coming up on c-span 3, congressman bobby scott seeking

to reduce youth violence. then a committee hearing on u.s. trade with russia. after that, treasury secretary timothy geithner speaking at the economic club of new york. and later, former national security advisors talking about the middle east. in march of 1979, c-span began televising the u.s. house of representatives to households nationwide. today our content of politics and public affairs and american history is available on tv, radio, and online. >> we're talking now about the supreme court. but they are the ones that changed this country inevitably with the march towards progress. the march towards knock down the walls of discrimination. that permitted us to pass a 1964 civil right action public accommodations so people whose skin was not white could go into

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virginia congressman bobby scott has introduced a bill called the promise act. mr. scott posted a discussion today about the legislation. among the speakers, actor hill harper of csi new york. >> thank you and good afternoon and thank you for joining us this afternoon for an important briefing on critical youth violence prevention legislation, the youth promise act. several of our panelists have come from across the country to be with us today. we're grateful for their support for this legislation. when it comes to crime policy, we have a choice. we can reduce crime or we can

play politics. for far too long, congress has chosen to play politics by enacting tough on crime slogans such as three strikes and you're out, you do the adult crime, you do the adult time and things like that. although the policies sound appealing, their impact ranges from reduction to crime to increasing the crime rate. these slogan-based policies have lead to the creation of what the experts at the children's defense fund have called the kr cradle to prison pipeline and reported the subject has identified various contributing factors to the pipeline including poverty, a struggling education system, and an unresponsive punty juvenile justice system. the results of this pipeline are staggering. in its report, it's estimated for black boys born in 2001, one in three have a chance of going

into prison during their lifetime if we don't make any changes. while white boys have a 1 in 17 chance. a national prison statistics also reflect the pipeline's construction since 1970 the number of individuals incarcerated in the united states has risen from approximately 300,000 to over 2 million. that makes the united states the world's leading incars rart by far with an average incarceration rate seven times the international average. this chart -- this chart shows the average incarceration rate. the green bars shows most countries you can name. the purple -- the first reddish bar is the united states' average and the purple bar is the 2,200 is the average african-american incarceration

rate and the top bar, almost 4,000, the african-american incarceration in the top ten states. now the united states rate at over 700 per 100,000 is not only the highest in the world, but it's also above that which a few research centers show is counter productive. any rate over 350 per 100,000 gives you diminishing returns and anything over 500 becomes counterproductive. you can see how far off base we are. other statistics indicate the pipeline is expensive. the cost for prisons have gone from $9 billion in 1982 to over $65 billion this year and the rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than the rate of increase for higher education. now evidence is clear that if we

want to reduce crime, we need to invest in research-based programs for at-risk youth. programs such as teen pregnancy prevention, prenatal care, nurse home visits, head start, and other early childhood education programs, quality education, after school programs, summer recreation and jobs, access to college, job training, all of them work effectively to get young people on the right track and keep them on the right track. by doing so, we save more money than we spend. we also need to invest in research-based effective interventions for young people already caught up in the cycle of delinquency. we should be focusing not on playing politics, but what actually works in order to get young people on the right track and keep them on the right track. one of the the aspects that we have found that is high ly

highly correlated is the dropout rate. this is a chart for african-american males 25-30. green is high school graduates. reddish is high school dropout. you can see a significant change between 1970 and 2000. 1970 you can drop out of school and go get a job and not get in trouble. but by 2000 with an information-based high-tech economy, if you drop out of school shs the likelihood of you being employed today by the time you're 25-30, it's about 30%. about a third are out in the street and a third are actually in jail today. not just probation and parole, but behind bars today. so once someone drops out of school, the trajectory they are on is a trajectory towards

misery. that's why i introduced this act. it puts programs into play at the community level. the act would mobilize community leaders by requiring the community to come together and form a committee consisting of everyone who has anything to do with young people getting in trouble. it's obviously law enforcement, but it's also the school system, the health and mental health agencies, social services, community organizations, after school programs like the boys and girls clubs. and business community. everybody get together to decide what the problem is and what can be done on an evidence-based strategy to reduce gang violence and youth violence. the community would then apply for a grant to implement that policy.

one of the interesting aspects of that is the people around the table also have to agree that as they save money as they will, they will reinvest the money to make sure that the programs can continue after the initial grant. the one question occurs is whether we can afford all of these programs and we would just point out that if you just do the arithmetic and look at a 2,200 incarceration rate, and take those 1,700 people that should not be in jail, and look at the amount of money about $30,000 you're spending. out of 100,000 people and do the math and you will notice that if you spent the money you're waste ing on kousht productive incarceration, you could be spending $5,000 per child every

year with the wasted counterproductive incarceration. ten states, you go through that same math and you find they are wasting $10,000 per at risk child per year. so obviously, we're spending the money now and it's a question not whether we can afford it, but how we spend the money that we're spending. youth promise act in the last few years has gathered the support of over 250 national, state, and local organizations. many cities have passed resolutions endorsing it including los angeles and san francisco and santa fe and new york and east cleveland, pittsburgh, and several e cities in virginia. the u.s. conference of mayors at the 77th annual meeting in 2009 adopted a resolution urging the passage of the youth promise act and we're working to gather even more support today. but we have distinguished

panelists today. and before i recognize the panelists, let me recognize just a couple people in the audience. judge barnett, who is a refitir judge in washington, d.c., is with us. and aaron boldman has been active in helping with the youth promise act. and kareen delaport has also been helpful. she's in the audience today too. the first panelist is hill harper, an american actor and author. he plays on the drama series "csi new york." he's created a nonprofit organization manifest to provide at risk teens opportunities for empowerment in excellence and he's a best-selling author and

has written several books including "letters to a young brother". he's graduated from brown university, earned a law degree from harvard law school. after we hear from him, we will hear from john pendergrass, an author who worked for peace in africa for over 25 years. he's cofounder of the enough project, an efficientive to end crimes against humanity. he's worked for the clinton white house, the state department, two members of congress, and many other organizations promoting peace and human rights. he's been a big brother for over 25 years as well as the youth counselor and basketball coach and he is the co-author of ten boo

books. his first little brother is also on our panel today. michael maddox is the coauthor of the unlikely brothers with john pendergrass. he emerged from living in a homeless shelter and dealing drugs as a teen and becoming a husband and father of five boys, often working two jobs at once in order to support his family. he also helps coach his sons on their football teams. we'll then hear from dr. katherine gallagher, the director of the cochran collaboration college for policy where she's the associate professor of criminology in law and society. her research focuses on improving the intersection between health care and justice systems to better address the needs of adverse populations in public health in larger

communities. she also provides guidance to numerous federal agencies. then we'll hear from dr. georgia leap from ucla. she's worked nationally and internationally in violence post war settings with major focus on gangs and youth violence. she currently serves as a senior policy advisor on gangs and youth violence for the los angeles county sheriff. she works in partnership with california wellness foundation, california endowment, and the advancement project. she's author of a new book. and we have a copy of that book. then we'll hear from bobby kuemper, who is a former police officer in new port, virginia.

best-selling author of "100 ways to stop gangs from taking away our communities." he is also a consultant for universities in our area and for the virginia department of justice. and last, certainly not least, we'll hear from frank i can korillo. after spending 20 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit, he has been exonerated and now dedicated himself to promoting juvenile and criminal justice reform. and before we hear from our speakers, we're going to hear from the former chairman and now ranking member of the judiciary committee, gentleman from

michigan who has a long career of advocating for justice, mr. john conyers. >> thank you, chairman bobby scott. i would ask everyone to give you a round of applause. as a matter of fact, this is a forum. let's thank chairman bobby scott of virginia for all that he's doing. and with the tragic of one young man in our country, trayvon martin, which has electrified the nation, here comes chairman bobby scott with a forum on the youth promise act. that's worth another round of applause because it's right on time. and what this bill does is it makes us safe and on top of it its cost effective and it brings

greater hope and justice for our youth. as chairman scott said, we incarcerate more people than any other country on earth. and it's way too many and i celebrate what we're doing here today. i close with this observation. hill harper was late coming to this forum. and attorneys bobby vasser and i were trying to determine whether we should issue a warrant or a subpoena to bring him here one way or the other. i'm glad we don't have to do that now. and i thank you, chairman scott. >> thank you, mr. conyers. now for equal time, we recognize hill harper. >> thank you, chairman. i was wearing my hoody and i got

stopped on the way. you know, it's an honor to appear and speak on behalf of the youth promise act. when we talk about educational opportunities, mentoring, intervention, and all types of wrap around services for our youth, i'm the founder of a foundation called the man nest your des in addition. we seek to serve underprivileged youth in this country. we hope to empower them to give them access to college skills, academic programming, and also pass along lessons i learned coming out of the public school system and be able to go on, as the chairman said, to brown and harvard for grad school. i wouldn't have been able to make that transition if it wasn't for interventionist programs that served me and

helped me overcome certain obstacles that i came across. i want to really start my remarks with a letter i received recently. you can see it's a handwritten letter from a young man. i get a lot of different types of mail coming to my office. it's fan mail. all sorts of things. but this it particular letter had a verier is cue tis path to me. this young man didn't have access to finding out where my office was. so this letter went on a very long path and finally found its way to me. i'm going to just read a bit of it to sort of set the stage for my remarks. >> my name is brian. i'm 16 years old, and i'm in jail. i can't use a computer, so i can't e-mail you. i wrote these to some place in new york, and i hope and pray

they get it to you. i really want to talk to you about a lot of stuff here. i just finished reading your book. it was the best book i ever read in my life. i would like to have your home address to correspond back and forth to each other. many young people don't have a role model. i did i-didn't have one. that's why i'm in jail. the letter continues, but i want to stop right there. like you said in your book, many young people don't have role models. i didn't have one and that's why i'm in jail. as many of you know, there's a direct correlation between the drop out rates and incarceration rates. if i was to offer up a graph of our increasing drop out rates and lay it over the incarceration rates, those

graphs would almost look identical. since we can literally identify, then it would seem to me if we take a step back, we could say let's deal with this drop out crisis firsthand. and to me, the youth promise act represents that. as was mentioned earlier, the u.s. has the highest incarceration rate in the world. the focus of the slogan-driven sayings falls on minorities and african-americans. the drop out rate is driving the nation's increasing prison population. it's one of the country's costliest problems. researchers found the collective cost of the nation over the working life of every high school dropout is $292,000 per person. we lose too many of our youth to

a lifetime cycle of incarceration way too early. to me, the youth promise act directly addresses these root causes. the promise model intervenes in the lives of our youth before they end up in the juvenile correctional facilities, which is critical because my foundation, we work in conjunction with many facilities. most of those facilities unfortunately, they focus on punishment rather than treatment and rehabilitation. and in a certain way and what's sad is they foster environments that often harden our youth. thus making it more difficult for them to productively reintegrate into their families and communities in a healthy way. in a way, this crisis that we're talking about can be called a pipeline from the cradle to the prison. my work with my foundation and other organizations has proven to me that we can solve this problem. we can deal with the crisis.

there's overwhelming evidence to show that it is entirely possible to move the pipeline to cradle to college jobs pipeline. but to deal with this crisis like any other crisis, we need all hands on deck. and what does that mean? it means, number one, foundations and nonprofits like mine working in conjunction with private entities. corporations. recently, my foundation has been working with at&t. they dedicated $250 million over a five-year period. corporations are willing and open to help, like at&t, if we come at them with something that's provable. research has shown that youth who spend time with a caring adult mentor for at least one year are five times more likely to graduate. 46% less likely than their peers to start using illegal drugs.

52% less likely to skip a day of school. without effective intervention, 70% of children with incarcer e incarcerated parents become involved in the criminal justice system. this letter came from a young man who was incarcerated. i want to seek to close with finishing from where i left off. he wrote, you said in your book many people don't have a role model. but i have one now. his name is hill harper. i hope they give you this letter first class. if you do get it, can you please write me back. i read your book that it you play on "csi new york." i also read you went to harvard

with barack obama. if you could please tell him i said hello. i'm only 16, and i'll tell you why i'm in jail and how much time i have left if you write me back or even if you get my letter, which i hope you do. that's everything for now. hope you write back. your friend and brother, brian. when i got this letter, i actually read it on a plane. and i got kind of choked up and i decided by the time i was going to land, i was going to do something for this young man. i found him. and i decided i was going to use the weight of my foundation to intervene in his life. i was going to do whatever it took to make a difference. and as i spoke to his warden, his warden said, mr. harper, you sound like a well-intentioned young man. i said i want to change this young man's life. if you listen to the way it's

written, you realize it's a 16-year-old young man who is probably writing at a third or fourth grade level. it it makes me think did we fail brian or did brian fail us? the warden said you're not going to be able to do much. he said you must not understand something. he said you're going to be dead before brian ever gets out. he said he was tried as an adult. he committed a heinous crime and he's going nowhere. i won't be the warden and you won't be alive. that set me back in a way to realize there's so many brians out there. there's so many of them. it's up to us to catch them before we actually lose them. to grab them before they are gone. before it's too late.

so i celebrate the youth promise act in that regard because it seeks to do those things. and i promise that i will not stop fighting. that my foundation won't stop fighting to grab every brian out there before it's too late. so i appreciate the work that's being done so far, but we have so much more to do. the the youth promise act represents a step in that direction. thank you. >> can i introduce the esteemed, amazing, the best number one freshman congressperson in history of congress, my classmate from harvard, and everyone talks about