 Our next conversation is called, Restore the Second Chance Economy. This is, I feel like this is so much in keeping with a lot of what Secretary Clinton said earlier and even what Governor Patrick said, just this idea that there should be a way in America in our economy for people to have a second chance, that the long unemployed should be able to come back into the workforce, that people who have been incarcerated should be able to get jobs after they come out. And so I find this a particularly appealing conversation. Reed Kramer, the director of our asset building program, is one of the co-authors of this. Before he was with us, he was at the Office of Management and Budget and somewhere out in the audience is his predecessor, the founder of the asset building program at New America. And Ray Boshara, so if he's here I hope he'll come up to the front, where it's freezing cold by the way. And now I know, I know one is sitting up here. We're also joined by Monica Potts, a fellow in the asset building program, senior writer for the American Prospect. Nicole Austin-Hillary, director and counsel of the Brennan Center for Justice in D.C. and Bernard Carrick, the retired former police commissioner of New York. So this should be a fun conversation. I'll let Reed do more formal introductions, but thanks very much. That was pretty good. Thank you. Yeah, you can get our names up there and we'll get underway here. I'm pleased to lead this discussion on restoring a second chance economy. And with my colleagues Rachel Black and Alita Sprague, we open our big ideas essay that's in your programs by stating that the promise of a second chance is really a signature refrain of the American narrative. I mean it really accompanies this claim that life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are fundamental rights of citizenship and not just mere products of circumstance. And it's that opportunity that really kind of motivates the aspirational climb up the economic ladder. It explains some of the entrepreneurial spirit of America that's led to so much prosperity. And I think while we want to argue that there are no guarantees that risk will lead to reward, we certainly want to make sure that failure, when it does occur, is only a temporary setback and it doesn't become a permanent and a fixed condition. So I think that's really foundational for delivering on this promise of a second chance. And it shouldn't matter where you start out, but you shouldn't be locked in. And here I think I sound like Secretary Clinton from this morning. But really the key is that people need to be enabled to overcome past failures with effort and with ability. And yet we have a situation where really millions of our fellow Americans face really large and often institutional barriers when they're striving to rebuild their lives after hardship. This includes a number of different types of people that I think we're thinking about. It includes groups like the long-term unemployed right now who in many ways are being left behind in the economy. They can't get jobs. They're losing their skills. They need a second chance. It also includes families that have experienced some financial turmoil. We've had the great recession. We've seen havoc wrecked on the family balance sheet. Families have lost homes. They're in debt. We have young cohort of Americans carrying a lot of student debt. They need a second chance. And it also includes those that have experienced with the criminal justice system. Since 1980, we've seen our rates of incarceration quadruple. A new study by the National Research Council is out verifying these rates. This is among the largest rates in the world. And then each year, we have about 150,000 Americans that return to society. But ex-offenders routinely find it hard to get jobs, they're denied work, and they're really prevented in some meaningful ways from re-entering their communities. So for all these groups, we argue that reclaiming the mantle of the second chance society will require a new public ethos where resiliency is encouraged in the face of adversity. And I think we need to look for public policies that can be used to advance social inclusion, economic inclusion, and also root out institutional barriers that end up doubling down on disadvantage in unfair ways. So that's the conversation we're looking to have here. I think we also need to think in meaningful ways about how our policies disproportionately impact communities of color. And that's a broad issue here that I think we can weave into this discussion. So we want to advance this conversation about restoring a second chance today, specifically for those who have come through the criminal justice system. So I'm joined here by Nicole Austin-Hillary, Monica Potts, Bernard Carrick. They all are going to offer their perspective. Just to say a few, emphasize what Rachel said in her introductions. Nicole is director and counsel of the Washington D.C. Office of the Brennan Center for Justice. They're based out of NYU, but six years ago she opened the D.C. office here and is advancing their work on criminal justice, voting rights, a number of things. So we're pleased to have you here. Monica Potts is an award-winning journalist at the American Prospect. She's also a fellow with New America. We've been pleased to have her in our midst. She writes extensively about families in poverty. She writes very humanely about these families. And her recent cover story, the current cover story in the prospect, is on featuring two men in Baltimore who are really striving to put their lives back together after spending time in prison. And Bernard Carrick, former police commissioner and correction commissioner of New York City. And in this capacity, these are two of the largest law enforcement organizations in the world. In 2004, he was nominated to head the Department of Homeland Security. He eventually withdrew his nomination from consideration, and then he experienced the criminal justice system from the other side. And as an ex-offender who has lived within the federal justice system, the prison system, he now argues that that system is in dire need of repair. So really, thanks for joining us. And let me start with Nicole. You know, life after prison. Let's kind of start with zeroing in on some of the obstacles. And how would you describe what some of the more debilitating impacts and collateral consequences are of our current approach to criminal justice? Thank you, Reid. First of all, thank you for having me on the panel today. This is such an important discussion. You know, the interesting thing about when one has to re-enter society after being an incarcerated individual is that every basic thing that most of us take for granted really becomes a barrier from how you get your home, where you live, to where you work, to whether you can take advantage of educational opportunities, to whether you can become a full-fledged member of our democracy by exercising your right to vote. All of these things become very difficult for you to become engaged in. And it really goes against the grain of who we are as a society. You know, we say at the Brennan Center, when it comes to our democracy, the foundation of our democracy is really that it is about providing opportunity and creating equal opportunity for all. But that's really not what manifests itself when it comes to how we as a country treat the formerly incarcerated. In fact, we do ask people to pay their debts to society, but then once they do, we make it extremely difficult for them to become full-fledged members of our communities. And that has a trickle-down effect. Not only does that make it difficult for that person to re-engage, it also impacts their families, it impacts their children from doing anything such as finding a safe home and neighborhood for your child to showing your child what it means to be active in your community and to be actively engaged in your democracy by doing something like exercising your right to vote. So that's really what the overarching issue is that we simply make it difficult for you to become a full-fledged member of society. Even though what we say and what we communicate in this country is, you commit a crime, you pay your debt, and then you're supposed to be put back at square one. You're supposed to be on an equal playing field with everyone else. But that's not actually what happens in terms of our policies and what opportunities we provide for the formerly incarcerated. Thanks. And Monica, let's turn to you and your cover story. Tell us a little bit about these guys. And you or your editors called it survivors of the drug wars. Tell us a little bit about the obstacles that they faced and kind of the effort they're putting forth to get their lives back together. Sure. I concentrated for the story on Travis Jones, who's 32, who had been a drug dealer for most of his adult life and finally ended up serving three and a half years of a five-year sentence in a state prison in Maryland. And he returned in 2007 and he really struggled to do very basic things, least of which was just getting a driver's license. Again, it took him about a year to do that. And without those things, you can't get a job and you can't drive and you can't take classes because you can't get anywhere, especially in a city like Baltimore where public transportation isn't the best, especially in areas like West Baltimore that are very poor. So he moved back into the basement of his girlfriend's house. He had maintained that relationship and he didn't work for the better part of five years. He had very small jobs that didn't necessarily pay very well. He lost them. He didn't really adjust very well to being back in jobs and he didn't really adjust very well to being back in society. He didn't want to make friends. He didn't want to trust other people because anyone who could possibly get in the trouble with the law could get him into even more trouble. So he really withdrew into the basement and turned it into his second kind of prison and it really took him five years to think about what he could do to get his life back on track and he decided to take part in a job training program and so he spent nine to five for four weeks without getting paid in a job training program and really worked very, very hard at it because that's how much he wanted to work in the legal world. He didn't want to go back to dealing drugs even though that would have been easy and it's what he knew and he could have made good money and he had made good money doing it. So he really volunteered his time to make himself more employable and then at the end of it there just weren't jobs sitting around for him so he's still struggling. I've kept in touch with him since the story was published and he's applied for a number of jobs and he gets to the interview session and they tell him his record is a problem for them and so whatever considerations he's supposed to be given he's just not feeling that he gets that and he goes through serious depression, pretty serious depression I think because of it. Thanks and Bernie, your story is I'd say far from typical but you really do have a new appreciation for some of the challenges of re-entry and a lot of people who are incarcerated they don't enter with they come back without any financial resources or professional network what's your sense of some of the barriers that are out there for the people trying to re-enter? I want to touch on one thing Nicole said and that is the debt to society we term that in inmate a former offender pays that debt the reality is the system doesn't allow that debt to ever be paid a criminal conviction, a felony conviction is a life sentence it's for life it goes on forever you can be an 18, 19 year old young man with a first time nonviolent low level drug offense get a conviction a year and a day in prison that year and a day is going to have an impact on you until the day you die if you live to be 120 years old at what point is enough enough we have to have some resolution to the debt and as the criminal justice system stands today that debt is never paid as for the barriers the national association of criminal defense lawyers within I think the next week or two is going to put out a report a study that has been done over the last three years and that study looked at all 50 states state collateral damage and federal collateral damage 45,000 different elements of collateral damage to former offenders that's absurd some of the things that Nicole mentioned think of some of the things for the people in the audience you come out of prison you are put on probation you are told to get a job if you don't get a job you could get violated and put back in prison so you go out looking for a job you can't get a license so you can't get to a job you can't get a checking account in many places you can't get insurance and I will tell you from a personal perspective my life insurance is in jeopardy my homeowner's policy was in jeopardy mine I paid my bills I've never had a problem with my insurance my conviction has had a major impact on my own things and you have to think 70% of the inmate population in many institutions around this country are drug related they come out of prison they're not coming back to a household a home, a decent home, a job, a family they're coming back to nothing to start from scratch I came back to a home and to a family and it is extremely difficult for me if it's difficult for me those young men and women that are in prison on these low level drug offenses they're getting crucified it is the demise of an entire generation of people and Rita if I may one of the other things that we often do to the formerly incarcerated is once they come out we often burden them with debt something that a lot of people don't know the Brennan Center did a recent report on fees and fines many people don't realize if you owe certain monies say for instance child support and you are behind on that debt once you are done with your incarceration period you are expected in many instances in most instances to repay that debt and often times you cannot get out of the system until those fees and fines are paid so it's really kind of an insane cycle that we expect people to work to pay off the debt but yet we make it harder for them to actually get full-time employment so that is a big issue there's also a big issue in terms of what are we doing to prepare individuals to re-enter their communities job trainings, educational opportunities that once 20, 30 years existed within our prison systems those programs have been depleted in most instances and where they do exist they are minimal and not every inmate has access to them so not only do we not provide opportunities when individuals return to the community we also are not doing anything while they are incarcerated to prepare them to re-enter the job market and to become full-fledged tax-paying citizens and Monica I'm also struck in reading your work how people struggle to kind of access the support systems that are out there whether it's their family systems the community systems or kind of public assistance programs and so what is your sense about how people do that and navigate getting connected or staying disconnected? Well as far as connecting themselves to the programs that the states provide to help them get on their feet again most people are very reluctant to do that for a number of reasons with people who have been in the prison system they actually don't want to be involved in the state at all if they can help it very often partly because of the debt that they can come out of prison with if they get a legal job their wages can be garnished as much as 50% and so the return on their work is actually very very low and there are a lot of different people for whom it's actually hard to get things like the program that was once welfare temporary assistance for needy families people who have been convicted of drug crimes they actually can't access that program for even for families who just fall fall on hard times who maybe are already low income or fall out of the middle class there are a lot of barriers just to finding out about the programs that are out there to help them there aren't many states that do a very good job of just having one office where you can go and someone says these are all the programs available to help you and when they do find those programs one of the things I've heard anecdotally in almost every state that I've reported the case workers that they see first are actually very sort of discouraging of the idea of accessing welfare or food stamps and so there's that extrovert and they already don't want to be there they're already embarrassed that they have to be there and then they have to deal with a case worker who sort of also doesn't want them to get on the program or seems to not want to get them on the program and so those kinds of things are difficult to find out about and they're difficult to educate yourself about and it's difficult to find out what your rights are even in states where people actually do have the right to vote again when they leave prison or it should be easy to access these programs they believe that they're difficult and so they don't seek out help as much as they could there's actually a technological dimension to this as well and I think maybe there always is here at New America but technology and data can be enabling it can also be discounting and especially when past setbacks are kind of available as part of the public record and placed in permanent view it can be very challenging click the button you get someone's record you get their credit history and it can create additional obstacles and so I think we wanted to have kind of a broader discussion about if there are ways of balancing some of the informational transparency objectives with the privacy objectives and so we were talking previously about the process of expungement and how important that is and the challenge that is kind of feedback on that process that problem Sure I will give you one sailing example there is a bill right now in Congress called the Democracy Restoration Act this bill was introduced by Senator Cardin in the Senate and Mr. Conyers in the House this bill would restore the right to vote with respect to federal elections immediately once you have completed your incarceration even if you remain on probation parole even if you owe fees and fines the problem with that with this bill or not with the bill but with this concept is this many individuals once they are done with their incarceration period they don't even realize that perhaps their right to vote has been restored they don't necessarily know what the laws and the rules and regulations are in the particular jurisdiction to which they are returning are so one of the components of that bill is information sharing and providing information and making certain that an individual is given all of the necessary information they need about their voting rights in the particular jurisdiction to which they are returning and we talk about how do we share that information how do we ensure that not only the inmates are getting that information but that the individuals in charge have that information we did a study at the Brennan Center that was called de facto disfranchisement that talked about the fact that when you poll and we did this as part of our study we polled secretaries of states offices in the country to ask them what are the requirements for a formerly incarcerated person having their right to vote restored in your jurisdiction we got myriad responses many of which were wrong so that tells you right there if you are not getting the correct information even from the entities within your jurisdiction that are supposed to have that information that is a problem that is keeping you from accessing the information that you need so we talk a great deal about what do we need to do to the technology and the information sharing so that the formerly incarcerated get the correct information and we ensure that the people who are in charge of disseminating that information and overseeing voting are getting the correct information and know what they are supposed to be communicating to individuals did you have a comment on the process of expungement and kind of navigating the information that is out there in the public record the one thing I have realized about this system as a whole from where I have seen it at this point is that when you lack money you basically lose your constitutional rights and when you talk about expungement you talk about clemency you talk about things like that for you to accomplish that that takes an attorney the laws are so technical so complex it's not easy for these people to do it on their own so they have to hire somebody to do it if they can't hire them to do it it's not getting done and the reason I talked about the constitutional rights aspect I was with men in prison that were there I believe they were innocent they played guilty because they were forced to in many circumstances they didn't have the money for counsel for an attorney many people could have been given less sentence or filed appeals they didn't have the money to file for those appeals you it's the system it contradicts it's own mission statement and without money your constitutional rights are not what we believe them to be and in today's day and age I just want to comment on the internet issue even with expungements even with clemency a pardon a presidential pardon all of that stuff is not going to eliminate what's on google and employers are going to go to google they're going to find your conviction and that stuff is going to hamper you in future employment and sometimes it's wrong information and inaccurate the information 99% of the time is media driven it's driven by media sources and media sources are not necessarily accurate so that's a problem I guess the issue is whose responsibility is it to respond to that whether it's policing it or creating some resources and support for a broader expungement process I think is a question for the future I've been struck in a lot of this work by the growing bipartisan energy around the issue of sentencing reform and criminal justice reform and I guess I wanted some feedback and perspective on that what do we think driving that is this kind of creating a new is there a common ground coalition that could emerge and where will it focus first will it focus on some of the sentencing issues and how could it use to focus on some of the longer term reentry issues down the line so Nicole what's your experience been trying to talk around this issue across the aisle as of I would say the last several years it's actually been quite positive and I think at the heart of this collaboration is economics we all know that states have been suffering over the last several years state economies are in trouble and one of the things that we know about the criminal justice system in this country is that it costs a great deal of money we spend an exorbitant amount of money to incarcerate people we spend an exorbitant amount of money on prisons and states are getting to the point where they're saying you know what we are not necessarily using our resources in the right way we are using these resources to lock up so many people and we all know that we have this huge problem of mass incarceration incarcerate more people in this country than any other free democracy in the world and states are saying we've got to do something about this that is the foundation of these collaborative efforts so as a result of that people on the right and left are coming together to say we've got to do something to ensure that we are using our resources in a very thoughtful and efficient and effective way so that we are still maintaining safety in our communities but that we are retooling our resources so that we are providing other opportunities like making our schools better making our communities safer so as a result we have a great deal of cooperation that's going on specifically on the Hill two examples I can give to you with respect to the felon disfranchisement issue and restoring the right to vote we have a coalition of faith based partners law enforcement partners civil rights partners who are all working together to try to push forward on this right to restore on this effort to restore the right to vote and you see it even from some unlikely suspects Rand Paul, Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky has recently in the last few months come out and said you know we've got to do something about this issue of making it difficult for the formerly incarcerated to vote so we see it there right now on Capitol Hill there is a bill called the Smarter Sentencing Act that is being pushed in the Senate we have folks from the law enforcement community working side by side with the progressive community trying to make headway with this bill again because there is a recognition that not only are we spending a great deal of money but we are also putting people in jail for far too long the president signed into law back in 2010 something called the Fair Sentencing Act and that is the bill that lessens the disparity between crack and powder cocaine and the Smarter Sentencing Act is going to do this it is going to say for individuals who would have already served their time under the Fair Sentencing Act we want to find ways to get them back into their communities because they've already paid that debt and so we're finding a meeting of the minds in terms of figuring out how can we stop locking people up for too long and get them back out into our communities and get them to be full-fledged members and people who are actively involved because those are the things that are going to keep our communities safer too if we simply put people back out into the communities but we don't provide them with opportunities we shouldn't be surprised at what we find at the end of that process we've got to provide these opportunities and folks on both sides of the aisle are starting to see this yeah the one thing that concerns me when I ran Rikers Island my budget, my annual budget was about $900 million if I had budget issues I had to come up with alternatives to incarceration I had to come up with incentivized good time I had to reduce the bed space in the facilities closed down facilities if possible these are all the things that you look at the one thing that concerns me and this goes back to what Nicole just said a lot of times in these state budgets the first thing to go are programs you cannot keep in mind when you run a prisoner or a jail system your first and foremost concern is security you can't reduce security post there's a mandatory minimum staffing that you have to have you can't touch security so the first thing that goes is programs well, you take programs it's education, it's life improvement skills it's all the things that these people need when they go back into society you cannot lock people up for 8 years 10 years, 15 years you have absolutely nothing and then send them back into society and believe that that's a benefit to society that they're going to be better people they've learned nothing they've gone back into society with nothing so what you've done is you've created an element where they're going to have to revert back to crime to live or they're just going to fade away and run into all kinds of psychological problems as Monica talked about now what's the reception you're getting when you're talking to more conservative audiences I think it's as Nicole said it's coming around on the state level states have to look at this because it's unsustainable we are mass incarcerating individuals it's almost in my mind these days it doesn't even seem like justice anymore and it's unsustainable in the states my bigger concern right now is the federal system the federal system as far as I have seen there has not been a budget reduction in the BOP for 25 years and their incarceration rates have I can't even tell you the amount that it was 25,000 inmates in 1980 today it's 218,000 it hasn't been reduced one year that's a problem we are going to open up the floor for some questions here and involve you as well but before we do that I wanted to ask each of you for some big picture ideas of reform that you'd want to put on the agenda both to reform the criminal justice system but also to promote more effective reentry you touched on some of them what do you want to emphasize for the audience here well one of the things that I've sort of been thinking since I wrote my story was that the prison system is sort of the most robust social program we have in this country right now it's the best funded and it's the best maintained and there's a lot of general support for it and so what I think we're seeing is that all of the problems that people have are flowing into the prison system so we have a prison population where 15% of them have some sort of serious mental illness there's a lot of problems of poverty that can lead to people sort of being involved in the criminal justice system and then the poverty that they experience when they get back out of prison sort of helps them flow back into the prison system and so I think one of the things that we have to think about is that we as a society have to deal with the problems that people have because they're going to flow somewhere and the prison system is not it's not a good system for dealing with most of the problems that people have Sure, there are two things that I'd like to point out one, and this is an easy thing and they've recently been successful with this I believe in Baltimore but banning the box when individuals go to apply for jobs I mean it is not necessary to ask do you have a criminal conviction in your background I'm a former employment lawyer before I came to the Brennan Center and I will tell you the thing that employers will say they are most interested in is do you have the talent, do you have the skills and the capabilities that I need if you have made a mistake and you have indeed paid that debt to society and yet you are qualified for the position that's what employers should be focusing on so this effort around the country to ban the box from employment is a step in the right direction the second thing is trying to deal with funding and how we are spending money we recently at the Brennan Center put out a report offering 15 executive actions things that we thought the president could do immediately using the power of the pen to make immediate change in fact the president said during his State of the Union address this past January that he was going to start trying to use the power of the pen more effectively so we wanted to jump on that and what the trust is that the president require that with respect to all federal grants that go out to law enforcement agencies that they tie those grants to what we are calling a success oriented funding such that if you tie the monies to a specific set of outcomes positive outcomes that then you will see better results if we are simply providing grants to law enforcement agencies and spend it as they will well you are not necessarily getting the results you want however if we tie those grant monies and say that these are the performance measures and within these performance measures we need to see concrete steps that you are taking to for instance reduce mass incarceration you are going to get a better outcome so I think those are two key steps that can be taken banning the box and the president using the power of the pen to say that with respect to federal funding we are going to put performance measures in place to try to ensure that the ways in which jurisdictions are spending the grant money we give them will give us better outcomes to help reduce racial disparities to help reduce mass incarceration I think mandatory minimums and sentencing guidelines are draconian I think especially in the federal system there has to be alternatives to incarceration I think that we have to have the GOP that teach life improvement skills and teach respect and discipline and educate these inmates so when they get back out into society they have at least a small chance to succeed to get a job to benefit their family those are probably some of the most important to me thank you let's see some hands you might want to get on this we'll start in the way back there we're some others I'm wondering do I need to start over? I was saying I write about felon voting and trying to get people to be to really connect with these stories when they don't really see the folks that I'm writing about are sympathetic I'm wondering what your thoughts are on how to generate empathy for folks not just for people who may be found to be innocent that get out of prison I think a lot of people connect with those folks but what about folks that actually have like you said pay their debt to society or trying to re-establish their lives how do you get them on board and then also getting society to understand that this really does affect the entire society and not just having a kind of us versus them mentality I'm wondering what your thoughts are on how to get people on board with that should I take that? please and Monica you too all of you so much of what we do when we talk about this issue we focus not only on the policy and advocacy but also on the messaging we spend a great deal of time with our communications people talking about how do we message on these issues because it is important to try to figure out how do you connect with the larger community on these issues and some of the things that we've come across number one the individuals who have actually been successful in reintegrating themselves into the community we've got to start using them as spokespeople people have to be able to see tangible evidence of success stories they can't just assume you know anecdotally that people are getting out of prison and they're becoming active engaging members of society we've got to have those people on the forefront and serve as spokespeople the other thing we have to do is continue to build bridges across the aisle and when I say the aisle I don't simply mean the political spectrum I mean in terms of the faith community in terms of the law enforcement community pull together these unlikely allies and have them engage on these issues I think that's going to be a great way to try and get more individuals engaged on these issues and thinking about these issues and becoming sympathetic to these issues finally the other thing that we try to do is we try to get people to look inward in terms of their own families and their own organizations their own churches everybody within our country has someone somewhere that they engage with who has had some sort of some kind of involvement with the criminal justice system if everyone starts to look at the people that they connect to the people whom they trust whom they value and start to see that yes I know individuals who have had these experiences and yet I see that they are active members of their community and they are contributing in a positive way I think that's also going to go a long way towards helping to change attitudes and mindsets I think about this a lot because it's sort of what I try to do in my work and I choose to do partly for this reason just to humanize them and what I try to think about doing is really showing sort of every single part of their life including the things that aren't so maybe don't seem perfect because I think one of the tendencies that a lot of people have is sort of just to expect perfection from people who especially those who have had especially those who are poor and it's like you've got to just live this super austere life and you've got to work really hard and never have any fun and it's just sort of not the way humans live and so I try to just show I just try to show people being really human and so when I picked Travis to profile part of the reason I did that is because he was actually really funny and really smart and I thought people would connect with that I don't know if it worked but he was he had done bad things in his past he was pretty open about it most of the worst things that he had ever done were really public but he it wasn't all he was and so I try to work on moving past the stereotypes but you know it's a really big challenge because people aren't necessarily going to connect with people that they've never met in real life and whose lives they can't imagine and so I think you have to make them imagine their lives Can we make empathy work or does it have to be a bottom line? I think the key is the message the key is educating the American public educating Congress because I can tell you there are things in the system I've been I've worked in this system for 30-35 years I put people in prison I put people in prison for a long time but these were bad people that did bad things tried to kill me killed friends of mine, partners I seized tons of cocaine and millions in drug proceeds from them but then I went to prison and I saw people with enormous sentences for first-time nonviolent offenses I met commercial fishermen that caught too many fish I met young men that enhanced their income in a mortgage application spending 18 months 2, 3 years in prison and there's lots of them if anybody told me before I went to prison you're going to go to prison and you're going to meet some really decent good people coming from where I came from I would have laughed in their face and I can tell you I met decent good men good family men they made a mistake good fathers they made a mistake and they are damaged forever and it's I think it's all about the messaging it's all about educating the American public these men, these people that come out of prison they're not monsters they're not animals and the problem is and this goes back to what Nicole said you know we put these people in prison without programs without the right life improvement skills the right education they are taught in prison without those things they're taught how to steal, lie, cheat, manipulate gamble and con and fight prison is a training ground for thuggery and criminality is that really what you want back in society it's not it shouldn't be we should be doing everything in our power to get them on the right track when they get out and I think if people could see them for what they are for what they really are if there was some educational I've got to give this one plug because I went to an event last week there is a young woman in New York by the name of Catherine Hoek who created this organization called DEFI and I went to one of her events last week where I watched a man who spent 21 years in prison he's been out for less than 6 months he gave a business a business presentation on a company that he's trying to promote and she took him through this process people have to look at programs like that where where they help these men get back on their feet and get back into society I can't say enough about that program and programs like that people have to look at those and the one thing I came away from walking out of that event was if you, anybody in this audience met that man in prison or before he went to prison you'd probably say he's an animal he's a monster, he's a bad guy but when I saw him standing up there giving this presentation and looking at him really trying to do what he was doing I came across with a different mindset and I think the American public would too if we've got to do something about educating the American public on what the system is what it does and how it impacts society thank you we just have a few more minutes let's ask in the back there Hello, thank you my name is Bonnie Newman Davis and I am a professor at North Carolina A&T State University my question deals with how realistic it is to sort of overcome some of the things we've been talking about today the question of race and the prison system is overwhelming first of all then there's the glamorization of incarceration that we see so much in the media economic engine I think that someone may have alluded to it I was surprised to see yesterday I passed by the courthouse here it's somewhere in the area and I saw nothing but dark people coming out of the courthouse in the case of many, many cities throughout the country and so I also wanted to find out how are some of the prisoners who are released how are they able to overcome some of the obstacles I personally know of someone who was released and seems to be back on his feet fairly quickly so a lot of questions big questions let me just say one thing on the glamorization of prison take it from me I've had people say to me you went to a minimum security camp it's a country club club fed, I've heard all that stuff I have housed some of the worst inmates in the world at Rikers I understand super max max, low, medium minimum security let me say this find the most prestigious hotel in Washington DC go there lock yourself in the bathroom for a year and tell me how prestigious it is tell me what a country club it is there's nothing like the deprivation of freedom nothing I don't give a damn what kind of institution you're in I don't care if it's a minimum security camp or a super max the deprivation of freedom is profound living like an animal is profound eating out of a microwave a tupperware dish you live basically like an animal nobody in this room would come close to living anything like you would live in the most minimum security camp which people call a country club I don't think it's a country club I don't think it's club fed it's prison and it turns people into monsters unfortunately that is going to be the last word thank you very much all of you for coming to join us thank you for being here and thank you we're done