Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On A Country Called Prison 20151031

Good evening and welcome to st. Thomas university church. Our program tonight will be a presentation and discussion of a new book entitled a country called prison. This is being recorded by cspan for later broadcast on booktv so we ask that you take this moment to silence your cellphones. When we get to the questions and comments portion of the program, please wait for the microphone so that you may be heard and recorded. Following the presentation there will be book sales and signing in the atrium of our chapel and a wine and cheese reception will also follow. Our authors tonight are dr. John carl and dr. Mary looman. Dr. Carle is assistant professor at the university of oklahoma where he teaches a variety of courses including criminology and criminal justice. Is social Work Experience includes the present context and a variety of medical settings. He is the author of sociology, think social problems, and a short introduction to the u. S. Census. Mary looman is a psychologist and works with the Oklahoma Department of corrections at the reception center. And is an adjunct professor at the university of oklahoma where she teaches courses with a masters in criminal justice program. She has worked in the field of corrections for over 25 years in both juvenile and adult settings as well as with at risk families and in the Mental Health setting. Thank you very much to both of our authors and without further ado i turn the program over to them. Thank you to the st. Thomas more community for allowing us to be here tonight to talk about something near and dear to our hearts. Our new book we published, a country called prison. One of the things i think most americans are aware of but maybe not aware of to a great extent which actually exists is the reality that the prison system in the United States is one of the largest in the world and we had spent an inordinate amount of tax dollars trying to deal with the problem of what to do with people who do stuff we dont like. One of the realities of social life is that we of always had people who do things we wish they wouldnt. We have always had miscreants who do things the rest of society doesnt like. One of the interesting questions is to wonder what is there a difference between people who do things we dont like lormac and do things we dont like the we are afraid of. One of the things we noticed in the Corrections System in the United States, we have not drawn that line clearly who we are afraid of and those we may be mad at. We have always tried to deal with this throughout human history, banished evil, send them to penal colonies, enslaved them, tried to kill them, put them in stocks and locked them in town square, the scarlet a, none of this stuff has seemed to solve much in the event of eliminating the possibility of people doing things we dont want them to do so we settled on prison. One of the things that is interesting to think about is if you settle on prison because it is necessarily better or we havent thought of anything else . One of the things that is interesting to me is this massive amount of people to incarcerate. Justice statistics estimate five out of 100, 5 of the American Population either have been or will be in prison during their lifetime. To give you a context of what that number means, 300 million americans, that is approximately 16 Million People. When you think about 16 Million People in prison but couple things are important about those people. About half of them, 36 , roughly in prison for nonviolent offensess. One of the questions we had about this book is there a difference between what you do with not that have we are essentially mad at, nobody likes being stoned on the corner or driving under the influence of some addictive substance unless it is alcohol, that we dont want them running around in our communities versus the people we are really afraid of, people who molest a child or might kill you or break. If you look at the real violent offenses this is a minority of who we are choosing, yet this country we tend to throw the mall in the same pot. If you look at some data about this group about half are also parents. 16 million, about half of the people we choose to incarcerate have children. One of the things we know about incarcerating a parent is you increase the odds that their child will in fact also be incarcerated and that is by about 25 more likely. You increase dramatically the odds that this is going to become a familial event. Dad went to prison, now is my turn and the next thing you know you develop this thing that looks a lot like a country. He didnt always do this. Is really fascinating. We didnt always incarcerate such high rates in this country. In our own state it took approximately 90 Million People but since 1980 we have incarcerated 700,000 people just in the state of oklahoma. This is at 700 increase in a 35 year period. One question you might ask is are you any more safe now than you were in 1950 . A decision that has warm your tax dollars heart. If you look at the incarceration of oklahoma it mirrors the nation quite frankly. You can look at prison populations and you get in 1980 and up goes the number. And this massive mountain of people we have decided to incarcerate as a solution because they have done things we wish for they hadnt done. As you compare us to other countries around the world we are kind of unique, the United States comes in second in the world in its rate of incarceration. We incarcerate 77 people for every 100,000 folks walking around. In a town in oklahoma, 120,000 people, 700 of us will be incarcerated. Put that in context. Number one, a small in the middle of micronesia, slightly higher. If you look at modern industrialized democracy, countries you would go to on vacation you see different numbers. France incarcerates 149 people out of every 100,000. Great britain incarcerates 102 people for every 100,000. Seven times approximately lower. If you look at japan it is 14 times lower. Someone who is interested in the social world, one question you may ask is what is up with this . Why are we doing this . What is the 16 million . But the context, why we came up with this . The fact of the matter is our prison, 16 million, the likelihood of including that, the people we are going to send is approximately a population twice the size of israel. Slightly smaller this is a massive number of people. If it was a state it would be the fourth largest state in the country, just below florida. Bigger than illinois. Imagine if prison was the state where the politicians would be going to try to get things done. This is the large number of people who significantly, some of whom we should be afraid of. We have no doubt there are people in prison who need to be there. One of the things that is fascinating, and i look at the federal prison system, get a drug offender rate of 50 incarcerated in federal prison our drug offenses. Hi maquettes state prisons across the nation i get 41 of the prison population being nonviolent offenders. Slaps this in half, we could probably if we stopped incarcerating high rates of nonviolent offenders we could cut the prison population in half which would have tax benefits to us all. One of the questions we might think about when talking about International Crime rates was incarcerate lower rates in great britain. They have less crime. No. Not necessarily. For example if you look at the assault rate in britain it is higher than in the United States. If you have ever been to what soccer match maybe will understand why. If i look at the rate in the u. K. Is higher than france. The one thing that is fascinating about our crime rates compared to most other modern industrialized democracies is we leave the world in one category, we incarcerate and that is drug offenders. Just a couple of numbers to hold this to you, we incarcerate 560 people out of every 100,000 by connection france, 176. What do they do the we are not doing . We will talk some more about this but the book talks about this to some degree, they treat drug addiction like a disease. There may be someone in this room who has recovered from alcohol and when you did you were told this was a disease and you got treatment and came out and went to meetings and we will cure you from this disease. It was alcohol. At you been addicted to them veterans that would put you in prison. To punish the diction. Mary is the psychologist but as a social worker who has been around awhile, never once in my life ever heard that you can punish away addiction. How did this happen . 1980s we get to Ronald Reagan and nancy reagan, the just say no campaign and start the war on drugs before they came into office, they wrap it up and we will stop drug addiction in america. We figured if we increased the punishments, make some water, harsher, it give these people we dont like off the street, this perahia, crack cocaine, fill in the blank. So this starts raising, at the same time you also get much more harsh punishments, you get states like california that create three strikes and you are out, states like oklahoma create truth in sentencing laws where if youre a violent offense user 85 and until last spring we in the state had not third strike Marijuana Law which would lead to a third offense to life without possibility of parole on the marijuana charge, 20 years. State across the nation, not just oklahoma. Not only are we going to create this, we are going to make longterm prison sentences. Part of what drives up the prison population is keeping these people in jail for longer periods of time. At the same time this is happening we are packing the prisons full of people but not increasing the budgets consistently with the number of folks theyre supposed to feed and house and take care of so all of a sudden a lot of the efforts made in the 70s and 60s and the vendor the 80s to try to, quote, rehabilitate or habilitate people start having a budget crisis and so we get fewer and fewer people with an opportunity to get a High School Diploma when they are in prison and then they get out of prison and we have high rates of revocation, get out of prison, go out in the community, find a job, smoked a joint, have a urinalysis and next thing you know i am back in prison. Approximately half of the people we send out of prison will end up back in prison within a three to five year period end of that, half of those people go back, most of them are borrow revocation. They have not necessarily committed other crimes, just didnt show up for Parole Office and when they didnt get the job in time or failed to go to the parenting class required them to do. All these things we call technical violations in the window of criminal justice those this all leads to the creation of this incarceration. If we actually thought this might stop criminality, what actually happens is someone commits a crime, we punish them and they go into this box. Officially if you are in a mediumsecurity prison you might be in with serious offenders odds are you have possibility of being locked in a box with somebody and if you didnt choose for 23 hours a day something is going on in the prison, they lock it down and this leads to significant numbers of problems with riots and rapes and assaults that happen in prison on a regular basis and you see locked ups and all these shows about prison life and you see this reality that prisons have become in effect since the 1970s more and more violent places. Prisons in america have become more violent, not less. More crowded, not less. And our recidivism rate at which returning people back to prison when we release them has gotten worse. I am not real smart guy but one thing i always try to remember is if you try something and it doesnt work may be what to try something else. Instead what we tend to do is keep the same thing over and over again. I called out of the people who have been in a, they call that insanity, try the same thing over the same way and expected different results. It keeps happening. We send these people out in the community and they have been discharged in what mary and i like to call legal aliens somebody who was born in this country, speaking. Citizens, they committed a felony and now they are precluded from all kinds of other activities, frequently employment. There are many jobs convicted felons cannot even get. In our state if you are convicted felon you cannot work in a nursing home period. You cant beat the janitor. You cant be anywhere near seniors. Really interesting. You could be in on the marijuana charge and we wont let you, let alone some violent thing or Something Like this. We create this separate status of these people. One thing we know about this population which mary will tell you about is this population is almost always disadvantaged backgrounds. The vast majority of americans go to prison come from lower class, the poor, poorly educated, when we release them from prison and stigmatize them with a stamp on their head says excon, you never get out from under. Are we surprised they offend again . Are we surprised we get the cycle that . One of the things, and i say this a lot to my students and i will say it to all of you. I dont like to pay taxes. In oklahoma i dont like to pay taxes but if they take my money i would like them to use it one of the things after 20 years of looking at this stuff, talking to people and reading about it, my own personal bias is theres not a lot of good that happens in prison. May be a Necessary Evil for some good this wholesale mass incarceration is a senseless prospect. In this country we spend 50 billion every year on incarcerating our own citizens. Okay . Massive number. When i think about what that means to you and i, every time you incarcerate, every time, you take from from a taxpayer and turn them into a tax user. Even if i am cooking mess in the backyard and not reporting to the irs money in, still go to the Grocery Store to buy things, printing and apartment where theres propertytax associated with that and still contributing to the community at some level even if it is in the illegal economy. I am contributing. As soon as you take some of the street and locked them in a box you turned them into a tax user. I am not saying we dont want to do that for some people. I hope california never lets out charles manson. But the reality of the situation is most people we put in prison are not charles manson. The other thing that is interesting, states and the federal government in my opinion never report the full cost of what it means to incarcerate. We go to the department of corrections, 18,000 a year, in the community facility, 24,000 medium, 80,000, you can look at these numbers but what do those numbers mean . They generally mean this . Bars and food and guards. That is the cost of incarceration. What about lost wages of the individual we have taken off the street . The lost tax revenue . The 25 increase in likelihood that his children are going to become tax users . What about the reality we have high rates of people we incarcerate whose family drop into poverty and we give them food stamps, provide them section 8 housing. All of those are potential costs of incarceration. And yet they are not reported anywhere. They get passed to some other government agency, department of corrections, honestly i am not saying the department of corrections is bad people, they are just doing their budget but as a taxpayer is someone who is interested in this no matter what state you are in you should be paying attention to the reality that whatever is being reported to you is not a real costs. The true cost is the loss of income that is long term, loss of human potential, loss of these children not to mention all the other expenses the bill along with this, provide section 8 housing, in oklahoma we lead the nation, the incarceration rate of women, one thing the University Never puts in, youre more likely to go to prison if you show up in oklahoma. They dont talk about that. Thank you. I fought it was funnier than that too. When you think about this, over 70 of those women we incarcerate are the sole custodian of their children. What happens to their kids when we put mom in prison . The numbers thing we incarcerate women in the state of oklahoma for, the number one thing, drug possession. Not distribution, not driving down the highway with a winnebago full of crack cocaine, possession. Who pays for that . We do. Take taxpayers and turned them into tax users. This creates this massive mountain of people. We look at this as a mountain i will turn this over to her to let you get an idea what makes those folks into a country and how we can do some things for them. As john said, i worked in a country called prison for 20 years or so, i worked in prison communities and also worked with the disadvantaged people in the American Society that live in their own community that we referred to as a difficult prison, inside and outside prison because the wage on talked about the collateral effects, children that are left behind, grandparents that are left behind and elderly parents the need a son or daughter to take care of them. When i was working in their early years, i began to notice a pattern, observations about people that were disadvantaged, people who were in prison. They seemed to talk differently. They seem to interact differently with each other, they were different clothes. Didnt talk about girls got in little league, they talked about finding food in a dumpster. I met john, we read teaching at the same college and i started telling him about my observation and he said that sounds a lot like the characteristics of a country. The sociology has studied over the years. As we began to talk about it the book began to take shape and we realized we were onto something that is very different. In that we have a group of people, 16 million plus if you count the families and children, that seemed to live in a country inside of america that are not part of the American Social structure and culture. In a country john already talked about, a lot of people. Even really small countries are larger than the university of oklahoma which i always felt was large. And we have our own territory, prisons Parole Offices all over the country, they have their own political system and their own economy. Prisoners have the barter system. 5 like to get some marijuana in the prison and so i have canteen privileges and the guy who has marijuana loves Hershey Chocolate bars. I am in, i get my marijuana and he gets his chocolate bars. They have a barter system. What i talk about is the three most import aspects of a country which is history, people in the country have a common history, they have a common language and the common culture. What is the history of nonviolent offenders we are talking about that are so different from people who dont go to prison . Again i am only talking about nonviolent offenders. We know from research over ten or 15 years that most nonviolent offenders are for. That does not mean all people that are poor go to prison but it does set you up for that failure rate. Some of the war, 60 of people coming in to prison have a job before they are arrested but they tend to make 50 less than people who dont come to prison. This is probably connected to the fact that 78 of the people that come to prison to not have a High School Degree or ged. They seem to drop out of school somewhere between ninth grade and eleventh grade. This is really because from childhood on, they live and grow up in a world where they dont learn social structures that require you to be in junior high and high school. In junior high and high school we are generally socialized in the American Culture. Football games, basketball games, this is where we learn how to beat american citizens in high school. If you dont go to high school that is not part of your training these the other thing that happens is a fairly significant portion of people going to prison have had at neglect and abuse in childhood. Neglect is just not getting food, not having a parent there, waking up in the middle of the night scared of a thunderstorm and no parent or guardian or adult there. That is neglect. They dont have a coach in wintertime, they dont have the right amount of food. Abuse is physical abuse, emotional abuse, being told i wish i never had you, why cant you be like your brother, why dont you just leave, very terrible things to say to children. For win in the abuse is pretty serious. 57 report sexual abuse in prison, about 25 have that abused before they are 18. 30 had it after they were 18. If you are a small child, something you were robbed of your innocence, sexual abuse is a robin of your innocence, one of the most damaging psychologically that anyone can have and as john was talking about most women who come to prison on drug possession, most of the women who use drugs to numb that paint. Most of them have posttraumatic stress disorder and dont have the money to get treatment and counseling and medications the use marijuana. Brain tends to stop developing and growing when you begin to use alcohol and marijuana, and theyre kind of delayed in their development. Another thing that happens is about 50 of the people coming into prison have Mental Health history. Theyve been in a hospital before, theyve had medication before. Maybe they were at a juvenile facility for theres some people here from a Mental Health hospital where a lot of young people go to get help, and farm they do a lot of good help that helps divert them from prison. So im glad theyre here. What happens is you have a group of people who come into prison, and these where we can fine out about them but they were that way a long time before they turned 16 or 17. A lot of people think people consciously make a decision to commit a crime. They turn 128 and say oh, goody, i can commit a crime and go to prison. I have net young people who say when i grow up i want to goo to prison. So exciting. I just have not heard that in any lifetime. And i asked a lot of kids that question. They want to be football players, they want to be ballerinas and school teachers. They dont talk about coming to prison. So, as a psychologist, i wanted to know what happens . What happens from the cuddly innocent little baby and a little fiveyearold with dreams about becoming a fireman or teacher or football star, and ten years later they in prison . What happened . In psychology, for about, um, 50, 60 years, we haved some 0 in pretty solid evidence that we grow up, all human beings in a very planned and organized way. We have five developmental pathways, learn to think, learn to feel, learn social skills and have to figure out moral roping. Reasoning. All developmental pathways and go 00 go through them to get to be an adult but u but something happens different between people who go to prison and those who dont go to prison in our book were trying to educate people about the fact that many of these 50 of the people who are in their for drugs are not in there because theyre bad and scary. Theyre in there because something happened in childhood in which they got hurt really bad, and they used drugs to stop the hurt. So, what happens is, when we grow up, okay, when we get to thinking right and the feeling right and hello, how, my name is sam, right, then we have three things that adults do well if theyre healthy and that is they have executive functioning skills. That means they can plan, they can organize, they can problem solve in socially acceptable way. They can know what to do in a conflict. They know what to do when the weather gets bad in oklahoma and not stand out on to the porch watching it come at your house but going to the shelter, go now. A they can do all those things. They can gate job. They can figure out what groceries to get for the meals theyre going to eat. Everything that happens is they have emotional reasoning skills. They know what theyre feel, why theyre feeling that way, and what to do about the feelings. We also know how to read other peoples body language. We know how to listen to see facial expressions and we go, oh, that person must be having a bad day. I need to cheer them up. Or, wow, that person is excited. I want to hang out with them. So those are healthy adult functioning skills. The most important healthy adult functioning skill, though, is we know how to culturally live in the American Society. We know that we extend a hand when its hello, how are you, my name is so and so. Whereas in japan they tend to bow. We know that we have a certain space limitation in america. We tend to stand two and a half, three feet away from each other, whereas in france they stand very close to each other, americans kind of back up when that happens. We know what to do at weddings, what to do at funerals. Children going to the School System learn the skills and theyre very socialized to this. So we know what to do. What happens, though, is growing up requires about what is plant little baby plants and little baby people need the same thing things. Plants need sunshine, they need water, ask is like food, and they need dirt, something solid to stand in and thats exactly what children need. They need consistency. We know from research the first three years of life are absolutely critical to adult functioning in a healthy way. Think about your house. It has to have a really Solid Foundation to be able to withstand storms, to withstand the ground shaking, a lot of rain we get here sometimes. When your house is solid on a Solid Foundation you dont get the cracks in the wall and coors out of balance, oar like the house i just got, had to redo the foundation to get the front door to close. That what happens with children when copies si. They know when mom and dad are going to come in and take care of them. Theyre leg in the crib crying because their tummy hurts and their mom and dad come in. They think, this is a cool deal. If i cry someone will take care or you. When you fall down and gate booboo you know that mom or dad or big sister will hug and you put a bandaid on you and make you feel better. When youre ten years old and you were going to be the star baseball player and hit that home run and you dont, you strike out, mom and dad there are to say, good try. Way to go. Or good coach is there, coaching you on. Thats what consistency is about. We also need to have warm and cuddly heads and need to have somebody cheering us on ore holding areunder behinds when we are scared. We need to know the difference between right and wrong, dont play in the street. Cars can hurt you. We know what to do after school. We know what to do in school. Its interesting because ive been going to school forever, and the difference between kindergarten and college wag not real different. I had to find a cubby for my things, and i had to know where the classroom was, and i had to check out the teacher to see if they were going to be nice or not. Its kind of the thing as we go. So what happens to the people in prison . They dont get those. They are strategies for growing up are very different. They get a lot of gravel instead of a lot of dirt. A lot of chaos. Re. She shows people growing up in disadvantaged homes, the television is on all the time. Theres screaming and yelling. Children are not told what they do wrong, usually just hit or yelled another, or good to your room. Day dont learn from their mistakes. They dont know if mom and dad are going to be home. They dont know if moms going to be sober. They go to school and dont have a coat or dont have the latest clothes so the kid make fun of them, and they dont have anybody explaining any of that. Again, the neglect and abuse. They come home from school and dont know if theyll have dinner or not. One of the saddest children i ever had early in my career that got me started on this whole, why is this heaping, is i was interviewing a sixyearold during a psychological evaluation, and she could tell me where the three best dumpsters were in her neighborhoods for getting the best food, the ones with leftover desserts and that was very sad. To be six. I dont think i could do that at my age, know where the good dumpsters are and stuff. So thats the kind of reality that they grow up in. They grow up figuring out things that you and i dont even probably think about as adults. The other thing that happens is they live in a very impromptu life. They live in the moment. Mom and dad might get paid on friday, by sunday they have no money left for food. They kind of live whimsically and without structure. What happen when you grope up like that, grow unlearning to survive, learn to grow up figuring out whether dad is drunk today and going to be rough. When you learn where the neighbors are that will take care of you if mom and dad dont come home. You can end up in adulthood in very different ways than we do. People who dont go to prison. They learn to be devious. And most people think of that as a bad word, but its really just the best way to explain the people i have met in the country called prison. They lie to get what they need. I really dont like that word. Ive often tried to figure out an english word that would not mean lying like on purpose. I might lie on purpose not to get in trouble. But these guys dont know how to tell the truth. They dont know what the truth is. They come in and daddy is sick, throwing up. Oh, is daddy stick . Oh, no, honey, he just had some bad food, when in fact he is drunk and throwing up. Sew the families learn to live in fantasy, learn to live that that its okayed to be the way it is. This is normal to them. Its normal not have food. Its normal not to have silverware, not to have a backpack. Its normal to have manned me downs, and knock wrong with those. I had those. But over and over again. So its normal to go to school cold. You dont have i see children with hoodies on and its snowing. Where are their really warm coats . So, when they come into prison, and the prison officers are like, well, if their lips moving, theyre lying. Im sad about that. Its the only way they know how to get what they need. If a prisoners mother is dying and they want to be able to say goodbye, cant leave prison to do that. Its very normal and natural thing that we need as human beings. They will come into me and make up this big story so i will feel sorry for them so i will give them the phone call. I would just as soon they say, hey, my mom is dying, can you please give me a phone call. I can do that. When they do that to me, tell me the big sob story, i said you could have just asked, and i teach them at least with mow you can just ask. And so i try to help them learn social skills and not have to learn lying. So what happens then is we have a prison culture that is very different from america. But theyre going to come back to america. Almost everyone that is not violent, not doing really wrong sentences, the nonviolent people come back to america in three years or less, but in the time they live in prison flare not in america. I theyre not america. I often feel like i go to a foreign country every day. I have an i. D. Badge and when i cross through the gate its like a passport and i cant come in without it. I have to get itself if i leave it in my car even though they know who i am. So what happens in the prison culture, we have a language there that is called objective fix objectiviccation, and thats turning human beings into future. Theyre not human, they dont matter, theyre just furniture, and were going to shift mr. Smith to the next prison to his receiving yard, is how we call it. Every day at work, an offender we switch them out of orange uniform to a gray uniform, give them a little plastic bag like a little shipping bag, tags, fedex, and they say, okay, youre shipping now. And they walk in a line down to the place where they get handcuffed and a belly handcuff and ankle chains. Theyre not violent people. Theyre in there for five ounces of marijuana. But when the get in the bus theyre looked down like going murder us all. Imagine what that does to their selfesteem. Theyre a box, shipping to the next facility. Wow. We tend to detach. As human beings, when you work in a very difficult place, refugee camp, for instance, its too much emotion. Its to overwhelming to your psychological psyche to your spiritual psyche so you detach from it. You shut it off. When you do that, then people stop being people and start becoming furniture. We tend to the staff tend to vilify offenders regardless of the crime. Youre a thief, youre a murderer. I dont know your name itch only know your d. O. C. Number. I dont even know what you have done. I dont know if you have a mom or dad or what has happened to you. Youre just a thief. And you need to get in that cell. I dont care if its 110 degrees or not. I dont care if you havent had hurricane. Time to lock down. Get there. Only they dont usually say it that nicely. So what staff people want is compliance. They want the furniture pieces to comply, to be over there in the living room thats why i want that chair is over there. The residents, people who live in prison, objectify the staff. They see us as targets. Were somebody they can con and lie to get what they need if the state hasnt provided for them. Again that makes them sound like theyre terrible people but when youre in prison and you dont have underwear, when you dont have hygiene, when you miss lunch, how can you get it . If you dont figure out that the sweet psychologist over there in the office will get you something. If you go tell hear sob story. Okay . And i see this. So we have to i try to see it in reality of what it is. In england they drive on the left side of the road. We know that as americans. When we go to england its a little weird but we think its cool. When you dom prison and see the way people act and treat each other, you think this is horrible. This is not right. Prison is a country of its own. Its not america. When im working with new offenders who come in for their very first time, thats the first thing i tell them. Youre in a foreign country. Quit thinking about this as america because it will make you crazy. And i have to think that way. I have to realize every day that im not in america. And thats taxing after a while. Its difficult after a while. The turnover rate in the staff with the department of corrections is fairly high because this wears you out after a while and you dont want to do that. Another thing that happens in prison in the culture, we have four subculture. Prison is the first place i ever worked in hi 30some years of working that everybody didnt have the same goal. In school, the teacher, the janitor, the principal, the coaches, they all know why theyre there. To educate the child, to help the child get through school and get a High School Degree and be a productive citizen. If youre at a hospital, doctors, nurses, janitors, the secretaries, the cooks in the kitchen, they all know why theyre there, to help that patient get well. And good home and stay well, and get home health. Everybody is working for the same thing. Not in prison. The security people are there to keep us safe. Not let the offenders attack me and not escape, and therefore protect you. The administrative people, cooks, janitors, maintenance men and janitors there are to run the substance to make shoe the electricity is spade food is done and we have gas in the buses. The licensed professional people, doctors, dentists, meant happened people, we have a license and code of ethics to rely on. Then the residents are there, and theyre there because somebody told them to be in timeout, and their only goal is to get out. And they would really like to get out better than they came in, but that doesnt always happen. What happens is we have four groups of People Living in this country called prison that dont work at the same situation. We all celebrate the fourth of july together. We all know why that is. Thanksgiving, we all know why that is. That doesnt happen in prison. We do different things. And we work against each other many times. I have a person who needs to visit with his mother on the phone because she is dying, and i for some reason am told i cant get him out of his cell. I prefer to call them houses but the way everybody else talks about it is a cell. And because its lockdown today. We cant let anybody out. I go, well, his mom is fight and they dont expect her to live through the night. Well, thats too bad. Okay. So i go and tell the person. He is crying itch have to talk through a door. Everybody in the room has to hear it. The rule in prison is you dont cry so heres a man losing miss mother, who he was very close to. Cant do the Human Experience of grief. Wonder what that does to him psychologically. Then his mom dies. The next day when its not lockdown, call him out, bring him to my office and tell him, im sorry, your mom has died. He did not get to say goodbye. All these things left over to say. He doesnt get to hear his mom say, i love you, that nurturing we all need. Unconditional love. So what happens then is im on call tonight, and at 2 00 in the morning, i have an officer calling me saying, oh, so and sos threatening to kill himself. We found a noose around his neck. I get to come into the prison and now the officers have to do extra work, i have to do extra work. A fiveminute phone call would have stopped that but we work against each other a lot of the time and stuff. So, what do we need to do to fix this . First of all, we need to help offenders learn the american way. To do that we have a thing called gaming technology. Its inexpensive and teaches you the the game teaches you how to do building a community. My grandkids play one where you build a farm or youre a Farming Community and its wonderful. Teaches longrange planning, teaches organizational skills, teaches budgeting, teaches getting along with your neighbors, and instead of the offenders sitting around figuring out how to get into trouble, they could be in the library gameroom and playing a Game Learning social skills. The biggest thing we can do, if question do anything tomorrow, it would cost nothing, is separate out the pie event people from nonviolent people. Its insane to mel re throe everybody together. We would never do that in the School System. Never put High School Kids in with kellers, never put a cancer patient next to a lady delivering a baby at a hospital. But in prison we just throw them all together. We put 18yearolds with 40yearolds. At 40 i dont want to listen to an 18yearold. Excuse me. Theyre nice but not in my room. Okay. So what happens then is what if we just designated prisons, 18 to 24yearolds go to this prison and get schooling and education and ged. The 35 to 55yearolds can be over here where they have family and grandchildren and a different scenario. We know psychologically what it takes to for people to grow up according to age development. Thats something we need to do. Another thing is, again, without very much money, is we can do interactive division. Ou has online classrooms. I could right now in my office tomorrow i could teach 400 offender, 20 prisons, 20 in the classroom, interactive television. They could get parentings clags some it would cost very little. Another thing we need to do with survival is help people return to america ready to go to work. Ready food, clothing and shelter. Most people come back to prison within six months not most but the large percentage of them come back within two or three months. They dont have food, clothing and shelter. They cant get a job. We already have things in place. We have personnel express. We need department of corrections social Work Department where thats what they do is connect people to the community. John is going to talk about the bigger things we need to do that requires some legislation. One of the things i think we kind of came to realize as we were writing this book is kind of my old socialwork background. Programs that dont work, that dont prove measurably effective, close. They shut us down. But in the prison system nothing succeeds like failure. I i have a he recidivism rate i just get more people black and the taxpayer gives me more money so i can hire more people and make my prison builder or bid a private one and let you invest your stock money in it. So one thing i think would be really interesting to consider is funding prisons and using private prisons, thats what were going to do based on their recidivism rate. That would take very little from us to actually do this, but this would actually give us an ability to kind of pick programs that prove they do what we all want. What we all want is a Safer Community and want these people to come back and be part of that so we dont have to keep feeding and house and can sheltering them. We out ought to do that with the programs that work. Its very important that we kind of try to the best we took get our handle on how much this really costs you and i. Right now, if the District Attorney of Cleveland County incarcerates a drug offender, that cost comes out of the cost of the whole state of oklahomas Department Tax base, and so me as a Cleveland County resident, i dont really know what that costs because its dispersed with everybody all over the state, and so, therefore, many of the financial incentives favor incarceration. District attorneys get to say, have a high rate of convictions. Vote for me. The prison system says, feed us, feet us, give us more. And so thats an interesting kind of component to think about. Actual cost. Secondly thirdly, we ought to think bat automatic expungement. One deal that is true about prisons, if youre affluent and you get a felony charge, say you got a drunk driving charge but youre affluent, you can gate lawyer to hopefully get your record expunged and then five years from now you wont have to report this when you go to a job. What if we considered doing that for nonviolent offenders . I think that we taught really look seriously at how we treat mentally ill and addicted individuals. Theres not a shred of evidence to suggest that prison is actually cheaper than drug treatment. While it is certainly true that drug treatment is not always universally successful, depending on the study, where its the Rand Corporation or other studies, you can send somebody to drug treatment three to five times for the cost of incarcerating them and what we know ills thats highly much more highly eeffective means by which to deal with this problem. So want to thank you all for become here today. We want to give you an opportunity to ask us some questions about whether you have ideas about this, and wed love to entertain those possibilities for you. Any questions . Yes. Over there. Good evening. Thank you very much, john and mary forks bringing these issues up. For the past six years ive been a volunteer d. O. C. In the religious aspect of visiting prisons. I want to make a statement and then a final question but i just want to enlighten people on the history of prisons. One thing you did say, mary, and youre absolutely right about the social condition. One factors that is common to most prisoners, female and male, is a lack of a male figure to have individuals see what a male is supposed to be in their life, and this is something we cant legislate. It comes from a society, from our heart. The other thing about legislation, john, and we all know in our heart, we, the people, their people who elect people who promise to put more people in prison. Its up to us to say, lets have a little more compassion. We dont want to just put drug offenders in prison because they sold drug 200 feet from my childs school. Everybody wants to protect their child but the child is important just as well as the person who goes to prison. The question i have is pretty simple. But it comes from my heart. Would you tell people what we all recall as a penitentiary was . Thank you. What was the question . I think if you look at the history of he penitentiary, the longterm history of prisons would indicate this was essentially a place where you sent people to do penance. A catholic church. This is the Perfect Place for people who are roman catholic0. So you took the sinner, separated them from the community and put them in this play to do penance. That was the original idea that crime was a sip and you had to adont for your crimes a sin and you had to atone for your crime in i other questions . , up here. He wants to get you on the microphone. [inaudible question] [inaudible question] [inaudible question] [inaudible question] [inaudible question] [inaudible question] i cant quote the statistics. Im very familiar with the program, and i cant quote exact numbers but i know youre exactly right. That the industry whichs almost like a program with a spiritual favor flavor to it, helps people do what were recommending. They learn to become good selfesteem, improve their feelings about themselves, become more prosocial and also become more spiritual and that always a good corrective thing. I wish we could have it everywhere. Like to ask a question. I hope its not too complicated. Lawmakers tends to, as we have heard, tend to want to put more people in prison theyre elected on that basis. A complaint of those lawmakers is that they must not cut down on light sentences, like youre talking about, baas we all know theyre going to be let ought the murderers, rapists and the sex molesters. Is this true, that many of those people who are is this true or not . Thats an excellent question and it is unfortunately misunderstood by people. When a person is assigned to the department of corrections, a judge has ordered a specific amount of time that they have to serve. That is kept track of by the department of corrections, and people who get close to their discharge date lets say im going to serve 18 months. When i hit the 18th month day, just like when you graduate from the university of oklahoma, i leave the prison. So, when we are told the department of corrections, the governor says everybody that was doing a sentence that they now have to only do five years. We know who those people are. We know which ones hes talking about. And so we pull all those files and we recalculate them. If somebody is on murder without parole, theyre like life without parole think dont get released. We have them tagged and they dont leave. I would say this, though, too. Depending on states and particularly if you look at the federal system in particular, theres a lot of really interesting sentencing strategies that have indeed made some of the sentences for nonviolent offenders longer than some of the ty the violent sentences. You have mandatory minimums, drug charge crimes where people may spend if they have the right amount of crack cocaine on them 25 years in prison, which could be longer than a rape sentence. So its a complex question that honestly if legislators would actually try to look and see it the punishment fit the crime and we made some decisions based on punishment based on the efficacy of the punishment it would be fascinating. To my knowledge theres never been a study that giving someone five years for Armed Robbery is better than giving then seven or ten and what actually curbs their behavior. What perfect helping of time to stop a robber free wanting to rob again. We never figured that out, and im now not sure we even really try. Early on that, for example, countries with comparable levels of have maybe a seventh as men people incarcerated. Can you speak to what it is about American Culture that causes us to do that . And how did we go down that road . I think the short answer here is that we didnt always we werent always on that road. We kind of got on that road in the late 1970s, early 1980s with kind of the decision that were made about drug punishment and harsher sentences, and a lot of that was depending on your own sociological, perspective you can draw the connection that its really interesting that it happened at the same time that people start deciding to try to profit off of the incarceration of their neighbors. And so if youre a you think this is really interesting, money started happening into this, corporations started building prisons, and, gosh, all of a sudden, we take people and turn them into Profit Centers for people. Mary . The other part of that is if you look at how crime has evolved and who gets criminalized. Like, for instance, the mentally ill are criminalized. If youre lawyering because you have a Mental Illness youre doing a crime. So what happens is, in america we tend to emotionalize the prison system. Somebody is some little kid is attacked in the schoolyard because somebody is on meth, and so suddenly its like, oh, gosh, if you get within 200yards of a school, youre going to go to prison. And im not saying thats bad. Im just saying that we like if you know the highway, bridge is going out, you bring an Engineering Team in and they say, oh, yeah, this bridge is going to fall down. We need to fix it. But the legislation rarely asks the criminologist to come in and say, tell us the right thing to do. I think lastly, the other thing i was thinking not answer to your question, is that we have developed many of you may not be aware but our crime rates have continued to drop for the last five to seven years, yet the fear of crime continues to rise. So more and more people are putting alarms in their house because you watch the news and, the goingy man is going to get you, and yet the reality is, crime continues to decline in this country, and so i think we have a culture of fear as many sociologist have already talked about, and we have kind of the media here, a whole lot of people profit from you being afraid, and if you actually look at the reality, most of us are probably more in danger driving home tonight than we are becoming victims of crime. I dont know if that answers your question. I have a question both. You talked about how schools and hospitals and even perhaps we could say businesses, kind of have a common goal, they unify their employees and their staff to work towards a common end. How can we begin to see that happen in corrections . Well, i think we could start practicing what we preach. If its the department of corrections, we might want to start correcting. At work we call it the department of containment. That its what were doing. Just containing. Were not a fixing anybody. Were not making anybody better. I think right now, the mission of most prison in the United States are protect the community, protect the inmate, protect the its all about safety. What happens is, if you have a goal that is create productive citizens or create taxpayers, that would focus everybody to helping people get better, not worse. For instance, in football, you get more of of what you count with count field goals. We count running across the line. We dont count how many flags go up in the air. At the end of the game nobody really matters how many flags went up if ou won. Were just excited. So, what happens is were counseling the wrong thing. We count failure. We have kept track of the recidivism rate for 30 years. We have not kept track of how many dont come back. We dont keep track of how many new taxes theyre paying weapon dont keep track who got a job within a day and a half. We only keep track of the failure. [inaudible question] maybe perhaps corrections and i think there is someone who is profiting from mass incarceration. Would you like to address that briefly . I think the focus of the book is not particularly on that but its certainly a welldocumented kind of question in criminology. And in the study of the prisons in the United States. Best prisons in the country are involving putting me Retirement Fund in the hands of somebody whose job is to lock up my fellow man because they can do it cleanly, this is an interesting question. If they can do it cheaper and we have low recidivism rate, thats one thing. But the notion that Public Safety is a number one reason they have prisons is really kind of interesting because if all i want to do is keep the public safe, then that is a pretty easy task to accomplish. I often tell my students you dont want your dog to pee on a rug, lock them in a cage all day and they wont. You just take people and put them in a box all day, and now that becomes a very expensive, dehumanizing decision, i think, but its a decision we have, i think, have made in this done. And that really ushered in the in 1970s you didnt have private prisons. This is the result of war on drugs and the mass incarceration. One more question for dr. Looman. Are people coming out of prison more psychologically damaged than they came in . Do you see that as a trend . Not a trend. Its a fact. Its call the prison trauma syndrome. On the internet if you want to type that in its been researched out for 20 years. First of all, the dehumanizing, just being dehumanized. You come into prison and youre immediately strip searched, shaved head and given a number. Your name no longer exists you live in a cell that basically i would challenge any of you to spend one weekend locked in your bathroom. With somebody bringing you a meal throw three times a die. Youll be traumatized when you leave prison. Do you think the lack of public defenders in america has to do has an effect on the mass incarceration rates in the United States . The lack of public defenders . Yes. Certainly think it statistics or public defenders would indicate there are definitely more likely to take a plea bargain an trial, exactly 90 plus of the court cases never go to trial. And the poorer you are the most e more likely you hard have a public defender and in our state, which is relatively rural state there would be comes where you have an attorney question the service to serve that role, and sometimes i think that would play a role in the likelihood of someone getting an adequate defendant. The vast majority of people we send to prison are guilty of the crimes we sentence them. To the question is, is it a crime we decided to incarcerate them for. Is it worth that 30 to 40,000 a year not to mention the other longterm costs to do that. First id like to thank the two of you very, very much for your presentation. Thank you. And for your book. Thank you. I worked at the lexington assessment center, 1982. Keep referring to the 8s so. I was there in the 80s. As i turn out the system they had at that time, the numbers. Today its the same. The numbers. I wondered all these years why dont they use a Social Security number. We all have a Social Security number. For some reason, theyve never done that. In order to track, guy may come in, oklahoma, as a nonviolent offender, but he might have a record in arizona as a violent offender. People who are under the influence, no matter what the drug is, prescription, do things because their brain is put to sleep. Back in those days, i was really trying to make others aware of this. It was very, very difficult. Administrators made life very difficult. I did what youre doing now. Evaluation of offenders. So anyway, i thank you. I was so excited to hear about this and hear about your book. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Anyone else . Dr. Looman, aid like in what you know about the legislation view of medical discharge. Im a nurse at lexington, and we see a lot of the inmates, the offenders, passaway towards the end of their sentence. They apply for medical release and it drags on so long they end up passing away, and well, thank you. Dont get to say goodbye to their families. For a long time we had medical discharge but the governor signed a new bill in may that is supposed to move that along quicker. The purpose and the perception of the bill is actually good and very humane, but bureaucracy. So all the forms have to get made and all these committees have to get done to get it happening, but if its implemented quickly within the next few months, i think we will start seeing people leave, and youre right, because the those who are terminally ill, the cost to taxpayers is way much more than it would be if they were in hospice care or nursing home care. So im hoping for that reason. Its more humane you can die in your loved ones arms. So im glad you brought that question up. You can both answer. Heres the question. As we listened to you tonight and learn from the statistics and maybe head the reality of prison, what would be your suggestion for a first step we can do as we walk out of this building that would move the process along, educate the right people, and begin to make change . Let me go first on that one. So she can sit there and think and be wise. Well, i think theres a number of things to think about doing. The first is, i think that you should get to know who your state representative is, who your federal representative is, who is your District Attorney. Theres a story in the book which was actually a true story, when a candidate was running for District Attorney and the county in which i live came to my door, wasnt my vote, and i had a conversation with the individual about what percentage of the people youre sending to prison youre bragging about here were actually nonviolent, and he kept talking about how this was a freebie to me as a taxpayer to get these people off my streets. I said no, its not. And so i had this conversation with this person, and it was quite interesting because the perception was i should have gone you ass as opposed to me thinking, wait a second. Is this really the way i think i should send my tax money . And so i think the first thing you should do is question your representatives. I think another thing you should consider is that we frequently have a misunderstanding about how dangerous many of these people are. Theres certainly many dangerous people in prison, and leave them there. But this idea that they, quote, they, are all the same, is really problematic, and mary and i both believe in one simple thing, and i think if you can talk we both believe that people can change. And i think the problem with wholesale mass incarceration is the assume that zebras cant change their stripe when in fact i think they can. Mary . Probably most of you work somewhere at a business or school, hospital somewhere. I would really encourage you to begin talking with your management, your policymakers at your business, to start mentorship programs for people returning to work. From prison. They do they cant just get a job. They are pretty traumatized when they leave. They need some Mental Health help and they need a big brother or big sister. We get it for our children and we know that works, but they need a job coach. They need clothes. They need transportation. They dont have a car when they get out of prison. They dont have money to put gas in it. They dont have lunch money. And yet they have to start work. So, i think businesses in america have to start a program that helps people return to work in a humane and healthy and productive way, and, yes, there will be a few failures but there are lot of studies out there that show most people who start to work with an organization that supports them for a year or two, in terms of just mentoring and job coaching, and helping them get through the first three months, are very successful and go on to college or go on to raise their children to go to college and not come to prison. Last question. Yes. Youre mentioning about most people can change. Is a good segway for me to bring up what i want to. Since 1993, i have directed an organization that supports and gives information for those who have committed a sex offense, through the organization with [inaudible]. It frustrates me to hear so much emphasis on nonviolence support. And i commend the state and the governor and were beginning to make them lose their but when everybody with a sex offense is lumped into one category, it is very frustrating. There are many people who would do much better than most nonviolent offenders, and i would even say some of those with very difficult child mosting cases molesting cases also really want change. They just cant get. I the lettered get just break your heart, and knowing some of the therapists i do around the country, starting with dr. Fred berlin at Johns Hopkins in baltimore, who has done tremendous work with this population, i just hope that we can start bringing in more with the realization, knowing that so many of these people committed their offense with somebody they knew or somebody theyre related to. I think youre saying something i completely agree with. I worked in the i had a six offender not everybody who is convicted of a sex crime is the same person either. Theres a significant difference between a predator who goes around a park and snatches kids and abuses them and some 17yearold who gets hands where with a15yearold. Thats a handsy with a 15yearold. Thats different person. Theres a difference between a predator rapist and an acquaintance rapist. So what we tend to do in the media and our society in general isve to kind of categorize people. Im not slur thats productive for news the long run. I want to thank all of your for coming tonight. Im been cut off in the back of the room. There are still a few books back there. Mary and i are going to donate whatever you buy tonight to continue this lecture series here. So, if you buy a book tonight, its going to come to the church so they can bring somebody else up here. Theres also, i think, wine and cheese in the back room, and well be in the back, willing to take your comments, criticisms or snide remarks, whatever is appropriate. So, thank you for your time. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] youre watching booktv. Tomorrow at noon eastern, economist Walter Williams is live for three hours on booktvs in depth program. Hell talk about his life and career and answer you questions. Mr. Williams books include his moe recent, american contempt for liberty, race and economics, and up from the projects. Have a question for Walter Williams . Email it to booktv at cspan. Org. Post it it to our facebook wall or treat it book tv and also call in during the program. This amongs guest on booktvs indepth program, economist Walter Williams. Booktv, television for serious readers. Many of this years president ial candidates have written books to introduce. Thes to voters and t p