distorted. [ laughter ] >> programs there's hope for you after all. my hometown of easton,

pennsylvania, nothing stood taller than the jail on the hill. every family had been touched by it. we all had tails of broken men in and out of lockout. black fathers, sons, uncles, perpetually absent from graduations, weddings, birthdays, funerals. i just assumed i would end up there, too. back in high school, my friends and i were already skilled in trading narcotics, breaking and entering. we were taking what we wanted from rich, white college boys, unconsciously stealing back what long ago had been taken from us. i always drove the getaway car. my best friend, tommy, rode shotgun. we were young and smart, rushing fast down roads leading us closer and closer to that ominous jail on the hill. then, i read james baldwin and i discovered that it didn't have to be that way.

baldwin's fiery words gave me courage to dream. i applied to college. i left easton for freedom. tommy stayed, spending his whole adult life going in and out of jail. when i heard tommy committed suicide, i decided to try to understand his journey through the prison system, to uncover the whole truth about the all-consuming, all-powerful all-american jail. the prodigal son, i climbed into my car and headed home. it felt right that i was not running away, that for the first time, i was driving full-speed towards the jailhouse on the hill. ♪

♪ ♪ >> this was my house, wow. this was the house i grew up in. so this corner here is where i would catch the school bus. on the first day i moved to this house, i was standing on the corner and the paper boy walked by and called me a nig -- i think it was the first time someone called me an n -- his mother said, don't do that, because those people will burn our house down.

>> like so many determined black women without resources, my mother cleaned the homes of well-to-do white women. she raised me with no help from my father, who had disowned us. i never felt i belonged. i wanted something more than i could see. i wanted to be somewhere far away from that jail on the hill. community college was the first step. then i got a scholarship to study journalism at nyu. the stories i reported propelled me to become an independent filmmaker. >> hello. look at your hair. >> i know. >> looks good. >> thank you. how you doing? >> i'm good. i'm good. >> back when tommy and i were hanging out, suzy was never far away.

tommy and his older sister were inseparable. she looked after him, protected him. she was devastated when he took his own life on his 52nd birthday. >> he's missed every day. that was my first phone call of the day. he would talk to me every morning. every morning. >> wow. >> knock on the door. >> getting jerica ready for school, talk to me on the way to the bus stop. >> where is tommy? >> he's over here. >> was he depressed? >> he would have bouts with depression. >> he would have bouts with easton police. >> tommy? yeah. he would drink and somebody would call the cops. he would drink and get loud. that drunk and disorder. the cops would come, spray him with mace and handcuff him and all this. now, he's resistant and they put him in the tank. they kept him one time, a year, two years, a year and a half. >> what? >> for nothing.

>> they didn't charge him with anything, held him for a year and a half? >> drunk and disorderly. >> it must do a job on your psychological state. in and out of prison so many times. >> tommy's sister's daughter lived with them. she was 15 years old when her father committed suicide. now, with tommy gone, jerica struggles to find a reason to go on. of all my friends growing up, tommy had the most discipline. >> he wasn't a thug. it didn't follow that he would be the one that ended up in so much trouble. that's the cruel catch of the

system. it only takes one time. and the more tommy went to jail, the more he started acting like a thug. tommy hung out in the west ward of easton. the west ward is home to the poor and black of easton. above the west ward is the juvenile detention center. and above that, at the very top of the hill is the jail. a beautiful, medieval castle, a receptical, carrying bodies from the east ward straight up to the hill. >> they have to change this around in here. we're locked down for hours. 23 hours with no [ bleep ] reason. we can't go to max block or

nothing. >> 24/7. you know what i'm saying? >> how many inmates are in this jail? >> currently, we have 746 inmates. you're here, it's a little tense, it's loud. the hair on the back of your neck stands up a little bit. you hear the housing not too far away getting rowdy. >> what's going on? >> there's a few individuals that are maybe having a verbal altercation right now. we have a few options. want to go check it out right now. we'll see what's going on. you know? if anything would happen to go -- we have a fight or anything, just make sure you step to the side. >> although i knew the statistics, seeing so many black men in cages made me furious. when did you get in here? >> i just got in today. >> today. >> but i'm obviously familiar with the system and how

sometimes corrupted it can be or how messed up, you know, it can be, for something so small, to be something so big and something so long -lasting, you know? >> tell me about the system. >> well, i mean, it just seems like everything that you do, no matter if you're a good guy, you know, it's inevitable to end up here. it's been such a long process. you know, just coming in and out and just being part of the system now, it's just like, you feel like you're never out. you know? >> any recent suicide attempts? >> no, ma'am. >> two years ago, codei got a dui. he spent five months in jail for driving under the influence. then, had to pay exorbitant court and jail feels. he missed one payment. and seven police officers broke down his door and arrested him.

>> the dui process for me has been two years. so, this is -- you can be a good person, you know? and it only takes one mistake for you to be in the system. and once you're in, you're in. >> cordei wants to leave and get a fresh start elsewhere. but he's trapped in easton, because of an unending procession of probation and court appearances. >> i could have easily ended up -- caught in the system. >> seriously. >> you know, like one in every three black men in america. >> man, it's quiet right now because i understand what you're saying. and that sucks for it to be like that. but i mean, this is the world we're living. and you would think after years and years after, you know, integration and, you know, being equal to the next guy, the guy next to you, it would change. but it doesn't. >> yeah. >> no. not at all.

>> cordei's story was a lot like tommy's. i know it would have been my story, too, if i didn't get out of easton. i got out, but my friends didn't. growing up, i was very aware of being different. long before i admitted the truth to myself, i bore the shame of homophobic bullying. i was called faggot in school all the time. my grandfather called me a sissy. as young as i was, i always knew no one in easton would ever accept this thing about me. my safety, my very survival, depended on how well i could hide my homosexuality from everyone, even tommy. when i packed up and left home,

it was in search of other people like me. in the 1980s, every closeted kid in every smalltown america, knew that guy people live and breathe in the openly queer pulse of new york city. when i left easton, i never looked back. the irony is, homosexuality may have saved my life. introducing e*trade personalized investments professionally managed portfolios customized to help meet your financial goals. you'll know what you're invested in and how it's performing. so you can spend more time floating about on your inflatable swan. [ding] starting now, everyone gets the plan they want. mom gets the unlimited she needs, dad gets the unlimited he needs, the kids get the unlimited they need. go mix and match! (scattered applause) wow. (man) yeah. sounds awesome. (vo) one family can now get different unlimited plans,

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[ screams ] ♪ [ laughs ] ♪ whoa, whoa, whoa. your one item would be the name your price tool? it helps people save on car insurance. why wouldn't it save me? why? what would you bring? a boat. huh. anif you've got a lifee. you gotta swiffer but, with more exercise and a change in diet, it can be reversed. i've tried exercising. it just makes me hungry. for bacon.

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we thank you, lord, for the resilience of the human spirit, for the resilience of this nation, that out of the ashes we rise. out of the dust -- >> church was always a big part of our life growing up. tommy played the drums in the band and i sang in the choir. my biological father was a deacon from another church. when my father and mother met they were both married to other people. they had an affair. my father chose not to acknowledge me as his son. i felt abandoned by him. after my mother left easton, i had no reason to go back. being there brings back all the demons i thought i left behind. after church, i had lunch with tommy's family. how many of you know someone who has been in jail? >> everybody. >> i've been in jail. >> i've been in jail. >> what? >> yeah.

>> wait a minute, you've been in jail? >> yeah. >> in the county jail? >> yeah. >> center. >> mass incarceration has become an septembaccepted part of life poor people and black people in america. it's so entrenched in our identity that we take it as the norm. its roots are buried deep in our troubled history. when slavery was abolished in america in 1865, the united states congress created the 13th amendment to the constitution, which essentially redefined the parameters of slavery. neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except for a punishment of a crime, whereof, being dually convicted should exist in the united states. this has allowed americans to enslave black people and poor

people for over 150 years. today, america has the highest incarceration rate in the world. our jails and prisons are mostly filled with poor people and people of color. i needed to see how this inhumane system worked. >> hey, paul. roger. >> hi, roger. >> how are you? >> nice to see you. paul wright, one of the most important advocates for prison reform has himself served time in prison. >> i spent 17 years in prison myself. i've known thousands of people over the years that have been in prison. i've yet to hear a person say, you know what, prison was really good for me and i fared very well. >> you spent 17 years incarcerated? >> i did. i was really surprised when i went to prison at basically the

brutalization and dehumanization prisoners are subjected to. one of the things i thought about then, in 1990, 27 years later i still believe, if americans knew what was happening in prisons and jails with their tax money in their name, they would demand reform and they would demand change. >> the united states has the highest incarceration rate in the world. since the 1980s, the rate has skyrocketed. how did we get to this point? >> you know, you get to mass incarceration not because of crime levels or crimes people are committing but criminalizing behavior and conduct. >> why is that? >> it took the united states from 1776 to 1990 to lock up its first million people. then the prison population doubled between 1990 and 2000. so, it took us ten years to lock up our second million. we have widening gaps of

inequality in this country. i view mass incarceration as a tool of social control. >> what are they controlling? >> poor people. the criminal justice system in this country, its only real function is to control and detain poor people. >> what's the threat of poor people? >> social change and political change. poor men of color particularly are the foot soldiers of revolution in the world and in this country they're viewed as a threat. >> our current incarceration crisis has its ugly roots in the unrest of the '60s and '70s. john ehrlichman, counsel to president nixon admitted that. the nixon white house had two enemies, the anti-war left and black people. we knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against war or black but by getting the public associate the hippies

with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. and so, that's what they did. >> it's a continuation of the deprivation of presentation of poor black people suffered in this country for the last five years. >> under president barack obama's administration with bipartisan support we had just begun to address the disproportionate number of poor black people behind bars. the numbers were starting to decline. and obama's attorney general, eric holder, made it his mission to reduce prison populations. >> i will restore law and order to our country. >> today, there is a new president in the white house. he has a very different idea in mind. >> when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you see them thrown in rough, i said, please

don't be too nice, like when you guys put somebody in the car and you're protecting their head, you know, the way you put your hand, like don't hit their head and they've just killed somebody, don't hit their head, i said, you can take the hand away, okay? >> donald trump has decided that mass incarceration is a good thing and we need to increase the number of people in prison and increase prison sentences and turn back the clock on prison reform. many in his own republican party disagree with him. but his attorney general, jeff sessions, a relic of the racially segregated jim crow era of the south is leading the charge to lock 'em up and throw away the key. >> today, i'm announcing that i sent a memo to each of our united states attorneys last night establishing a charging and sentencing policy for this department of justice. but it is important to note, unlike previous charging memoranda, i have given our

prosecutors discretion to avoid sentences that would result in an injustice. this is a key part of president trump's promise -- >> sessions has told federal prosecutors to ask for the most serious charges and harshest sentences against defendants. >> your opponents against mandatory minimums or tough sentencing say it disproportionately affects the minority communities but they most disproportionately impacted by drug traffickers in those communities. they're the victims ultimately is what we're trying to stop. tough on crime ultimately benefits the communities victimized by crime the most. >> what about reducing prison populations? is that an issue, as i know that was for holder? >> i think our issue is reducing

crime. i don't think we're trying to get to a result beyond that. i think that making sure that families throughout america are safe from the most violent and dangerous criminals, that is our number one priority. that's what we're focused on. >> what the department of justice fails to acknowledge is that studies have shown that prosecutors are 75% more likely to charge black defendants with offenses that carry mandatory minimums. though minority communities may be targeted, this does not justify the fact that following conviction, black defendants receive longer sentences for similar crimes. it makes me so angry he chooses not to acknowledge our criminal justice system overlooks the crime in white suburban communities. instead, he chooses to only highlight crimes in communities of color. these racially-informed micro

and macro aggressions only prove the prison systems is biased against minorities and even more biased against poor communities of color. (♪) i'm a four-year-old ring bearer with a bad habit of swallowing stuff. still won't eat my broccoli, though. and if you don't have the right overage, you could be paying for that pricey love band yourself. so get an allstate agent, and be better protected from mayhem. like me. can a ring bearer get a snack around here? sometimes a day at the ballpark is more than just a day at the ballpark. [park announcer] all military members stand and be recognized. sometimes fans cheer for those who wear a different uniform. no matter where or when you served, t-mobile stands ready to serve you. that's why we're providing half off family lines

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they're not paying attention, they don't care because it's happening to somebody else and often that person is a different skin color or ethnicity than they are and they just think, they did something wrong, all bets are off. i also think if you talk to people and say, should you be paying for all your life for one disorderly conduct, or should you be in jail off and on for several years for writing one bad check or not returning one blockbuster movie, nobody believes that. >> what's the motivation to keep the numbers up? >> here's the thing. there's not one person that controls the numbers, right? the path to jail is made up of decisions by lots of different people, most of the time not in coordination with each other. suddenly, the jail is full.

>> the bureaucracy of mass incarceration has grown into a monster of many heads. locking up large numbers of people began as a way to control black activists during the civil rights movements in the 1960s. in the 1980s, black behaviors were criminalized as the war on drugs focused on crack. by the 1990s, with widespread racist fear of super predators, there were so many people incarcerated, prisons became an industry. now, that industry has become so lucrative, so far reaching the moral issue is complicated by the financial issue. after the shooting of michael brown by a police officer in ferguson, the u.s. justice department investigated. they found the local government was using unnecessary fees and fines in order to extract large amounts of money from poor and black people. >> this investigation found a community where local authorities consistently

approached law enforcement not as a means for protecting public safety but as a way to generate revenue. >> it's not just ferguson. these are the same kind of court fees that got cordei thrown back in jail in easton. i have met many who simply cannot afford to get out. this modern day practice of punishing people for being poor is reminiscent of the inhumane debtor prisons of the past. >> can i ask what you're in for? >> i'm in for dui, my third, and i'm getting out in five days. i've served a year. a whole year. >> this time, it's for a second offense, dui. >> how about you? >> i'm here because i owe $545 to domestics, child support. my case is being closed but i lost my job before i could pay the last payment and i'm here for six months now. >> just backwards. crooked county, i think.

>> a crooked county? >> yep. northampton is all about their money. you owe them $5, you better give them $5. >> there's no help. how is she supposed to pay child support when she's in jail? >> yeah. >> it makes no sense. >> the reason i was on child support i went to get clean. i was a heroin addict. i was working. my living situation got messed up. i got kicked out. i had to quit my job and now here i am, over $545 an a case that will be closed as soon as i leave here. >> the cost of running the criminal justice system is also enormous for the rest of us. state governments pour money into it, spending 5% of their local budgets on correctional institutions. the federal government spends a whopping total of $265 billion a year, essentially paid for by

taxpayers. who is profiting from the billions of dollars being spent? and where does all that money go? one answer i hear a lot, private prisons. but the truth isn't what you might think. what is the percentage of private prisons in america? >> it's pretty small. basically, they're kind of stagnant at around 6% of the total american prison population. i think, too, this is confusing the symptom with the disease. and the private prisons are the symptom. mass incarceration is the disease. only the federal government drives mass incarceration. and the private prisons are feeding off of the process. profiting off the process but they're not driving it. >> so, who is driving it? taxpayers spend $265 billion a year on the criminal justice system. and still, the question remains, and still, the question remains, where does all that money go? hi or she, has ever seen.

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>> i'm the american director of the american jail association, the only organization worldwide, that we're aware of, that focuses exclusively on the men and women who operate and work in our nation's jails. right now, we're on the show floor of our conference. this is where vendors showcase their products and services used in jails, everything from clothing to food to medicine, security systems. if you run a jail, it's like running a city. >> tell me about these chairs. >> one of the manufacturers, norick, produces furniture for jails, for inmates, furniture like this, made of plastic, so -- >> you can wash it down. >> it can be easily maintained. no sharp edges, no way to take something apart and make a weapon out of it. it's a comfortable environment for an inmate.

we want to keep inmates comfortable. >> that's not what i thought. >> the private company is just one of many companies that profit from correctional institutions. last year, their revenue was an estimated $22 million, much of it from this industry. i'm starting to see why this $265 billion a year industry makes it so hard to change the system. >> basically the united states has done a good job of creating a self-perpetuating prisoner machine. one thing to look at is, their jobs depend on mass incarceration. sinclair lewis said it's hard to explain something to a man when his paycheck depends on him not understanding. >> to be fair, not just private companies. yearly $265 billion of our taxpayer money is spent keeping prisons and jails going. wages are $38 billion a year, healthcare costs, $12.3 billion and $2 billion on food.

as it is, with all profiteering factions of any bureaucracy, no one wants to lose their piece of the pie. >> when they call a prison an industrial complex -- >> i hate that term. >> why do you hate that term? >> don't look at it that way. we're not manufacturing automobiles. no one profits from it. jails don't have shareholders. we're not traded on wall street. >> the companies, some of them, maybe. the companies that are part of all of it. $265 billion a year in taxpayer spending means a sure profit for companies like securist, who charge hiked-up fees for prisoners to use phones to call their loved ones. ♪

>> for individual families, it's not uncommon for them to pay $500 a month. but you're talking about the most economically vulnerable families in our society. they're being weighted with the burden, not only of a loved one, who might have been the primary breadwinner. now, that breadwinner is gone and now that family is, in essence, being overly taxed. >> we're talking about a phone call? >> we're talking about a phone call. >> the fees inmates pay for everyday services are several times what we pay outside of prisons. and companies like securus continue to see their profits rise at the expense of poor and black inmates. >> there's a number of companies that profit from the poor that end up getting locked up. whether it be the telephone

companies that profit from telephone rates. the companies that manage financial flows to and from people in prison and their families. food service companies. there's a lot of money to be made in this industry. >> i'm also -- >> plus -- yes. this particular account, you have three mutual funds. we can look online and see what the mutual funds are invested in and see if they are involved in some way profiting from the prison system. so, i'm looking for corrections corp of america. and there it is. it seems crazy, doesn't it? >> it's so mind-boggling. >> it's very warped. it may be time to tell your financial adviser there's certain issues you would rather not be involved in. >> yeah. yeah. and to think that i'm an investor in that, unknowingly,

is even more disturbing for me. i keep going to people and saying, is this some giant conspiracy? they're like, no. everyone, it's the way things are done. from the profiteers to the d.a.s, to the judges, to the magistrates, everyone, to the ceos, they're just -- they're all part of a system that works. it's an industry. >> yes. though, if you look back, you know, 10 or 20 years ago or longer, i think it was almost -- they knew kind of how it was going to end up. right? and they didn't scale that back. i think there were concerted efforts to not do anything about what was happening. >> why do you think that is. institutional structural racism? that's the only explanation i can see. your digestive system has billions of bacteria, but life can throw them off balance.

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♪ when someone is convicted and moves from jail to federal or state prison, the government

now has legal access to them as a workforce. these prisoners work for almost nothing, making road signs, or mattresses or just about anything the government decides. the eastern correctional facility is one of the oldest in new york. here many are enrolled in a prison labor program where inmates work for far below minimum wage. some people see these programs as a good thing, training inmates for skills they can use when they're released. while others see it as modern day slavery. >> many of your speed limit signs, your stop signs, no u-turn signs, all the road signs you're seeing as you drive down the road on any typical journey, they make many of them right here. >> what do they get paid? >> the pay rate ranges from 15

cents an hour to 65 cents an hour. >> what's the motivation not paying them minimum wage? >> well, wage and inmate pay rate is set by regulation. but you have to understand, a minimum wage employee in the community, that's assuming that they're meeting all the financial demands of maintaining a household, family, and all the attendant fiscal responsibilities there. purchasing of groceries, housing costs, transportation costs, healthcare costs. for an inmate who's incarcerated in a correctional facility, those costs are not realized by >> for time spent within the penal system, inmates will accumulate fees averaging $13,600. their families suffer huge financial losses in lost wages. by the age of 48, a former

inmate will have earned $179,000 less than someone who has never been incarcerated. >> every time the prisoners have gone to court seeking to be paid for their labor, seeking to be compensated for their labor, the court's response is, you're slaves, you're slaves of the state. that's the exact words of court after court after court for the last 120 years. prisoners are slaves of the state and as such they're not entitled to any compensation at all. >> i read in prison legal news companies like victoria's secret and starbucks have used prison labor. paul wright exposed those stories. >> what percentage of prison labor is corporate america? >> it's actually pretty small. i think this may be bad for your story, but the reality is that there -- at any given time, there's around 5 to 6,000 prisoners employed by the

private sector in this country, you figure out of a workforce of 200 million people or 180 million people, that's not huge. >> but the truth is most prisoners aren't working for private companies, they work for the government. cheap labor keeps the prison system running. >> what are they doing? >> they're doing primarily what prisoners do, they run the prisons. so anything that prisoners -- anything that has to get done in a prison, unless it's security related, usually prisoners are doing it. they're doing plumbing, they're doing maintenance, they're doing custodial and janitorial services, cleaning and cooking food, anything that is needed prisoners do. the prisons save a fortune by making the prisoners run the prison? >> millions, tens of millions.

there is a ga over report that said it would cost congress tens of hundreds of millions of dollars each year to pay people for the work the prisoners did. we found the median wage in state prison was 20 cents and hour and in federal, 31 cents and hour. in many they don't pay anything at all. in texas, georgia, arkansas, alabama, they are not paid anything at all. in some places they're required to work under threat of disciplinary action. if they say, no, i'm not going to work, they can write you up for that, send you to solitary for that. >> that's like slavery. to work for free and put you in solitary if you don't work or write you up for not working, why is that not slavery?

in the prison labor debate we rarely hear from inmates. >> what do you say when people say they shouldn't have labor programs in prisons? >> i don't agree with that. i could be out there just walking the yard, be out there just angry. this is a buffer. this gives me an incentive to want to do the right thing, to do something different. the pay can be a lot better. >> i'm pretty sure someone is making money off of it. >> the prison industrial complex could not exist without inmates. the entire prison industry would collapse without large numbers of people to incarcerate. to keep this $265 billion a year industry in place there needs to be a pipeline to provide a

steady stream of new people. people who are dispensable. in the history of forced labor in america, those without power have often looked different from those in power. arresting those people who don't have power is the first step. when police officers put the handcuffs on a young black man, chances are, he has entered the door of no return. >> peter. roger. >> nice to meet you. >> nice to meet you. >> i get stopped all the time and when i get stopped the cop always says to me, the state trooper says to me, what do you do for living? i have to give my resume in order to like get out of the situation. >> yeah. >> so what do you think of that?

>> it sounds like racism to me. >> what role does race play when cops pull over someone like me? >> probably you were pulled over for a traffic violation. race plays a role. this is america. race always plays a role. there's research on it. there's probably less of a role in why you were pulled over. i'm not saying no role. it has probably much more of a role if they ask to search you. it's what happens after the stop is where you see a lot of racial disparity and bias in terms of who cops ask to search and who they don't. >> a recent study in san francisco found that blacks accounted for less than 15% of stops, but over 42% of

non-consensual searches. even the whites were more likely to carry contraband. >> but the way america is set up, yeah, if it's a white kid in a rich white suburb with a well-paid sympathetic police department that has to be more responsive to rich community concerns absolutely the treatment is different. policing is local. the courts are local. so all that matters. and so again, we're talking about systemic problems of income inequality, of segregation. those problems are very real. but it seems like we don't want to focus on that. back up again. is this adequate sunlight for a komodo dragon? -yeah. -sure, i want that discount on car insurance just for owning a home, but i'm not compromising. -you're taking a shower? -water pressure's crucial, scott! it's like they say -- location, location, koi pond. -they don't say that. it's like they say -- location, location, koi pond. is this at&t innovations? yeah, wow..this must be for one of our new unlimited wireless plans. it comes with a ton of entertainment options.

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once you are arrested you have to wait in jail until trial, unless you pay bail. tommy sister's susie said bail was a huge finance burden on their family. i understand more when i saw how bail works. the court sets bail, and if you pay it you get to go free until your trial. but the average bond amount is $55,000. that's more than a year's wages for most people. >> most states in this country have what's called a right to bail. that's been perverted in two

ways. the first is that money has become not just the primary but almost the only way that people can get out of jail. and so the number of people who are sitting in jails across the country because they can't afford bail is really, really depressing. what you can do is if a bail is set you can't afford is you can go to a bail bondsman. and the bail bondsman will front you the money. so say, a judge sets your bond at $50,000. you know. the average person doesn't have that kind of money lying around. they might, however, have $5,000 lying around. so if you can pay a bail bondsman 10% of your bail, they will front you the rest. almost every state has a bail bond industry. where if you go to a jail you may have seen this, everywhere you'll see neon lights, bail bonds, bail bonds, bail bonds. that's what they do. they'll go to the court, and when they -- when people's bail is set they'll front them the

money in exchange for a 10% fee. and what happens is these bail bondsmen form very powerful lobbying interests. and they will -- they will lobby at the state house. so anytime the issue of bail reform comes up you can be sure that the bail bond industry's lobbyists are there pushing to maintain the money bail system how it is. >> from 2002 to 2011 the bail lobby spent $3.1 million to influence lawmakers. it makes sense why the bail lobby wants to stop reform. arrested people pay over $1.4 billion a year to the bail industry. that's over a billion dollars annually become sucked out of mostly poor communities. >> i'm not so crazy as not to know that you've already figured out that if i can talk you into doing this bill my clients are going to make some money on the bond premiums. >> things do not have to be this way. in fact, the united states is the only country in the world besides the philippines that allows a for-profit bail industry. but arrest and bail is only the first step in the pipeline. once you've been arrested, a prosecutor steps in to decide whether to press charges. adam foss is a former prosecutor in boston and he's seen firsthand how black men get

sucked into the prison pipeline. adam knows that while prosecutors are often overlooked, they are actually the key to the problem of mass incarceration. >> the way i prosecuted cases for nine years in this community, if you ask anyone that lives in this neighborhood they would tell you that if anything it made it worse. and it's not because i'm evil or a bigot or not thinking about these things all the time. it's just that i was provided a set of tools when i walked in and that's all i got. and those tools were jail or no jail. where you end up often depends on the color of your skin. >> by a show of hands, how many of you by the age of 25 had

either acted up in school, went somewhere you're told specifically to stay out of, or drank alcohol before your legal age? all right. how many of you shoplifted, tried an illegal drug or got into a physical fight, yes, even with a sibling? now, how many of you ever spent one day in jail for any of those decisions? how many of you sitting here today think you are a danger to society or should be defined by those actions of youthful indiscretion? >> i don't think i have ever met anyone who can explain white privilege to privileged white people with as much charm as adam foss. >> i saw this system playing out that disproportionately affected people that look like us in a

really, really negative way. i actually got caught selling a lot of weed and i was doing it across state lines. so it was a federal crime, but i was caught by my father in my driveway. and i was adopted by white people. and because of who he was in terms of being a respected community member and a police officer, nothing happened to me as a result. i mean, i got a kick in the ass from my dad and we had a conversation about that. and you know, i was grounded or something. but i certainly didn't need to go to jail or prison. so i just feel like it's unfair that the privilege that i had in having a mentor like my father and having that safeguard from the bottomless pit of the criminal justice system is the difference between me sitting here and talking to you. i was adopted. it was a lottery ticket.

they could have literally been like no, we'll take this kid. but i won the lottery. i got to go home with them and be raised in their house, in their community, in their schools. college was never a question. despite the fact that neither of my parents had ever gone. i went to college. and that entire time i was messing up. i was doing things that these young people were doing. but because i had interventions at the time that were pro social and not punitive and shaming and awful, i got out of that and then i just grew up. it didn't happen when i was 19. it happened when i was 25, 26, 27 years old. went to law school. and here i am. we're all business, mostly. (vo) what if this didn't have to happen? we're all business, mostly. i didn't see it. (vo) what if we could go back? what if our car...

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>> adam introduced me to julien, a young man who's already had several run-ins with the law. he currently lives with his mom, who raised him alone. >> julien is dealing with a firearm case. he was caught in a car with a gun. they charged him and the other person that was in the car with the gun. >> the details of julien's arrest are typical in cases involving young black men. julien and a girlfriend were riding in his car when a police officer pulled him over. he accused julien of reckless driving. not thinking he had a choice, julien gave permission to search his car. julien says he didn't know the girl in his car was in possession of a gun. although she says it was his.

the d.a. charged julien with a felony, illegal possession of a firearm. >> that's how people end up right back in the same position. they think it helps. it doesn't help. the jail doesn't help me. i don't think it's fair. i think they look at you, they look at a person off his black and white. you see what i'm saying? i don't know. i can't even tell you, to be honest. it's like they don't -- they don't know better. people rock people all the time, this is what they do, this is what they know. nobody showed them a different path to get money or a different path to get this. you see what i'm saying? nobody gave them that different route. this is my route. this is all i know how to do. you see what i'm saying?

a person that works ain't going to go sell no drugs. but he's like hold on. you see what i'm saying? i'm not dealing drugs. i work. this is my lane. everybody finds their lane and that's what they -- i don't know. how to explain. >> if the felony sticks, the life he envisions for himself won't be possible. >> if he's convicted of the crime, he'll be going to jail for 18 months. it just doesn't smell like justice to me. >> julien faces some tough odds. in the 1990s, prosecutors began prosecuting felony charges at twice the rate they did before. young black men have a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison in their lifetime. to help young men like julien, adam travels all over the country trying to change the way prosecutors think about these cases. >> if we're going to reform this, everybody needs to do something a little different.

>> there are 2.2 million people in jail or prison. and despite making up only 14% of the population, african-americans make up almost half of that number. it's not because african-americans commit more crime and it's not because we're a bunch of bigots. it's because implicit bias rules our decision-making. we don't make decisions based on data and technology and things that are giving us a feedback loop. we make decisions based on our life experiences as individual prosecutors. we were learning so much from these -- >> when people think about mass incarceration, they think about jails and prisons being full of people and people sort of falling out of the windows and doors. and that is a definition of mass incarceration. but to me mass incarceration is also a question of proportionality. so in massachusetts we do very well in terms of the gross number of people in our prisons.

i think we're second in the country. but when you look at the racial disparity we are second for a different reason. we are almost the worst in the country. and to me that's a mass incarceration problem. therefore, we need to look at the people who have the ability to send people to prison. those are prosecutors. >> one visit to a homeless shelter, one visit to a treatment center, one visit to a domestic violence center, to understand that there are things out there we never learned in law school, we'll never learn in one of these trainings, that we have to go out and experience for ourselves, and it will make you a better prosecutor, make you happier at the end of the day. it's not going to make you unbiased. but at least it's going to give you more life experience. when that does rise up, you'll be able to combat it with a little bit of life experience that you've had. >> julien's mom is frightened for his future. julien had to wear a restrictive

ankle bracelet which makes it practically impossible for him to get a job. but the courts will only remove the ankle bracelet when jewel ran gets a job. he's trapped in an inhumane cycle that perpetuates his criminalization. it's almost impossible to get out. >> prison is a supply problem. if they don't have the supply, they can't run their business. and they have no way, no way of actually taking people from the street and putting them in the building. it requires the police. it requires prosecutors. it requires judges. and it requires probation officers. the police, prosecutors, judges and probation officers don't make a dime off of prisons. we have no incentive to send people to prison.

the reason we do is that's the tool that we were told will make us safer and make people better. but we don't profit off sending people to prison. so if we can change what happens down here, police should be trying to reduce crime in their neighborhoods. prosecutors should be trying to improve public safety in their neighborhoods using data and science we know works. probation officers should not be probation officers. they should be probation liaisons. they should be helping people stay out of jail. >> probation is another reason why so many people are in jail. probation officers used to be like social workers helping inmates make the transition to life on the outside. but over the last 20 years, they have become more like law enforcement officers. >> mass incarceration is a result of the war on drugs and sentencing laws. but it's really especially in the jail system. it's probation violations. there are so many people sitting in jail for probation violations

which a lot of the time are not new crimes. so when you go on probation, you have general rules you have to follow. let us know where you live, your phone number so we can contact you, get employment, get housing. none of those things if i don't do them are crimes. if i choose to not have a job, that's not a crime. if i choose to hang out with my friends, that's not a crime. if i choose not to get an education or to smoke weed, those aren't crimes. and yet as a prosecutor and as a probation officer if you do those things while you're on probation i can send you to jail. and that's a dirty little secret that we don't talk about, is how that functions. >> 76% of prisoners who are released are rearrested within five years. many for probation violations. >> another thing we don't talk about is you as a person on probation, you pay the government to be supervised. so it was $65 a month when i was a prosecutor. i think it's up to $90 at this point.

when you're a young black male who has no employment opportunities and you have kids and you have no education and you're caught selling drugs to make money, you go through all of this stuff, we make it harder for you to get a job, harder for you to get a house, harder for you to get financial aid, harder for you to get services, and then you have to pay for that. so what do you think is going to happen? how did we when we created this system think this will be a good way to keep people from committing crime? say goodbye to the one-size-fits-all family unlimited plan. starting now, everyone gets the plan they want, without paying for things they don't want. mom gets the unlimited she needs, dad gets the unlimited he needs, the kids get the unlimited they need. it's big news from verizon. (shoes squeaking) (scattered applause) wow. all this for us? yeah, and every other family in america. i think the kowalskis are next. (vo) one family, different unlimited plans. starting at $40 per line.

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instead of playing with dolls and having a normal little kid childhood like i wish everybody else could have, i used to have to hide beer and beg the cops not to take my dad. >> you would beg the cops not to take your dad? >> yeah. it was bad. the cops would take my dad, so i used to like cry so they didn't take my dad. because they took my dad me and my brother would -- i don't know how to explain it. it's like -- i don't know. it was bad.

>> how much time did tommy spend in jail? >> a lot. a lot. >> like every month? every couple months? >> it was more than every month. >> so the jail never got him any help or treatment. they would just throw him in jail. >> they would just throw him in jail. but wa they did was they put him in what they call a bubble up there. if they think you're suicidal. i guess they put you in a paper gown. and you're up there. and as other people in the prison are in there they can walk past and see you there. >> this is northampton? >> in northampton county. but he was in there for quite some time. they kept him medicated. he was so medicated that a lot of times he didn't know his name if you called it. but this went on for years. it went on literally for years. >> if tommy were alive it would break his heart to see what is

happening to his daughter jericka. she's missed so much school that she might have to drop out. the psychological trauma of jail isn't just shouldered by the person in prison. the families of the incarcerated bear much of it too. watching jericka weep for her father triggered a deep well of sorrow i shoulder as a black person living in america. the system exploited tommy. he might still be alive if the courts were designed to rehabilitate instead of criminalize. >> how much of your job when you were a police officer did you spend dealing with mental health issues? people with mental health issues. >> significant part. i mean, sometimes it's hard to tell, especially when it overlaps with alcohol and with drugs. but also just general family crises. i wish police didn't have to deal with people in mental crisis. yes, cops could and should be better trained in dealing with mental issues. but at some level i don't think that should be the officer's job. >> the idea that we have even equated mental health care and it's linked to mass incarceration is again another moral strike against us as supposedly civilized humane people. can you imagine a worse treatment program than jail?

>> the correlation between mental illness and incarceration is truly frightening. starting in the 1970s, the numbers for mental hospitalization plummeted while the incarceration rate of people with mental health issues skyrocketed. >> it shouldn't be the responsibility of justice system actors anyway to be the primary, the first responder for people with mental illness, for people who are self-medicating with alcohol or drugs. because of depression or trauma or all this kind of stuff. it shouldn't be the criminal justice system. but that's what we've got. so a lot of the work around reform is how do we make that system better at spotting those folks and finding alternatives to get them out. >> there are good people inside of the jail system. i know that seems like an oxymoron to some people. there are individuals that are in bad situations. >> one of my best friends from high school tommy, tommy spent his whole life in and out of the county jail. he never got any treatment. i didn't understand how that could happen. i wonder how many other tommys there are. >> you're right. there's a lot of tommys there are. they should not be spending time inside our institutions. they need to be in hospitals where help can be provided. we're de facto mental health institutions now. that in itself is troubling. i can say that when i first came into this system, this jail

system about 1995 i was an individual that thought people used the mental health claim to try to get off their cases and different things of that nature. i had an opportunity to interact with some individuals. and the mental illness is real. mental illness is real and it's a real problem inside of our jails. in miami-dade, 62% are classified with some type of mental illness. so if we figure out a way to treat that issue or divert them into the proper resources in the community, then our numbers go down and we can better service those inmates that are inside our system for something other than that. >> that's a massive number. i had no idea. >> jails serve a need because there are ills in our community. there are some bad people out there. i get that. not everyone needs to be in jail. jail should be the last stop for an individual who we have exhausted all means as a

society. if you look at it from dollars and cents, would you prefer to pay a jail system $200 a day to house this person and then return them back to you within a matter of days sometimes or would you prefer to spend your money on a diversionary program or mental health scenario where they can get the treatment and never end up in the street again? >> so it's costing us money. >> it's costing you money. i would argue it cost you more money to house the wrong person inside of a jail system than to get that same individual treatment. >> it's kind of like -- you must have the only job where if you're -- if you're out of -- if you guys are out of work it's probably a good thing for society. >> absolutely. >> isn't that kind of weird? >> that'll be a pink slip i'll gladly accept.

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the judge is the one that administers the final push in the incarceration pipeline. >> i don't want to take john's job away, but what would

american jails look like if our intent were rehabilitation? >> incarceration is sort of embedded in our society. about sort of how we treat people. what, you know, a judge who's running for an election has to say when he's on the stump. right? and changing those is really hard. >> the worst of the worst. rapists, murderers, let off easily. >> being weak on criminals is dangerous. >> phil o'neill expresses sympathy for rapists. >> it's no secret that being tough on crime looks good at election time for a judge. a recent study found the more tv election ads there are, the more likely judges are to rule against criminal defendants. >> at this point i have been

locked up ten years in january. and i'm struggling right now with like accountability. i'm accountable for what i did. right? but at this point i'm not the savage that i was when i took this young man's life. right? i'm educated. i'm civilized. i'm dignified. and at this point the sentence is having like a reverse effect. >> adam often meets way group of inmates. most of them have life sentences for murder. >> so a lot of the films i've seen about prison and people i've worked with who do prison stuff, they'll find the one really compassionate story about, you know, somebody who's been wrongfully accused and has

spent all this time in prison and was exonerated or they'll find the person who's doing 30 years for a bag of weed, and those are great stories for the conversation because it sort of gets people thinking like this is crazy that our system operates like this. but they're such a small fraction. and we have to expand the conversation to people who did the most violent thing that you can in the course of a two-second decision when it was really it's me or you and they killed someone but sitting with those men in that room the other day i would challenge you to find me one person that you would label as a violent person. >> when i went away as a kid, juvenile, it taught me nothing. it taught me more about the game and made me resent the system as a whole. i learned more doing the streets and gave me more of a drive to do in the streets in dys than i

ever did in the streets. going into counties, fighting day and night, spending time in the hole only made me colder. it didn't make me no better. sentence me more and more treatment as if i meant nothing made me feel like no one meant nothing. it made me even colder. having to lose brothers, relatives while locked up never helped me. it took my father and my uncles and left the streets as my father then taught me the way of prison life. that you take no sorts, that you ride, that you fight. that you trust no one and nobody. it's a truly anti-social world. >> i myself was out in the street corners because i was looking for something i didn't get at home.

my mother is a single parent. she tried her best, but in order to put food in our stomach and clothes on us, she worked hard. so she didn't have the time to give us the emotional support that i was seeking. i was fortunate i would say to speak to some federal prosecutors and d.a.s, and after hearing some of our stories that are very similar they said i wish i would have known this before, before sending so many people to prison. right? and to me when that was stated, i believe it was by a federal prosecutor, i was a little bothered by that. i was bothered because of the fact they were ignorant to who the people were that were sentenced. they just looked at them as an inmate, which i hate. i hate that word. i cringe using that word because i feel like we are people. we are a person. we are just incarcerated. >> the names that they use, killer, gang banger, drug dealer, monster, nigger, i have to believe that people create these names and make them so offensive and so hard because they cannot accept the fact that sitting in this room are artists and poets and doctors and teachers and fathers and

brothers and uncles and mentors. they deal with their feelings by hating you, by prejudging you and by labeling you. and it's really, really easy to do that when we stick you as far away from your community as possible, behind walls that we can't see over and neither can you. >> well, i'm very sort of shaken by everything that i have heard you guys talk about. you know, i live this very sort of -- i never think about the world i left behind. and i'm very disconnected with where i came from with my family. i'm disconnected. the community, i'm disconnected. and somehow you all -- the stories are connecting me back to that and i see this sort of cycle. i see the same story without father figures, without role models, without the same story. and it just doesn't seem to stop. >> i've been with them for five years now.

and i've seen what prison has done to them over the course of that five years. i mean, they have grown. they have become men. they have really atoned through this justice process. but you can see the effects of prison. that's been five years. those guys have another 50 to 60 to go. of that routine every day, not seeing any other part of the world, not seeing any other human being than the men you're by. not being intimate with a female, not having the feeling of getting a job and making a paycheck and buying something. not having the feeling of actually being remorseful and actually doing something to pay back what they've done. >> i was in prison because i shot and killed a drug dealer

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driver's license and financial aid, to get public welfare. and the idea behind that was it would deter people from committing crime, but the consequence of it has been people who were touched by the criminal justice system come out in a way worse position. so they go back to committing crime. >> if julien goes to jail, it will cost taxpayers $30,000 every year he's incarcerated. >> me talking to adam, that's big for me. because i don't have people that i can just go talk to like that. you know what i'm saying? i see adam as a big brother. you know what i'm saying? he got that. he's trying to guide me. he's trying to put me on the right path.

he's trying to do something a big bro would do. >> most of the people caught up in the criminal justice system aren't the hardened criminals we imagine. too many are kids who just did something stupid like tommy or i did in high school. the puppeteers of the system would prefer that we see these kids as super predators, thugs or animals to be caged. >> thank you for having me. >> i have some misgivings about government's effectiveness and wisdom, but government doesn't get everything wrong. every now and again it will get something right. one thing it did get right is it adopted policies in the late '80s. reagan, bush, president clinton was a big part of this. during the clinton years we hired many more police. when you have many more police criminals going to be more careful about what they do. we have had more aggressive, proactive and computer-driven strategies reining in the discretion of judges and more generally increasing the use of

incarceration. and it worked. my opponents will frequently point out, and they're right about this, there are many more people in prison now than there were during the '60s and '70s. there are about 2.2 million people in prison. what they point out frequently is we've gotten something for that. it's not a mistake. it's not just a happenstance that we have so much less crime now than we did in the early 1990s. >> why do you think america -- i'm trying to understand why america has the largest incarceration rate in the world. why do you think that is? >> it's the crime rate. that's what -- the crime rate affects us all.

326 million americans. if you want to avoid incarceration, it's actually easy to do so. and you don't have to be a lawyer and you only have to know four things to avoid incarceration. don't steal stuff, don't cheat people out of their property, stay away from drugs, and resolve your disputes without violence. if people follow those four rules, the prison population in this country will shrink to nothing. >> and what about the opponents who say when you lock someone up, especially someone young, you basically create a criminal, a harsher criminal, let's say? >> what i would say to them is if it were true that being in prison tends to make a person a criminal, then as we had more and more people in prison and then they get released after five or ten or twelve years, we would have more criminals and more crime. but exactly the opposite happened. as we put more people, as the prison population increased over the last 25 years, we've had less and less crime.

>> what role does race play in the mass incarceration system? because there's -- what is it? 1 in 3 black men. why is it sort of unbalanced? >> there is a disproportionate -- it's true that blacks are disproportionately represented in the prison population. they're about 12% or 13% of the overall population in the country and i think from 36% to 40% of the prison population. but that is -- i don't believe that is because america is a racist cauldron. there are still racists. anyone who denies there is not racism is not well connected. but i don't think it's racism. i think it's the commission of crime. >> so why are black people committing more crime? >> what is needed is the right parenting to teach the right values. i haven't met you before today, but i would bet a good chunk of

change you didn't become a successful person, an independent filmmaker, because your parents just let you run wild and didn't care about checking your homework. >> you know, i had a single mother. i shoplifted. for a while i actually sold pot. i'd gotten -- i thought -- and i was always fearful, you know, that i would end up in the system because the statistics were, you know, against me. and all of my friends were in the system. and i wonder if i had gotten caught selling pot or shoplifting if my life would have been very different. >> you avoid crime and you avoid scrapes with the police because your parents teach you to respect other people, to respect their right to be safe and to resolve your disputes without violence. and if you want money, go earn it. get a summer job. when you grow up that way, the chances of you winding up and

having an unfortunate interaction with the criminal justice system are extremely low. >> bill otis's ideas are very popular with the trump administration. i'm terrified of what the criminal justice system will look like after this administration is done. i think it is imperative that people in power hear stories like tommy's or kordei's or any of the men in the restorative justice program. >> i think that there's a huge disconnect between the political ruling class in this country and the ordinary americans on criminal justice reform. >> what is the jail for? come to a decision and then say all right, let's look who we've actually caught in that jail. and if those don't match up, how do we get those people out? so there are a whole bunch of things that can be done at each of these decision points. that can change the face of

jail. >> there's this law of diminishing returns with incarceration. and people have studied this. where up to a certain point incarceration deters crime and then after that point it either doesn't deter any further crime or in fact it causes more crime. >> the system of mass incarceration is morally abhorrent. it's also futile. and it contributes to huge structural problems in our economy. so at the end of the day over a longer term period investors will not profit from this.

and so, it is up to investors to try to change it. a lot of the feedback, i've gotten you will never reform the system because it rubs on money. and the sad irony is that the people who are making money off prisons are the people who are making money off of prisons. it's not the other actors in the system who go to work every day, to fundamentally do a good thing. police aren't going to work every day and being like i want to kill black people. they go into a system that was handed to them that has been used to capture and kill black people since its existence. i and my colleagues didn't go to work and say i'm going to lock up a bunch of black people and get as many convictions as possible. we walked into a system that was set up to achieve that goal. that has really bad metrics. we don't really -- we're not valued for anything else than winning. and then you have this other end of the system which is only designed to make money off of holding bodies. and the bodies that are expendable and the black and brown ones. people care less.

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the prosecutor made the decision to dismiss julien's case today. it's like winning a battle, and the war is still being waged. >> julien's celebration is short lived. soon after they reopened the case against him as a misdemeanor. his future remains uncertain because young men like him are still targeted by the police. it's no wonder that julien is angry at the process. the system is stacked against him. the next time a police officer pulls him over, adam might not

be there to save him. >> it's just really sad to me, the amount of effort that it took for this one young person when i know that it's happening to thousands of people around the country. it's a bittersweet victory. the likelihood he gets employment, because that is not on his record goes up, which means the likelihood he stays out of trouble will go up because one of the number one factors that we've seen as experts in criminal justice reform is that employment really keeps people out of the justice system. julien is under a much brighter sky right now, he just needs to understand that it can fall down at any second. >> i keep coming back to the jail on the hill. 30 years apart, julien, tommy and i all inherited the same legacy, poor, black, young in a racially hostile country. one of us escaped, the other remains trapped, yet another took his own life. it breaks my heart to know that all over america countless black people, countless poor people, without the power to decide their own fate, are cuffed and carted up a hill to be disappeared from public view.

>> i keep coming back to the jail on the hill. 30 years apart, julian, tommy and i all inherited the same legacy, poor, black, young in a racially hostile country, one escaped and one remains trapped and another took his own life. it breaks my heart to know all over america, countless black people and countless poor people, out the power to decide their own fate are cuffed and carted up a hill to be disappeared from public view. inside, they are stripped of their dignity and denied their humanity. the cumulative cost is enormous. in lost dollars, in lost opportunity, and lost lives. if we allow this cruelty to take place away from our gaze, we compromise our humanity. if we're able to look at it as it is happening and do nothing, we become inhuman. we cannot turn away from what we

have done.

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