me these book reports. i was like why am i getting book reports from prisons? i'd continue to get more letters. as i got more letters, they were increasingly moving. you know what? i got to dive into this issue and start seeing what's going on. then as i started to uncover more and more data, you know, you start to realize that in our country we lock up 6 to 10 times more people than any other industrialized nation in the world. for the past 30 years we had 300,000 incarcerated individuals. it's ballooned to 2.4 million. many on probation who have lost voting rights. this is a hyperincarceration crisis in our country. i wanted to write a book to shine a light on that and bring some humanity and sense to this issue. >> the book is really personal. because you begin the book with a letter you received from a young man behind bars. >> yes. >> and it says, quote, my name