about punishment. and you might be surprised who else thinks mass incarceration is a problem, the people who run louisiana s prison system. and i think nation-wide, we lockup people too long and too many of them. seth smith is the director of operations for louisiana s department of corrections. it s not working. it s not giving us the results that we want. it s costing a lot of money. we send people to prison that aren t necessary a danger to society, and then we keep people that their time for danger is over. they re no longer a threat. he says it is time to rethink prison from simply punishment to rehabilitation. you say it is about rehabilitation but a lot of americans think it should be punishment. this should be hell. suure, but we could make somebody worse. but as i m about to hear, plenty of the incarcerated do believe it s just about punishment. another day in the field.
police said they re gathering evidence in multiple clearing seems. we ll continue to update you on the story as we get more information. now, back to dateline. welcome back to dateline. i m craig melvin. does the punishment fit the crime? it s a question at the heart of the prison reform debate. especially when it comes to drug related offenses. for the man you re about to meet, a parole board s answer could mean the difference between a second chance at life, or growing old and dying behind bars. back to lester holt with life inside. in my three days at angola, most of the men i spoke with had committed violent crimes and received long sentences. life without parole? yeah. but like every prison, there are also nonviolent offenders serving long sentences that might as well be life. john
now in addition to its popular annual inmate rodeo, there are a variety of programs. all right. ready? go. these men are training service dogs for veterans. there is even a radio station run by incarcerated men. the only one in the nation, the station that kicks behind the bricks. you can get a lot more freedom here depending on your behavior. you know, we have a lot of programs mentor led, led by other guys serving life sentences and it giving them purpose. it looks like a shop. yeah, it does. i talked to a master mechanic at the prison s auto shop. i didn t know how to change a spark plug before i went to prison. don t let the uniform fool you. he has been incarcerated since 1989 for killing his wife with a shotgun. even know he ll likely never get out, he mentors nonviolent offenders in a re-entry program. when you can see a man, come
they got into an argument. he became enraged and beat her over the head with a metal rod, and then tried to get rid of her body by burning it. you committed a pretty savage crime. it was a horrible crime. an unexcusable crime. and there s nothing i can do that will be able to undo that. thankfully they were able to look and see how i had changed. so, if a parole board said that he changed after 19 years, what will it say about henry montgomery after 55 years? you re the first guy that got out and he s still here. yeah, there s a lot of guilt. i went to prison whenever i was 15. a white kid. and got out when i was 34. henry went to prison, a black kid at 17. and he s still here after 55 years. big day, big day. big day. the three members of the panel must vote unanimously to free him. they were behind closed doors for more than an hour. this is the audio from that hearing.
fully mature. but that ruling didn t apply to peole like henry montgomery who had already been sent away as a juvenile. so, that s why he took his case to the supreme court and in 2016 he won. now all juvenile lifers, no matter how long ago they were locked up, can make a case that they deserve parole. mostly older guys here? 78-year-old clifford hampton is one of them. i went to see him in the dorm where he lives. this is my bed right here. this is your home? yeah. this is mine out here. he s been locked up 61 years. since you have been here, we have landed a man on the moon. yeah. think about that. yeah. there s been a lot of changes. hampton says six decades in prison have changed him, and thanks to the man sitting next to him, hampton will now have a chance at freedom. why do you think you deserve parole? i wouldn t say that i