My name is tyra, and im the executive Vice President at new america. Welcome to new america, for those of you who are here for the first time. I am delighted that we are having a very important conversation this afternoon about punishment in the u. S. For those of you that may be unfamiliar with this particular, with the criminal Justice System, youll learn quickly that i think the criminal Justice System is criminal in some of the ways in which it applies justice. We at new america are working even though our society is changing, woo erwere working f thriving individuals, communities, and family. To have the time, stability, necessary to leave productable lives. We work for equitable, accessible and high quality education for all. We work for equal representation in politics and participation in accountable government. And we do that in part by telling stories about whats happening and whats possible. And we also do that by generating big and bold ideas to solutions that i think youll see that today. Our criminal Justice System is in dire need of change. Imprisonment was originally intended to be used as a social deterrent and to protect those from those who commit crimes. It was intended for individuals to pay their debt to society, be rehabilitated, and then returned to society as productive citizens. But instead of doing those things, we have made big business out of mass incarceration. With the u. S. Holding the highest incarceration than anyone else in the world. We disproportionately arrest and incarcerate people of color, and those we have an error rate of 1 out of 9 innocent people convicted, the Death Penalty, the Death Penalty still exists in some states. Though whites and africanamericans use drugs at roughly the same rate, africanamericans are imprisoned six times more than their white counterparts. And because of what you can and cant do once you reenter society, recidivism rates are high. So thats just a teaser for what well get into this afternoon. Well focus on solutions and all that and then some, and so with that, i want to turn it over to our moderator for this afternoon. Dr. Marsha chatland. Marsha is a 2017 eric and one b. Smith fellow here at new america, and shes been a tremendous asset to our community. She also serves as the assistant professor of history and africanamerican studies at georgetown and has also written a book called south side girls growing up in the great migration. Before i send it over to marsha, i should also mention that this conversation is being broadcast via cspan, so you dont want to be seen, now is a good time to dip out. So anyway, with that, ill turn it over. Thank you. Thank you so much. [ applause ] good afternoon. I have the pleasure of moderating a conversation between two individuals who have helped us really look into the depths of this issue of punishment. Ill introduce our panelists and get started with the conversation. Professor howards class changed my life. This is what he and many of my colleagues at georgetown have heard over the years. Mark is professor of government and law at georgetown university. Hes the founding director of the prison and justice initiative, which brings together scholars, practitioners and students to examine the problem of mass incarceration from multiple perspectives. Exa problem of mass incarceration. He also teaches regularly at the correctal institution, a maximum security prison in maryland. His most recent book, do you have a copy of it for us to see is unusually cruel, prisons, purnishments, and the real american exceptional itch. Mark received his b. A. In ethics politics and economics from yale. In Political Science from the university of california at becomely. While being a professor, his jd from georgetown university. Welcome, mark. Thank you. [ applause ] in november of 2017, our second panelists admission to the could be constate bar was so moving and in his words, quote, unlikely, that it warranted a article in the new yorker entitled a boat with prison behind him becomes an attorney. On that day, Reginald Dwayne bets remarked, last time my mom saw me in a court i was sentenced to nine years in prison. I know nobody expected this, least of all, me. He is the husband and father of two sns sons, a boat and memoryist. The author of three books, the recently published, bastards of the reagan era, a question of freedom, and the boatry collection sharks heed reads his own palm. He is enrolled in the College Program in law at the yale law school, earned an jd from the yale law school, mfa for writers and a ba from the university of maryland. Join me in welcoming dwayne to this conversation. Thank you. You are welcome. So mark, i want to get started on your most recent rchb that really takes a comparative look at the criminal Justice System. We hear that our nation overincarcerates its own citizens but when we look at the conditions inside u. S. Prisons from the perspective of other places we deemed developed what did you fine . Right. Well the starting point i think for a lot of studies of mass incarceration in the u. S. Is to look comparatively, at the number of people, the percentage of people incarcerated. Its a lot higher in the u. S. Most people just stop there. What i tried to do in my facebook and in my research is to go much deeper into all sass suspects of the criminal Justice System and then also inside a prison and see what takes place. What i found is an actual horror show, which is to say that at every stage of what i call the criminal justice life cycle, which starts with plea bargaining, with sentencing, then prison conditions, rehabilitation, parole and then reentry, the u. S. Is off the charts. And i would say off the rails. There is something that is distinctively american about this rm follow of punishment which is not just about making society safer sh keeping people out of protecting society by keeping dangerous people off the streets for a short period of time. Of the about punishing people, punishing them severely and personmently. This is something thats different. What i discovered in my work is that there are other countries that do it differently and other countries that do it better. Why are we having this very insular little conversation at the u. S. Where i think many people who look at it agree there are problems when the solutions are actually right there. There are better ways of doing it. Thats what i try to draw on in this book and spell out hopefully to lead to some common sense and some practical changes in the u. S. I want to touch upon this issue of the plea bargain. Because we know we are in a crisis in terms of the ability for criminal defendants to get representation. And we understand the ways thats werors have to deliver numbers in order to maintain their positions. So what are some other models outside of the plea bargaining structure that you found compelling . All right, well plea bargaining is something that shocks al of my students when they first take my class. This all watch law and order and they watch movies, in every one of those there is courtroom drama and the zealous public defender making the case for his or her client. Its sort thisle about an and so on. The reality is vastly different. Does anyone know what percentage of criminal cases actually go to trial . 5 . 5 . All right . The rest are handled through plea bargains. And this is something that is just astounding when you think about it. There is a constitutional right in this country to a trial by jury. What happens is if you exercise that right which is to say if you turn down the plea bargain that has been offed to you in a one dimensional way where its basically said heres the deal, take it or go to trial, and guess what, if you go to trial, you are probably going to get double that. There is a case that the Supreme Court sanctions where somebody turned down a plea bargain for five years and got life without paro parole. The Supreme Court said thats okay. He had the chance. He turned down the deal. This is unfathomable. When i tell other countries about how this works some countries a modified form of plea bargaining, and there is an active role of the judge and ensuring the process. Its for more minor cases, shorter term in sentences and so on. But its nothing like what it is like in the u. S. Thats stage one. But that alone is shocking and apauling in my view. Whats the solution to that . Its hard to say. We have so many cases that are coming forward. And there are already incredibly long delayed. So plea bargaining is deemed to be efficient but its incredibly unjust. The solution might be to build more courthouses or not to prosecute so many people to have more diversion, to have more sensible forms of diversion in seeking justice other than we do, the machinery of cranking people through, plea bargaining is the prime mechanism for doing that. Its interesting when we think about the discretionary mechanism that allows for the plea bargain system, and then we think about a mandatory sentencing. I want to take this conferring to you, dwayne, about the other part of this. So after we leave the courthouse and we think about the conditions inside prisons, particularly as they relate to juveniles and adult correctional facilities, which have some of your reflections touched upon in terms of the conditions in which people have to live out these sentences . I found the plea bargain conversation interesting because i think i agree. Im not sure if there should be more trials, but too i actually dont think there should be more trials of but im also not sure of the rate of plea bargains on its own is a problem. Its how they are done. Or even beyond that, its the fact that the amount of time thats available at the start is so intense that there cant be a rational conversation on both end. I have a friend who was offed five years, they offer him manslaughter for five years. Pled not guilty. He lost that trial and ended up getting 53 years. This is a case in which he didnt commit the crime, he maintained his innocence, and two 20 years later a reporter did a story on him and found out that the Police Actually never even interviewed him before charging him with the crime. And that he didnt do it. And at that time he had an iq of about 62, 63, his mother was momently disabled. So i do think there are a lot of problems. But maybe the problem we dont discuss enough is the sentence, the possibility of getting that 60year sentence on the back end. I think thats what perverts the whole plea bargaining process, maybe even more so than a plea bargaining rate. And i said that having pled to a guilty, and i say that having pled guilty to a crime that carries a life sentence. And i do think that part of the conferring has to try to get into the rationalization for why somebody would plea guilty. I pled guilty because i committed the crime. I feel like we have to have room to acknowledge. What does that mean, to have committed a crime . And what does that mean to have pled guilty . I was 16 years old, and i carjacked somebody. And i preface it and always say nobody was hurt. But people were my whole community was hurt. And im sure that the victim of my crime was traumatized and i dont know how long that trauma lasts. I think the question after that what should the punishment be. You ask what is it like for a 16yearold . I know from experience, from representent senting kids, i know from speaking with young people that have been in prison, im like, what does it mean if you are 14, 15, you have never been away from home more than a couple of weeks and suddenly you are tossed into a world that is just completely unlike anything else you have experienced . One of the challenges with even describing that is that one of the things that people want to hear is how violent prisons are. But if i make that argument then that seems to suggest that prisons are the place for these extremely violent people. So i dont want to necessarily make that argument except to say that it was the c. O. S who were violent. It was the Mental Health workers who were absent. It was the medical staff who frequently were unqualified. And sometimes there was a pocket of individuals that could frankly terrorize a prison that were always unaccounted for for reasons around the prison guard to prisoner ratio. The reasons fort around the architecture of the prison and for reasons around the protocol, like how problems were managed at the institution. I think one of our ill end with just saying this. Its amazing to me that its still okay to send juveniles to prison in the united states. Frequently we talk about this as it is a new owe occurrence. The j tretic reality is that we have been treating juveniles as adults since the mid 1800s and sending them to prison since that time. What people dont understand. They want to anchor the conversation around people who committed the most Violent Crimes, what is in the part of the conversation is frequently children who havent committed Violent Crimes and end up in prison with adults could tragically change their life for all kinds of reasons. Comparatively, this is also somewhere where the u. S. Stands out. Other countries dont sentence juveniles as adults to inkree creditably lengthy prison terms. What happens when we hear about how we treat children with life without parole and incredibly long sentences is somewhere where they say this country has lost its mind. I had a client who was 15. Because he was 15 he was being tried as an adult. Because he was 15 he couldnt be in lobup with adults during the trial, during the court process. When you go to court its not as if you show up and you have got a time slot. So if the you get there on time, you get in and you get out. You show up at 7 30 in the morning and you remain there until like 3 30, 4 00 in the afternoon. Because this kid was only 15, couldnt be in lock up with all the adults. Where was he . Basically, in a solitary confinement cell. And i had forgotten i had forgotten just how how difficult it is to find a way to occupy your mind at 15 until i went to see him. And we went into the cell, me and my supervisor and an attorney, to talk to him. We actually had nothing to talk to him about. Because it was a foregone conclusion that he was going to plead guilty. We had very little to talk to him about because all the evidence suggested he did it, he told us he did it. And that complicates the plea bargaining process because how should we think about those cases. The point is we were in that cell for 23 minutes talk approximating nothing because it looked like he was broken. In fact he was upset because his mother hadnt been answering his phone calls. So i think when we think about what the system does is one way to think about it on a sort of broad level but its a different way to say, what does this mean . He hasnt been convicted of any crime. Once he does plead guilty, if he does plead guilty he will probably get time serves. What does it mean for him that he went back and forth to court and each item he had to sit in a single cell by himself for eight hours. Im glad you touched on the solitary confinement. This is something you have written about before. I think we have left the idea that this is about rehabilitation and at the same time there are people who fine mechanisms to remain connected and grounded through the process. So in a sense, solitary confinement is one of many kind of excessive forms of punishment that has been rationalized within this system. So from both of your perfectives the critique of solitary confinement, is there a global kind of response to that . And is there any way that we can make sure that people on the outside of this can really advocate to stop this pro. Do you wa stop this practi . . If you look comparatively, other countries in the world consider it for you are too. Period. Its very simple. There are exceptions where there is a particularly violent act in a prison where somebody is separated under a day, two days. Every evident is made to reintegrate that person. In this country, when somebody gets sent to solitary it is a minimum of a monday. Then you have a process where people go in for a lon period of time and they start acting out. So if they are acting out, what happens . They get more solitary. So we create this process where we are causing psychological damage, and then as a result of that, we are giving them the exact same thing thats creating even more psychological damage. Then you have people who leave solitary and go right out on the street. It makes no sense. Thats what happened in colorado, which is a good case, because the guy was locked up. He had been in solitary a number of years, and he was released directly. The interesting thing, though, is that i wish i knew his name. I hate to talk about somebody and not know their name but the then director of department of corrections was reducing the number of people in solitary, part of a number of states, including mississippi and washington state, that had been working to reduce the numbers in solitary confinement. They released this guy who had been in solitary confinement for years and the guy goes and murders the director of the department of corrections. It was interesting, i do remember this guys name, rick remainish took his place. The question became, what will rick remainish do in the face this tragedy . Because you could easily ramp up solitary confine men given this. I mean, actually, it seems like thats the only choice, to be frank. I was certain he was going to ramp up solitary confinement, but what he did was he went to solitary confinement and there is a New York Times op ed article he wrote about it, which is interesting to me. I spent more than a year in solitary could be finement. This grown man who was a cop, i met him a few times, a tough guy, cop, aboutan in the department of corrections for years. He could only do it for 20 hours. He continued to decrease the numbers of solitary confinement after having experienced it. What happens in the context of this conversation is we imagine that the crime that got commitmented lasts not just forever for the purposes of you having a criminal record but its justification forever for whatever happens to you. We dont even need to imagine what it means to suffer through solitary confinement, to suffer through like improper, improper hygiene, improper medical treatment, horrible food. You dont have to did that yourself because you deserve it for having committed that crime. He said, no. Before i make a decision on what to do with this, let me understand what it means to be in the hole. And i heard him the last time i was in a room with him, it was i wonder if i can say this. But i was at a conference. It was like a meeting of correctional administrators. And the problem that they were addressing was how to decrease Racial Disparities within a system that they were responsible for understanding it wasnt their fault, they have no role in people coming into prison. But there are things that they could do as administrators of department of corrections to decrease Racial Disparities in different points in the system. And on that day i wont quote them exactly because i might misquote them. But im relatively certain he said between 30 and 60 of the people locked up in colorado could be released without being a threat to the community. Now, dont quote me on that. Dont put it on tv. Dont too late. It was a joke. Then the last thing i will say is my own experience though, my own experience, interestingly enough, is that one of the aspect of solitary confine men that we dont discuss enough is protective custody. You actually have a wide swath of people who are in the hole not because they have done anything wrong but because they are afraid to be in population. I dont know if the its something thats actually more tragic than that. I was in the hole once because i had ostensibly done something wrong that i still disagree with, but i was in the hole once for six months. And the guy besides me had been in the hole for years, had been in the hole for years on protective custody. And it got so bad that they would try the release him, and that he would spaz out just to get put back in the hole because for all kinds of reasons he felt like he couldnt manage being in the general population. Could i have one little thing on solitary confinement. Please. At georgetown, in coordination with Martin Luther king week and let freedom ring festivities we are hosting a two week exhibit of a replica solitary confinement cell on catch us, and we are going to have two presentations on solitary confinement. This is a theme. You have to be thoughtful about that. We are. Somebody did that before and i got upset. It was at the public library. I went to check it out and a woman came up to me and she said do you want to go in there . I said, no. And then she asked for my cell phone. I was like you can have my cell phone. Me and her got into the conversation back and forth. She said well you cant understand the experience . I was like, you shhh i take my shoes off as well, should i change cloths, should we have a Kangaroo Court so i know how long i have to stay . Should i change my clothes . Then she realized i knew what i was talking about. Its not the same walking into the cell under our own volition. We are not allowing people walk into the cell. Let me explain what were doing. Please. We are having a video that has peoples personal testimonials. Two, we will have formerly incarcerated persons there talking about the experience. And three we are going to have a system where people are reflecting and leaving their notes and taking it seriously and contemplating it. Obviously, there is nothing that can actually replicate the experience. But we are trying to have people under the gravity. Yeah, yeah. The biggest thing i found, and this can maybe segue into other topics, that the general public doesnt understand, the demonization of people who committed crimes is that people dont get the experience of getting to visit a prison. I brought in holdups of students into prison, and dozens of guests faculty members and so on and every single one of them walks out of there saying that totally apg changed my life. I cant do that for everybody. Its actually really hard to get access to prisons and so on. But im trying to to it in a solemn, serious way, to get people to think about how dehumanizing this experience is. This is the way of doing it. I think we are taking appropriate measures. I will have you come check it out. We set that out, i was going to criticize the project and he would further explain it. I like that, having the video and somebody who was formerly there. Three formerly incarcerated people who spent years in solitary. A deep explanation how it works. I appreciate that. We are touching upon the way that the racialization of the system often leads to changes in the conditions. So when you talk about the juvenile Justice System, as that system had more and more black children in it the system became more committed to a certain time of penal process. I want us to think about the ways that race and gender Work Together in this system because i think that people are often surprised to learn about the number of women who give birth in prison while shackled. The various ways that transgendered individuals are put in solitary confinement in both a protective and punitive way. So when we think about tackling this incredible system that has so many problems in it, what are the ways that we can think about this in terms of a gender justice, a racial justice, a sex sexual sexuality issue so that we can help mobilize different groups to make sure that they are also working on this . Because this cannot just be the work of the people who want to reform the system. There are a lot of people who need to be brought in. What are some of the ways we do that in order to create a Sustainable Movement to really change this . I guess one thing i would say. I mean the question that you raise is really what kind of literacies do we need to bring to this question. And i think that that hasnt been on the table when primarily what we are doing is critiquing the system. Part of critiquing the system is providing the public with information they dont have like what it actually looks like to be inside the system. I think a different question that we have to more thoughtfully engage with is what should the system look like . Its two different conversations we could have. We could have a conferring about just how the system is motivated to do harm to specific communities and how the system does harm to those specific communities but then we have researched the challenges there. We have like james formers book, locking up our own, thats about d. C. Thats raising this question about what does it mean to have, like a city thats advocating for some punitive policies . And what does it mean for that city to be advocating both for punishment and Something Else and only get punishment. Because i think in some of these conversations we have, the only way for you to care about me or somebody who had been to prison is if i also went to yale or say that again, please. Its funny. Actually, whats amazing is the number of people who bemoan the fact that i was incarcerated now. But when i was 16, in 1996, and this was around the time of the super predator, this is around the time of the crime bill, there were really few people bemoaning the fact that i was incarcerated. And even to this day, there are still very few people bemoaning the fact that that generation is incarcerated because those are now grown men who are 35 and 40 years old. What i think could bring us to the point that you are talking about is beginning for more robust conversations about the policies that need to be changed to get people out of prison. Once you Start Talking approximate concrete policies, i will name four people that i need to get out of prison. Ness would i name those four people i have to think about what has to happen to get those four people out of prison. Then i end up asking myself different questions about now what me and those people need to address to help them get out of prison. Too frequently we are talking about soared of broadly reforming the system but we have no idea what that should end up being in prison. I didnt know that was a thing, when i got to prison i found out it was a think. I read a people biette ridge night. It was about a 16yearold that got raped in prison. I read that poem and i realize the thing that happened to me, that i experienced and i wasnt raped in prison, but the fact that i have to add that qualifier means something about how dehalloweening it is to suffer in prison, that even if you do suffer, you cant mention it out loud. Because to mention it out loud is a different kind of suffering. The point after i read that poem i started the study and do research on the issue. When i came out i found a group of people who were dealing with it. I thought this is amazing, this is an organization thats attempting to answer this question, thats attempting to stop people from being incarcerated with adults. But a decade later we have done very little to stop people from being incarcerated as adults of the men that i know who are in prison now who served time with me are completely outside the space of advocacy that was created by very dedicated and committed people. I think if we start to ask questions about why are they outside of the space of advocacy. Why has grant v florida not had nearly the impact i believed it would. I was at Georgetown Law School watching, i was on a panel discussing it, excited. All of that has been deflated. I think if i start asking why then i go to those other groups and how they need to bring their literacies and their expertise to really naj what we want the stipulate to look like. And maybe if we provided some different answers in that way then we could provide some relief. I mean, i think there is no doubt that the situation today over the last few years is very different from ten years ago, 20 or 30 years ago where it was all tough on crime, more punitive, more, more, more, lock them up longer, and of course them, it was a code word, right, for certain types of people. Now today, obviously the 2016 election throws a wrench in things and makes it a bit complicated. Im sure we will talk about it. But there has been a movement building. And i do think that the fight against mass incarceration has become the Civil Rights Movement of today. I disagree. Tell me why. First of all, because if somebody says name the mass incarcerat incarcerated, who are they . I know its not me. People like me now that i went to yale. When i pulled the pistol out on that guy and carjacked them i was not amongst the mass incarcerated. When we talk about this issue and i name people i know they are never amongst the mass incarcerated. You feel different primarily because you spend times in prison. You actually have a kinship and a relationship that you have built over a time period with men in prison where you have a more robust understanding of their possibilities, their capabilities, their humanity. But a lot of us dont. And i mean you said that we are in a very different space now than from 20 or 30 years ago. Its like saying you know the knife was 12 inches in my back and now its nine. Because everybody i know is still in prison. For me to say that its different from 1996 to now, i have to be able to point to some people who i know who because of our work, because of the policies we advocated, are no longer prison. Im coming off of spending three years in law school trying to get person an attorney, and having all of the everybody who i respected who thought would give me a yes, guys doing 63 years for a crime that wasnt a rape, that wasnt a murder, that wasnt a robbery. It was an attempted capital murder where a gun never went off. He got 63 years in a state with no parole. And i could not get him an attorney from you know, some of the best people in the country. For me to argue that things have changed, i mean i would be lying to him. And i have to be accountable to him. What has changed is awareness. That may be step one out of 20, right, but not im not talking just from my own experience going inside, which has been incredibly influentialal, im talking about spreading that, bringing people in. My students, the millennial generation gets this in a way that prior generations didnt. First step is knowing with it. Then they all want to go to law school, be public defenders or be ethical lawmakers. Thats going to take time. Read the conclude of my, into. Im in no way celebratory today. Im saying we are having the right conversation, its been frayed that mass incarceration is injustice. The next step is what do you do about it. Im not popping champagne. I wont. There are people coming home. I caught a call from a guy who got out in september who is speaking. It starts to spread. On the issue of coming home, the reentry policies of our time make this question of what is home and what is the condition of home and how you get to stay in that home and if you can apply for Food Assistance and if you can travel to a job. I mean, so while i think both of you are touching upon the ways that we positively and negatively understand the Civil Rights Movement it raised a lot of awareness but it didnt change voter behavior. It somehow streamlined race itch and at the same time made people reflective. But i think a good place to kind of think about a holistic approach is to think about the real challenges of reentry. If we think about ourselves as committed to making sure four people come out, how do we ensure that four people are come out into an ethical and dignified word to care . This is i think the kind of last component of deepening this conversation. I want to make one quick point. Im not denying that we havent had change over the past 20 years. Im denying that its nearly as robust as it needs to be. I was once in a conversation, and Nicole Porter from the sentencing project said that if we continue the rate of decars rags we are at right now its going to take 80 years. That right there says we have had no change. 88 years . I mean thats the same im going to be dead. You know, and im primarily concern about me being a gran father. If im dead in 88 years and everybody else is still in prison thats a huge problem. Then in terms of reentry, i take all of this stuff personal. And the problem with me ever being involved in these conversations is that i dont know how to engage in a conferring without taking it ins matly personal because its not just about intimately personal. Because it aint even about my experience. Its about the experience of people that i know who still struggle every day with stigma, struggle with the ways they are blocked from release, if they get release they are blocked from achieve men. I cant complain about the things i endured because it sounds like complaining because you have accomplished multiple things. Literally along the way doors i expected to be opened with less fight have frequently required a kind of effort that we shouldnt expect anybody to have to exert. It wasnt just my effort. It was my wifes evident. It was my friends effort. It was the communities i was paft, it was their evident. I had a full tuition scholarship to howard university. This was the mecca. When they found out i had a felony, it got denied. Its more difficult to hide the kind of ways in which we continue to punish people who have the criminal record when you apply the target in a safe way. If they were willing to deny me like institutions of Higher Education that i was qualified for, imagine whats going on with you. Actually ive never told the truth when do you want to stop there. Mark what are your perspectives. First off all, i dont know what dwayne just pulled because there is kung fu voodoo because i was suddenly cast as an optimist. Anything but the case. Please read the book of its called unusually kruchl its not called the road to success is here. Sorry. Im very negative and very pessimistic about what has been taking place. Okay . But i still will insist that there are seeds now through the Younger Generation in particular, through the use of narratives and stories, through Innocence Project and dna making people aware all these mistakes are made. There is something about awareness and people are upset about it. Maybe they go home and they go back to their instagram and they dont care about anything. There is that problem with that generation. But i think being aware is inspiring. In terms of reentry, it is a disaster. Thats the Chapter Seven of my book is on reentry. There is no comparison to bring in the other countries here, france, germany and the uk that i looked at. First of all, the puretive incarceration is about getting people ready foe reentry. They say the punishment is over. Punishment is simply being separated from society. Prison is about trying to help you reenter. Job training, education, whether its social services. In germany to become a prison guard its two years of training. Its essentially to become a social worker is to be a prison guard. Here its barely two weeks. Take a baton and some mays and go control the animals. I mean thats essentially very everyone orientation. With reentry in European Countries they explain to people how to explain the fact there might be a gap on their resume while they were incarcerated. They try to support people. And if there is a crime against children or financial crimes and other sorts of jobs but employers dont have a right to know why somebody was incarcerated. If it has no bearing on the job it is a fresh start. In this country there is no fresh starts. We talk about Second Chances. First of all many people didnt have a first chance but then they dont have a Second Chance when they come out. The thing i want to say about dwayne, while everybody about dwaynes story is remarkable and amazing and its inspiring, i think he actually recognizes that the yale buzz and halo and so on is something that gets him adieulation from certain crowds. What i would say is dwayne is not exceptional. I know 30 dwans that i could name who are just as smart, just as dedicated, just as capable, just as ready to come out and do Amazing Things and they are not getting a chance to come out, or just a handful occasionally will trickle out. Thats my larger point. Not to say lets celebrate dwayne. But lets say why arent we letting all the dwans out who are just as capable. Maybe. The first time i met mark it was in a prison, with a bunch of students in a program. And they were engaged and like ready and brilliant and sharp and compelling. And sometimes a little abrupt and aggressive. In a good way. In a good way. We will take some questions. Before i open it up to the audience i think this conversation is particularly illuminating because it helps understand that the talents and gifts that we have right now where we are, we have an opportunity to move this boulder. And throughout this conversation we have seen the importance of architecture, the importance of history, the importance of medicine, the importance of food science, the importance of physical science, that we are prepared to fight this because we bring different types of knowledge to this problem. So one of the thing that im so grateful for both of your work is you really help us understand not only the complexities of this issue but you also challenge us to use your talents in order to upend the system. Please join me in thanking our panelists before we open it up for questions. [ applause ] all right, i will take questions from the audience. I remind you that a question is a seven for knowledge rather than a reflection. So we will start with you in the blue shirt. And christian has the microph e microphone. Hello. Is this on . Hi, my name is dimitry. Thank you very much to awful you for what you have shared and your experiences and your work on this very important subject. It seems to me tragically ironic what we are discussing now that tokevilles original purpose in writing democracy in america and coming the america to write it was to study the american prison system. And actually a lot of the points that he came up, he ended up writing obviously everyone knows masterful work about many other subjects but he did talk about the prison system and possibly reducing prison sentences and the harshness of them. I have two questions. One is from what i understand in the last 40 years the population of people in prison has gone up dramatically. Im wondering what the data shows, is it the war on drugs, what is it about thats causing this . And obviously im always interested in a comparative perspective globally. I thought what you said about the german Prison Guards is spot on. The other question i have is prison industrial complex. How much are they able to lobby inside washington, d. C. And get their interests advanced and get the laws to privatize prisons, et cetera. I hate to go there because i know you are probably both jds and there is a lot of lawyers in the room, but how much is there a lawyer business criminal courtroom complex of economic interests . Because one of the things tokeville did say he was obviously writing during slavery, so it was incredibly inequity. But he did say america is more equitable than france and other places but one thing he pointed out is the inability of a poor person to get a lawyer or to got a competent ten lawyer. Thank you very much. Story sorry for speaking so lon. The question on population . Let me ask you, you mentioned tokeville, i start out the book from a quote from tokeville, i started the preface, ill throw this out and movan. Since dwayne has been telling his personal story. The preface is little did i know at the time but this book originated in the summer of 1979 when i was sitting in the jail cell in london. I talk about tokeville and how he was astute in understanding american democracy but actually completely missed predicting where it was going to go, criminal justice, because he has a quote about in no country is criminal justice administered with more mildness than it is in the united states. You could do a 180 on that one. But in terms of what explains this, and really it is a phenomenon thats over the last 40, 50 years, starting in the mid 19 0s. The war on drugs is key part of it. Also an Important Role has been played by prosecutors in pushing for convictions, the professionalization of prosecutors, but even branching out further from that, if you look at society, i emphasize four main factors, one is race. This follows the Michele Alexander argument that after enfranchise men of africanamericans, after the end of jim crow, that locking africanamerican tuckcally men up became the new way of trying to have racial control. Right . Second is religion. Starting in the mid 1970s you had a very politicalization of what had been a private sphere that was infused with racial images. Then you had politics, which is Something Elsewhere the u. S. Is very exceptional. This is the only people in other countries are just shocked when i tell them that we in this country elect prosecutors. Elect judges, that they run campaigns. That they fun raise. They have political advertisements, they brag about how many people they sentenced to death and so on. There is something utterly bizarre about the way in custom judicial politics is politicized. It should be a meritoography, should be based on logic not about fear amonger through commercials and elections and so forth. And you mentioned the industrial complex. As this system has been built up. In the 1990s there was a new prison being built every ten days, every ten days there was a new prison opening. People talk about private Prison Companies and dont realize thats only 8. 8 of prisons. People have the sense that they are everywhere, private prisons. But they have had a lot of influence, through lobbying and so on and also the private companies that work within public prisons, there are a lot of vested interests in keeping mass incarceration very high. Unless we are going to have change in terms of how people think about race and practice racial punitiveness, which starts in the schools, by the way, as you mentioned, very young. Unless we have changes in reasonable, i think there is some movement there in term of a more redemptive approach and more tolerant approach of Second Chances clue religion thats changing a little bit. Politics, i dont see any change there, its still tough on crime still wins and then the business is still very deeply entrenched. I think those are the four main features that explain this american exceptionalism. Do you want to address the legal representation. I will add, when you had this boom in the increase in the prisons being built you had federal policy that said i will front you federal prisons if you get rid of parole. We might have slowed down on building the prisons but we havent had a comparative federal policy trying to find ways to encourage states to reinstitute paroles. We opened up the front doors and closed the back tours. And the pill grants. You shut them down and they havent return ared. Despite years of reform you havent had a return of pill grants. The question about the lawyers is difficult. Most public defenders dents make any money at all. Right . I mean you are lucky if you work here in dc you get a public defender you have got one of the best lawyers in the country. You can work in other states and you get a public defender you might not have one of the best lawyers in the country but its kind of like criticizing a teacher who has a classroom with 50 students for not being as skilled as another teacher who has 15 students. All of that i think creates almost an impossibility of providing just representation. Actual why couldnt he get a lawyer . Return to that. He couldnt get a lawyer because he had already been convicted. He had been convicted. You are entitled to have an attorney during your trial. You arent entitled to have an attorney post conviction. If you lose your appeal then you arent entitled to have an attorney at all. Frankly, anybody who has dna they want to address as their attorney in order to produce their habeas petition. There is all kinds of deadlines to meet which you dont know about if you are incarcerated. That goes back to clinton. In the red. Hi, my name is isabelle, i work at new america. I have a question. I know there are federal prison and state or local or county prisons. Im curious if there is a distinction in terms of how the prisons are run and treatment within prisons as well as policy between the state and federal level and what advocacy looks like at the state level versus the federal level and if the prospects for one are better than the other . Obviously im sure they are better in blue states. I think the differences are so answer in and so profound that i dont know if there is a way to begin to answer that question except i will say you have somebody like mark who started a clemency project that can exist on the federal level and is a blue print for things that could be reproduced on a state level but its more difficult because you dont have the sort of drug policies and the drug laws that have been sort of peeled babb. You dont have that on the state level necessarily. But i think there are so many difference from doing time in a state prison to a different state prison to a prison in a different state to a prison in a different federal it is a lot. I mean its impossible to really quantify how different the experience is for one person in a the state of mead being at jess on as opposed to another prison on the jess on compound thats five minutes away. Huge variation. Its hard to generalize. But overall the standard is pretty terrible across the board. But you know the thing with prison conditions there is a lot of research on programming. Thats something that varies across prisons. That might be a funk of who is the warden, which could change when that warden chains or it could be at the state or county level. It might be depending on where the prison is located. If there is a lot of volunteers in the area. If there is a college nearby. San quin quentin is a unique prison in the united states. There are people there who qualify for minimum security who could be to other facilities who ask to stay at san quentin because of the programs. Pause of the fact that its in marin county. Because of the fact there are volunteers, whether its becomely, stanford or other institutions or clubs in marin county. So they have education programming, shake sphere clubs, they have a pod cast. They are amazing. The thing thats so clear, this is why it is a no brainer in my mind. Programming works. Education, its incredibly clear, if people get an education when they are in prison if they take some Higher Education courses it reduces recidivism by 43 . It make them prepared to reenter. It changes their mindset. I have seen it literally happen. It activates them in some way. Its cheap, humane and makes sense. It keeps society safer. Think about it, 95 of people in prison, even though they are in there for way too long, at some point they are going to come out. Who do we want them to be . Who do we want to be living next door with, who do we want to be sharing the commune with . We want them to be well equipped to return. Right now at georgetown we are starting literally this month, a Prison Education program. Something we feel that georgetown and d. C. Department of corrections feel the same about this. That it is a win win for everybody. This is something that i think more prison us should be doing. I wish there were ways of measuring and evaluating prisoner mo precisely to reward those who have more programming and perhaps punish in some way those who dont because the results go along with it. Its very clear, more better education and programming, better results. Why would anyone want to oppose that . On the topic of education, i dont know if you heard recently the new Jersey Prison system banned the new jim crow from that was overturned today, actually. Im curious about policies like that in general which into like minuta but how we can stay vigilant to be sure that things like that that impacted. We will continue to build awareness. Then what . How do we really start to shift the tide towards action . What does that look like . And weve started to see bipartisan support on this i think in part because of the dollars that are flowing into this area but im curious if you have thoughts on whats that shift thats beyond a programmatic level or a individual level but you really start to see institutional and systemic change. Let me take the third one. The third one, i think i did this project when the law school we sort of studied the highest rate of recidivism. I hate words like recidivism. In maryland it means parole violations. At one point i was sitting in on hearings. And one guy was hifg with his girlfriend who just had a child. He was staying there overnight. He had an ankle bracelet because he was the caregiver when she was at work. They violated his probation for not being at home. During the hearing they stepped him back eight months. At the end of the hearing he said can i change my address . I thought maybe he wants to move to another country. He gave the address of his girlfriend. So the parole board says thats fine. He got violated for going to his girlfriends house and then upon conditions of his release he was authorized to go there. We studied for a few months and consistently technical violation, technical violation, technical violation, none of it was serious enough to warrant another criminal offense. All of it led to somebody doing more time in prison, three months to a year more in prison. One of the things that we can do is find ways to be on the parole board. This is an Administrative Agency with broad discretion and zero oversight. And nobody i know has ever said, i would like to be on a parole board. Like we havent really thought about how to make up people who are in those positions. I actually think Administrative Law is the way we have to think about danging and decreasing the prison population. Because there is people who are already in prison. You are not going to get back in court. Not going to be resentenced. We have to figure out how to make clemency and parole work. I was in a state i wont name. I was visiting that parole board and it was a local pastor that was on the board. And a public defender was the head of the parole board and that gave a different face to the problem. As opposed to connecticut which was two correctal officers who only got those positions because they had reached retirement age and wanted to be able to get parttime sal rather who were completely uninvested in the people they were seeing on a constant basis. Thats my one way in which i would say this is what we can do to change some of the policies and put a real dent in incarceration rates. The second thing is i have to be worried about how we think about what evidence is, and how we think what recidivism is. There is somebody who is released who is unable to get another job who commits another crime. We have to be careful all of you people in the audience who have a college degree, if you ever do anything despicable in your life your institution does not get blamed for i. If you cheat on your wife, if you beat your kid, if you get a traffic ticket. Right . If you commit a crime, nobody says you went to university of maryland . University of maryland has failed our society. We cant keep sending students to university of maryland. Because you got that education and you decided it was okay to run that red light consistently for six months, right . I think its dangerous for us to put that kind of burden on Higher Education or any program in the system because all of those are legitimate, even if people go through those programs and still end up back in program. Let me have a point on parole and well answer the questions. Theyre often points to members of the parole board. What governors most fear is letting somebody out who commits another crime. That is the number one fear. So in germany they talk about having a relatively high risk tolerance which is to say they do their best, but when someone reaches the end of their sentence or has a conditional release earlier which is a form of parole, that then we as a society are hoping for the best and with the emphasis on rehabilitation that comes in they have fewer failures. The point is were not going to have 100 . Whatever programs they do. We have to be, and a wrote an oped about parole is we have to be willing to consider letting people out of prison at some point. We have people who serve life with parole. That sentence is just given out like candy for life, life. And theyre eligible for parole. Then what happens is when they come up for parole at a certain point, what happens . They might be 30 years into their incarceration. They might be all gray or whatever. And then it goes back to what they did when they were 16 or 18 or whatever. And the original nature of the crime. Nothing about the transformation thats happened, ive written 35 different parole letters, none of them have done any good because in a certain number of states life basically means even though youre eligible for parole, you dont get a chance to get parole. Its essentially life without parole but we have this charade we call trying for parole. So i think parole is usually problematic, but it is an area where there needs to be a lot of attention because the sentencing part, that is changing a little bit. There is some ramping down, three strikes and mandatory minimums and so on. Thats going to take a long time to have an effect on the 2. 3 Million People who are locked up today. Parole is where we can make a difference, c due alifornia, dua Supreme Court decision, has actually been giving out parole much more regularly because they were forced because of overcrowding and conditions in the prison there to let people out. There are all these scalia and many others saying theres going to be crime waves. It hasnt happened. Its been incredibly successful. Its not 100 . We as a country need to think about that and prepare for that and do everything we can to make that happen. In terms of what can be done, you know, i talked about programs. The other thing is family. The way we treat people in this country when we lock them up, we do Everything Possible to prevent them from maintaining Strong Healthy ties with their family. They get sent far away. The federal system they get sent all over. But even many states, theyre put you know, theyre in sort of rural areas that are really far away from where many people are from and the visitation policy is restricted. The way its set up is meant to actually break those ties and discourage that. In terms of where we can go, the reason why, and i want to come back not quite be an optimist but have some hope which is that on the state level there has been some change in some states and in the end we have 51 criminal justices in this country. We have a federal system in 50 states. Even some deep red states, texas, louisiana, that have been harsh for decades but that have been moving in a different direction, locking up fewer people, being willing to let people out and so on. Its not always for the same reasons i would share. A lot of it is economic. Our budgets are bursting. We need to cut our budgets. Why are we spending 50,000 a year to lock up someone. Why are we spending 100,000 a year for someone elderly who has health needs. I think its more of a human rights perspective. But that still is real. Its an argument effective with certain crowds. I think theres some hope that the combination of those types of arguments will make people realize on a state level where its separate, where theyre not part of all the federal craziness and so on, that there are better solutions. Drug court and so on, its happening for racialized reasons that its sort of a white population thats being addicts and its not criminals anymore. That should have happened 30 years ago. But theres some movement on the state level in that direction. Thats where i think more attention needs to be paid in the states. Maybe its better. Maybe happening quietly in the background without all the sort of fearmongering is a better way. I want to say one thing that i think is worth noting. More like sort of bringing new literacies to the problem. My friend gary with impact justice, he had students in prison. There was some pushback. Somebody hit me up on twitter and said im completely against this and they tagged me. I said i disagree with you, i think its a good idea. You like to do that, dont you . Yeah. One of the reasons i thought it was a good idea is i was there and i watched them present. One of the things it did is its not a given that all of us know what it means to be incarcerated. Its not a given all of us know what the system looks like. When you start to bring a Diverse Group of people, each prison was built with this notion, they conceptualized it being some kind of space than what it is now. They also had all had built spaces, so imagine spaces being built that took for granted the fact that the families of prisoners needed to be able to have a meaningful and kind of complex interaction with their incarcerated partners, children, loved ones. And so one of the reasons why i think we need to bring others into this conversation is because they say the same things that me and mark might say, but they raise different questions like oh, the state prison has no Family Access because its built into the side of a mountain thats 79 hours away from the entire prison population. Actually i just wouldnt choose to build it on the side of a mountain in that place. And if i built it, i would actually have a space for restorative justice. I would have a space that i imagine is using as a community theater. Doing all of those things encourages us to think in a different way about those incarcerated. Although i agree with all the system t systemic racism, and all the structural problems, we dont like the people in prison. We just dont like them. Sometimes theyre use cousins and we dont like them. We dont like them because we disappear them and we dont engage with their existence. We dont meet them, especially if theyre our families. We dont meet them on a level than we were not actually thinking about real crimes when we think about people incarcerated. We think about the standin crime which is something we saw on law and order. How has that show been on for 30 years . Unbelievable. Ten spin offs. I love nbc, though. On that note i want to tell everyone that both duane and mark have books available through our partner solid state books and in a time that has been characterized by this idea of building a wall, i really appreciate your help in braking down not only physical ones, but ideological ones as well. Thank you so much for being here. [ applause ] coming up later today here on cspan3, President Trump has a News Conference with the Prime Minister of norway thats scheduled to start at 3 20 eastern. When it gets under way, well bring it to you live from the white house. Then this evening on cspan3 we head to Richmond Virginia for the Governors State of the commonwealth address. Thats set for 6 30 eastern also live here on cspan3. The cspan bus continues its 50 capitals tour this month with stops in raleigh, columbia, atlanta and montgomery. On each visit w50ell speak wit state officials. Follow the tour and join us on wednesday at 9 30 a. M. Eastern and when our guest is josh stein. House minority leader denny hoyer has a News Conference on daca. Thats the obama administrations program allowing some undocumented im