Transcripts For CSPAN3 Politics And Public Policy Today 20240622

Credibility and accountability and will tip to do so. Do you have another question. Im going to make a quick note on that. And see if dan agrees. Afghanistan is going from a fairly corrupt patronage system to a system which will be professional, transparent and noncorrupt. That is a long hard road to travel. And if president ghani moves too fast he will break his politics. And he will cause so many groups to be disgruntled with him and organize against him. So we have to be patient and recognize that this kind of transition is very difficult. Hes got to be on that road he has to be convincing of the afghan people, but we have to give him a little slack. Because if he moves too fast and breaks his politics and we lose the government, then we lose the possibility of moving to a professional, transparent and nonrupt system and go back to the old afghanistan and that is not good for anybody. Sorry. And i absolutely concur with that. And i guess finally the last question on reconciliation and the role of women. I wouldnt say that anyone is necessarily optimistic either. But nor are they pessimistic. It is truly a matter of just evaluating as much information as we can get and trying to seize most importantly this potential window of opportunity. It is this alinement of factors that is currently there right now that we should be able to take advantage of should we be able to do. So it is continuing to try to build a conducive facilitateive, hospitable environment for a reconciliation process should that become available and the way to do that is to continue to work with the Afghan Government and work with the pakistanis and work with others in the region and see what is spawned from trek two initiatives and see what might be achieved. But clearly, i mean, the commitment to women is not only something that obviously most unites our political left and right and congressional support in terms of wanting to safeguard the remarkable gains that have been made for women over the course of the last 14 years and which unites the key donors but truly something that this government and National Unit espouses because it knows it is the right thing and because it believes as passionately in it as we do. We see we saw that from president ghanis inaugural address and he talked about his wife and reconciliation for the first time and all of the subsequent time hes talked about reconciliation and his actions. The fact that he delivered on a commitm to appoint four women ministers and the fact there is the first women justice of the Supreme Court that was nominated and not confirmed but will take the opportunity to key to announce women tor key positions and to slowly again, cognizant of where we started this process, the fact that it is subject to poverty and instability and lack of institutions and lack of capacity and that every single step here is a calculation between what the policy goals are in the vision of how to get there and what is politically feasible as well. But i have no doubt that that commitment is shared by president ghani for to the advancement and continuing to safeguard the gains that women have made, by president ghani, and dr. Abdullah and by the entire government and with regards to specifically to reconciliation theyve said this is one of their key red lines and we have said consistently since the beginning of the administration and i remember secretary clinton announcing the same three red lines for the outcome of any process, particularly the embracing of the afghanistan constitution including the rights for women. Thank you. Were out of time. I would just like to thank all of you again for coming. I would like to say thank you to steve for giving ten days to visit the region. [ applause ] last but not least, particular thanks to ambassador feldman for his Public Service and in particular for his years at the special Representatives Office for afghanistan, pakistan and trying to bring peace to afghanistan and pakistan. And i have to say as somebody working on the region for a long time i feel more hopeful now that we are inching in that direction than i have in a long time. So thank you all. And thank you, dan. [ applause ] thank you. Thank you. [ proceedings adjourned ] and a reminder if you missed any of this event you can watch it at a Video Library at cspan. Org. And elsewhere in washington today, a short drive up the road from the institute of peace president obama at American University taking sharp aim at critics the Iran Nuclear Deal saying many of those who back the invasion of iraq now want to reject the accord and put the middle east on a likely path toward another war. This is from the washington post. Speaking to lawmakers opposing the deal mr. Obama said it would miss more than the chance to curb the nuclear program, it would cause the reputation on the United States and internet diplomacy. Well watch it tonight at 8 00 p. M. On cspan and watch it in the Video Library. And tonight a look at austin texas, we visit history sites across the nation to hear from local historians, authors and Civic Leaders every other weekend on cspan book tv and cspan 3s American History tv. And this month were featuring the citys tour each day at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Sunday night on q a former emergency manager of detroit kevin orr speaks about the Financial Issues and the job overseeing the largest municipal bankruptcy in u. S. History. If detroit had taken the 1. 5 billion that it borrowed in 2005 and 2006 when the stock market went down to 6,700 and just invested in a index fund, dow jones, s p it is trading at 18,000, three times what it was. They would have tripled their money, they could have paid the pensions in full and got back in declaration of the 13th check, giving pensioners a 13th check at the end of the year in addition to the 12 they are due. So it could have fixed itself if there was a sober management Going Forward, just like any organization, the United States as well, if you have strong and focused leadership you can resolve the problems but it takes a lot of effort. On sunday night on cspans q a. A panel of advocates and a panel of Justice Department officials testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on the effectiveness of the federal prison system. The first panel which included piper kerman author of orange is the new black, my year in a womens prison discuss their experiences in and out of the system and the work they are doing now to assist those still incarcerated or in the reentry process. This is 2 1 2 hours. Let me just say im really looking forward to this one. I was telling the witnesses i have read all of the testimony and generally do that as best to my ability. Sometimes the testimony provided before this committee can be a little dry. And as im reading it late at night, it will put me to sleep. Not so in this case whatsoever. I think the testimony was fascinating. Partly because i am somewhat new to this issue. Im going to keep my Opening Statements brief because i know senator booker would like to make an Opening Statement and im happy to have him do so since he has been involved in this issue a whole lot longer than i have. And i just want to make a few comments. Being a business guy, im data driven. The statistics on the bureau of prisons and the high levels of incarceration rates are stark. In 1980 for example, there were 25,000 people in the federal prison system. Today there are 209,000. That is 736 increase as our population has only increased 40 . In total, back in 1980, there are about 500,000 people in prison. Today there is 2. 3 million. We in america, have the highest level of incarceration in the world. In 2014 or 2013, 716 people per 100,000 population, the next closest country was rwanda with 492. Canada is 118. So i guess my primary comment is when you look at those stark statistics and you see and i appreciate that jerome dealer is here from wisconsin. Met with him earlier and part of a group called nehemiah project, a group of individuals some of them ex offender, spends some time in jail, trying to help other people reenter society. I remember during that meeting jerome how many times did i wince, as i was being told the story about how unbelievably difficult we make former offenders and people in jail to reenter society. So the purpose of the hearing is to lay out the realities and understand that what the bureau of prisons is dealing with is an incredibly difficult and complex problem. And i do have to mention that the testimony by Charles Samuels the current director is also powerful. And he lays out a little bit of the problem in terms of the dual mission of the bureau of prisons. Let me quick read from his testimony. The dual fold mission is to protect society by confining offenders in prisons and Community Based facilities that are safe human and cost efficient and appropriately secure. And to make sure offend rerz participating in programs that are law abiding when they return to our communities. That is a tough task. And i wish i could look at the statistics and say we are nailing that one and we have this problem solves but we dont. Were a long ways from it. The testimony will be in the federal system we only have a 14 recidivism rate, where state and locals it is over 60 . I guess we can look at that we are doing Something Better on the federal level than state and local but that is a long way from a successful result and im sure yule agree with me on that. And im not going to steal ms. Ker mans thunder from his testimony but at the end i want everybody to Pay Attention from the quote she will provide from mr. Thomas mott osborne because it lays out the issue and the question we should be asked as a civilized society. So with that ill turn it over to my Ranking Member senator tom carper. I want to thank senator booker for encouraging us to hold this important hearing. We thank you for coming as witnesses. My day job, was i was governor of delaware for eight years and very involved in the National Governors association. In delaware we dont have sheriffs jails, we dont have county jails or city jails, we have the state correctional system. We have one for adults ab one for juveniles and one for juveniles. In my second term as governor, general mccaffrey came, and he was the nations drug czar and he wanted to come and visit in wilmington at the prison because we are doing a good job in terms of reducing recidivism by half, from 75 to maybe 40 . And he wanted to find out how were doing with it and he brought with him abc camera crew as well. And ill never forget before he went into the prison and looked at the program to see how it worked, we met with about 50 inmates. And we met in a room much smaller than this room and all of their white garb and general mccaffrey and myself and been to many of the high schools and middle school, grade schools churches and other ball games and i had some idea of who some of them were and they didnt know who i was. And said to the guys, before we got started on the program part of the tour, i said, most of them, maybe 19, 20, 21, 22 years old. I said how did you end up getting here. What happened in your lives or didnt happen in your lives that led you here. About five or six guys spoke up before we took our tour and they all told stories that were verym6 similar. Very similar. I was born before i was born when my mom was young. I never knew my dad. I ended up in kindergarten other kids could read. They knew the letters and the numbers and i couldnt. I got into the first grade and i started falling behind. And the second grade and the third grade and fourth grade and falling further behind. And about the fourth grade, one guy said i realize if i act up in class and be a real nuisance, the teacher would stop calling on me. So he would put his head down and just stay out of trouble and he said eventually they would be put out in the hall by the fifth or sixth grade. And finally when i was in the seventh or eighth grade i was suspended from school and for a while i liked that. Because i was no longer embarrassed by how little i knew. And when i was in the ninth grade, i got expelled. And i found myself on the outside and everybody wants to be popular. Guys want to be popular. If you are a good athlete, you can be popular in school. If you could be good with the girls, you could be popular in school. I was nob of those. The only way to feel good about myself was to take drugs or kmu alcohol and when i did that, i felt good about myself. He said didnt have the ability to pay for those things. I ended up in a life of crime and i ended up in this prison. Every one of them told the same story. The same story. And the fella who was the commissioner of the corrections at the time, fella named stan taylor wonderful guy who used to say to me, 95 , 98 of the people incarcerated in our state are going to end up being released and come back into our society and we can send them back into society as better People Better patients or better parents or better criminals. And he said it is our choice. And it is a choice of the inmate themselves. So were big on root causes in this committee and im big on root causes in this committee. And if we take young men, young women, not so young men and women and do something about their addictions, while they are in cars rated that is helpful. If we do something about the lack of education that is helpful. If we do something about the lack of work skills or the ability to get up in the morning and know they have a job to go to, that is helpful. All of the above. All of the above. And the state laboratories of democracy, we can learn from them and from one another. Today were going to learn from you. And i thank you very much. And thank you for suggesting we be here. Lets have a good hearing. Thank you. Thank you senator carper. Ill ask for unanimous consent to enter my written statement into the record and with that senator booker. I want to start by expressing my gratitude to the Ranking Member and the chairman for having this hearing. It has been probably the best experience ive had in the United States soebts since i senate since i began about 18, 19 months ago to find such bipartisan willingness to deal with justice in our country. It is extraordinary from my hour meeting with chairman grassley today to sit with you today chairman to see this bipartisan willingness to confront the wrongs in our country that surround criminal justice and a determination to do something about it. Let me just interject before you go on. And we talked about this earlier, i was going to do a field hearing in milwaukee on high levels of incarceration. We didnt do it on that subject because this is so complex, and it was difficult to design the hearing so it wont be inflammatory. So again, i appreciate you working with me so we hold this one first here. But again this is first in a series. When what we end up having a hearing is School Choice and this is the beginning of the spectrum in terms of not providing a proper education and it ends up leading to this end result in terms of prison. But again, i appreciate your willingness to work with me on this and im hoping at some point in time we can move this discussion into different areas that this is pretty relevant one of them would be in milwaukee. Thank you. Im grateful to you. And weve had countless conversations about criminal Justice Reform and your eagerness, willingness, sincere desire to do something about it has been really encouraging to me in my early months in the senate and im thankful for that and this opportunity to be here today. It is a movement in our country to do something about it when you have a president of the United States, being the first president to do so we see that as part of our culture. As a christian, it says in the bible, matthew 25, when i was hungry you gave me something to eat, when i was thirsty, you gave me something to drink and when i was in prison, you came to visit me. This criminal Justice System is not about fear and retribution and guided by principals of justice, fairness and ultimately redemption. To me that is the american way. But unfortunately weve gone in a way that so far cuts against our common values and our ideals. This age of mass incarceration on a whole is violating our core principals in so many areas. To have us as we proclaim to be the land of freedom and liberty but to have one out of every four imprisoned people on the planet earth here in the United States of america even though we only have 4 to 5 that runs contrary to our core ideals to do this at such a massive expense to the taxpayer egregious expenditure where we spend a quarter of a trillion dollars of a year incarcerating human beings many of whom do not need to be incarcerated at the length they are. When we see our infrastructure crumbling and we had the resources between 1990 and 2005 to build a prison in this country every ten days runs against our principal values as a nation. When we see pour people poor People Ground up into a system but for the fact they dont have the resources for a liberation that we have a modern day debtors prison that runs contrary to our common values. We now are at a point in our country where we have literally almost one out of three americans between 75 and 100 million americans have an arrest record. If we go back to the revolutionary times and tell them there was a government in this land that would be seizing the liberty of almost one out of every three people, we would definitely have sparked that revolutionary spirit and now is a time that we need a revolution when it comes to issues of crime and punishment. And the chairman was clear i think it is important to state this is a narrow hearing about one specific aspect to begin a process of looking at reforms but if you look just at the bureau of prisons, the federal bureau has expanded 800 since 1980, the bureau of prisons has 200,000 inmates and is 3540 over in capacity. Employees nearly 40,000 people and last year in face cal 2014 the bureau of prisons enacted budget totaled an astonishing 6. 9 billion. Just working on transportation and Commuter Rail seeing the fraction of that were debating over when we are spending this much. This bureau of prisons now is 25 of the department of justice discretionary budget and in my very first meeting with then attorney general holder he actually talked to me about the urgent crisis he faces that the bureau of prisons is squeezing out his entire budget taking money away from things we should be invested in for Homeland Security for our protection over all as a citizenry because of this massive explosion. The bureau of prisons is so large it is critical that we in congress, this committee exercise our over sight to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being spent wisely especially in light of the states that you can reduce your prison populations dramatically saving taxpayer dollars and lowering crime at the same time. So make no mistake, as a mayor i learn that you have to make sure that when a crime is committed, that there is a punishment and people get a proportional punishment but im troubled by the practices that are failing to live up to our common values and just do not make in any way economic sense as well. And so im grateful for this hearing. There are some areas which i think we really need to drill down that are in those small areas that we can make improvements now, that can mr. Chairman, make a big difference. One is solitary confinement, the segregated Housing Units a practice many people medical professionals, human and civil rights activists and other countries consider torter torture torture because of the impact. Prolonged use of solitary confinement results in severe psychological harm. Justice kennedy in a recent Supreme Court decision questioned the constitutionality of the punishment saying the penal system has solitary confinement that brings you to the end of madness perhaps madness itself. The medical community confirms that reality. It is time the federal government acts as a model of ending this practice of solitary confinement and give the authority to release prisoners early for compassionate reasons. Those can be released facing imminent death or facing serious seriousin cap astation. They are not a threat to the safety in our community and costing taxpayers extraordinary amounts of money. This is a Compassionate Release Program that is properly named and should be explored. Eric holder issued guide lines to allow them to expand the pool of applicants to be considered for compassionate release and this is something we should look at. And i hope to explore what planning the bureau of prisons provides to those that are the least of these in the society those often marginalized those suffering from Mental Health challenges and drug addictions. Right now states across america are struggling to control for example a growing heroin epidemic and many people are finding themselves addicted in a federal system that does not adequately treat them. The bureau of prisons must find a way to insist inmates struggling with addiction and with Mental Health. Again, i want to thank you, chairman. This is a hearing that ive been very excited about and i want to thank our witnesses. I especially want to thank Charles Samuels who has met with me personally and weve had great conversations with and his tenure is coming to an end but he is a dedicated Public Servant representing the administration and i know they are committed to reforms and have a record of making some progress on these issues that i have outlined. Thank you. Thank you senator booker. And again we want to thank the witness and welcome them. It is the tradition of this committee to swear in witnesses. So if you all rise and raise your right hand. Do you swear the testimony you will give before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god. Thank you. Please be seated. Our first witness is miss piper kerman. She is the author of orange is the new black, a memoir about his experiences in federal prison. Shes a board member of the Womens Prison Association which promoted alternatives to incarceration for women. Missker man. Mr. Chairman Ranking Member, and members of the committee, i appreciate you inviting me here today. Many my memoir orange is the new black i recount in detail the 13 months i spent incarcerated in the federal prison system. With most of my time servedality the Federal Correctional Institution in danbury, connecticut. I have worked with many women and men who are returned citizens like me and we all want to get back on our feet to reclaim our rights of citizenship and to make positive contributions to our communities. Our experiences are essential to understanding the reform that is needed in our criminal Justice System so it will provide for Public Safety in a way that is legal and humane and sensible and that is why im here today. Women are the Fastest Growing population in the american criminal Justice System. And their families and communities are increasingly effected by what happens to women behind bars. According to the bureau of justice statistics 63 of women in prison are there for a nonviolent offense, many are incarcerated due to Substance Abuse and Mental Health issues which are overwhelmingly prevalence in prisons and jails and the rate of sexual abuse and other physical violence that women experience prior to incarceration is staggering. Female prisons suffer these problems at greater rates than male prisoners and these experiences are relevant both to their crimes and to their incarceration. But these issues are not be adequately addressed by the bureau of prisons. The research on criminal justice involving women and girls shows the risk factors i mentioned require different approaches in order to reduce womens recidivism and result in successful reentry. This is not unlike findings in other fields such as health care where a Research Shows that women experience hart attack symptoms differently from men and their treatment needs differ. And this understanding has saved womens lives. The bureau of prisons should adopt gender responsive approaches that interrupt cycles of unnecessary suffers. States Like Washington provide a road map to do this successfully. When i was locked up in danbury i knew women trying to raise their children during brief reunions in the visitors room while fending off Sexual Harassment and struggling with addiction and trying to get a High School Education so that when they got out, they stood some chance of surviving, despite their felony conviction. I saw women in Bureau Prisons denied necessary medical care and women with Mental Health issues wait for months to see the one psychiatrist who was available for 1400 women. And that is unimaginable in a system where at least 65 of women experience some kind of Mental Illness. Equally shocking were the mandatory reentry classes inmates took to prepare to leave prison. I attended one on housing which was led by a man who worked in construction in the prison. And the mostly poor and overwhelmingly minority women attending the class desperately wanted to know how someone with a felony conviction and few resources could find safe Affordable Housing to live in after release. And instead, we heard about fiberglass insulation and roof maintenance and some other Home Improvement tips. The reentry Health Classes that we took were taught about a kuehlinary Department Officer who had no expertise or information on Reproductive Health or Mental Health or Substance Abuse options post release. He had, however, played professional baseball for a brief time and hence his authority on the health topic. Many of the dan berry rules were questionable but it was close to home for the women serving time there. Families could visit children could see their mothers many of whom were raising their kids on their own before being sent to prison. Yet, the b. O. P. Disregarded this when it chose to convert danbury fci to a mens facility in 2013. This sent women beyond the b. O. P. Stated goal of no more than 500 miles from home and also deprived many of them of programming that male prisoners enjoy, such as unicore employment, which is very important or the residential drug and alcohol treatment program, which not only is one of the most effective programs the b. O. P. Has but one of the only ways to earn a sentence reduction in the bureau. It is worth noting that the desire to empty that prison of women caused the bureau of prisons to examine prisoner sentences and exercise discretion granted by the Second Chance act signed into law in 2008 but president bush. Hundreds of women were reassigned to complete their sentences in Halfway Houses or even in home confinement. And while briefly exercised in the case of danbury fci, the b. O. P. Has not used its authority under the act to safely reduce the federal prison population and return as many prisoners as possible to their communities. The v. O. P. Should place all eligible prisoners in Halfway Houses or home confinement at the earliest possible dates and should use compassionate release and sentence reduction programs and this would help relieve the persistent overcrowding and keep staff and prisoners safer while reducing costs. Finally, the b. O. P. Must be led by individuals who value the role of communities and families in rehabilitation and understand the particular needs of women. We appreciate the service of director samuels and he leaves at the end of this year. He should be replaced by a leader who is committed to enacting these values into policy. I urge the administration to look outside of the existing Bureau Leadership for strong candidates who will make the b. O. P. A model system driven by innovation and creativity. I close with the words of the legendary reformer and warden of [ singing ] prison, Thomas Mott Osborne who famously asked shawl our prisons be scrap heaps or human repair shops . Today with the biggest prison population in Human History here in the United States we must insist on a different answer to this question. Thank you. Thank you, mrs. Ker man. The next witness is mr. Jerome dillard. He is the jail reentry coordinator for dane county wisconsin and served as the voice for voices beyond bars and offering employment and computer classes. And i want to thank you for traveling here from wisconsin for your testimony. Please. Thank you senator johnson. In opening, i want to thank this committee for having me. I want to thank you, senator johnson, and my other senator from wisconsin, Tammy Baldwin for having me sit before you today. I sit here as a formerly incarcerated citizen who served time in both federal and state prison systems. My crimes were nonviolent. Driven by a long history of drug addiction. While doing time in prison, i witnessed the system that was ballooning, where prodominantly young africanamericans who were serving long prison sentences, 10, 20, 30 years for drug crimes. This was troubling to me, seeing so many young men losing the prime of their lives to the criminal Justice System. It was while doing time, i made a strong determination that i would do all i can to stay out of our prison system. Ive been out roughly 19 years now. And ive had the opportunity to share my own journey of recovery at correctional centers, educational institutions, conferences and in the community. Given my personal account of how peer support direct lip aided in the success of my recovery with regard to Substance Abuse and Mental Health. We dont think of in cars rated citizens in the work sets being done to address the issues of incarceration. The power of peer led groups and organizations provide so many essentials needed for the successful reentry of individuals returning to our communities. And inhouse prison support network of this type would be helpful for the process of rehabilitation. Some of the barriers to creating the sense of Community Opposition from the bureau of prisons an the state prisons staff with fostering that us and them mentality. Real cultural competency training would be a value in all prison systems. I want to say, in the work that i do i realize that the barriers are tremendous. For individuals returning to the community from state and federal prisons are often faced with huge amounts of debt Child Support, restitution, supervision fees and on and on and real barriers to individuals who are subjected to the lower paying jobs that are available in our communities. I was given an opportunity to work in a Mental Health aod prison in our state. This is a unique facility that issin vaduable because they provided Mental Health and Trauma Informed Care on an individualized basis. What i witnesses there and the programming that went on there i cant say enough about. Because traumas are so prominent with this population. As i talk to these men, many and often i ask how many men had their fathers in their lives. And the majority of the times these individuals would say my father was in prison, or i dont know my father, and i was raised by the streets. These are some of the traumas, even fatherlessness is a trauma that usually goes unaddressed. And for those in our inner cities they are humongous. They are huge. In the time that i have i really cant elaborate on many of the things i would like to say. But im going to say this in closing. In working with our in cars rated and former incarcerated citizens over a decade now im beginning to see a shift in confronting mass incarceration. It is an issue that both Political Parties agree on. That americas addiction to mass incarceration is not working. It is costly, it does not restore people, and i personally feel that the climate is right and the ground is fertile for real criminal Justice Reform. The modern war on drugs produce an overall prison population that remains unprecedented in world history. At the federal level, the growth in the incarceration rate has been even greater and more sustained than in the states. I am encouraged by some of the initiatives taking place on the local level and many states and counties. In my county, were working to address the Racial Disparities and reduce the number of those incarcerated at all levels of the criminal Justice System. And great works are being done addressing these problems and i feel that addressing these problems will require far more tinkering with tinkering with the sentencing policies of nonviolent offenders or revamping prison programs to achieve a reasonable level of incarceration we would need to substantially reduce both the numbers of people admitted to prison and the length of their sentences. In making a suggestion would you like to say to the department of the b. O. P. , to continue to solicit feedback from people who are serving time so they can craft programming that is to the prisons population. The b. O. P. Programming needs to match labor market data about High Growth Industries and also needs to be specific to the regions. And last of all the b. O. P. Needs to advocate to congress for laws that allow more maritime Early Release and incentives for Good Behavior or programming. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Dillard. Our next question is udi ofer. He is the executive director of the American Civil Liberties union in new jersey. Through aclu he has formed a blue print on how to reduce the prison population in new jersey. He worked close with chicago for legislation that takes place in 2015 and estimated to reduce the prison population in new jersey by 8500 inmates. Mr. Offer. Thank you chairman and Ranking Member and my name is udi ofer and im from the American Civil Liberties union of new jersey and it is my honor and privilege to be here on behalf of the aclu and the 1 million supporters living across the United States and including in new jersey. Todays hearing comes at a critical moment in the nations history when there is a rare opportunity to take bold action in criminal Justice Reform. Republicans and democrats alike are taking a second look at our nations criminal Justice System. And republicans and democrats alike are becoming much more pragmatic and much less ideological in their approach to criminal justice. Following decades of punitive policies that have sent millions to prison and devastated communities, particularly low income communities of color, americans are now realizing that the nations prisons and jails have grown too big and that all too often the people who end up in prison really suffer from drug addiction or Mental Illness and should not be incarcerated in the first place. We know the story of the growth of our nations incarcerated population. Our nations jails and prisons hold almost 3. 2 Million People on any given day. The federal prison population was increased from 25,000 in 1980 to more than 207,000 today. And allf oq of this comes at an annual cost to taxpayers of tens of billions of dollars. But the costs have far more severe consequences than simply the fiscal expenses necessary to incarcerate 25 of the worlds prisoners in a country with 5 of the worlds population. The true costs are human lives and generations of black and latino men who served long prison sentences and are lost to their family and communities. And the fact is latino and africanamericans communities are broken in our criminal Justice System. So it is clearly a time for a change. We are at a cross roads as americans recognize the need to reform both the federal and state criminal Justice Systems. So with this in mind, i come before you today to urge you to seize this opportunity to reform prison practices, reduce the incarcerated population and create a system that is smarter, a system that is fair and a system that is more cost effective. And at the top of any reforms of federal prison practices must be the issue of solitary confinement. Approximately 5 of federal prisoners are in solitary confinement. That means that at any given day 11,000 people in federal prisons 11,000 people are confined to a 6 by 9 cell and deprived of basic human contact with little to no natural live and minimal if any, constructive activity for 2224 hours a day. And in some federal facilities the average time that a prisoner sits in continuous solitary confinement is four years. You need to look no further than the front page of todays science section of the New York Times and it is the science section not the politics section to get a better understanding of the mental and physical consequences of longterm solitary confinement. And according to a recent independent review of the federal prison system solitary practices, there are major problems. Federal prisons send thousands of seriously mentally ill individuals into solitary confinement, people who should be receiving treatment, not sitting in the hole. And federal prisons use solitary on close to 1400 people there for protective custody protective custody but instead are subjected to virtually the same conditions as prisoners who are in solitary for punishment. So what can we do about this . Well there are many small, yet important steps, that the bureau can take today and are out lined in the independent review. But the truth is if all we take today are small steps then well have lost this historic moment for bold change. Now is the time for historic change. Solitary confinement has no place in american prisons. Physical separation may sometimes be necessary for safety and for security but isolation is not. Therefore, we call on the bureau of prisons and we call on the congress to resolve this issue once and for all. First, it is time to abolish the use of solitary confinement for persons under the age of 18 and persons with Mental Illness. Senators cory booker and rand paul have already introduced legislation, the redeem act, this could prohibit the use of solitary confinement on juveniles. And second they should abolish solitary confinement lasting longer than 15 days, period. We believe that implementing these rimgss will lead to a smarter and more humane system and a decrease in the federal population by reducing recidivism rates. Finally about new jersey, given the b. O. P. Practices, the lessons from new jersey are not applicable. But new jersey is not a perfect model. We have terrible solitary confinement practices but there are some things weve done well. In 1999 new jerseys incarcerated population peaked at more than 30,000. Today it is at about 21000. A 30 reduction in a decade and a half. How did we achieve it . We achieved it through numerous policies with the biggest ones changing the harsh mandatory drug offenses and decreases the number of parolees returned by parole violations and atowarding to to senator johnson we worked with governor chicago to overhaul the bail system which will lead to thousands of fewer people sitting in jail simply because they are poor. Nationwide the bipartisan commitment to criminal Justice Reform is as strong as it will ever be so the aclu urges the congress to take bold action to adopt our recommendations to help to increase fairness and justice at every stage in the system. Thank you. Thank you mr. Offer. And i do want to stress, you mentioned the word bipartisan a number of times and this is true. The focus of this committee has been describing problems and look for the areas of agreement and this is something that i think we have broad agreement on. This system isnt working, as mr. Dillard pointed out. It is just not working. We have to take a look at the facts and admit that. That harsh and stark reality. Ms. Ker man you have a unique story here. You didnt spend much time on your testimony maybe people tied into pop culture fully understand but if you could quickly describe what you were put in prison for, and at the tail end i would like you to tell me what do you think your punishment should have been . Thank you for your your question, senator johnson. I was, when i was in my early 20s, which is a very typical risk time for folks to be involved in crime or to commit a crime. I was involved in a relationship with someone involved in narcotics, and i carried a bag of money from chicago to brussels in support of you know, a Drug Trafficking enterprise. I voluntarily left that situation, you know, good sense kicked in, i was very fortunate i had a College Degree already. I had many benefits and prif linls. And so i was able to return to the United States and to get my life back on track, and to put any involvement in crime behind me. Many years passed before i was indicted in the federal system and ultimately i was sent to prison ten years after i committed my offense. I pled guilty to my crime very swiftly, i was very fortunate to only serve 13 months of a 15. Month sentence. One of the things that was so striking to me the very first day that i spent in prison was that so many of the women that i was incarcerated with who i would spend a great deal of time with were serving much harsher sentences than i was. And as the days and the weeks and the months went on and i came to know theres other women really well, it was impossible for me to believe that their crimes were so much more serious than me. In fact the only conclusion that i could draw is they have been treated much more harshly by the american criminal Justice System than i had been treated because of soes yo economic reasons differences in class, and in some cases, because of the color of their skin. I left the custody of the bureau of prisons in 2005. I had two years of supervised release, probation which i completed successfully. When i reflect on the punishment for my crime, i certainly cannot protest it when i think about the harshness with which poor people and disproportionately poor people of color are treated in this country. Its hard, however to believe that there is a lot of social benefit to the community, drawn from my incarceration. It prevented no new crimes. I think particularly consider the punishments that we have weed the out for drug offenses we have to reflect on the enactment of the minimum drug sentences and laws. Generally in the mid80s. At that time you know, i think that those laws were intended to curve Substance Abuse and addiction. And some of the crimes that grow out of Substance Abuse and addiction. Today, many decades after we passed those laws, we put millions and millions of americans in prison and saddled them with felony convictions, and today illegal narcotics are cheaper, they are more potent, and they are more easily available than when we put mandatory minimum sentencing laws on the books and incarcerated all those people. We can only draw the conclusion that in terms of cur,ing Substance Abuse and addiction that locking people up particularly low level nonviolent drug offenses is a huge waste of time and money. Let me go back to what i wanted you to answer the final question though, i agree. Its not working. Uhhuh. Theres two reasons for prison, punishment and deterrence. So what type of punishment is appropriate, and that would deter people from, for example trafficking drugs to young people. Which is pretty damaging for society. What do you think would be the alternative . Have you given that any thought . I think that a very appropriate part of my punishment, if it was not confinement in a prison would have been a lengthy term of Customer Service working with people who are addicted to drugs and with families that are suffering from the ravages of addiction. What i experienced while i was incarcerated was very intense Close Relationships with women whose lives had been devastated by Substance Abuse and addiction. And that really brought home to me the harm of my own actions and i think that thats one of the most appropriate ways to deal with those kinds of things. I want to get to mr. Dillard as well. The other women in prison, you dont have the stats on it were they also for basically just drug crime. In particular vast majority . In both state and federal systems, in the federal system, women incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses and for property crimes but in the federal system, i mean, i think if any member of this committee had the opportunity to meet the hundreds of women that i did time with, you would probably walk away from getting to know those women with a deep feeling that their confinement in a prison cell or a prison facility was just a colossal waste, and not an appropriate way of intervening in the things that put them into the criminal Justice System. Thank you. Mr. Dillard, obviously we met in discussions about the difficulty of reentering society after you served your time. Talk about challenges. You were talking about the huge debt levels. Youre sitting in prison and your Child Support continues to build, then you get out, its difficult to find a job, one of the things im working on is ban the box for federal employees, hopefully thatll work to give people the opportunity to get a job. But even if you get a job, a lot of these are entry level they dont pay a whole lot yet we expect people to just get out of prison, to all the sudden start paying off those debts and then describe what happens when theyre unable to. Well, the fact is when youre faced with these barriers, and i too came home to face many barriers the fact is i had support, i had individuals who kept me encouraged, and i had someone to give me an analogy, and that was putting a little bit behind you at a time. I was fortune to be able to obtain a living wage employment about a year and a half after being out. That was helpful because after 13 years i finally got a tax return. And that analogy of putting that debt behind you a little bit at a time is something that i teach to young men today. The fact is many of our young people have ties to the criminal Justice System. And theres so much hopelessness that comes with being tied to the criminal Justice System that often they feel that theres no place for them in the work force. Application after application, turndown after turndown because in many instances of your criminal conviction individuals land into hopelessness, and from there addiction can present itself or hustling or just becoming part of the norm in many of the communities that have had to resort to these things. Again, in our meeting one of the individuals were talking with spoke that not paying Child Support ends up being a parol violation which lands you right back in jail, correct . Which costs up 33,000 for a male prison and 50,000 for female prison. Uhhuh. These anonymous challenges just trying to reintegrate into society, get a job, then when youre unable to pay off your Child Support which again we all want people to be responsible and pay for their children, then you land right back in jail. Thats what i heard is that basically true . Well in some cases. But the fact is Child Support continues to accumulate even while youre doing time. I, i had a gentleman who was released from prison after 15 years. 67 70,000 in Child Support. Along with all the other things that came. The only employment that he could find was working in a Fast Food Restaurant at minimum wage. And after taking home his second paycheck, he was like, i cant make it like this. I just cant. You know over 40 of his check was being taken before he even got it. And, you know, thats, thats discouragement really for him to continue working at a minimum wage position, and not be able to pay rent or have transportation. Thank you mr. Dillard im out of time, senator. Chairman said a few minutes ago the two reasons for prisoners punishment and deterrence. Id say theres at least one more, and that is to try to correct behavior so that when people come out, theyll beless likely to resit innovate and simply commit crimes again and return to our prison. I mentioned earlier, my second term and his words still ring true today. Majority of people are going to come out some day. Theyll come back into our society, into our communities, and they could come out as better people or they can come out as better criminals. And cory booker, senator booker eluded to people of faith are not eluded to matthew 25, when i was hungry when i was thirsty, when i was naked when i was sick and in prison did you come to see me. And ive been to every prison in delaware, we transformed a school, which was a juvenile prison into a real school. And i have given this matter huge amounts of time and thought over the time. I was there even now. And the governors association, we used to say, i would say my cabinet, we have cabinet meetings dealing with a particular issue id say somebody, some government, some state dealt with this issue, figure out how to deal with it and do so successfully. We have to find that state and that governor and whoever worked on this particular challenge in that state. A lot of what were talking about here somebodys done something. Really good. And could serve as a model. States are laboratories of democracy. And before we go on before the bureau of prisoners just starting from scratch, we need to look around our country and say, well wheres mistakes doing things really well. In our state, we changed the juvenile prison into a real school. In our state we decided to, when we have people in prison, were going to have them far while, work with them on their educational skills, actually create a school within the prisons . To work with the addictions to give them an opportunity whatever faith they might be, but actually exercise if they learn about their faith. To prepare for transformation, to learn skills, whether its operating computers or whether its building fortunate. Whether its learning autorepair, and learn to take the whole fleet from the state of delaware, the car fleet and basically provide maintenance in our prison system so people at least have that kind of skill when they walk out. What id like to do is ask each of you to give us one terrific example, could be in the state or local correctional system, one terrific example within the system within the prison itself, or frankly without because if we dont if we dont do a lot better job on the early cycle, Early Childhood side and so forth were not really going after the root cause. But just give us one good example, could be in the corrections system, could be before, could be after release that you think we ought to really drill down and try it and say thank you. Thank you, senator carper. I currently teach nonfiction writing in two state prisons in ohio. And one of the prisons is a mens medium security prison. Theres, it was built for 1400 men, it currently houses 2600 men. It is led by a young warden who is trained as a social worker at osu, he does things differently than any prison ive ever set foot inside. The prison has more lifers than any other prison in the state of ohio, it has it is one of two prisons with the lowest violence rate rate, that predecessors have done a great job that a much safer prison and that warden has, and his staff, have a tremendous amount of rehabilitative programming of every sort, whether its vocational, educational spiritual, one of the first programs that was ever put in place there put in the 90s was an interface dorm where prisoners of different face would come and live for one year, do a special curriculum, learn how to deal with each other and their dirnss and then go back out into general population as change agents. That prison is a really interesting place. And that wardens philosophy and the philosophy of all of his staff, because one man cannot do it all, all of his staff need to be on board for him to do that, is really inspirational, i think. I want to make a note on some of the results that the prison gets back to the testimony miss kermet. I would like to listen to you for the rest of the morning i have only duomore minutes. Hold it right there. And well hopefully come to a second round. I would note this. One of the things that attracted me to the key problem which we instituted in our prison system that the guy who developed that implemented that in delaware is from ohio state. Came out of out of ohio and in fact worked pretty well. Mr. Dillard same question. One great example. Give us one as well. I personally feel that the work is on the offenders themselves. Two quick examples. Someone solitary confinement. That was the focus of my testimony. There are examples of states that have dramatically reduced solitary confinement without causing risk to staff and inmates. Good example is colorado. In 2011 colorado placed a solitary confinement, about 7 of its incarcerated population. Today its about 1 . Weve seen a dramatic decrease in the use of solitary by banning the use of solitary against some populations, like people with serious Mental Illness and by restricting the number of days to be sent. The second example is bail reform. What weve done in new jersey and what other states and some municipalities are looking at, in new jersey, we have 10,000 people sit in jail for awaiting their trial because they couldnt afford a few thousand dollars in bail. We have completely revamped that system where now, your bail, whether youre going to be released pretrial or not is determined by your Risk Assessment and not whether you are poor or rich. We believe that that change in and of itself will lead to about three quarters of the 10000, so seven to 8,000 fewer people sitting in jail. Before the reform the average time a person awaited trial was 314 days. These are people that are presumed innocent until Proven Guilty that were being treated like guilty. This is all over the country, and this is one of the ways that we can dramatically reduce our jail population in the United States. Let me close by saying this senator, we talked about the moral imperative we have, we have a fiscal imperative. While the budget is down a lot, its still substantial. We have a physical imperative to meet the moral imperative in a fiscally responsible way. Before i turn it over because you mentioned my name, and didnt quite get it right. I said that jails, we jail people to punish and to deter, but then i also fully mentioned the Mission Statement of the bureau of prisons to ensure that the offenders are participating in programs that will assist them in becoming lawabiding citizens when we return to the communities and of course we highlighted the testimony when she quoted thomas osbourne, shall the prisons be scrap heaps or prison repair shops . I strongly hope is that they are human repair shops. With that to senator booker. Thank you mr. Chairman, lets jump in real quick. Solitary confinement can you please describe this. Because as ive had these conversations with friends and others, people often think that solitary confinement is a result of them someone having done something wrong in prison. And why is solitary confinement so, so common sense . Is it because prisons are doing things wrong in prison . Weve seen that the dramatic increase in use and solitary over the past couple decades. We dont have exact Scientific Data since we do a terrible job as a country tracking how many we place in solitary. There is consensus that its uses increase dramatically, particularly in response to overcrowding. And where prison officials are overwhelmed, and their Quick Reaction is to send people to the hole. We have examples from new jersey, we have examples from around the country of people being sent to solitary for things like talking back give new jersey an example out of new jersey state prison in trenton where an inmate by the name of sean washington in 2013 he was a clerk at the library and he wanted to leave the library to go bring some legal papers to one of the other inmates. Yet a corrections officer said you cannot leave. And the facts here are disputed, but the worst facts, the facts that the state claims is that mr. Washington then said, mother fer to the correction officer dont tell me what to do. Thats the worse facts. What was his punishment . 90 days in solitary confinement. That is a real example, those are examples that we see all across the nation. You know for im just wondering, just for time, so we know that people are being sent for many Different Reasons some of them have to do with administrative issues and the like, does it work in terms of, somehow affecting the behavior of prison, is this something any productive value in the bureau of prisons . Im going to pushback for a second, some people are sent for administrative reasons. Thats a loaded term. Because the bureau of prisons, and other prisons commonly call solitary administrative segregation. And it sounds harmless, but in effect it is solitary. And people are sent there for really minor reasons and some reasons are for protective custody, like i mentioned in my testimony. With the Lgbt Community which faces this harassment from other inmates in prisons, a lot of times they will be sent to involuntary protective custody to protect them from inmate violence, yet they are being punished. We see this happening all the time. In the bureau of prisons for example, according to you asked what was does it actually work . Recently there was an independent review that was released to the public in february of this year by cna, that looked at a solitary practices in our federal prisons, and looked to this question, does inmate behavior change following solitary . And their response was absolutely no. I would just pause there can we have that report into the record for this hearing . Without objection. And i want to also say that not only lgbt lesbian and gay prisoners, but obviously transgender transgender, absolutely. Let me say what the cna report found bauds its important. It looked at inmates disciplinary record, 12 months before being sent into solitary and 12 months after coming out of solitary. And it found virtually no change whatsoever. Lets get to the the consensus upon medical experts, what are what is the damage the trauma, the affect on an individual to be in solitary confinement and you said shockingly average of four years. Ive talked to numerous inmates who have experienced that length or more. What is the, the damage done to someone in general and would you also include someone who already has a Mental Health channel . First of all, when i think of this issue to use, you know, an example thats contemporary, i think its similar to Climate Change. In the sense of there are certain people that deny the science. Yet the Scientific Community thats consensus. Its about Climate Change and there seems to be almost, there seems to be consensus please dont talk about Climate Change. Lets stick to the consensus. What i mean, there is consensus in the Scientific Community about the harms of solitary confinement. There are two kinds of harms it exacerbates conditions. So Mental Illness that existed before becomes worse. Secondly produces Mental Illness and physical illness. Things like anxiety, depression hypersensitivity to stimuli bipolar disorder, theres been documentations of that. The list is long, and im happy to provide the committee with citations to every i think that would be helpful. Im going to switch first of all, i want to say thanks, its extraordinary that you are here with your testimony about what the experience of actual people whove been behind bars. Thats extraordinary. And miss kermet, in the time i have left, just drill down on something that is often not talked about, but whats happening as a result of the crowning. We saw this in dan bury when it was converted into a low security mens facility. You were close to your family. And im really wondering what impact does being in prison and close approximateproximity to loved ones have on an inmate, and what would it have on a womans ability to successfully enter. If you could hit on both issues really briefly. Okay. Proximity to home, family, and community is overwhelmingly important for both men and women who are confined to prison or jail. The opportunity and lets be clear, the majority of women in prison have children, and the majority of imprisoned people period are the number one breadwinners for the family before their incarcerated. Absolutely. The overwhelming number of prison are mothers and most of those mothers are the mothers of minor children, kids under the age of 18 who experience sort of a seismic impact when their mothers are incarcerated because a lot of moms are single moms who have primary responsibility for their kids. So the opportunity to touch your children, for your children to be reassured that their mother or their parent is okay is incredibly important both to parent and child, the opportunity to see your own parents or family members to maintain ties to the community, broadly considered to which you will almost inevitably return, senator johnson is absolutely correct, the vast majority of people who are coming, who are in prison are coming home from prison. So those lifelines to the outside community are incredibly we cant overstate how important they are to Public Safety. To peoples safe and successful return home to the community. Because when prison when correctional systems whether its the b. O. P. Or otherwise cut those lifelines by making visits very difficult by placing people very, very far from their families or by making prisons inaccessible in other ways. By making phone calls kpob bantly expensive, many jails have no contact visits through glass. Which is a huge disincentive to have a visit. Those lifelines are cut, and the person who is incarcerated is much less likely to have both the family support, the safe and stable housing, the access to networks which might help them gain employment, all of which are primary concerns for successful reentry. And that is true whether youre talking about men or whether youre talking about women. When we are talking about female prisoners just very quickly and briefly, we know that the three things that drive womens involvement in crime in their incarceration are Substance Abuse, Mental Illness, and again, that overwhelming experience of violence. Either Sexual Violence or physical violence, 80 or more women and girls in the system report that happening to them before they were incarcerated. So the problem with incarceration, prisons and jails are very harsh places by design. Is that for prisoners who have experienced very significant trauma, like rape, childhood sexual abuse domestic violence, many of the common sense correctional practices are very reminiscent of some of those abuses. And so that creates a serious, serious challenge in terms of regular engagement with female prisoners in terms of their rehabilitation and in terms of again their ability to return home safely. Thank you for that answer. Absolutely, thank you. By the way, when he devilled into Climate Change he didnt lose the agreement. We by and large agree theres been Climate Change, always has been, always will. Senator. And vaccines work, is that correct . Yes they do. Thank you, mr. Chairman, at the risk of being em fwloildbroiled in that side discussion. I was the attorney spent a lot of time, most of the Drug Task Forces were under my jurisdiction and we ran a lot of those. And it was at a time when there was a growing concern in 1992 with the drug problem and with more and more violent crime. And as a result we saw incarceration rates really skyrocket because of desperation. And, i will tell you this its been my experience that we constantly treat symptoms but never treat the disease. And thats really where we are today, talking about how do we treat the symptoms and not how do we treat the disease. Ill tell you a story about a wise man, i did a juvenile Justice Project one where we made a little easier to transfer kids into the adult system. But i traveled around the state of north dakota with a prison warden by the name of winston satron. He was a very wise guy, and at the time in north dakota you could actually interview every prisoner who came into the prison system, and he would sit down. And he would say tell me about your life. And as he talked, theyd say my parents were divorced at 11 and i went to live with my grandma write 11 in their prison file. Because in his opinion, that prisoner was 11 years old emotionally. And thats where we get stuck because a lot of this is related to trauma, a lot of this is related to not understanding trauma, and we exacerbate by not only not treating the trauma but engaging in behaviors that further the trauma. Whether it is isolation from family, isolation from any human contact at all. And so lets be honest about the task that this society has imposed on the bureau of prisons. You know none of this should be any judgment on the bureau of prisons. Weve ginn them an impossible task. They have to take, and prison crowding is part of that they got to maintain some level of security, and there is desperate for solutions as what they can be but were here talking about things way downstream and not upstream. And so the juvenile Justice System, led really by a lot of very enlightened people at the department of justice has really begun a transformation into trauma informed and traumabased therapies. Looking at what can we do to treat trauma . How can we basically brechbt prevent a lot of abuse, a lot is selfmedication. A lot of is chemical. Maybe thats the old model, but a lot of it is selfmedicating for the trauma thats been experienced with peoples lives. So with all of that i would like to know how we could design a system of prevention so that we dont see more people. What would you all, in your experience like to see in communities that would prevent the kinds of outcomes that were seeing right now in the bureau of prisons and we can start with you, miss kerman. Ting seems that i think it seems that theres a tremendous amount of thoughts that Substance Abuse and full blown Mental Illness but also the demons that some people suffer contribute to peoples bad choices and breaking the law. And so significant commitment to handle those Health Problems in the Public Health system as often as possible can i ask quickly of the women that you worked with and were incarcerated with, how many of them were given a choice of drug court or some kind of intermediate kind of intervention . Yeah, thats very rare in the federal system. Thats much more common in state systems or county systems of justice. And so theres a program in new york called justice home where women who are facing, at least a year of incarceration, when theyre District Attorney and their judge agree are able to enter this program called justice home, they stay at home, generally with their children. And are, you know, faced a set of Accountability Measures but also get the Mental Health interventions or the Substance Abuse interventions the parenting classes, vocational training, kwhavr is specific to their case that is needed for them to get better outcomes. In new york, it cost about 60,000 a year to incarcerate somebody, that program cost about 17,000 a year. If we threw in the cost of foster care for, you know, a family with two children, the cost would mount to 129,000 a year. Thank you. Yeah. Great example. Mr. Dillard. Thank you for your observation, senator. It is truly something thats needed if were going to be preventive. I can use myself as an example of someone who had traumas at the age of 12, 13 years old who walked around with them for 35 years, never addressed, and im just burying them. When i was diagnosed, you know, i had been severely depressed most of my life. One reason that i selfmedicated with illegal drugs, had i been diagnosed, maybe i could have been given legal drugs and avoided the criminal Justice System. The fact is, we never look at the cause we just look at the effect. And many, many many of these young men and women who i endowner and the work i do today have tremendous traumas. And were working as a peer organization to help them work through that. To avoid Walking Around as hurting people because hurt people hurt people. And if we do not address those traumas early on then further down the road after recidivism and recidivism and were still going to be paying much higher cost. Thank you. Im going to give a perspective informed by the fact that i spent of a lot of my time in newark, new jersey which is a terrific city. And it is a city that is plagued by by poverty, and in certain communities theres violence. And what i see in newark and really a lot of urban areas across new jersey and across the country, is that the only agency thats available in that municipality to address social needs or at least see primarily available is the police department. Wellpleeng officials if theres, lets say some minor misbehavior happening on the street, that is minor, but that should not be treated by the criminal Justice System. And ill ill criticize also diversion programs while theyre better than sending someone directly to jail or prison, my reaction is, this person shouldnt have been entangled with the system in the first place. They shouldnt have arrested or diverted to alternative programs. We need to build up the resources or municipalities of states to have other agencies to go to when they are interacting with people with Mental Illness or drug addiction problems. And if i could just close with a comment the sigmatization of that label is something youll carry the rest of your life. It will prevent you from getting student loans, from getting a job, so it is with a great deal of care that we should ever take that next step because we are in fact relegating that person to a certain quality of life for the rest of their life. Especially the anyone of the internet where we can find out anything about anyone. And so i just wanted to make a broader point that were here to talk about what were going to do with high incarceration rates, but we cannot look at this problem without looking at the broad scope of services that are provided and how we can work more effectively for prevention. Thanks senator, senator ayotte ayotte. Thank you, i want to thank you all of you for being here. I think like my colleague, senator highcamp, we were both attorneys general in our state before we came here to the senate. And one of the things that i worked on as an ag is reentry programs. And im a strong supporter of the Second Chance act and supporting its reauthorization but saw it from a context where even people who were incarcerated, you know serious crimes, that we did not give them any path for success Going Forward because they came out if they had a Substance Abuse problem, it was underlying issue was never dealt with. If there was Mental Health factors, that was not dealt with, no job, no place to live if you put yourself in those shoes and youre that person and youre put out on the street then, i dare say that all of us are on this diet wouldnt be able to put it back together. So i wanted to get your thoughts, you know, doctor, i saw that your focus is really as i understand what youre working on it would be some form of reentry program. And we saw it in our state, get some momentum and then sort of fizzle. And wanted to get your thoughts on reentrytype programs and what more we could do to make them more effective to try to end this cycle and to get people on to productive lives. Then i have some other followup questions, id appreciate it. Well, i think reentry is a crucial point. Theres planning done and individuals are giving different options. I know the federal system six months in a Halfway House is something that i went through that was very beneficial for me. I just wasnt released to the streets, and i was able to obtain employment during that period and save some money to be able to rent a room at least when i was done with my federal time. What im saying today though is young men coming out of our state and county systems, homeless. 17, 18 years old who cant go live with their mother because theyve been told you cant go there because of subsidies connected to that housing. And their couch surfing. And oftentimes when theyre couch surfing, its probably with those who arent doing so well or the antisocials that had an influence on them in the first place. Housing initiatives are huge. I dont have a solution. I can say were working on them in the region that im working in, nonprofits and faithbased organizations are engaging with us and providing housing at an affordable rate, preparation is huge. Individuals have to identify certain things while in custody, in order to have a paradigm shift that this cant be an option within this cant be an option. I had a client tell me that committing a crime wasnt his first choice but it was his very last option and i know the troubling times that he was in sleeping on park berges, couldnt go to the shelter for various reasons, he committed a new crime. As he told me it wasnt his first choice, it was his very last option, and so the reentry process, alone with all the barriers, i think mentor inging from being incarcerated or connections with organizations that hire formerly incarcerated because we are ambassadors. I look at us as being those who can help them through those trying times and pivot points of reentry. May i respond quickly . This is an Oversight Bureau of prisons, the independent review that i keep referencing to, and im happy to have my copy, look at this questioning of the Bureau Prisons practices on reentry programming, and heres its finding in one sentence. There is no formal bureau wide reentry Preparedness Program specific to restricted housing and inmates in these settings have very limited access to reentry programming. The bureau does not do a good job in reentry programming. About 2,000 people a year in the federal bureau of prison go from solitary back to community. One of the things the study found is that many of them, they dont know the exact number because the bureau doesnt track it are sent directly from solitary back to communities. That is a terrible practice that needs to stop immediately. There needs to be a focus on reentry programming in the federal bureau of prisons. Thank you. And i wanted to ask you one of the things were seeing and i saw this when i was ageing as well, were seeing just on a devastating scale in our state right now is opioid and heroin addiction. And ive been working on legislation called the comprehensive addiction and recovery act im hoping that were going to take this issue up here to not only the, i hope the Second Chance act, but also this comprehensive recovery act. There was some discussion you had about this idea of alternative courts up front. What would you do as you think about this issue, how many people did you encounter that had addiction issues, they were underlying why they were in prison and how do you see, this to me, to senator highcamps point, i fully agree, we cant arrest our way out of1ixthis, this is a Public Health crisis. I want to get your thoughts on what you think we should be focussing on, rose. Thank you senator. Whats happening in New Hampshire is also happening in ohio and all over this country in terms of huge spikes and deaths from heroin devastating. The parents that are coming to me, its just heart breaking. It is. Its devastating. It is fundamentally a Health Question first and foremost. Particularly as we continue to see crime rates very low. Violent crime rates very low. While obviously people who sell or use drugs are breaking the law, remembering that intervening in that addiction cycle is the single most important thing and cant be accomplished with a prisoner or jail cell. It is completely central. We see a lot of people folks in the states trying lots of different things, and im obviously neither a doctor nor an expert in addiction, but we see safe harbors in places like i think gloucester, massachusetts, and other parts of the New England States have tried very innovative approaches to getting folks the medical help they need and having that be the primary concern rather than incarceration. When we look at states like new york new jersey, california, the states that have reduced their prison populations the most and also have simultaneously continued to enjoy huge declines in violent crime, one of the things that weve seen in those states, and i know you could weigh in in new jersey is a huge decline in prosecutions and incarceration of people for low level drug offenses. And a recognition that those that public disorder is a reflection of the health problem, and thats the way to tackle it. Thanks senator ayotte senator baldwin. Thank you. First of all i want to thaj our panelist, what a tremendous opportunity it is for us to hear from you and interact with you. And mr. Chairman i want to join the thanks of holding this hearing. Also to the Ranking Member. As you said in the outset and many have commented, this is a very big and very complex issue. And so i hope well have additional opportunities and i want to say that im glad that youre recognizing this committees role in that discussion and i hope that we can keep that up. Theres a number of things i wanted to touch on. I heard the Ranking Member talking about upholding the models and states that are working, and i usually like to brag about my state but in this particular case, i am just going to share some of the statistics about Racial Disparities in the incourse rated population in our state incarcerated population in our state. In wisconsin, African Americans constitute only 6 of the state population a little bit more, 35 of those incarcerated in state prisons are African American. According to a recent study from the university of wisconsin in milwaukee, 13 of wisconsins African American men of working age were behind bars which is almost double the National Average of 6. 7 . And the figures were particularly shocking, and dismal for Milwaukee County where more than 50 of African American men in their 30s had served time in prison. 45 of the inmates at our federal correctional facility oxford, are African American and 19. 3 are hispanic. And i hope as we continue to work on this very complex issue that that will be on our minds. Also just wanted to mention it, and i previously people are talking about their previous service, attorney generals et cetera, as an attorney general i practiced law in a small general Practice Firm at the very beginning of my career, mostly general practice a couple of times i took misdemeanor public defender cases, thats really my only immediate interaction i was becoming involved in county politics and state level legislative office at this time where i felt like i saw the precursors of what were seeing now being debated. So i had the honor actually of serving as chairwoman of the Corrections Committee in the state legislature for one term. I actually took our committee to prisons for tours for visits, for conversations with people who work there, people who were inmates this. We had sometimes legislative hearings in the prisons. We went to the intake facility the maximum, one of the maximum security prizes medium, minimum prisons for men we went to the womens prison on a couple of occasions, and visited work release facilities. At the same time, the legislature was talking about should we allow private prisons to be built and run in wisconsin. Should we contract with other states to deal with our overflow issues, and have them house our wisconsin prisoners . And the counties were doing the same thing because some of the jailsinal justice debate at the time, three strikes youre out, limitation of elimination of parole. New crimes being created. There was a love debate about the elimination of prisonbased vocational programs, mandatory minimums were a big topic. There was a lot of debate. You could see all of this in the future. Now that feature has come and it is not going to be overnight that we figure out what missteps we had and how we deal with this in a saner way. I have a couple of questions im hoping you will be willing to submit some answers in writing. You mentioned that women are the fastestgrowing prison population right now. I remember years ago when i was visiting the womens prison in wisconsin, and seemed to me there were gender differences in how they dealt with certain issues. We talked a lot about solitary confinement. Is there a gender difference in how these issues are dealt with in womens prisons . For example i remember being , concerned about over medication of women to deal with behavioral issues as opposed to placement in solitary confinement. This is something we should still be looking at. Ms. Kerman we should absolutely be looking at these of solitary confinement in mens and womens prisons. I echo the testimony that solitary confinement is often used not for the most serious infractions like an assault but rather for very low level infractions. Women are overwhelmingly likely to be incarcerated for a nonviolent crime and are very unlikely to use violence while they are incarcerated. Womens distilleries facilities do not struggle with violence. Solitary confinement is overwhelmingly used as a punitive measure. Female prisoners are disproportionately likely to suffer from Mental Illness. One of the tragic things that solitary confinement is that mentally ill people have a more difficult time following the rules of a prison. You ceasefire sanctions spiraling sanctions which land them in solitary confinement. A regularly healthy person placed in solitary confinement for 10 days, after 10 days will start to significantly terry deteriorate. Let alone a mentally will person. Mentally ill person. Let me ask a quick question let alone a person placed in those circumstances. I only have a couple of seconds left let me ask a quick question about the entry both in prison and after prison vocational and educational programming, and you can certainly feel free to elaborate after the fact in writing. One thing i was looking at closely, i believe thats continued over time and we have additional restrictions once a person is back in the community they want to seek it makes it impossible for the financial aid. You talked already about people emerging burdened with debt not related to Higher Education tell me a little bit about the options for people that secure post High School Education upon release. Well im seeing more opportunities opening up for individuals, postrelease, and at one time there was, we check a box and you could get student loans. Im happy to hear that the pell grants, theres a pilot going on within the federal system with pell grants, i am so happy to hear that because its a fact that individuals prior to 1994, i know many individuals who serve time prior to that who came out with Associates Degrees and went on to achieve bachelors and masters. The fact is, 98 of those who get a higher, a bachelors, higher degree never returned to prison. Thats something that we cant ignore. I think that we should support as far as Higher Education within the system. Thank you, senator baldwin. We do have a second panel, we can keep going on and this has been fascinating. Again, i want to thank this panel, we talked beforehand, the purpose of every hearing, from my standpoint in this community is to define the problem lay out the reality, so we collectively admit we have. I think youve accomplished that goal big time mr. Chairman if i may. We dealt with such distinct verticals here to the lack of reentry programs. It might be good to pick one of the verticals, given the vastness of the program and hold another hearing. I was just going to get there. This is just a first. I think whatll end up being a series of hearings. You know we have a Mission Statement for this committee unusual for a committee, its simple to enhance the economic and National Security of america. I think this issue touches both. One of the things we try to do in this committee too is find the areas of agreement. Youve seen in the hearing that theres a great deal bipartisan agreement that what were doing just isnt working. And not because a lack of effort by our next panel of witnesses by any stretch of the imagination. I would encourage you and your organization to work with those of us that want to solve this problem. I think your points on solitary confinement are dead on and we need to fix that. Mr. Dillard, god bless you for having turned your life around and taking your circumstance and offering that to your fellow, fellow man to help other people find redemption and again, turn their lives around as well. And in miss kerman with your unintended celebrity youre done an excellent job of raising the issues. Spoken to my staff i like your answer to the question in term was what are alternatives. From my standpoint a rigorous, you know dose of community preparation. And those types of programs, Community Service, is probably appropriate for people that have committed crimes, need some punishment, we need deterrence but hopefully in the Community Service you just might, you might heal and you just might find that far more effective way if you know these issues than locking somebody up and really seeing the result simply not working. Again, i just to want thank everybody here on this panel. I want to continue to work with you and work with the members of the committee on a bipartisan basis. This is just a first of what will be a series of, i think very important hearings. So thank you very much. Call for next panel. By the way, if you have time, id love to have you stay and listen to our next panel as well. But dont feel obligated to. Mr. Sanders dont sit down i am going to ask you to stand again. Please rise and raise your right hand. Do you swear the testimony will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god . Please be seated. Our first witness will be mr. Charles e. Samuels junior. Director of the federal bureau of prisons and was appointed on december 21st 2011. Hes a career administrator previously serving as the assistant director of the Correctional Programs Division where he oversaw all inmate management and functions. Mr. Samuels. Good morning chairman and members of the committee. I thank you for your time and focus on the issue of federal corrections. Im pleased to discuss the operations of the federal bureau of prisons. Im also pleased to speak on behalf of the 39,000 dedicated correctional workers across the country who are on the job 24 hours a day, seven days a week to support the bureaus Public Safety mission. We protect society by confining the standards and facilities that are safe cost effective, and appropriately secure. We provide programs to help them become lawabiding citizens. Simply stated we protect society and reduce crime. But we face significant challenges. The bureau does not control the number of offenders who enter our system or the length of their stay. Were required to house all federal offend oers sent to prison while maintaining safety security, and effective reentry programs. We house offenders convicted of a variety of offenses. Many serving long sentences and many with extensive histories of violence. Drug offenders make up almost half of our population, in addition, we house many individuals convicted of weapons, sex, and immigration offenses. To include individuals convicted of international and domestic terrorism. The bureau is the largest Correctional Agency in the country. With more than 20. ,500 207,500 offenders and 13 private prisons and 178 facility based facilities. We gab to expand in the 1980s due to the war on drug. From 1980 to the present we experienced an eightfold increase in the size of the population. Crowding in federal prisons reached 40 smeemwide and higher at medium where the more violence prone offenders reside. This out paced Staffing Resources and negatively impacted institution safety. Our ability to effectively supervise prisoners and provide inmate programs depends on having sufficient numbers of staff available at our prisoners prisoners. Recently it abated slightly. In fiscal year 2014 we saw the first decline in inmate population in more than 34 years and we project declined to continue for the next couple of years but crowding will remain a challenge. Staff safety and the safety of the public and the defenders we house is the highest priority. Every day the staff put the safety of the American People above their own to keep communities safe and secure. Some of the saddest days of my 27year career occurred one week in 2013 when two staff were killed in the line of duty. Correctional officer Eric Williams was killed on february 25th and the next day oswald offar auldy was murdered. This is a pose of the real dangerouses our staff face. The bureau has taken advantage of technology for couldnt dand detection and perimeter security. With pepper spray for staff and we are required to use protective vest. We increased the Correctional Officer staffing at high security institutions during evenings weekends and holidays. Over the past few years we have been proactive in addressing concerns regarding the use of restrictive housing. Since 2012 we substantially reduced the number ofib mates in the special housing and management units. Less than 7 of the population is in restrictive housing. And very few inmates are housed without another individual in the cell. Our focus is to ensure inmates are placed in restrictive housing for the right reasons and the amount of time. We created new secure Mental Health units for those with specialized treatment and to protect themselves and others. We look forward to restrictive measures in the form of housing. We have a saying in the bureau that reentry occurs on the first day of the installation. This is related to criminal behavior. Including Substance Abuse, and education and Mental Health. We target offender needs and help them transition successfully to their community. We have reduced recidivism, such as personal and educational programs. We have programs for those mentally ill and including those with histories of trauma and offenders for those with cognitive and sex offender histories and severe personality disorders. We help them specific to their faith and specifically to female offenders. We have fas based facilities. Halfway houses as well as home cob finement. Community placement helps offenders readapt to the community andure housing jobs, medical, care and more. Chairman johnson, Ranking Member carper, and members of the committee, this concludes my formal statement. Im proud of the work our staff do to keep americans safe. Again, i thank you for your time and focus on the important issue of federal corrections. Thank you director samuels our next witness is Michael Horowitz from the department of justice. The office of Inspector General has notified a number of reforms, including the budget inmate programming and as especially as it relates to the elderly inmate population and increasing security and the Compassionate Release Program. Mr. Horowitz. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member carper members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify today. The Justice Department faces two inter related crisis in managing the federal prison system. Costs continue to rise while federal prisons remain overcrowded and in an era of tight budgets this path is unsustainable. Sis fleef 2000 the budget has doubled and now accounted for 25 of the departments discretionary budget. The b. O. P. Has more employees than any other component and the second largest budget trailing only the fbi. One of the primary drivers for the cost for the increases in addition to the increased prison population is health care. Which costs the b. O. P. Over 1 billion in 2014, a 61 increase since 2006. This rapid increase can partly be attributed to the aging federal inmate population. In a recent report those 55 and older increased from 2009 to 2013. By contrast those underage 50 decreased by 1 . Including a decrease of 29 for inmates underage 30. This demographic shift is notable because aging inmates cost more to incarcerate. The report founds that b. O. P. Lack appropriate Staffing Levels to address the needs of the aging inmate population. While social workers are qualified to assist aging inmates the employees the b. O. P. Employees only 36 social workers nationwide. And the further infrastructure cannot house aging inmates and the b. O. P. Has not conducted a review of the institutions since 1996. Additionally we found b. O. P. Does not provide programming specifically addressing the needs of aging inmates. We concluded that based on lower rates of recidivism, certain inmates could be viable candidates for Early Release, a program that congress has authorized but after an eltorly Compassionate Release Program the department only released two elderly inmates pursuant to it. This is similar to what we reported in the 2013 review for the Compassionate Release Program for all inmates. We found the bomt program has increased the number of in mates released under it. In our 2011 review of the International Prisoner transfer program, another Program Congress has authorized and permits Foreign National inmates to serve the remainder of sentences in the home kurps, the oag found that the department translerred less than 1 of mainities to their home countries to complete the sentence. We kwon cluded concluded the Department Needs to make improvements, including determining whether inmates are eligible for the program and completing a followup review to that report. Another area where the b. O. P. Has increased is for private contract prisons which housed inmates, some of the nonu. S. National inmates. The b. O. P. Budget is over 1 billion and the proportion of in mates housed in bop contract prisons has increased from 2 in 1980 to 20 in 2013. Indeed two of the three largest d. O. J. Contractors are private prison providers. In addition to rising costs the Department Must continue to address efforts to ensure the safety and secure of staff and inmates. Prison overcrowding represents the most significant threat to the safety and security of b. O. P. Staff and inmates with federal prisons at 30 overrated capacity. Indeed, in every one of its Agency Financial reports since 2006 the department has identified prison overcrowding as a program weakness yet the problem is unresolved today. In addition to overcrowding, the unlawful introduction of contraband presents a serious threat. The unauthorized use of cell phones is a significant risk and the jao reports that the number of cell phones confiscated doubled from 200 to 2010. Sexual abuse in prison is a serious safety and security issue. The o. A. G. Has investigated sexual abuse by staff at detention facility. We recently reported on the departments efforts to implement and comply with the prison rape elimination act. Finally, a Significant Management challenge for the department has been measuring the success of the prison programs. And an essential achieving Building Block for Performance Base management is having reliable data an issue that is a challenge for the department and the b. O. P. A comprehensive approach to the collection and false of data on how well b. O. P. Programs are reducing incarcerates deterring crime and improving Public Safety will help the department focus resources and make strategic investments. Thank you for the committees continued support for our work and i would be happy to answer any questions the committee may have. Thank you Inspector General horowitz. Mr. Fliets i do notteny your task. And it has been long standing. And according to the bio, you began as a Correctional Office in march of 1988. Can you just because weve all quoted statistics here in 1980 the prison population in the federal system was 25,000 and now it is over 200,000. Can you just give us your perspective in terms of what all has happened and what you witnessed over