 Good afternoon everyone My name is Tyra Mariani and I am the executive vice president at New America Welcome to New America for those of you that are here for the first time I am delighted that we are having a very important conversation this afternoon about punishment in the US For those of you that may be unfamiliar with this particular with the criminal justice system You'll learn quickly that I think the criminal justice system is criminal in some of the ways in which it applies justice We at New America are Working Even though we our society is buffeted by change. We are working for thriving families individuals and communities With the time to have the time stability and opportunity necessary to lead productive lives We work for equitable accessible and high-quality education for all We work for equal representation in politics and participation in accountable government And we do that in part By telling stories about what's happening and what's possible And we also do that by generating big and bold ideas to solutions and I think you'll see that today Our criminal justice system is in dire need of change Imprisonment was originally intended to be used as a social deterrent and to protect those from those who commit crimes It was intended for individuals to pay their debt to society Be rehabilitated and then return to society as productive citizens But instead of doing those things we've made big business out of mass incarceration With the U.S. holding the highest incarcerations And then anyone else in the world We disproportionately arrest and incarcerate people of color And though we have an error rate of one out of nine innocent people convicted the death penalty Death penalty still exists in some states Though whites and African-Americans use drugs at roughly the same rates African-Americans are imprisoned six times more than the white counterparts and Because of what you can and can't do once you re-enter society Recidivism rates are high So that's just a teaser for what we'll get into this afternoon We'll focus on solutions and all that and then some and so with that I want to turn it over to our moderator for this afternoon. Dr. Marsha Chatlin Marsha is a 2017 Eric and Wendy Schmidt fellow here at New America And she's been a tremendous asset to our community She also serves as the assistant professor of history and African-American studies at Georgetown And there's also written a book called South Side Girls growing up in the Great Migration Before I turn it over to Marsha I should also mention that this conversation is being broadcast via C-Span So you don't want to be seen now. It's a good time to dip out So anyway with that I'll turn it over to Marsha. Thank you Good afternoon. I have the pleasure of moderating a conversation between two individuals who have helped us really look into the Depth of this issue of punishment. I'll introduce our panelists and get started with the conversation Professor Howard's class changed my life This is what me and many of my colleagues at Georgetown have heard over the years about Mark Howard Mark is professor of government and law at Georgetown University He's the founding director of the prisons and justice initiative which brings together scholars Practitioners and students to examine the problem of mass incarceration from multiple perspectives He also teaches regularly in the prison scholars program at the Jessup Correctional Institution a maximum security prison in Maryland His most recent book give a copy of it for us to see is Unusually cruel prisons punishments and the real American exceptionalism published by Oxford University Press in 2017 Mark received his BA in ethics politics and economics from Yale University His MA and PhD in political science from the University of California at Berkeley and while being a professor I don't know how he did it his JD from Georgetown University. Welcome Mark in November of 2017 our second panelist admission to the Connecticut State Bar was so moving and in his words quote Unlikely that it warranted an article in the New Yorker entitled a poet with prison behind him becomes an attorney on that day Reginald Duane Betts remarked last time my mom saw me in a court. I was sentenced to nine years in prison I know nobody expected this at least of all me Reginald Betts is a husband and father of two sons a poet and member. He is the author of free books The recently published bastards of the Reagan era the 2010 NAACP image award-winning memoir a question of freedom and the poetry collection Shaheed reads his own poem Duane is currently enrolled in the PhD program in law at the Yale Law School And he earned a JD from the Yale Law School and MFA from Warren Wilson College's MFA program for writers and a BA from the University of Maryland Join me in welcoming Duane to this conversation So mark I want to get started on your most recent Research that really takes a comparative look at the criminal justice system We hear that our nation over incarcerates its own citizens But when we look at the conditions inside us prisons from the perspective of other what of other places we deem developed What did you find right? Well the starting point? I think for a lot of studies of mass incarceration in the US is to look comparatively and just look at the number of people They're percentage of people incarcerated and it's a lot higher in the US But most people just stop there So what I tried to do in my book and my research is to actually go much deeper It's all aspects of the criminal justice system and then also inside of prison You see what takes place and what I found is an actual horror show Which is to say that at every stage of what I call the criminal justice life cycle which starts with Sentencing and prison conditions rehabilitation Parole and then reentry The US is off the charts and I would say off the rails So there's something that is distinctively American about this form of punishment Which is not just about making society safer keeping people out of The sort of protecting society by keeping dangerous people off the streets for a short period of time It's about punishing people and punishing them severely and punishing them permanently and this is something that's different So what I discovered in my work is that there are other countries that do it differently and there are other countries that do it better And so why are we having this very insular little Conversation at the US where I think many people who look at it agree there are problems when the solutions are actually right there There are better ways of doing it. So that's what I try to draw on in this book and spell out. Hopefully to lead to some Common sense and some practical changes in the US Because we know that we are in a crisis in terms of the ability for criminal defendants to get representation And we understand the ways that prosecutors have to deliver numbers in order to maintain their positions And so what are some other models outside of the plea bargaining structure that you found compelling? Because they all watch law and order and they watch movies and in every one of those there's courtroom drama Public defender making the case for his or her client and then sort of this balance and so on the reality is vastly different Does anyone know what percentage of cases of criminal cases actually go to trial? 5% 5% right the rest are handled through plea bargain and that is something that is just Astounded when you think about it. There's a constitutional right in this country to a trial by jury But what happens is if you exercise that right? Which is to say if you turn down the plea bargain that it's been offered to you in a very one-dimensional way Where it's basically said here's the deal take it or go to trial guess what if you go to trial you're probably going to get Double that I mean there's a case that the Supreme Court sanctioned where somebody turned down a plea bargain for five years and got life without parole The Supreme Court says that's okay. He had the chance to turn down the deal, right? This is unfathomable and when I tell people from other countries about how this works I mean some countries you have a very modified simplified form of plea bargaining in very specific conditions where there's an active Role of the judge and ensuring the fairness of the process and so on and for more minor cases shorter term decisions in terms of sentences and so on But there's nothing like what is in the US so that in the sense of stage one But that alone is shocking and appalling Now what's the solution to that? It's hard to say we have so many cases that are coming forward and they're already incredibly long-delayed So the bargain is deemed to be efficient, but it's incredibly unjust And so the solution might be to build more courthouses have more Or the solution might be perhaps not to prosecute so many people to have more diversion to have much more Sensible forms of prosecution and seeking justice than what we do Which is this machinery of just cranking people through and plea bargaining is the prime mechanism Interesting when we think about the discretionary mechanism that allows for this to happen within the plea bargaining system and then we think about mandatory sentencing and I want to Take this conversation to you Dwayne about the other part of this so after we leave the courthouse when we think about the condition inside prison Particularly as they relate to juveniles and adult correctional facilities. What have some of your reflection? Touched upon in terms of the condition than which people have to live out these Oh, I should say I found the plea bargain conversation interesting cuz Cuz I think I agree Well, I'm not sure if it should be more trial But to I'm not sure. Yeah, I don't actually don't think it should be more trials But but I'm also not sure of The rate of plea bargain is on its own. It's a problem. I think Or even or even beyond that it's the fact that The amount of time that's available at the start It's so intense that they can't be a rational conversation on both ends So if you if you face and I have a friend who faced who was offered five years For for murder they offered a manslaughter for five years He played like guilty and he lost their trial and he ended up getting 53 years And that this is a case of fact in which he didn't commit the crime He maintained his innocence and then 20 years later a reporter did a story on him and Found out that the police actually never even interviewed him Before child before charging him with the crime and that he didn't do it and at the time he had IQ of about 6263 his mother was mentally disabled and so I do think that there are a lot of Problems or maybe the problem that we don't discuss enough is is this sentence the possibility of getting that 60 years sentence on the Because I think that's what perverts the the whole plea bargain and process Maybe even more so than the plea bargain and rate And I'm and I say that haven't haven't played guilty to a crime And I say that haven't played guilty to a crime that carries a life sentence And I do think that part of the conversation has to try to get into the rationalization for why somebody will plead guilty And I played guilty because I committed the crime and so I feel like we have to have room to acknowledge So what does that mean to have committed a crime? What does that mean to have played guilty and I was 16 years old and the crime? I called you at somebody and I'm and I'm prefaced and always say nobody was hurt for people with My whole community was hurt though, and I'm sure that the victim of my crime was was was traumatized And I don't know how long that trauma lasts, but but I think the question after that is what should the punishment be and When you ask, what is it like for 16 years? I mean, I know that both from experience. I know that from research I know that from representing kids and juvenile detention centers. I know that from Speaking with young people that have been in prison And I'll just say like what does it mean if you 1415 and you have never been away from home for more than a couple of weeks So suddenly you are tossed into a world that it's just completely unlike anything else you've experienced But one of the challenges would even describe in that is that one of the things that that people want to hear Is how violent prisons are But if I make that argument then that seems to suggest that prisons are the place where these extremely violent people And so I don't want to necessarily make that argument except to say that it was the co's who were violent It was the you know the the mental health workers who were absent it was the medical staff who frequently were unqualified And sometimes there was a pocket of individuals that could frankly terrorize a prison that were always unaccounted for for reasons around The prison guard the prison ratio for reasons around the actual architecture of the prison and for reasons around the actual protocol if I think for um Like how problems were managed at the institution I think one of um and I and I I'll end with just saying this It's amazing to me That it's still okay to send juveniles to prison in the united states and frequently you talk about this as if it is a new occurrence But the the tragic reality is that we have been treating juveniles as adults since That mid 1800s And we have been sending juveniles to prison on a regular basis Since at least that time period even after the juvenile justice system was developed and what people don't understand I mean they will always want to anchor the conversation around people who've committed the most violent crimes So what people don't understand is this frequently young people who haven't committed the most violent crime Who end up with prison who end up in prison with adults when they experience could drastically Change your life for the worst for all kinds of obvious reasons And let me just add that comparatively this is something that also where the u.s stands out because other countries don't sentence juveniles to these You know as adults to these incredibly lengthy prison terms and when they hear about what happens how we treat children Let's say that's the word children in this country With lake without parole or Incredibly long sentences. It's something where they just say this country's lost its mind. It's actually like it's actually amazingly different Right and it's so irrational So I had a client that was 15 years old because he was 15 He was being tried as an adult because he was 15. He couldn't be in lock up With adults for during the trial during the court process But when you go to court It's not as if you show up and you got a time slot So if you get there on time you get in and you get out you show up At 7 30 the morning and you remain there into like 3 34 o'clock in the afternoon And because this kid was only 15 he couldn't be in lock up with all of the adults So where was he? Basically in a solitary confinement cell And I had forgotten I had forgotten just how How how how difficult it is To find a way to occupy your mind at 15 Until I went to see him and and we went into the cell me and my supervising attorney To talk to him and we actually had nothing to talk to him about right because it was a foregone conclusion That he was going to plead guilty So we had very little to talk to him about because all of the evidence suggests that he did it He told us that he did it and and I think that also complicates the plea bargain narrative It's because how should we think about those cases? But the point was we were in that cell with him for 23 minutes talking about nothing because it looked like he was broken And in fact he was upset because his mother hadn't been answering his phone calls And and I so I think when we when we think about what the system does Is one way to think about it on a sort of broad level, but it's a very different way to say So what does this mean? He hasn't been convicted of any crime Once he does plead guilty if he pleads guilty, he'll probably get time served But what does it mean for him to have spent basically three months going back and forth to court? Each time he went to court he had to sit in a single cell by himself For eight hours And in thinking about Um, I think that we have kind of left this idea that this is about rehabilitation And at the same time there are people who find mechanisms to remain connected and grounded through the process And so in a sense solitary confinement is one of many kind of excessive forms Of punishment that has been rationalized within this system And so from both of your perspectives, you know the critique of solitary confinement Is there a global kind of response to that? And is there any way that we can make sure that people on the outside of this can really advocate to stop this practice? Well, let me take that if you look comparatively other countries in the world consider a torture period very simple There are exceptions where There's a particularly violent act in a prison where somebody gets separated For a day or two days right and every effort is made to help reintegrate that person solve the complex Start on a positive note In this country in most prisons when somebody gets sent to solitary it's minimum a month It's often two months six months year or years Right and then you have the process where when people go in for a long period of time They start acting out And so if they're acting out what happens they get more solitary Right and so we create this process where we're Causing psychological damage And then as a result of that we're giving them the exact same thing that's creating even more psychological damage And then you have people who leave solitary and go right out on the street I mean there's nothing makes no sense. Well, that's what happened in um And um in colorado, which is it was a good case because um The guy was locked up. He had been in solitary for a number of years and he was released Directly and the interesting thing though is that I wish I knew his name because I hate to talk about somebody and not remember that name But the then director of the department of corrections In colorado was reducing the number of people in solitary When he was a part of a number of states include mississippi Include washington state that had been working to reduce the the numbers in solitary confinement So they released this guy who had been in solitary confinement for years And the guy goes And murders the director of the department of correction And um, it was interesting. I do remember this guy's name was interesting as rick ramish took his place And the question became what will rick ramish do In in the face of the strategy because you could easily ramp up solitary confinement given this Or may I mean actually it seems like that's the only choice to be frank I was certain that he was going to ramp up solitary confinement and but what he did was He went to solitary confinement and this is the new york times up there piece that he wrote about it Which is actually interesting to me because I spent like more than a year in solitary confinement And that this grown man who was a cop and he and I met him a few times He's just like this tough guy cop Spending the department of corrections for a number of years He wrote the op-ed and said frankly I could do 20 hours I think they let him have a cell phone because then he called him and said listen I'm done Please come open the cell and let me out But he continued to decrease the numbers of solitary confinement after having experienced it because I think one of the other things that happens in the context of this conversation is we imagine that the crime that got committed lasts Not just forever for the purposes of you having a criminal record But it's justification forever for whatever happens to you And so we don't even need to to imagine what it means to suffer through solitary confinement to suffer through like improper improper hygiene improper medical treatment And horrible food you don't have to do that yourself because you deserve it for having committed that crime. He said no Before I make a decision on what to do with this Let me feel let me understand what it means to be in a home And I heard him at the last time I was in a room with him It was But um I was at a conference It was like a meeting of correctional administrators And the problem that they were addressing was how to decrease racial disparities within the system That that they were responsible for Understanding that it wasn't their fault They they have no role and people coming into prison But there are things that they could do as administrators of department of corrections to decrease racial disparities in different points in the system and on that on that day Um I won't I won't quote him exactly because I might misquote him But I'm I'm relatively certain that he said between 30 and 60 percent of the people locked up in colorado could be released Um without being a threat to the community Now now don't quote me on that. Don't put it on tv. Don't I definitely was a joke This is so it did um it did the last thing I was saying is my own experience though my own experience interestingly enough is that um One of the aspects of solitary confinement that we don't discuss enough It's protective custody You actually have a wide swath of people who are in the hole Not because they've done anything wrong But because they're afraid to be in population And I don't know if it's anything that's that's actually more tragic than that To I was I was in a hole once Because I had ostensibly done something wrong that I still Disagree with but I was in a hole once for six months And that guy beside me had been in a hole for years Had been in a hole for years on protective custody And it got so bad that that they would try to release him And then he was spaz out Just to get put back in a hole Because for all kinds of reasons he just felt like he couldn't manage Being in a general population I have one little thing on solitary confinement at Georgetown at the prisons and justice initiative and in coordination with martin lucer king week And let freedom ring festivities We're actually hosting a two week exhibit of a replica solitary confinement cell in the very central building on campus And we're going to have two public events that focus on solitary on the damage of solitary confinement So this is a big theme that we're going to be addressing Coming week starting next week. I hope you guys have to be real thoughtful about that We are somebody did that before and I really got upset with it And it was it was a problem It was at the public library and I went in to check it out and I was walking around the space and the woman came with me Do you want to go in there? I was like, no, I'm good And then I was like, all right, I'm gonna go in and then she said well I got to have your cell phone And if you were at the conversation earlier, I have a real problem of people demanding my cell phone I was like, you can't have my cell phone. But um, and then me and her got into this back and forth and she's like, well, you can't understand the experience And I was like, would you like me to take my shoes off as well? Uh, should I change clothes in the scrubs? Should we have a uh, uh, uh, uh, like a kangaroo court hearing before this so that I know how long I have to stay And then she realized that I must know something of what I was talking about And I think the danger in this is is how do we How do we actually understand experiences? And I think sometimes We imagine Walking into a cell under our own volition Is there any way like what it means to be handcuffed and shackled and sometimes dragged into the cell And I just don't think it equates, but I'll say this to you what we're doing. Yeah, we're not just letting people walk into the cell Please the one is that we're gonna have a video from the rikers film that 10 minutes Excerpt that focuses on solitary confinement that has people's personal testimonials Two, we're gonna have a formally incarcerated person there every single day who's going to be talking to people about the experience All right, and then three, we're gonna have a System where people are reflecting and leaving their notes and taking it very seriously and confiscating it Obviously, there's nothing that can actually replicate The experience right, but we're trying to have people understand the gravity of it And the biggest thing that I found and this can maybe segue into some other topics That the general public doesn't understand and the sort of demonization that people have committed crimes and crimes Is that people don't get the experience of going and visiting a prison and I brought in hundreds of students into prison And I brought in dozens dozens of guests faculty members colleagues and so on to give lectures in prison And every single one of them walks out of there saying that totally changed my life Now I can't do that for everybody and it's actually really hard to get access to prisons and so on But I'm trying to do in a very solemn serious way Get people to think about how dehumanizing this experience is And so this is a way of doing and I think we're taking appropriate measures and I'll have you come visit to No, no, I'd like to check up on what we're doing. We actually set that up I was going to criticize the project and then he was going to further explain it No, but but I like the thoughtfulness and and and both having the video and having somebody just actually And we're having two public events that each of which has three formally incarcerated people spent years in solitary So there's a big focus on the experience that works throughout this conversation about solitary confinement We're really touching upon the way that the racialization of the system often leads to changes in the conditions And so when you talk about the juvenile justice system as that system had more and more black Children in it that system became more and more committed to a certain type of penal process And I wanted to think about the ways that race and gender work together in this system because I think that People are often surprised to learn about the number of women who give birth in prison while shackled The various ways that transgendered individuals are put in solitary confinement In both a protective and punitive way And so when we think about tackling this incredible system that has so many problems in it What are the ways that we can think about this in terms of a gender justice a racial justice a sexual A sexual sexuality issue so that we can help mobilize different groups to Make sure that they're also working on this because this cannot just be the work of the of the people who want to reform the system There are a lot of people who need to be brought in What are some of the ways we do that in order to create a sustainable movement to really change this? I guess yeah, I guess one thing I'll say I mean the question that you raise is really What kind of literacy do we need to bring to this question? And I and I think that that hasn't been on the table when primarily what we were doing with critiquing the system And so, you know part of critiquing the system Is providing the public with information that they don't have Like what it actually looks like to be inside the system But I think a different question that we have to more thoughtfully engage with is what should the system actually look like Because it's it's it's two different kind of conversations we can have We can have a conversation about just how the system is motivated to do harm to specific communities And how the system does harm to those specific communities But then we have research that challenges that we have like james formas book Locking up our own that's about dc. There's raising this question about what does it mean to have like a city that's advocating for some some punitive policies And what does it mean for that city to be advocating both for punishment and something else and not only get punishment Because I think in some of these conversations we have the only way for you to care about me as somebody who has been in prison is if I also went to yell or Like it's funny to actually what's amazing is the number of people who um who bemoaned the fact that I was incarcerated now But when I was 16 in 1996 and this is around the time of super predator This is around the time of the crime bill There were really few people bemoaning the fact that I was incarcerated And even to this day, there are still very few people bemoaning the fact that that generation is incarcerated because those are now grown men Who are 35 or 40 years old and so what I think Could bring us to the point that you're talking about Is to begin to have more robust conversations about the policies that need to be changed to get people out of prison Because once you start really asking about like concrete policies Like I will name four people that I need to get out of prison And once I name those four people I have to think about what has to happen to get those four people out of prison And then I end up asking myself different questions about now what me and those people need to address To help them get out of prison too frequently. We're talking about a sort of broadly reforming the system But we have no idea like what that should end up being in practice One of my sort of biggest critiques I got into this because I was a juvenile who went to prison I didn't know that was a thing And when I got to prison I found out that it was a thing I read a poem by etharish knight called for freckleface jerald It was written in the late 60s and it was about a 16 year old that got raped in prison I read that poem and I realized that the thing that happened to me that I experienced And I wasn't raped in prison But the fact that I have to add that qualifier Means something about how demeaning it is to suffer in prison that even if you do suffer you can't mention it out loud Because to mention it out loud is a different kind of suffering But the point is after I read that poem I started to do study I started I started to study I started to do research on the issue and when I came out I found a group of people that were dealing with it and I thought this is amazing And this is an actual organization the campaign for youth justice that's attempting to answer this question That's attempting to stop people from being incarcerated with adults But a decade later we have done very little To stop people from being incarcerated as adults The men and the men that I know who are in prison now who serve time with me are completely outside of the space of advocacy That was created by very dedicated and committed people And I think if I if we start to ask questions about why are they outside of the space of advocacy Why has grand v floored and I had nearly the impact that I believed it would have When on the cusp of the supreme court decision. I was at Georgetown law school watching I was on the panel discussing it excited All of that's been deflated and I think if I start asking why Then I go to those other groups and how they need to bring their literacies and their expertise To really imagine what we want the system to look like and maybe if we provided some different answers in that way Then we could provide some relief Yeah, I think there's no doubt that the situation today or over the last few years is very different from 10 years ago Certainly 20 and 30 years ago where it was all tough on crime all punitive more and more and more Locked them up longer and more of them and so on and of course them was Code word for certain types of people now today Obviously the 2016 election throws a wrench in things and makes a little bit complicated I'm sure we'll talk about that but there has been a movement building And I do think that the fight against mass incarceration has become the civil rights movement of today Tell me why First of all because I I don't even if somebody says name the mass incarcerated Who are they? I know that it's not me People like me now because I went to jail When I pulled the pistol out of that guy and carjacked him I was not amongst the mass incarcerated and when we talk about this issue in our name people I know they are never amongst the mass incarcerated and I've rarely been in rooms some you feel different Primarily because you spend time in prisons though, right? And so you actually have a kinship and a relationship that you've built over time period with men in prison Where you have a more robust understanding of their possibilities their capabilities their humanity But a lot of us don't and I mean you said that we're in a very different space now And from 20 or 30 years ago It's like saying that you know the knife was like 12 inches in my in my back and now it's nine because Everybody I know is still in prison So for me to say that it's different from 1996 to now I have to be able to point to some people who I know Who because of our work because of the policies we advocated are no longer in prison And I'm coming off of spending three years in law school trying to get one person an attorney And having all of the everybody who I respected who thought would give me a yes Guys doing 63 years for a crime that wasn't a rape That wasn't a murder that wasn't a robbery. It was an attempted capital murder where a gun never went off He got 63 years in a state with no parole and I could not get him an attorney from You know some of the best people in the country so for me to argue that things have changed I mean I would be lying to him and I have to be accountable Well, I think what has changed what has changed is awareness and that may be step one out of 20 Right, but not only I'm not talking just from my own experience going inside which has been incredibly influential But I'm talking about Spreading that bringing people in also My students the millennial generation I think gets this issue in a way that prior generations didn't First step is knowing about it Then they all want to go to law school or they want to want to be public defenders Or they all want to be even ethical prosecutors and so on That's going to take a long time. I don't disagree. I'm in no way and and read the conclusion of my book I'm in no way celebratory about where we are today. I'm saying we're finally having the right conversation It's been framed in a way that says mass incarceration isn't injustice. Now the next step is what do you do about it? I'm not popping champagne and I won't for a long time But there are people coming home. I just got a call marshal was there I got to call 15 minutes before we started from the guy who came home in december who's speaking at georgetown next week There's another one who came home in october that i've gotten involved and they when they get involved It's it starts to spread because the re-entry politics policies of our time make this question of what is home and What is the condition of home and how you get to stay in that home and if you can apply for food assistance And if you can travel to a job I mean So while I think both of you are touching upon the ways that we positively and negatively understand the civil rights movement It raised a lot of awareness But it didn't change voter behavior and it in some ways streamlined racism in a more efficient system And at the same time it made people more reflective but I think that a good place to kind of Think about a holistic approach is to think about the real challenges of re-entry And so if we think about ourselves as committed to making sure four people come out How do we ensure that four people are coming out into an ethical and and dignified world to care? And this is I think the the kind of last component of deepening this conversation So I'll just make one one quick point I'm not denying that that we haven't had change over the past 20 years I'm denying that it's nearly as robust as it needs to be I was once at a I was once in a conversation And I've been the co-porter from the Simpson project said that if we continue to rate a decarceration that we're at right now It's going to take 80 years So if that's so that right there says we have had no change 88 years I mean, that's that's the same. I'm going to be dead you know And I'm primarily concerned about me being a grandfather. So if I'm dead in 88 years and everybody else is still in prison That's a huge problem. Um, and then in terms of reentry um You know, I I take all of this stuff personal and and the problem with me ever been Involved in these conversations is that I don't know how to engage in the conversation When I was taking it Intimately personal because it's not just about like it ain't even just about my experience But it's about the experience of people. I know who still struggle every day with stigma Who still struggle every day with the ways in which they block from release and then even if they get released They're blocked from achievement And I can't even complain about the things that I've endured because it sounds like complainer because I I have accomplished a whole lot of things But literally at every step of the way Doors that I expected to to be open with with with less fight Have frequently required a kind of effort That we shouldn't expect anybody to have to exert because it wasn't just my effort It was my wife's effort. It was my friend's effort. It was the communities that I was a part of it was their effort I had a full tuition scholarship at Howard University This is the mecca When they found out I had a felony it got denied and so You know, it's it's more difficult to hide the kind of um Um Ways in which we continue to punish people who have a criminal record When you apply to target In a safe way If they were willing to deny me At like institutions of higher education that I was qualified for imagine what's going on with you and actually it's it's more I've never told the truth Stop there mark. What are your perspectives? Okay? So first off, I don't know what Dwayne just pulled but there's some kung fu or booty or something because I suddenly got cast as an optimist Which is anything but the case so Please read the book and it's called unusually cruel It's not called like the you know the road to success is here I'm very Negative and very pessimistic about what's been taking place. Okay But I still will insist that there are seeds now through The younger generation in particular Through the use of narratives and stories through innocence projects and DNA making people realize that all these mistakes have made There's something with awareness and people are mobilized and upset about it Now maybe then they just go home and they go back to their instagram And they don't care and they don't do anything because that is a problem with that generation Right, but I think that there's an awareness and that that's meaningful and that's something that is to be encouraged and hopefully keep inspiring Now in terms of re-entry It's it's a disaster and that's the you know chapter seven of my book is on re-entry and There's no comparison to bring in the other countries here of france germany. Okay that I look at I mean first of all the period of incarceration is about getting people ready for re-entry Right, they say the punishment is over Right you you your punishment is simply being separated from society prison is about trying to help you re-enter help you get better okay, so whether it's job training whether it's education whether it's just Social services. I mean in germany to become a prison guard. It's two years of training Two years. It's essentially to become a social worker. This would be a prison guard here It's barely two weeks. It's that you know takes a baton and the mace and go control the animals I mean that's essentially you know very different orientation and then with re-entry In european countries. They prepare people they explain to people how to Talk about the fact that there might be a gap on their resume right when they are incarcerated They're trying to support people and then legally other than certain sensitive areas if it's working with children And there's a crime of children or financial crimes and certain types of jobs But employers don't even have a right to know About why somebody was incarcerated if it has no bearing on the job It's a fresh start right in this country. There's no fresh start We talk about second chances first of all many people didn't have a first chance But then they don't even have a second chance when they come out and it's a huge problem One thing I want to say about dwayne Which is that and i'll start it with a compliment but since he's been so harsh on me I'm going to turn it into a criticism Which is that well everything about dwayne story is remarkable and is amazing and it's inspiring And I think he actually recognizes that The sort of the yell you know buzz and halo and so on is something that gets him this adulation from certain crowds But what I would say is dwayne is not exceptional. I know 30 dwayne Right that I could name Who are just as smart just as dedicated just as capable just as ready To come out and do amazing things and they're not getting a chance to come out or just a handful Occasionally will trickle out. So that's my larger point. If not say let's celebrate dwayne But rather let's say why aren't we letting out all the other dwayne's in there who deserve a chance And we're just as capable and maybe even more stuff Maybe And I was I mean the first time I met mark it was I mean it was in a prison It was in a prison and it was with a bunch of students in the program and they were um engaged and like ready and brilliant and sharp and compelling and um sometimes a little abrupt and aggressive In a good way in a good way I think you take a question I think yes, but before I open it up to the audience I think that this conversation is particularly illuminating because it helps understand that The talents and gifts that we have right now where we are We have an opportunity to move this bolder and throughout this conversation We've seen the importance of architecture the importance of history the importance of medicine the importance of food science The importance of physical science that we are prepared to fight this because we Bring different types of knowledge to this problem And so one of the things that i'm so grateful for both of your work is you really help us understand not only the complexity Of this issue, but you also challenge us to use our talents in order to Upend this system and so please join me in thinking our panelists before we open up for questions Hey questions from the audience. I remind you that a question is a search for knowledge rather than a reflection So we will start with you in the blue shirt And Hello the song Hi, my name is Demetri. Thank you very much to all of you for your what you've shared in your experiences and your work on this Very important subject It seems to me tragically ironic what we're discussing now that Tocqueville's original purpose in writing democracy in america and coming to america to write it was to study the american prison system And actually a lot of the points that he came up with He ended up writing obviously everyone knows a masterful work about many other subjects But he did touch upon the prison system and about possibly reducing prison sentences and the harshness of them So i have two questions One is from what i understand the in the last 40 years the population of people in prison has gone up dramatically So i'm just wondering what the data shows it because of the war on drugs What is it about that's that's causing this and obviously i'm always interested in a comparative perspective globally I thought what you said about the german prison guards is spot on The other question i have is what some people called prison industrial complex that How much of are they able to lobby inside washington dc and get their interests advanced and get the laws to privatize prisons etc And i hate to go there because i know you're probably both jd's and there's a lot of lawyers in the room But how much does the lawyer is how much is there a lawyer business criminal courtroom complex of The economic interest because one of the things tokeville did say In he he was obviously writing during slavery and so it was incredibly incredibly inequitable But he did say america is much more equitable than france and other places But one thing he pointed out is the ability of a poor person to get a lawyer or to get a well or get it to get a Competent lawyer, so thank you very much. Sorry for speaking so long Question of population. Yeah, well you mentioned tokeville. I start out the book with a question tokeville who says Well, actually I started the preface. I'll just throw this one out there and move on but Dwayne's been telling his personal story The preface the first line is little that i know at the time, but this book originated in the summer of 1985 when I was an Adolescent sitting in a jail cell in london Hopefully that makes you want to read on but in terms of the the actual book it starts out Literally the first words of the first chapter lexus to tokeville And i talk about how he was so astute in terms of understanding american democracy But actually completely missed or at least missed where predicting where it was going to go criminal justice because he actually has this this quote about In no country is criminal justice administered with more mildness than it is in the united states All right, and you could just do a 180 on that one so But in terms of what explains this and it really it's a phenomenon that's over the last 40 50 years starting in the mid 1970s The war on drugs is a key part of it But also there's an important role that's been played by prosecutors In pushing for convictions. There's a sort of professionalization of prosecutors, but Even branching out further from that if you look at society, I emphasize four main factors One is race and so this follows in the shell outstander argument that after uh, in franchising of african americans after the end of doom crow that Locking african americans as we men up became the new way of trying to have racial control Right second is religion right starting in the mid 1970s You had a very Policization of what had often been a private sphere with a very much of a punitive eye for an eye Locked them up that was also infused with some implicit racial images Right and so and then you had politics, which is something also where the u.s. Is very exceptional This is the only kind people in other countries are just shocked when I tell them that We in this country elect Prosecutors elect judges that they run campaigns that they fundraise that they have political advertisements that they they brag about how many people they sentenced to death in film There's something utterly bizarre about the way in which Judicial politics is politicized. It's something that should be a meritocracy It's something that should be based on careful reasoning and logic not about fear mongering to commercials and Fundraising itself and then the fourth is what you mentioned the prison industrial complex Which is a loaded term, but it's really about business and as this system has been built up and in the 1990s There was a new prison being built every 10 days every 10 days a new prison was opening It's astounding right there was a huge business people always talk about private prison companies and don't realize that's actually only about 8.8% Of prisons that people have the sense that they're everywhere private prisons But they've had a lot of influence and there's been through lobbying and so on and and also the private Companies that work within public prisons There are a lot of vested interests in keeping mass incarceration very high So unless we're going to have change in terms of how people think about race and practice racial punitiveness, which starts in the school, by the way, as you mentioned very young Unless we have changes in religion. I think there's some movement there in terms of a more redemptive approach and more tolerant approach of second chances to religion that's changing a little bit Politics I don't see any change there. It's still you know tough on crime still wins And then the business is still very deeply entrenched. So, you know, it's an uphill battle But I think those are the four main features that explain this american And I'll just add other piece when the prisons when when you had this boom and the increase in the prisons being built She also had federal policy that said I'll grant you Federal funds federal grant money to build prisons if you get rid of parole So you had two things happen So we might have slowed down on the building of prisons But we haven't had a comparative kind of federal policy That's trying to find ways to encourage people to encourage states to reinstitute parole. So So we open up the front doors and close the back doors simultaneously And the same thing goes for the Pell grants at the time you shut down Pell grants And they haven't returned despite this sort of years of reform You haven't had a return in the Pell grants which one would suspect given the kind of political climate to change The question about the lawyers is difficult though because most lawyers most public defenders don't make any money at all Right. I mean you're lucky if you work if you work here in DC You get a public defender You got one of the best lawyers in the country You could work at some other states and you get a public defender You might not have one of the best lawyers in the country But it's kind of like criticizing a teacher who has a classroom with 50 students in it But not being as skilled as like a private school teacher who has a classroom like 15 students in it, right? It's this question of one caseload Two training three to burden the student loans that are not a public defender that's coming into the office with and all of that I think creates Almost an impossibility Of providing just representation I'm going to take another All right, let me just yeah, we're turning that and then I'll switch he couldn't get a lawyer because he'd already been convicted So he'd been convicted and you want you entitled to have an attorney During your trial You aren't entitled to have an attorney post conviction And if you lose your appeal then you really aren't entitled to have an attorney at all So frankly anybody who has dna that they want to introduce Aren't entitled to an attorney to help them prepare that hate these petitions And there's all kinds of deadlines that you have to meet that it's no reason for you to know if you're incarcerated So And epa which goes back to quentin My name is isabel and I work at New America. I just have a question I know that there's federal prisons and there's the state or the local county prison And I'm curious if there's a distinction in terms of Of how the the prisons are run and treatment within prisons As well as policy between the state and federal level and what What advocacy looks like at the state and at the state level versus the federal level and if the prospects for one are better for the other Obviously, I'm sure they're better in I think the differences are so many and so profound that I don't know if there's a way to begin to answer that question except I will say that Like you have somebody like mark oswald who started a federal clemency project that could exist on the federal level And actually be a blueprint for things that could be reproduced on the state level But but it's more difficult to reproduce on the state level because you don't have the sort of drug the drug policies and the drug laws that have been sort of sort of Peel back. You don't have that on the state and that level necessarily But I think there's so many differences from during time in the state prison to a different state prison To a prison in a different state to a prison in a different federal. I just It's I mean it's impossible to really quantify how different the experience is For one person in the state of maryland being at jessup as opposed to Another prison on the jessup compound. That's like five minutes away. Yeah Yeah, no, there's huge variation. It's hard to generalize but overall the standard is pretty terrible across the board But you know the the thing with Prison conditions that and there's there's a lot of research on programming And that's something that varies across prisons that might just be a function of who's the warden in one particular prison Which could change when that warden changes or it might be at the state level or county level if there's sort of more Research is put in it might be depending on where the prison is located if there are a lot of volunteers in the area Then comes benefit at this college nearby I was at st. Quentin just a month ago. I've been there several times St. Quentin is is a unique prison in the united states now There are people there who qualify for minimum security who could be at other facilities But who asked to stay at st. Quentin even though their cells are four by nine four feet wide by nine And they're double-celled two people in that space But they choose to be there because of the program because of the fact that it's in marine county Because of the fact that there are volunteers whether it's berkeley stanford or other institutions or clubs in marine county and the administration in st. Quentin is incredibly welcoming So they have all kinds of education programs. They have training programs. They have shakespeare clubs I mean, I was talking to them. They have a podcast ear hustle. I met all those guys. They're amazing the thing The thing that's so clear and this is why it becomes a no-brainer in my mind, which is that programming works Education it's incredibly clear if people get an education When they're in prison if they even just take some higher education courses it reduces recidivism by 43 percent It makes them Prepared to re-enter it changes their mindset and i've literally seen it happen with my own eyes in the eyes of my students in front of me It activates them in a way. It's something that's cheap in many cases free because they're often volunteers And it's something that is humane and it's something that makes sense It keeps society safer for when people get I mean think about it 95 percent of people in prison Even though they're in there for way way too long at some point. They're going to come out Right, and who do we want them to be? Right, who do we want to be living next door? Who do we want to be sharing this community with? We want people to be well equipped to return and this is something we're doing at georgetown We're starting a program right now in the dc jail literally this month The prison education program something that we feel at georgetown and the dc department of corrections Feel the same about this. This is something that it's a win-win for everybody And there's this is something that I think more prisons should be doing and I wish there are ways of measuring and evaluating prisons More precisely to reward those who have more programming and perhaps punishing some way those who don't because The results go along with it. It's very clear more better education and programming better results And why would anyone oppose that? On the topic of education, I don't know if you heard recently the new jersey fitness system banned the new gym pro from Yeah, I'm curious about like policies like that in general which seem like minutia But how you know how we can stay vigilant to make sure that things like that that appear very malicious on the surface How we can fight that since they are so varied and spread out across the country Yeah, I mean I think that kind of stuff happens all over the place That was I don't know for sure, but that was probably a decision made by some administrator without any consultation And then when there was some uproar and Michelle Alexander got involved and then the governor overturned that and now it's considered not I mean, it's it's mind bogg especially new jersey has the highest over representation of african-american Of any state in the country right and for there for the new gym pro which is exactly making that point to be banned think about the irony there But reinstituting it Okay, it's good, but it's absurd that it was even banned for a second And it's not really something to celebrate, but I think it just goes to show this is often what we're up against We're up against administrators here and there just making decisions arbitrary rules when you work in a prison You just there are crazy things you can do something one day you can't do something next and then you know For people when they're themselves subjected to it's bad enough for volunteers coming in or trying to run a program But when people are subjected to themselves You know, it's utterly You know dehumanizing and just empowering and that's probably the purpose At least I mean at least the the practice is usually invisible. So like whether or not that's the purpose you got some bureaucrat who Is really um, I've never read the new gym pro There was probably a whole host of other books that that were on that list too that had never been read by anybody And it might have just got banned based on the person that requested it So I think if you ask what can you do? I mean one thing that people are interested in the issue could do is to find ways to be more mindful of the state regulations and a particular prison regulation so that when the prison is saying And and and just follow the organization like the prison policy initiative There's always doing great work around like visitation and around Certain issues phone calls and things like this. They have a serious pernicious effect on both people incarcerated and people who aren't incarcerated That could completely fly on that a radar because it's not going to get reported on the national news But I think it should be and there are fortunately something like the marshal project and other news media are starting to get more public So I think that every state should have a spotlight going on in terms of their practices whether it's censorship Whether it's just different policies from visitation, you know Prison I went to that You know, suddenly they would say, you know, you can't greet the person when you come for a visit So you imagine your your kid comes to you imagine your lucked out You get a visit from your child that you don't see very much And you're not allowed to hug that child. What kind of message is that sending? You're not allowed to take pictures when you used to be four There are these rules that come up. There's no rationale for it other than they can And I'd like to read the point where they cannot anymore because enough attention will be paid and enough outrage to be So three part question you all can decide which of the three you want to answer and it's it's kind of micro to macro first is So we just talked about individual action So for the person that individual that does become involved about this issue It wants to do something you touched on a couple of resources But I'm wondering if there is a resource Or a place that folks can go to just to learn about ways that they might get involved and do action Second question is And footnotes are a great idea Which we will have outside Um, and then for programs that work. So you're right. There are evidence-based programs that work I'm curious if you can cite another example up to our things that we should be advocating for that We know exists and can change the outcomes For the folks that we're talking about and then my third question is at a at a systems level, which is We started talking about this, right, which is some of the obstacles being Dehumanization of the person that gets caught up in the system dehumanization of the experience itself Where what is it like to be in solitary confinement? Folks that really don't care about black and brown people to the extent that they Understand the disproportionality of the people impacted We will continue to build awareness Then what how do we start to really shift the tide towards action? What does that look like? And we've started to see by bipartisan support on this I think in part because of the dollars that are flowing into this area, but i'm just curious if you have thoughts on What's that shift that's beyond a programmatic level or an individual level, but you really start to see institutional and systemic change We take the third one so the the third one i think um I did this project when when the law school we Sort of studied the so the highest rate of recidivism and i hate where it's like recidivism because It's so much buried in it. What does it mean to recidivate for instance in connecticut? Right, it means the highest rate is parole violation But a parole violation can literally mean like i watched one hearing and i was sitting in on these hearings And they didn't know that i've been formally incarcerated. They just knew that i was a law student and one guy Was living with his girlfriend who just had a child And he would be staying there overnight. He had an ankle bracelet He would stay there overnight because he was the caregiver when she was at work I think violating this probation for not being at home So during the hearing they stepped him back for eight months at the end of the hearing He said can i change my address right? I just thought maybe he bought the move to another country And uh, he gave the address of his girlfriend and the parole forward said that's fine So he got violated for going to his girlfriend's house and then upon his release He was given permission to go there. So this is just completely a waste of eight months And so the question is what can we do besides being informed that this is happening? And we studied for a few months and consistently technical violation technical violation technical violation None of it was serious enough to warrant another criminal offense All of it later somebody doing more time in prison between three months in a year more in prison One of the things that we could do is find ways to be on the parole board Like this is like a administrative agency with with broad discretion and zero oversight And nobody I know Has ever said I would like to be on a parole board like we haven't really thought about how to make up of people who are in those positions I mean, I actually think administrative law Is the way that we have to really think about changing and decreasing the prison population Because it's people who are already in prison. You're not getting back in court. You're not going to be resetting So we really have to thoughtfully figure out how to make clemency work How to make parole work and I will say I was in a state that I won't name In which I was visiting that parole board and it was a local pastor That was on a parole board and it was a public defender That was the head of the parole board and that gave a different face to the problem as opposed to connecticut Which was two correctional officers who only got those positions Because they had reached retirement age and wanted to be able to get part-time salary Who were completely uninvested and and and the people who they were seeing on a constable basis and I got to him So that's that's my one Way in which I would say that this is what we could do to change some of these policies and to put a real Dent and incarceration rates and then the second thing is I think we have to be worry about how we How we think about what evidence is and how we think about what recidivism is Because there will be somebody that's released from prison who was unable to get a job Who commits another crime even if they do have a degree and I think that we really have to be careful about the ways in which Because look all of you people in the audience who have a college degree When if if you ever do anything despicable in your life your institution does not get blamed for it Like if you cheat on your wife If you beat your kid if you get a traffic ticket, right if you commit a crime Nobody says you went to university of Maryland University of Maryland has failed our society like we we can't keep sending students to university of Maryland because you got that education And you still decided that it was okay to run that red light Consistently for six consecutive months, right? And so I think it's dangerous for us to put that kind of burden on On higher education or any program in the system because all of those are legitimate Even if people go through those programs and still end up back in prison. They still legitimate Let me add a point about parole and then answer the question directly I mean on parole the problem is a lot of times those are governors who are pointing members of the parole board And that's often rewarding people or their loyalty, but it's also part of the whole political nature of it Which is to say that what governors most fear is letting somebody out who commits another crime But that is the number one fear Right and so in Germany they talk about having a relatively high risk tolerance Which is to say they do their best but when someone reaches the end of their sentence Or has a conditional release earlier, which is a form of parole that then we as a society are are hoping for the best And with the emphasis on rehabilitation that comes in they have fewer failures, but the point is We're not going to have a hundred percent whether whatever programs they do and whatever the commutes about But we have to be and I wrote an op-ed in New York Times this summer about parole Which is that we have to be willing to consider letting people out of prison at some point We have people who serve life with parole Right, so many that that that sentence is just given out like candy right important life life And they're eligible for parole But then what happens is when they come up for parole at a certain point What happened and they might be 30 years into their incarceration They might be all gray or whatever And then it goes back to what they did when they were 16 or 18 or whatever And the nature original nature of the crime and nothing about the transformation that's happened between I've written 35 different parole letters None of them has done any good Because in certain number of states Life basically means You're even though you're eligible for parole you don't get a chance to get parole So it's essentially life without parole, but we have the charade that we call Trying for parole So I think parole is hugely problematic But it is it is an area where there needs to be a lot of attention because the sentencing part that is changing a little bit I mean there is some you know ramping down three strikes and mandatory minimum and so on But that's going to take a long time to have an effect on the 2.3 million people who are locked up today For all is where we can make a difference California Due to a supreme court decision that the state was initially very reluctant to accept has actually been Giving out parole much much more regularly now because they were forced because of overcrowding and conditions and horrific situation in their prisons there To let people out and there are all these you know Scalia and many others were saying, you know Oh, there's going to be you know crime waves and so on it hasn't happened Right, it's been incredibly successful and it's not a hundred percent But it's been successful and we as a country need to think about that and prepare for that and do everything We can to make that happen Now in terms of of what can be done, you know, I'm talking about programs and so on the other thing is family I think we the way we treat people in this country when we lock them up We do everything possible to prevent them from maintaining strong healthy ties with their families They get sent far away You know in the federal system they get sent all over and people from dc get put in the federal system by the way But even many states they're put, you know It's you know, they're in sort of rural areas that are really far away from where many people come And the visitation policies are very restricted people will have to go overnight that no public transportation We need to completely rethink this again. Who do we want coming home? We want people who have strong healthy ties But this way it's set up now is meant to actually break those ties and discourage them But finally in terms of where where we can go the reason why and I want to come back not quite Be an optimist, but at least have some hope which is that on the state level Right, there has been some change in some states and you know in the end we have 51 criminal justice systems in the country Right, we have a federal system in 50 states and there haven't been even some Some you know deep red states, texas, louisiana that have been horror shows for decades But that have been moving in a different direction Locking up fewer people being willing to let people out and so on It's not always for the same reasons. I would share a lot of it is economic Let's be honest. There's just saying our budgets are bursting. We need to cut our budgets Why are we spending, you know, 40 50 thousand dollars a year to be locking up this person? Why are you spending a hundred thousand dollars a year to block up someone who's elderly and who has a lot of health needs? Let's just let them out earlier and it'll save our budget I think of it from more of a human rights perspective, but that still is real And that's an argument that's effective with certain crowds and I think that There's some hope that the combination of those types of arguments Will make people realize on a state level where it's separate where they're not part of all the federal craziness and so on that There are better solutions that they can come to so you know diverting to drug courts and so on again It's happening for racialized reasons now that it's sort of a white population that's being viewed as you know being addicts And it's not criminals anymore That should have happened 30 years ago, right, but um There's some movement on the state level in that direction And that's where I think that more attention needs to be paid is in the state But maybe it's better that there's less attention. Maybe maybe happening quietly in the background without all the sort of fear mongering is a better way I just want to say one thing that I think is um is I think worth noting um tell them all like new Sort of bringing new literacies to the problem Frank Geary and students did a project with impact justice and the Yale school architecture And he had students build in prisons and it was some pushback I remember somebody hit me up on split it was like, you know, I'm completely against this and they tagged me and I was like Well, I disagree with you. I think it's a good idea, you know, and um, you like to do that, don't you? Yeah But one of the reasons I thought it was a good idea Because I was there and I watched him present and one of the things that did was It's not a given that all of us know what it means to be incarcerated It's not a given that all of us know what the system looks like And so when you start to bring a diverse group of people to the problem They start to ask different questions and when those students built their prison each prison Like was built with this notion that the prison in the community shouldn't be two distinct places And it should be far more porous than it is whether it was a community center a library A theater they all conceptualized as it been some kind of space in which it was far more Porous than what it is now and they also all had built spaces or imagined spaces then built that Took for granted the fact that The families of prisoners needed to be able to have a meaningful and kind of complex interaction With their incarcerated partners children loved ones and so, you know One of the reasons why I think that we need to bring others into this conversation Is because they say the same thing that neil mark might say But but they've raised different questions like oh Red onion state prison Has no family access because it's built into the side of a mountain that's 17 hours away from the entire prison population So actually I just wouldn't choose to build it on the side of a mountain in that place And then if I built it I will actually have a space for restorative justice I will have a space that I imagine as using as a community theater and doing all of those things I think encourage us to think in a different way about those incarcerated because although I agree Well, all of the systemic racism or though I agree with all of the sort of structural problems that lead to open incarceration The other reality is that we don't like people who are in prison We just don't like them sometimes they are cousins and we don't like them And we don't like them because we disappear them and we don't engage with their existence We don't meet them Especially if they on our families We just don't meet them on a level in which we can imagine That they are more than the most horrific crime we could think of because we don't even actually thinking about real crimes When we think about people incarcerated we think about the the stand-in crime, which is something that we saw on law and order How's that show been off for 30 years? 10 spin-off. I love mbc though. No Well on that note, I just want to um Tell everyone that um both duane and mark have books available to our partner solid state books and in a time that has been characterized by um This idea of building a wall. I really appreciate to help your help in breaking down not only physical One but ideological ones as well. So thank you so much for being here