was passed in 2000. It had been enforced one time in the course of 16 years. Since our story, it was brought up with ben attorney general loretta lynch, who was asked about it by a florida congressman what they were going to do after the story came out. They promised to investigate, and good news bad news. Great, they will investigate. Then this past i got a phone march, call from a woman that ran by aon a van subsidiary of prison transportation services, and she passengers had taken aan die oo burger king wrapper and passed it around to each other and wrote down their name and Contact Information so they could find each other when they all were off of this vehicle. Because they couldnt believe what they were seeing. They did this before the guy died on the bus. This was something that they were able to get us a list and we were able to call every single person, who all verified this story was real. Its tragic, because it was supposed to be something that was being looked into, and obviously the company just went right back to the way they have been operating. People have been on that bus for two weeks, and we verified that. Verify that. Its absolutely true, they are not just saying it. But we do know some people have been arrested really recently, actually, by the department of justice, the criminal section. It does appear they are being looked at. They are not being prosecuted under the law, more for criminal reasons, the most recent being both were for sexually assaulting a female that was on the vehicle. Do you know if these services are increasingly being used to shuttle immigrants to Detention Centers . You know, we did look into that. The thing is that those types of transports are quite different, because they are usually from one facility to the other. They are kind of more direct, whereas the problem with this is that it is such a crisscross they get another car to drive to another another call call, they drive to georgia, now they are driving back to tennessee. It is different whereas immigration transports are done sometimes privately, because so many immigrants are held in private detention facilities, they have their own transfer arms. They have their own transport part of their business just business. Just because it is so because there are so many people to move, and its another thing they can charge for. We are hearing that we are going to see a lot more demand from private Prison Companies for immigration detention because of the crackdowns in the trump administration. Jeannie woodford, do you have any sense of where we are in that ramp up . I really dont. I do not have the current numbers. I know there are projections that the number of detainees that will be held in private prisons will double over the next few years. But i dont know if this actually if it is already occurring or not. You you know . Im not sure. It is also this isnt starting now. It started under obama. It did not start, but it went up through his presidency. I do not know the numbers either, but that has been the frontier of these companies for a while, immigrant detention. There is not a lot of expansion, not in the state federal prison world, but there is a lot in immigrant detention. There has been for years. Jeannie woodford, during this conversation you have been talking about how california has much better policies, that the courts have stepped in, it has really helped improve how the situation is in california, after it reached such intense overcrowding but yet doesnt , californias recidivism rate remains stubbornly high, still in the mid 60s . The return to prison rate is like 65 or Something Like that . It is actually it was over 65 when we added rehabilitation back to the name of the department and corrections and started expanding rehabilitation. Last year it finally started coming down. You attribute that to programming and Rehabilitative Services . Absolutely. I think that it took us almost 40 years to get to where we were with the prison problems in the state, and it is going to take a long time to unwind that. It really is about not only what happens at the state level, but also what happens at the local level. Realignments, you are probably all familiar with realignment, where inmates who are convicted of nonserious, nonviolent, nonsex offenders are kept at the local level. That is a big chunk of people as well. They are still considered state prisoners, but they are held locally. Many of our counties are realizing they have to change what they do at the level to provide rehabilitative programs local level to provide rehabilitative programs. San francisco is doing a really good job, and some other counties as well, but it will take a while for us to see a dramatic change in recidivism. I think it is just good news we are starting to see it come down. Do you think that recidivism could be improved, shane bauer, if private Prison Companies were incentivized to lower the rate of recidivism, meaning that they could get payments for inmates that they held that dont return to the prison within a two to threeyear period, or Something Like that . Havent there been things like that being tried . Not that i know of. There was no of. There was a prison simulation that came out a while ago that was doing that, and this is not what happens in real life. They were paying the Company Extra for people to do well when they get out. The thing is, when we talk about prisons, prisons are the end of the line of a long chain. The reason people are ending up in their do not have much to do with them and the programming issue also is beyond the prison themselves. These are the state issues. The programming in public prisons isnt a whole lot better either. It did seem better than the ones in the private prisons in louisiana, but it is just so minimal. The prison i was in, they were giving classes like kg or rage, and there was a cage your rage, and they were giving ged classes that you could all fit into. In california, i know they have gone way back since the 1970s. They had this time where a lot of rehabilitative programs were getting cut and were building these prisons for longterm solitary confinement. Its almost like a switch of approach in how it deals with the prison population. Alicia, do you know of any innovative ways to incentivize private Prison Companies to improve outcomes . I have never heard of any, but it would be great if they tried it. It seems obvious. You are a company, or you are a government agency, you are contracting out something for the public, you are using taxpayer money to pay for it, then you set up nothing within your contract to ensure basic human dignity. Even with the prison transport companies, there was even Something Like if you bring our prisoners, you have to make sure their medical needs are met. That is the most basic thing, all they require is you be brought alive at some point. I just i dont think these kinds of incentives will happen, because the margin of savings that leads to profit is relatively small, and as soon as you start telling them all of these things, they are not saving any money anymore. If the system is based the bottom line is the most important thing, it always will be for any company. If they arent making money, than they arent going to exist. Why did you want to be a prison guard . Why did you want to do that story . [laughter] what was the first of all, its very hard as a reporter to get access to prisons, period. It has gotten harder and harder over the years and decades. I have been in some california prisons, but even in california it will be easier, but still you have a tour for and thats it. Three hours you cant interview particular inmates, and there are a lot of walls. With private prisons it is even more difficult. These are companies. They dont have a lot of Public Access the Public Access laws dont apply in a lot of ways to them, so getting records is really hard, getting information about them is difficult. These companies have existed for 30 years, and we havent had a good look inside of them. That was the only way that i could think of to do that, to see what life was like in these prisons. Do you think a forprofit prison, that private prisons, have a role in our criminal Justice System, that they should be there, that they have a beneficial role to play. No. Not at all . I mean, again, the only the difference theres nothing they are adding other than cost savings. That is really the issue. And that is questionable. And its questionable. But behind this question is, really the issue is the size of our prison population. Private prisons, all this stuff are a symptom, because it is so big it is the largest in the world by far. As long as its inflated, there are going to be ways states are going to be trying to save money because it is just so expensive. It is going to be minimal. And before you speak, i just want to remind the audience that in five minutes we will be taking questions from you, so please be thinking of your questions. Theres a microphone in the back right corner of the room, my left. Please feel free to line up if you have questions. I was just going to say, you talked about recidivism. It is so much for complicated so much more complicated than that. You have to look at the entire system to address recidivism. It starts with a persons first arrest. It starts with what happens when when they are on probation. It is every aspect who gets out on bail, who doesnt. Is is your criminal Justice System fair, is it not fair . Who are you arresting, who are you not arresting . It is part of a whole. You cant just take one piece of it and say, weve contract with you to bring down recidivism. You have to look at the entire system and make it fit together in a way where everybodys goal is Public Safety, and when you are looking at Public Safety, you have to be concerned about everybody that is involved in that system, the inmates, your policy, your families, the victims. Its that holistic approach that will really bring down recidivism and get us to a sensible criminal justice policy. I have the same question for you that i had for shane bauer. Do you think that a forprofit correctional facility can play a beneficial role in our criminal Justice System . I really dont. Having been a Public Servant, i really believe in public service, and a really believe and i really believe that when you are a Public Servant, it is really your goal to try to try to be judicious with taxpayer money, to have clear missions, to really seek policies that meet that mission. If your mission is profit, i dont know how that fits in to a good Public Policy and a system that really seeks to benefit all taxpayers and everybody within the state and other states. Alicia, where do you stand . It is unlikely they add anything at all, but i also want to say that i dont necessarily think private prisons are worse than some of our public prisons. It is just worth keeping in mind. The profit motive is gross to many of us, it is so offputting that it is how we are running our system. But at the same time, some of the worst stories ive ever was making ano one profit at all. So removing the profit is not going to fix our problems all. One problem is reducing the prison population. That to some degree. Its caring about people. I would agree, i absolutely agree, there have been horrific stories in california prisons and prisons around the country. But i think the difference is, in a public system, every time you have a pelican bay, things change. Courts get involved, policy changes, Staffing Levels, staffing training, the tools that people utilized, better medical care, better psychiatric care. All of that happens in the public system as it evil all. Udalls evolves. In a private system, you have companies that go bankrupt and come back with a new name, which we have seen. I dont see how you make that any better, because their motive is profit. But also the public system builds super max prisons, builds things to put people in cells for 30 years. It also created a war on drugs, mandatory minimums, lots of things that inflated our prison population significantly, particularly in the 1980s, when we hear about these private prisons becoming much more appealing. But you are writing a book about private prisons, and you are finding that this model has gone back even before the 1980s. Yes, we have had forprofit prisons throughout american history. Different periods of times, from the first prison in the country was a forprofit prison in philadelphia. The first penitentiaries were essentially factories where they are making textiles for companies. It was about 40 years into the time that we Start Building penitentiaries that in the south they were entirely run by companies, entirely privatized. Then after the civil war, companies were using prisoners as labor, working cotton fields, working in minds mines. This went on into the early 20th century. Then the states took over, and the states are still trying to make a profit from these. Sometimes it is private, sometimes it is the state, but there has been a profit aspect through the whole system, up until very recently, when the private prisons were created. Well, let me open it up to the audience. As always, keep your questions short and ending with question , and be brief so we can get to as many people as possible. I see someone at the microphone. What is your question . Do you think there is a connection in the modern prison system, both private and public, to the belief that it has become our modern system of slavery . Who wants to take that . [laughter] i could the thing i would i am deep into history now, and there is a line. We had slavery, and during slavery, prisons were basically subsidizing the slavery system by making clothes for slaves, cheaper than the north could make them. It was very much tied into the system. Slaveowners were learning from the prison system for a while. Then we have prisoners doing what slaves used to do for a very long time. I am talking up to the 1970s, there were prisoners picking cotton in fields when the rest of the country was mechanized. And its not just the profit issue. Before the civil war, most prisoners were white. Immediately after, most were black, and they have been ever since. It has been a method of dealing with the huge gap of wealth in the country. Social control, in some ways, i think you cant separate it. It is not the same, but it is part of the same trajectory. Thanks for the question. Next question . Feel free to introduce yourself, if thats ok. [laughter] hi, im eric. Ok. Is there any relationship between private prisons, the internal illicit prison economy, and the prominence of gangs as authority within prisons . Drawing connections . Im confused by the question, im sorry. Is there a tie between private prisons and gangs within prisons and contraband . Chain, do you want to answer . , so the prison i was in was louisiana is strange because there arent prison gangs like most of the country, and they are not racially segregated, which is strange coming from california. You have this idea of the deep south being a place that is really racist, but in california prisons are extremely segregated. But there were guards from other prisons filling in, saying where they were, and one of the guards said he liked his prison better because the gangs were really strong there, and in louisiana s prison it was very chaotic. There werent really people calling the shots within the prison population, telling people what to do. He said at my facility, if somebody doesnt make their bed, they get stabbed. If they mouth off to an officer, they get stabbed. It maintains a lot of order. I heard this from several people, had some lawsuits about this. It kind of comes back to the issue of the understaffing, stuff like that. Although at the same time, in those prisons, guards get killed sometimes. There is more concentrated hits that are directed by gangs. Hi, im kimberly. I am a volunteer on the board, so thank you for being here tonight. Even more so, thank you for doing what you do, putting yourself in peril to do so for the good of the public. I was hoping you could talk a little bit about risk and reward in terms of the backlash that you received from the articles he wrote, and perhaps ms. Woodford could comment also on how it feels to be on the receiving end of seeing what happens in someone elses prison. I would say that, interestingly, a lot of the times when i write stories, there is more of a backlash, but the prison transport authority, even the employees of the company likes the story. They were like, thank you so much for getting the story out there. The only people that didnt like it were the people that owned the actual companies. The backlash was just silence, like they just didnt talk to us, and then they did invite us their later to see some of the changes they had made which we later realized were not real. That was actually really nice, because a lot of the times you do kind of get its not always horrible, just people being like, screw you are or whatever. But with that one, a lot of people thanked us. That was an interesting reaction, because a lot of times when you write about prisons, you are writing about what guards have done and they are very mad. But in this one, we did try to make sure to point out the difficulties they were facing. So they really appreciated that. When you advocate for the interest of prisoners, do you hear from victims of crimes sometimes who feel the trade, maybe, that you are advocating for their needs . I would never say i am advocating for them in this sense please dont interpret it that way, i was just curious if you hear from them in any way . That is definitely happened, where people are like, you ruined my life, you ruined my husbands life by writing about this particular thing. People say that to you, and i find the best reaction is, i try to have a phone conversation with someone when i have an email like that, because emailing back and forth on that is not going to work. We will get nowhere with that. I themly will try to hear out, actually, because i want to hear what people say. I really want to hear their criticism, because i want to think about it next time. It is a sensitive subject matter. You want to be aware of everyone you are impacting because you are impacting a lot of people. Hi im mike, the executive , director of a nonprofit called the public trust alliance. In looking at models for improving the situation, the Public Trust Doctrine has been part of our law since before statehood, and most of my work is with the Public Utilities commission and investing your own utilities, which are doing some amazingly dumb things with respect to climate change. Prison is anook inherently public sphere, much like providing resources for water and drinking. To use some of the Public Trust Doctrine as guideposts for moving forward, have you heard of any citation of that particular strand of law in our law which is based on Public Interest, and its application in corrections . No. Jeannie woodford . Im not sure that i understand the question. I think in terms of just how to function in Public Interest like that, that is something that is a stated objective. How to make these institutions im sorry, my understanding have was articulated, you not seen any of that. No, i have not. But something in my mind is somewhat unrelated. It is related in that this is a idea of how profit is impacting people who work in the Public Interest, which is appropriate because im here with the martial project, named after Thurgood Marshall. The son of Thurgood Marshall is actually on the board of the cca. I was recently at a shareholder meeting. He was there, and he gets paid 150,000 per year to sit on the board. In the pamphlet they pass out it actually said in it that he was brought on the board to increase diversity of the board. I tried to ask him why he does answer me,ill never but he gets a lot of money to do it. Code in california defines the purpose of prisons, and for a long time the purpose was punishment, that was it. And then, four or five years ago, 2006, we added rehabilitation into the department of corrections. I think adding that back in set the department towards the mission that would improve Public Safety by providing Rehabilitative Services to inmates. Is that getting to what your point was . Some things are too important publicly to treat as private property. What youre saying is the closest you have seen to a Corporation Getting there is to have courtmartial Thurgood Marshall on their board. That is what you are saying. We have time for three more questions. My name is gerald, californias prisons were privately owned for a while, until governor weller broke down the gates to take the keys back. They were held by the state until relatively recently, and about 1000here are prisoners located at side of california outside of california and inside of california. Moreu think there are people currently held in private prisons in california, because california is held outofstate . Do you think that will be a trend continuing in the state . Are private prisons going to gain more power as time goes on . I do not think that will happen in california at all. We have had a cap on private aisons in state, 4500 at long, long time and all efforts to increase that have never gone anywhere. Ly reason that california the only reason that california is like that is a state is because of the cap is the number that can be housed in our prison system. This date has been doing everything they can the state has been doing everything they can to eliminate the outofstate beds, because they are expensive and are sending inmates away from their family members. I think those private beds outofstate will come to an end, actually. Thank you. And . Hi, my name is jaden, and one so iion i had in my youth, know that it is a lot of all my youth, we would be sitting in the back listening, so one thing i was going to ask is what more can we do in our communities to help this keep going and progress . Thank you for the question. It is a similar question i was going to ask as a concluding question, as we are looking at we are on the cusp of potentially exponential growth of this industry, what should be be watching for we be watching for to keep it in check . What can we do . I think you have to be involved at the local level in terms of what happens within your countys criminal Justice System, and the state gave the county a lot of money to bring rehabilitative programs to individuals who are involved in the criminal Justice System as a result of realignment, and some counties have used that money for things other than programming. I think you have to Pay Attention to what your counties are doing, where they are spending their money, and making sure they are putting it into drug treatment, Mental Health treatment, providing homes and medical care, the things that we know work to bring down recidivism and keeping people from being involved in the criminal Justice System. I think that is really, really important. Privateting against prisons i think is really an important issue as well. Alicea, shane . One thing we talk about a lot at the Marshall Project is that one of the difficult things about prisons is that most people have never been inside one. If there was some way, some future scenario that being in our society meant you had to know what it felt like an look like to be inside of a prison, i think it would be so enlightening for people, because it is out of sight, out of mind. You think that is never going to affect me, anybody i love, and even if you believe that and walk through a facility and see what it is like inside of a prison and see what it is like in there, i do not think you can walk away the same. As a young person, just spreading awareness as much as you can and being as knowledgeable as you can, because the biggest obstacle is that people do not know and they do not care. Making people care, however you can, is a really powerful thing. If i could quickly being so close to san quentin, i have run into people all the time who have been in that prison because their doors were open quite a bit. Has anyone been inside . Isnt that amazing inside . Isnt that amazing . They actually let people in. We have time for one final question. We have a combo statement question. You do not need to know my name, honestly. Comment is that i do not know how you guys go to sleep at night knowing that you do what is do, and saying that it enlightening to going to prison and have to realize, and even if you do not have this mentality yourself to have to tell people this mentality that it might not happen to your family, because it happened to my family, to say that it is enlightening and that it will not happen to you, and that you do not have to worry about it. You can be the advocate for them it is kind of love for you guys. I just do not understand how you are doing this right now. That is just my comment. That, ok, son on we have had several states, including california and oregon, where i just came from, that have legalized Recreational Marijuana, but on the federal end of that, you have attorney general jeff sessions, who is equate Recreational Marijuana to the use of heroin. Is do youmy question anticipate a busing of the heads butting of the heads between our federal government led by the attorney general and the states over incarceration over nonviolent drug offenses . If you want to be able to respond to the previous statement as well, i think it is a strong statement and if you have a response, if you have one. I certainly do not mean it to be hurtful. , butnk people should care i know from the work i do that a lot of people do not. So i believe that if people saw it and experienced it that it would be moving to them, and not everyone has the experience of having a loved one, and they are fortunate to not have that experience and know what it is like to have a loved one incarcerated. I wish people could understand what it would be like, and that is what i mean by that. If it is interpreted that way, i could not do anything about it, but that is my response. It seems like what you are doing is trying to solve the problems and help the problems, and help the system get better. If people want to be able to respond, i think they should be able to respond. That was the opportunity that they were being given. If you want to have more of a conversation about it, please do so. We are very close to concluding this conversation. Too,nk part of the reason, there are large segments of our society that have not been , oured by our system criminal Justice Systems, because those in it are not reflective of our population as a whole. They are disproportionately populations that are much smaller proportion than what they are. They are much more proportion to our population as proposed to how they are represented in our prison population. Because of our past drug laws, i do not know any family byt has not been impacted incarceration, at the local level or the state prison, including my own. I think it is important to go inside prisons to humanize people there. People think inmates are what you see on tv. It is not so. They are people, they have kids, families, and we need to care about what happens to them. For me, that is why i am so passionate about making changes to our Public Policy. We do not incarcerate people when they do not need to be incarcerated. It is not the length of the prison sentence that makes us safer, it is what we do with people, the treatment we provide for them that makes us they for. So that is really why i do what i do. Our guests will be around after this as well to answer questions, because i am sorry for the person who asked the last questions, we will not be able to get to it in this panel. Umat is in part because infor has a tradition of asking the last question, as we conclude our program, what is your 62nd idea to make the world better place . Shane . I do not have a need the innovation an easy innovation, but when we look back on this time, the time we are living in, the recent decades we are living, i think thats incarceration is going to masshis time incarceration is going to define this time, and we have to let a lot of people out of prison. We have 2. 2, 2. 3 Million People behind bars, more than any country in the world. Doing that takes a lot of things. Taking the power of the prosecutors, changing drug laws, changing how much we punish violent criminals, because most of the people in prison are there for violent crimes, 85 , and policing there are so many things races and then Society Racism in society, is all of thatem. Tuff mashup into one it symbolizes our bigger social problem. For me, it is really expanding datadriven decisionmaking. I think r Public Policy comes from the motion and politicians trying to win elections. Aboutant i think it is expending that into decisionmaking. Every law, every statute that is passed should have the data behind it to say why we are doing what we are doing. [applause] it is pretty pie in the sky, but if there was any way to really loosen the laws around the records of prisons, one of the most difficult things is it is so hard to figure out what is actually going on because the records are kept in a way where fors a Security Threat anyone to know anything, kind of like a blanket denial. The transparency is an important thing that is needed. More cameras, more Public Access to what that footage shows. When people know they are being watched, people behave differently. That has been proven over and over again. So just shine a light on these places that operate in full darkness. [applause] alicia, you worked under a prison more and warden, and shane power of mother jones magazine, thank you both for coming here. [applause] road to the white house 2020 kicks off tonight with president ial candidate john headey and headlining the the clintonkennedy dinner. Top taking the lead on policy change. Here is a portion of tonights event. Boy, a young child, a young baby in youngstown, ohio has less of a chance than survival of survival than a baby born in iran. We have the Republican Party saying we are going to throw 20 more Million People off of the health care roles. We are going to disinvest and try to undermine the very program that provides health care for our citizens. This is not right. This is why we are here. This is why we have come together. This is the job before us. The Democratic Party has got to be the party that builds the new system. We have to be the party that builds a new system. [applause] ohio congressman tim ryan speaking at the kennedyclinton dinner in new hampton, one of new hampshire, one of the keynote speakers, along with democratic president candidate john delaney. On cspan, here are some of the highlights. 11 30 a. M. Eastern, the Liberty Medal ceremony honoring senator nationalin at the Constitution Center in philadelphia. At 1 00 p. M. , former secretary of state john kerry receiving a Lifetime Achievement award at the Kennedy Institute in boston. At 240 2 45 p. M. , david brooks and historian ronald white discuss character and the presidency. On book tv on cspan two, the southern festival of books in a nashville. At 2 30 p. M. Eastern, jonathan ives