Okay. Good afternoon. Welcome to the texas book festival and our panel on mass incarceration. My name is Peniel Joseph and on the professor for Public Affairs at austin, and we had really two very, very brilliant and important scholar activists today talking about two brandnew books. To my immediate left into your right is james forman who is a professor of law at your university and his new book is locking up our own crime and punishment in black america. , a terrific book and going to give it some play right here. [applause] and then professor forman left and youre right is Danielle AllenWhose University professor at harvard university, and her new book is called cuz the life and times of michael a. [applause] and before even asking, beginning and asking questions, really both of these books are about really what i think is an m1 civil rights issue of our time, the proliferation of mass incarceration in the United States and the way which mass incarceration has disfigured and really distorted american democracy on multiple levels, levels of race, class, gender, sexuality, Mental Health and really citizenship. What it means to be an american. Both of these books really utilize both deep Academic Knowledge but also personal experience and reflections. Especially cuz. My first question, professor allen, danielle if i may, you are a train, very, very well known classicist, political thyrsus, philosopher and this is such an intimate searing portrayal of a cousin of yours who got caught up in our criminal Justice System. What inspired you to write this book . So, personal i may just say how glad i am to be here in austin and yes. [applause] and thank you so much to all of you are turning out for this panel. I agree that this is the civil rights issue of our time. So to have you here listening and thinking with us means a lot, so thank you for being here. So it actually come to just answer the question i want to read the final chapter of the book because i think this is perhaps the surest way of answering it, just a paragraph long. Its chapter 30 called my hearts locket. In my hearts locket, five gangly brown skinned kids, cousins, will be forever at play in it pair of trees they in the june sunshine. The meanwhile, inside the house, picture window, the lovett are forever passing their time and clean seemed distracted talk. So how is that an answer to your question . I grew up as a huge set of cousins, big sprawling family, levin brothers and sisters in five of us particularly close. Myself, my brother in the three children of my fathers younger daughter in the baby of the family was my goal coming youngest of the huge sprawling family and we grew up together as equals. Thats the point of the final concluding passage found by the love of family and started in the same place. Im a professor at harvard. My cousin is dead. He went to prison 15 on a first arrest for attempted carjacking appeared a terrible thing to stand up in public and talk about the person you want to commend attempted carjacking. The only good things said about you than is the only person of godard is michael. He shot him through the night and in the ambulance on the way to the hospital and andy hadnt done anything like this caught completely by surprise. Californias costa three strikes youre out law 18 months earlier in what this meant he was told by the judge as he went to trial and was convicted on all the things he confessed to and receive 25 years to life. He accepted a plea deal was sentenced to 12 years in eight and eight months in prison and 15, was transferred at 17 for reasons ive not been able to get from the records and got out when he was 26 the long prison he pursued his education in a helpless courses and i was the cousin on duty when he got on out that 2090 was killed by someone he met in prison during the 11 years he spent in prison. I wrote this story partly because to convey the pain of the way inequality works in this country, okay, talk about inequality is an abstract thing. Its got emotions through the five kids growing up together playing in a tree and look at the different world we live in. This is not sent them purely a matter of different choices we made your michael and i made different choices but its also got to do for the different degrees of difficulty on our life path as he ended up as a 15yearold in South Central los angeles in the early 90s and the gangs and temptations in Violent Crime and the degree of difficulty presented who come up in circumstances and neighborhoods that we have a collective responsibility for and thats the story my book is about. I wrote it because he asked me to give a series of lectures on the state of African Americans in a cab deferring the date given on strike titles like theyll talk about political equality and justice and i kept postponing and finally says kids coming to have to give this lecture is when i realized thinking about it the only way i could possibly pretend to speak to the question of what has happened to africanamericans in the last 30 years was to tell my cousin story so thats why he wrote the book. Thank you. [applause] james, and this is both a history in a case study of our criminal Justice System in washington d. C. In the nations capitol, but its also very, very personal as well. How did your experience as a former public defender really shaping inspired this book . Thank you. I want to join danielle and thinking the audience for coming out to this incredibly important conversation and for moderating it appeared there were so many representations of public defenders in the media and theyre almost all bad. They are almost all dispirited, underpaid, overworked, dont care, sell out their clients and of course that is part of the reality of our criminal system and we needed a lot of things including supporting them in under the current constrains there are valiant, eager, energetic desperately Mission Driven public defenders all over this country and in washington d. C. As an office full of them come as a part of it is i wanted to tell a story that told about the criminal system through that lens, through the lens of my client and the lawyers they represented them. The other way in which being a public defender motivated me to write the book as i took the job because i viewed it as a civil rights work of my generation and this is in the mid1990s. We did not deter mass incarceration at that time. There was a term created in the year 2000, but one in three black men is under criminal justice supervision. We knew the United States for the Worlds Largest prison system. We passed to or not dishonor and i also knew that the way that i entered and i thought about my own life, my parents were in the original civil rights coordinating committee. My dads my dad thought my mom spike, an interracial couple at a time when those marriages were illegal in many states in this country and our generation and i should say, for those of you in the audience part of that generation in your generation coming youre finding your struggle changed america per family. You made a possible somebody like me could have opportunities that were unheard of for a black man of my fathers generation. But at the same time, we also had the inequality that daniel talks about. We also have neighborhoods like the neighborhood michael grew up in. We also have the one entry number i just cited earlier. So i wanted to make sense of this. I wanted to figure out how it could be these two things could happen at the same time and in particular, and wanted to figure out how it was enfranchised Africanamerican CommunityLike Washington d. C. Where theres a lot of black judges, a lot of my prosecutors the police jeep whose majority African American and even all the representation, were creating some of participating in some ways the same unjust system of the nation was creating and so i wanted to figure out how could that be . How could these injustices be happening in a majority black jurisdiction . Thats great. Thank you. Just to keep our discussions flowing, number clapping until the end. Im excited as well. This is for danielle. One of the most inspiring parts of reading cuz in iran in one sitting part of the brilliant book and i would tell everybody to run out and get this book. It is that compelling is you talk about your cousins intellectual development. There is a portion of the book where you have some of his writings are reprinted word for word and you and your cousin talk about dantes inferno. It made me think about prison intellectuals. I thought about how complex, all these different things. I wanted to ask you about michaels intellectual Development Even while he was incarcerated because its so profound and we never think of those who are incarcerated or formal incarcerated has been intellectuals are being excited about ideas and intellectual work, but it runs throughout cuz that michael was somebody who is really gifted intellectually and really try to pursue that with your help in your encouragement. I want you to talk about that. Sure, think again in order to do that, and any to read a short passage through one of his essays. When he was arrested he was in an Early College program at southwest Community College come a program Gifted High School students who were going to combine high school for the firstyear Community College in the four years of high school and he was always hungry for learning and for a score between his arrest and number 1995 in sentencing in june of 1996 he completed his cheek ed purity went into prison are thinking about college, talking about college and so forth and at the time stripping all the opportunities other than vocational ones come in the federal government stopped sending telegrams be used by incarcerated people to pursue their education. So he did get a degree certificate and so forth, but there is always that hunger for college. Finally worked out. Finally worked out we could sign him up for correspondence courses at Indiana University and this was really for him the way to stay a spirit of years where he was admitted to indiana to indiana universities and a ba in liberal arts programs. Such a complicated experience because then you learn that you cant have them sign up for any course that requires hardcover books. I had to go through the catalog and causing a stir here is an figure out which courses only have soft cover books and that left two classes. Let onetoone in philosophy 101 and so we dove into live onetoone and not all kinds of amazing books, odyssey and so forth. Ill just read you a section of dante inferno like dante and force to defend to achieve the full awakening. Scarred by ascendant is, war after war, but teachers survive in a step closer to a full awakening of cells in the is no longer demonstrating what im capable of doing in order to survive. It has become what i can tolerate in with dan in order to live. I cannot help but to judge those around me. We are far from the same. I am cursed at the spirit of discernment which allows us to see the truth for what it is good many whom i despise who are truly sick beyond healing the nation never leave this place. Those who way to fulfill their destiny. I see many sincere and apologetic heart. Anyone still change the world positively or positively change someones world. How can i hold the latter the two opposites, but in time will only set them back out into society to do what is right. The i live in canonical dante. Try oneself the canonical dante and will not hold me. In the inferno, the dead are trapped forever. The biggest and most important difference in the inferno called present is that i have a layout. So, the point of reading not as partly to convey that hunger to convey the fact it is possible for people to grow and develop in prison. A hard passage because michael is simultaneously recognizing lots of other people in prison like himself who share that possibility growing into the future though hes also distinguishing some of the people hes met inside the prison. Its a complicated passage to think about, but i think the important point is there is talent everywhere in this country and how it is and we talk about the school to prison pipeline and take us so long as extraordinary. This is not to say that everybody in prison is always reaching for the things, but a heck of a lot of people are to the point you made about what we build. More than 2 Million People in prison this year, more than 2 Million People last year and the year before. The first book i wrote was about punishment in each and democratic athens. Ive been thinking about punishment throughout Human History and the world has never seen, never come a penal system like the one this country has built. We have to own it and understand what weve done and figure out how to undo it. Can i just say, just a followup, you guys dont take direction very well. [laughter] i just want to followup on daniels last point on undoing and connecting to her the story you read about michaels essay in his intellectual journey and development appeared one of the things that i think we have to be clear on if we are going to undo the system, the likes of which the world has never seen is that we are going to have to create space in the movement against mass incarceration for people who have been incarcerated, convicted of crimes, who have now come back to our community so its not just in daniel talks about the talent that is there, the talent is also leaving prison. We have 700,000 people every year leaving prison and jail and many millions of people leaving courthouses with felony convictions and misdemeanor convictions. Historically, it has been the case that even advocates, even activists, organizations fighting against the inhumane criminal system has not lifted up the voices of people who have been incarcerated or convict him of crimes. People have been worried about stigmata, if we put the person in front of the microphone, and it reinforces the stigma. We have to listen to these voices of people like michael and validate them and put them in leadership positions of the movement to reform the system. Somebody wrote an article recently where they sent to imagine that the Civil Rights Movement all the black people had been told to stay home and they have strategize. How much sense that god made . Thats what weve done in the criminal Justice Reform movement appeared to incarcerated people were told to stay home of the rest of us march in strategize. Weve got to stop doing that. Thats a good segue and this is going to bleed into both of you. Your book, the subtitle is crime and punishment of black america. Locking up our own and reading locking up our own and cuz come you get a class black community and that is something we often dont talk about. A documentary in 1998 by two, two black americans. In locking up our own, we really see people like marian baird calling black young people thugs. We see city counselors who are afraid to decriminalize marijuana for fear that they are abandoning black youth, but by not decriminalizing marijuana and 1970s, we relegate black youth to really harsh sentencing and the lack of opportunity and on the stigma. You want to talk about class and you talk about that as well, danielle, and the variations between the different sides of your family. Michaels mother had been a victim of domestic violence. I really want to talk about class in her community. Sometimes when we think about racial progress, we know terminal racial progress in the last halfcentury. This is reflected in that on some level, but one segment of the community has been able to enjoy that racial progress . Especially if you live in d. C. Or atlanta and other pieces in the complicated question about all of this as there are Family Networks in daniels book is a perfect example of that is not an easy dividing line where you can say we have these poor black people over here in these middleclass people over here. Its not so simple because a lot of people have a cousin. A lot of people have a nephew. But having said that, it is true when we look at the numbers, we see that if you are a black man that has dropped out of high school, you are 10 times as likely to go to prison in a black man has attended college. We dont have this team statistics. But theres every reason to think that you see similar discrepancy there appeared the problem is the africanamericans who needed into positions of power and authority who are passing a lot of these laws are overwhelmingly, almost exclusively from the group of people that have made it economically, educationally and a lot of the laws that are being passed are being visited upon end up with it upon the community, that part of our community that has not succeeded in that same way. You see it in policing practices in a place Like Washington d. C. In the 1990s in 2000, to be unleashed a style of policing they call pretax policing where they stopped cars for basically any reason. They pulled him over, try to get consent to search, but where did they do it . Where did they do this type of policing . They concentrate most aggressively in the poorest parts of of the middleclass break the code including the africanamerican middle class at the time they said pullback of this is where you get to the complication. Classes and a complete protection. We see that driving while black. This is complicated by worldclass matters and is about the same time. It is interesting. These are very hard issues and for me it matters to put them in an even vaguer context of broad changes in the country. Its important that what weve done with mass incarceration is to build a society that penalizes a mixture or rate beyond africanamericans, also affects latino americans, but a group of people who saw the highest increase between 2000 the president was white women. This is because simply as a country cover extended criminalization of penology to agree country and agree that havent been seen historically apparent that affects everybody and thats a place where pay raises