 Welcome to Free Thoughts from Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute. I'm Trevor Burrus, a research fellow at the Cato Institute's Center for Constitutional Studies. I'm Aaron Ross Powell, editor of Libertarianism.org and a research fellow here at the Cato Institute. Joining us is Bernard B. Carrick. Mr. Carrick was appointed the 40th Police Commissioner of New York City by Mayor Rudy Giuliani on August 21, 2000. Prior to his appointment, Carrick was Commissioner of the Department of Corrections. He served with the New York Police Department on both uniformed and plainclothes duty for eight years and was awarded the prestigious Medal of Valor among many other awards. His stewardship of the department in the aftermath of 9-11 brought him national attention. He is the author of the new book From Jailer to Jailed. Welcome to Free Thoughts. Thank you. You have one of the most fascinating and illustrious careers of anyone I've ever met. And so the jumping off point for your book, though, was less your career than, I guess, what we could call your downfall, but I'm putting that in scare quotes. Right. So I'd like to start where you start your book, which is on the ninth floor of the Special Housing Unit of the Metropolitan Correction Center in Lower Manhattan just a few years ago. Why were you there? I was actually being housed in the Federal Bureau of Prisons Special Housing Unit in MCC. I was a federal prisoner at the time. In 2004, after being nominated by President George W. Bush for the Department of Homeland Security as Secretary, I withdrew my name from consideration and because I had a nanny that I did not pay tax on. Ultimately, that led to me pleading guilty in 2009 to eight felony counts, which included full statements and tax charges relating to my children's nanny and some apartment renovations I had done. And I was sentenced to three years in prison, four years in prison. I did three, three years and 11 days. I was actually housed in a minimum security camp, but at some point in time I was brought back up to New York as a state witness and I was placed in solitary confinement for 60 days exactly. And that's where the book starts out. And it was during that 60-day period that I realized solitary confinement is a mind-altering, if you will, experience. You hallucinate. You talk to yourself. You do anything and everything you can to basically not lose your mind because there's no contact with the outside world. You're locked down 24 hours a day. I was let out of my cell three times a week for a shower for about 45 minutes to an hour. No phone calls, one phone call a month, a 15-minute phone call, and no communications with the outside world. So it makes you insane basically. How or I guess why do people end up in solitary? Because we've heard these horror stories about it, but is it something where typically people are put into it to protect others? Is it really bad people who are violent or is it more of like a retribution or punishment? Like you've done something and we want to hurt you really bad. Well, here's the thing. I mean, there's a use for solitary confinement. As somebody that ran Rikers Island, I ran Rikers Island in the New York City jail system for six years and basically took it from one of the worst prison systems in this nation, one of the most violent and mismanaged to an international model for efficiency and safety. I can tell you there's a use for solitary. If you're a threat to an institution, if you're a threat to staff, if you're a threat to national security or a major substantial threat risk for escape, then there's a place that they have to put you and that would be in solitary or a special housing unit. Unfortunately, in our country, we've digressed from that and we use solitary confinement for protective custody. That was the excuse that I was given as to why I was placed in solitary. There's administrative segregation. There are low-level housing units that you could go into, but in my case, they stuck me in solitary. We take young kids. We put them in solitary confinement for institutional infractions. Like I said, solitary is a mind-altering experience. You don't want somebody in solitary confinement that basically loses their mind and then you send them back into society. There's a place for it. There's a purpose for it, but it should be monitored. There should be legislation to ensure that it's not abused because the ironic thing is you have correctional staff that man the gates of our prisons and jails all over this country that do a tremendous job. They have a dangerous job. They have a job that's pretty much thankless. For the most part, most of them do their job the way they're supposed to do it, but there are people out there that believe that it's their job to impose punishment on you. Your punishment in reality is the deprivation of freedom. There are correction staff out there, not all of them, but some, in some cases many, that believe it's their job to punish you, to demean you, to demoralize you, to degrade you. The use of solitary confinement, in many cases, is one of the ways they do that. Isn't that though part of the attitude of putting people into prison as part of it to demean them and degrade them and take away more than just their freedom? Because otherwise we could – I mean, the environment, prison is not, aside from the absence of freedom, it's also not the greatest environment. It's not pretty. The food's not good. We could list all of these things – I mean, even minor things compared to the really awful stuff that goes on. And so if the only punishment that we are giving people is the loss of freedom, then why put them in prison as opposed to somewhere really posh and nice with video games and entertainment? Well, here's the way I've tried to explain it. Unless you're an institutionalized animal, the deprivation of freedom is far more profound than anything you could imagine. You know, people have said to me, well, you were in a minimum security camp and a minimum security camp is considered a country club. It's considered club-fed, some people have said. Well, that is true. That may be true if you're somebody that's been institutionalized, but I could assure you somebody that's never been in prison before going into a minimum security camp is not the country club you would expect. And what I've told – I once told this to a room full of reporters. If you think it's that posh and you think it's that much of a country club, then pick out one of the best hotels in New York City – Four Seasons, The Ritz, whatever – go down to that Four Seasons. And I can assure you that the bathroom is bigger than the cubicle I lived in. My cubicle was about 12 by 8. Go into that bathroom that is made of pure granite and marble and has all the luxuries of modern-day. Lock the door, come out in a year, and tell me how posh it was. How great it was. Tell me what you think of it then, because I can assure you the deprivation of freedom is far, far more profound than anything you can imagine, especially if you have children, especially if you have family, if you have things you're concerned with on the outside. I've tried to explain to people, and an inmate once told me this, and I would have never understood it before going into prison. Prison is like dying with your eyes open. That's what it's like. Your whole world goes on without you in it, and there ain't a damn thing you can do about it. The good, the bad, the ugly, no matter what it is. That's what prison is like. Now, and from jailer to jailed, which the title explains that exactly, and as you mentioned, you were, what would be the title? Running Rikers. I was the Correction Commissioner from New York City before I was the Police Commissioner. And your attitude or your idea of prison when you were Commissioner, how much did that change? I mean, I'm sure it changed a lot, but did you think it was worse after you went through it or did you see how bad it was when you were at Rikers? What was the biggest surprise? Well, there's a difference between what I did at Rikers and a prison system. Rikers Island is a jail system. My average length of stay at Rikers was about 45 to 54 days. I had 133,000 inmate admissions per year. When I took over the department, we averaged 150 stabbings and slashings per month. 150? Wow. 150 stabbings and slashings per month. On the month I became Police Commissioner with one. So I reduced stabbings and slashings inmate on inmate violence by about 93% and created a number of other efficiencies that basically turned it into an international model for efficiency and safety. Just quickly, that's such an enormous difference. Presumably people are encouraging slashings and stabbings before that. How do you cut it from 150 to 1? Basically, there was a program. I don't know if you guys are familiar with the ComStat program on how crime was monitored and addressed in New York City. I created the same sort of program on overseeing the agency. And basically what that is, is daily data collection on addressing hot button issues such as violence, slashings, stabbings, assaults, inmate on inmate assaults, staff assaults, staff abuse, things like that. Instead of looking at that stuff quarterly or biannually the way it used to be looked at, I looked at it daily. So I address the issues daily. That's number one. Number two, removing the weapons. Getting the weapons out of the facilities. More searches. Searches of visitors coming into the institutions. Preventing the contraband from coming in. With the more searches exacerbate the interactions between correctional officers and the inmates which can lead to violence and that seems to be... And that's a really good point because some correction administrators will tell you that. It's all about first line supervision. You're going to have more contacts between the inmates and staff with more searches. If you have the right supervision, you have the right oversight, you have the right people, you have everything is videoed and that's what we did, then you don't have those incidents. You don't have those problems. In fact, the confrontations between staff and inmates reduced, was reduced during this time. But the other thing I did that historically had not been done and this came to light when I first took over as the first deputy commissioner, I once had a... I had two inmates that held a guy down on the ground and they took a turkey bone or a chicken bone and they carved LK into his back for Latin King. Like 180 stitches. And I asked one of my guys at the time, what happens to this guy? You know, what do we charge him with? And they basically looked at me and said, well, he doesn't get charged. See, he goes to special housing. I said, you mean to tell me that that guy just committed an atrocious assault, maybe attempted murder and we do nothing? They said, well, the prosecutors look at it like this is jail. That's what happens in jail. And I basically said, I don't give a damn what the prosecutors say. That's an assault. Outside the facility, if I nicked you with a razor blade, it would be an assault with a deadly weapon. You know, it would be all these charges. But inside a jail, you let them do what they want. Jail and prison cannot be a safe haven for criminal activity. You can't. So we started instituting charges, internal charges on guys that committed crimes within the system. If you cut somebody, if you assault them, you're charged. If you burn down a cell or light somebody on fire, you get charged with a crime. That immediately, immediately dropped inmate on inmate violence by 40%. Right out of the box. It's so simple. It's just crazy. But you know what, Trevor, it's simple stuff that historically was overlooked with the mindset that that's the way we've always done it. You know, that's the way we do it. That's the way it's always been. So nobody changes it. And if you look at the other things that we did within the system, you know, why does it take an inmate six hours to see a physician? Wow. Six hours. It used to take to have an inmate in the New York City Department of Correction to see a physician. One, the inmate puts in a notice 24 hours in advance. It's not like you don't know they're going. You don't know, it's not like you don't know how many inmates are going to be seeing the doctors the next morning in that facility. You know. So why do you have an inmate moved out of his housing area, taken to a place who sits around for six hours in most likely an unsecure or less secure spot waiting to see a doctor that he could see in 30 to 45 minutes if the movement was done correctly? Well, we changed that. How many hours it took for attorneys to see, and you can't, six hours, four hours for an attorney to come see a client on Rikers, which I thought was atrocious, considering that attorney's getting paid by the hours. That's what I was saying. They're getting paid the whole time for reading a magazine or whatever. And I'll tell you, and this goes to, this is sort of accountability one-on-one and this is, you know, you said it seemed so simplistic. I put up signs in all the visit rooms for the attorneys. And it said, the sign said, if you don't see your client within 45 minutes after you arrive on site, then you were to call this number. That number was the cell phone from my chief of staff. Well, I can promise you that only happened once or twice after. And then it's over. Then the inmates see their client, see their attorneys within 45 minutes and there's no problem. It's all about accountability. And if there's not leadership and accountability, you're going to have all this other stuff that creates problems within the system. What's the reaction from the staff to these reforms? I have to, when it first started, there was, you know, there was outcries, especially the unions, you know. I have a question here about the unions. Any change in a system, in a big system like that, any major change, the unions are going to have an issue with it. Okay. It's going to hurt my guys. It's going to impact them. It's, you know, they're going to be punished. The bottom line is, and if you go back and you look in 1990, 60 minutes in Mike Wallace, they did a full blowout feature of Rikers as being one of the worst, most violent jail systems in the nation. In 1998, Mike Wallace, in 60 minutes, the same exact team came back into Rikers when it was under my command. And the reason he came back is he saw an article in The New York Times and he called me and said he didn't believe it. He did not believe the article that said Rikers was a completely different environment. Rikers had been tamed, so to speak. Mike Wallace says, I want to look at. I want to see. And he went back in and he actually talked to staff. And ironically, he also talked to inmates that had been in the system then. And both the inmates and the staff said the exact same thing. It's safer. It's cleaner. Everything is better than it was. And we benefit from those changes. And that was inmates and staff alike. So at the end of the day, when you have change in a big organization like that, you're going to have outcries, especially from the union. But it's to their benefit that those changes are made. And once they understand that, once they see it, today, Rikers Island has 10,000 to 12,000 less inmates than I had on a daily basis. And they have constantly increased their violence, scandals, corruption, and a multitude of other things. And all the COs that were there under my command. The CO is correction officer. They're all begging me to come back. So it was to their benefit. It's interesting exposing these two sides. And that's one reason I'm really happy you're here on the show, because the prison seems like a black box to a lot of people. We don't even want to think about it. And there's a lot of things you can just... Something we like watching TV shows. Yeah, exactly. We like watching TV shows and everything. But there's a lot of, you know, out of sight, out of mind, seems to be a big part of this. And you've seen both sides of it. And a lot of these reforms see very, very commonsensical, that you can just accountability, just charging people with crimes, having accountability of correction officers. Another thing you talk about in your book is having the correction officers treat prisoners with respect, which I think is very important. Can you talk a little bit about that? It's sort of like I said before. You know, the punishment is the deprivation of freedom. The punishment is being away from your family. The punishment is the lack of employment. The punishment is a number of things. What the punishment is not supposed to be is mental torture. And you have staff, for the most part, that do their job. It's, you know, like I said, a very dangerous job at times. But you also have staff out there that they feel that's something in them that thinks, you know, they feel that it's their job to impose punishment. So they do everything in their power to demean you, to moralize you, degrade you. And this goes back to accountability. How do you get that to change? It's a question. It's all about first-line supervision. So, you know, every CO, you know, depending on your housing area where you work, you have a first-line supervisor, whether it's the federal system or a state system. And it's those first-line supervisors that oversee the people under them, the squad of correction officers or a platoon of correction officers, however number-many that is. It's their job to oversee them. And if the warden's doing his job, and I say the warden specifically because when I took over Rikers, I remember walking as the first Deputy Commissioner around Rikers Island and going through a housing area with a warden who the inmates in that housing area had never seen before. Now, I went up to an inmate and I asked him, how long have you been in the facility? I've been here four months. You've been here four months. And you don't know who that guy is. The guy with the white shirt and the stars right there. You don't know who that is? No. Well, that afternoon that warden was transferred. He was gone. You mean to tell me for four months that inmate never saw you pass this housing area? And believe me, if they did, you would know. So the bottom line is, if the warden's not making his rounds, if the first-line supervisors, if the Deputy Wardens aren't walking those facilities to see what the problematic issues are, well, then things like that are going to happen. And you're going to have COs that abuse their authority, that do things they shouldn't do, that create conflict, and many times create violence. So you have to have supervision. You have to have accountability. And I talk a little bit about how the... I don't like using the word cough gas too much, but it definitely fits your situation about how you found yourself in prison because someone's probably listening to this and saying, oh, I've heard of this guy. He's a corrupt guy. He's now a convicted felon and all this stuff. And it's not so much a matter of guilt and innocence. I think when you found yourself on the... wrapped around prosecutors and your own attorneys, it's not so much guilt and innocence anymore. It's whether or not you can maintain a staring contest with the government. And they have way more resources. All right. Let me talk about the staring contest. First of all, if you're indicted by the federal government, that indictment says the United States of America versus whoever your name... whatever your name is, I promise you, it's the United States of America. It's the whole United States of America. It's the prosecutor's office. It's all their attorneys. It's every agency... any agency they want involved, it's everybody and it's everything and it's all their money. And I really don't care who you are, unless you're Warren Buffett, Gates, Carlos Slimmer, a couple other guys I know that have wealth in the billions, there's not much you can do to fight the American government. There's passages in my book that I talk about this. And the one thing that I concluded and I believe in strongly is that you as an American citizen don't have the actual constitutional rights you think you have if you don't have the money to pay for them. And I will tell you, I was the more fortunate of many that I had money. But even then, and I'll give you an example, on a monthly basis I was billed between $100,000 to $150,000 to $200,000 a month for 18 to 20 months. In October of 2009, one month, a 30-day period, my legal bill for that 30-day period was $176,000. How long can you last? So the staring contest doesn't last that long. At some point it's more or less a business decision, whether you're going to keep trying to go forward and survive. And you can't, you just can't. They have all the cards. Well, and then to get back to my charges, specific charges, people just, you know, they hear about the case that he was charged with corruption. Well, one, I wasn't convicted of corruption. There was no corruption. There was false statements and tax charges. The false statements, I was not under oath, as I've heard many say, you know, he lied under oath. No, I did not. I didn't lie under oath. It was a false statement made on applications for a vetting process. For the secretary? The secretary and for a committee. It wasn't even the secretary. One of them was for a committee. That being said, my charges initially started with an ethics violation in the Bronx. The ethics violation, it was a 18 month grand jury investigation, 18 months that resulted in two ethics charges. One, I didn't put something on a financial disclosure. And two, that I accepted apartment renovations and I accepted a gift in the form of apartment renovations from a contractor attempting to do business with the city. The Bronx grand jury concluded their investigation with those two charges. The Bronx DA admitted and told the judge in court there was no quid pro quo between me and the contractor. Yeah, it was all news to you as you were talking about. There was no corruption. Immediately after I pled guilty to those two things I had $221,000 fine. Then the federal government came in and charged me all over again with the same, on the same issue. So because you said the G word, you said gift in your plead, right? Right. And that's, that was the thing. The government used my plea, the words in my plea against me to start a new investigation. I'm not saying I did nothing wrong. I'm not saying I'm not saying anything that I pled guilty to was wrong. Here's what I have a problem with. There isn't one thing I was charged with and pled guilty to that couldn't have been handled civilly or ethically. In fact, it already was. It was handled ethically by the state. And for those that have any doubts, most of my charges related to my tax stuff around my children's nanny. Okay. But at the same exact time that I was actually being prosecuted and investigated, Timothy Geithner was being confirmed by the United States Senate for the position of Treasury Secretary after he admitted that he didn't pay tax for like two or three years. Tom Daschle was up for Secretary under President Obama $180,000 in tax issues that he had over a period for a car and drivers. You had Zoe Baird President Clinton's Attorney General nominee Kimba Wood Clinton's Attorney General nominee all of them and specifically those nanny issues just like mine. There was no grand jury investigation. There was no investigation period. There was nothing. So anybody that believes or thinks that there aren't selective and political prosecutions you got to be pretty naive. So why you? I mean what why would they come after you and not those other people? Well I think at the time and I talk about this in the book I think at the time Rudy Giuliani was my friend, my partner somebody I worked with for eight years. In 2006 he announced he was running for president. He started his PAC made his announcement and from that point forward you know he was on a roll. If you go back in time you look at every single article that I was in he was mentioned. If you look at every article about him in his campaign I was in it. So there was this constant political driving force to besmirch him or dirty him up as a result of me and I think that had a lot to do with it. And then your the whole story gets kind of bizarre too because as you say the prosecutors here I always have this question about federal prosecutors and I want to ask you some later questions about some of the people you met in prison but you kind of wonder what they're doing. Why reading you, reading the menace and getting you off the streets is what they actually need to be doing right now to make the world a better place. You know what listen I can't speak for the prosecutors, my specific prosecutors other than to say what I've said in the book and I believe that there was enormous overreaching. I believe that it was politically driven and I want to be clear I've worked with some of the best prosecutors in this country on state and federal cases. Some of the most notorious drug investigators investigations and cartel investigations in New York the best prosecutors in the country I feel I've worked with and I know and they did their job by the book but there are prosecutors out there that they believe they're doing God's work in some way and it it blinds them to the injustices that they're really committing they're supposed to be working based on evidence based on you know going after really bad people they're not supposed to win cases by subwarning perjury suppressing evidence extorting testimony things like that but it does happen and horribly horribly it is happening at an increase in this country worse than anybody has seen in years it's so bad that out on the west coast just a few months ago you had the chief judge the chief federal judge out in the 9th district Kazinsky basically banished an entire office the entire United States Attorney's Office and called on the Justice Department to get people in there that weren't going to be engaged in misconduct that is horrendous and we're seeing it all over but I think that was a major major example of what's going on and increasing around the country but they have a lot of tools at their disposal for example that incredibly long criminal code there's a lot of things they can do well listen it's not even about the criminal code anymore depending on who you talk to I just came from somewhere else where 50 people sitting in a room talking about over criminalization and the bottom line is these are all experts in the field nobody can tell you how many crimes are on the books actually nobody can tell you and where they're at and worse than that and this goes back to the people I met in prison being involved in a crime a criminal investigation a real crime is one thing but that commercial fisherman caught too many fish that was a regulatory issue the guy that sold the whales tooth on ebay that's regulatory we're taking regulatory and civil issues and ethical issues and we're locking people up criminally we're turning them into career criminals basically for this stuff that's on the books as regulatory issues that's a big huge problem and the American public they don't have a clue they read a headline and they don't think of in the context of what that really means for them what it means for this country and also what it means for their pocketbook because you could have handled ethically or not ethically but regulatory wise you could have handled that commercial fisherman caught too many fish you could have suspended his license take his fish do something to hold him accountable we didn't do that we take his license, we take his boat the people on the boat lose their jobs he loses his job he loses his license forever he can't never work again and who pays for that we do the American taxpayer so it's a bizarre process but don't our laws, our regulations need teeth and it sounds someone could interpret what you're saying as well they were really hard on me and they're hard on these other people and I wish that they had gone easier on me and I wish they would go easier on these other people but isn't the goal of the regulation to the criminal law whatever these things are that we're charging people under to prevent people from doing this stuff and so if we went easier on them more of them would do it two things, one this isn't about me I'm done this is about the future of this country don't tell me that the only way to hold that commercial fisherman accountable is to put him in prison that's a ludicrous statement to make anybody that believes that is stupid because you can hold that guy accountable in a number of different ways you could suspend his license you could find him take his probation whatever license put him on probation do whatever you want to do but you don't turn him into a criminal and remove him from the work force all these guys you know you had these you had this the Obama task force in the financial world looking at the banks now they were looking at the banks the heads of the banks well what happens all the brokers on the bottom that were violating these regulatory issues they locked them all up they locked them up they didn't touch anybody in the banks everybody went about their business but the small guys they locked them up they turned them into criminals why not find them why not suspend their license why not take them out of the work force suspend their license for two years a year whatever make them pay restitution for whatever they think the loss was we don't do that on those regulatory issues and the ethical issues and things like that these are tens of thousands of people that we're doing this to we're permanently taking them out of the American work force we are creating a permanence underclass of American citizen permanent underclass in the millions there are millions of people in this class now which is a second class citizen civil and constitutional rights they have 40,000 different collateral consequences that they have to deal with you know until the day they die and they never get their civil and constitutional rights back in full never they're never empowered as a full American citizen again that is not the way the system was supposed to be looked at I agree with everything you've just said in the libertarian kiddo institute it leads me to how does that sort of argument apply to the thing that is perhaps the largest driving factor of destroying people's lives taking away their livelihood turning them into criminals through prison time and all that which is drug penalties for nonviolent defenders our jails and prisons are overflowing with nonviolent people who are in there as they bought and sold some chemicals that make you feel funny you mentioned a guy Eric you met in prison serving 36 months for 9 grams of cocaine his first defense nonviolent who was working two jobs and had a family well listen it's far worse than Eric's situation I met young black kids out of Baltimore 5 grams 10 years 15 years because they get tacked on to a conspiracy and the conspiracy enhancements kill them or somebody used a gun in a transaction had nothing to do with them they get hit with the enhancement there's all these things in the federal system that can enhance your penalties the reality is the kid never had a problem with the law it was a nonviolent offense it was a first time offense now he's doing 8 to 10, 15 years when he was 19 and his whole career his whole future is destroyed but here's the problem I think that we have in the legislature and in the general public at large and I think this goes to your question there are people that will listen to this and say drugs is a bad thing you're dealing drugs people get killed because of drugs so that guy whatever happened to him happened to him he deserves what he gets and what I would tell those people and I've had these conversations at like town hall meetings you know at book signings and things that I've been at don't be so quick to think that's a benefit to you in society because here's what you've done and here's what I don't think people understand you take that young kid that's never had a problem with the law and you stick him in prison for 15 years which means he's going to do 12 if he's doing 12 he's not going to a minimum security camp he's going to a lower or medium he's going to learn how to steal, cheat, lie, manipulate, gamble, con most importantly he's going to learn and he's going to believe very strongly that if he gets into a verbal altercation with anyone it ends with somebody getting cut or somebody getting beat to a pulp that's what you teach him and then you send him back home into society with no education no vocational skills no life improvement skills and you send him back and as one kid said to me I'm black and I'm a convicted felon what goods my GED do the bottom line is I know guys with doctorates masters, bachelors they can't get jobs because of a conviction because of their conviction what's that kid going to do you've guaranteed in most times you've guaranteed he's coming back as a convicted felon back into the system he has no choice he's got nowhere to go he's got no job he's not going to get a job especially after a 15 year sentence in a federal prison it's not happening we do that instead of taking those kids getting before a drug court and putting them in a mandatory boot camp or something that teaches them respect and discipline that parenting goes beyond conception getting them a GED and getting them on the right track and most importantly if they pass that boot camp dismiss their conviction get the conviction off the record because with that conviction I really don't care what you do to them I don't care what you do for them they're doomed to failure 95-99% of the time they're doomed to failure and we're creating it now when you walk to the beat when you were on the NYPD and you walked to the beat you were uniformed in plain clothes and that was in the 80s right when the drug war was getting ramped up and all those things did you think about the same stuff for the people you were interacting with did it strike you as much when you were uniformed? No and here's the problem it's not going to to anybody in law enforcement you're given a penal code you're given a set of laws you're told go out and enforce these laws nobody should blame the cops nobody should blame the federal agents for what's going on in today's criminal justice system don't blame them the system blame the legislators blame the people to create the laws and the punishments that we have to live by now that's what the problem is it's not the cops and the federal agents they're doing their job they're doing what they're supposed to do they're doing what they're told to do and that's the problem nobody in law enforcement no cop or federal agent or any of those guys they're not thinking of the end result you just don't but that's not your job your job is to take the bad guys off the streets and the law says this guy's a bad guy and that's what you have to do they do what they're supposed to do and the rest is through the system the system has to change knowing what you know now would you have done things differently when you were a beat cop? first of all I really don't think I ever locked up anybody for smoking marijuana most of the people I locked up were bad guys that did bad things and I was a very aggressive cop would I do anything different? I don't know here's the problem you have and this is the problem even if you had 50 cops sitting in this room right now listening to this interview and this is a real example I've sat in rooms with a bunch of cops talked to them about the system as it stands today and they basically admit you're right there's something wrong they don't have the authority to change it because here's what happens they get that guy selling a dime bag of cocaine they take the cocaine they rip it up they throw it on the ground guess what? I promise you there's a prosecutor that's going to lock up the cop really? yeah they don't have the ability to do anything about it they can't let people go they can't do that so that's a problem you have to change the laws what about what are your thoughts on jury nullification how do we change things or the prosecutors aren't willing to stop prosecuting we empower the people or educate the people to just refuse to convict on these sorts of things you know what I think that's nice it sounds nice the reality is it's never going to happen and the reason it doesn't happen is because of the way the prosecutors get to present their cases that won't happen there's also almost no case goes to a jury anymore in the federal system I just did this recently I asked a group of people give me a give me a company or give me a government agency any government agency that has a perfect record anybody and they're all sitting around they're all thinking well maybe apple well it's not really perfect but maybe this or that 20 different things none of which can come close to the record of the United States Justice Department none 97% of the criminal cases in the Justice Department are pled out 97% and out of the 3% that aren't pled out 98% of those to 99% are found guilty perfect record really I don't know beyond what you could reasonably expect without well when you look at state prosecutions that are 65% to 75% I don't know well they can with the police system they can put as many screws to you as you want and we go back to the steering column listen and the and I'm not saying this you have Supreme Court justices former attorneys general and present day federal judges called the police system a corruption prone system it's corrupt anytime you could sit somebody in a room and tell them look you're looking to 25 to life when the reality is that's a complete exaggeration of what they could really get but you tell them that anyway you're looking at 25 to life so we're going to give you a break if you take 10 you've got to be an idiot the guy's going to take 10 I know tons of guys that took pleas to things they did not do because they were scared to death after being threatened with these crazy sentences now your plea you took I mean you had a lot of considerations about your lawyers constantly getting dismissed by a judge who seemed to be a little bit biased I had to pause there and so eventually you just kind of threw up your hands well in my case look I was actually days from going to trial I was going to trial and my judge in my case basically said he was inclined to disqualify my attorneys this would have been a third time disqualified the prior and the first one was conflicted out who eventually I don't know how it worked the prosecutors got him to cooperate in the case against me unbeknownst to me and without telling my lawyer so your first attorney was going to testify against you that's a little bit crazy a little bit let me tell you when you're standing up in the courtroom and the federal prosecutor starts to tell the judge that they had all these conversations with your attorney your prior attorney and you have no idea what he's talking about it's more than crazy but I was actually five days from trial and once he said he was inclined to disqualify my legal team at that point I was already remanded I'm already in solitary confinement I'm going to have to sit there for another year, year and a half until my new legal team comes up to speed and I had no more money for a retainer for new legal counsel what do you do you know I quit so that's it we have a system that's broken and so many different ways I think it's look there's nothing there's one answer and the one answer is the legislators there are hundreds if not thousands of advocacy groups around the country that do all kind of great work Kato Institute included phenomenal advocacy work on criminal justice reform if we don't change the laws you guys are going to be doing what you're doing for the next hundred years in this arena the laws have to be changed the mandatory minimums and sentencing guidelines have to be repealed, revamped, abolished whatever let the judges judge the mentally ill the addicted stop putting them in prison they don't belong in prison they belong in treatment centers I saw a lot of that really horrendous cases of that programs we need real programs that's going to reduce recidivism and get people back into society as productive citizens we don't have that it's just not happening and lastly at some point in time you pay your debt to society because it stands right now as it stands you never pay your debt to society this stuff goes on forever and it has a negative impact on you by some 70, 80, 90% you never remade a whole citizen again and I think it's wrong there are some people that may have to happen some people go to prison for a long time some people you have to put them away for a life to keep society safe I get that but when you pay your time you do your time, whatever you want to call it you're off probation and you become a model citizen well then get it over and the punishment because as it stands right now the punishment goes on for a lifetime it seems like we can reform a lot of the prison you were at in Cumberland Maryland federal prison camp which was supposed to be the way you first described it it was supposed to be kind of open I mean look security camp is pretty much a non-secure facility there's no fence there's no locks on the doors you could literally walk off site anytime you want it I could have a visitor come on a Saturday and Sunday I could walk out to the track get in the car and drive off it's an honor system so here's my question here's what I think people are missing when I push for programs they say well you need money you need real money well then take the 27,000 people that are sitting in these minimum security camps nonviolent first time many first time offenders low level drug offenders 27 to 28,000 of them sitting in federal prison camps at the cost of about $30,000 at the cost of $30,000 a year and more especially the older guys they could be $60,000 a year because of all the medical stuff you know send them home on home confinement do something that benefits society versus destroys it and I don't know what the number is you just reminded me of this I don't know what the actual number is you know how many prisoners are in the federal prison system on death row not on death row but they're dying they're dying they've got cancer they've got this, they've got that they're not murderers many of them are not violent criminals and they're infirmed send them out send them home the guy's dying for God's sakes let him die with dignity with his family instead of just forcing the issue to let him rot in prison as they say why do you do that it wouldn't be done the Cato Institute does an enormous amount as do others and I think time will tell well that's the crazy thing the thing that sets me the most about this is the sort of common sense element I feel like most people would agree with you that these people should not be in prison the people you talk about what's the problem with convincing them education the problem with convincing them is educated nobody, listen if every American citizen saw what I saw there'd be anger, there'd be outrage and there would be change they don't know and I know they don't know because I didn't know thank you for listening if you have any questions you can find us on twitter at Free Thoughts Pod that's Free Thoughts P.O.D Free Thoughts is produced by Evan Banks and Mark McDaniel to learn more find us on the web at www.freethoughts.org