they started buying these prisons and putting them in private prisons. i'm a businessman. i employ 40 people. i appreciate business. as a business person, they said, let's cut our bottom line. let's make money off these people. services were cut. health services were cut. mental services were cut. now you're warehousing, you know, black and brown men, mostly men, across this country and making money off them. >> michael, one of the reasons why states, as you said, sold these prisons and these prisoners to these private companies, because they had huge budget holes to fill. one of the ways they could do that was to sell off the prisons. but aren't private prisons basically a way of the states not only washing their hands of the buildings but washing their hands of the responsibility that they have to those prisoners? >> sure. so the idea was like a good one. we can't front the money to build the prisons. we can't front the money to house these people, so you front the money. they fronted the money. now what's happened, not only did they front the money, they then lobbied for these drug laws to pass across the country. now the prisons have busted to the seams with too many