constitutes a tax and there by removing the case. at 5 eastern a question on whether the laws on medicare are an intrusion on states. and later at 4:25 if the mandate is found unconstitutional can the rest of the law stay in fact. listen to all the arguments from this week on c-span or anytime at c span.org. í

he is joined by the film's producer sunday. >> one thing that they have done over the years is that they have told so many half truths and total lies. they have omitted a lot of information to the media and now if they were to sit down with me face to face i could show them with their own document and counter what they have been saying and they don't want to do that. >> more with jerry and rachel sunday night at 8 eastern on

c-span's q and a. last month virginia congressman bobby scott redu reintroduced a new statagy about gang violence and crime. thank you and good afternoon. 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 travelled across the country to be with us today. 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 and you do the adult time and mandatory minimums. although these policies sound appealing their impact ranges from negligible reaction to crime. these have led to the creation for what the experts have called the cradle to prison pipeline and reporting the subject the defense fund has identified various contributing factors including prauvty, a struggling education system. results of this pipeline are staggering. in its report the cdf has estimated that for black boys born in 2001 one in three have a

chance of going into prison during our lifetime if we don't make changes. 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 incarcrater by far with an average rate seven times the international average. this chart shows the average incarceration rate. the green bars show the incarceration rate of moech countries that you can name. 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 rate in the top ten states. now, the united states rate of over 700 per 100,000 is not only the highest in the world but it is also above that which the pew research center shows is counter productive. they calculate that any incarceration rate over 350 per 100,000 gives you diminishing returns. if you look at the chart you can see how far off based we are. other statistics indicate that the pipeline is also expensive. the cost for prisons have gone from about $9 billion in 1982 to over $65 billion this year. and the increase, the rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than the rate of increase for higher

education. 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, new training, nurse home visits, head start and other early childhood education programs, quality education, after school programs, summer recreation jobs 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. to save money on labs we should be focusing on not politics but works in order to keep people on the right track. one of the aspects that we have

found that is highly correlated with the incarceration is the dropout rate. this chart 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 get a job and not get in trouble. but by 200 with an information based high tech economy if you have dropped out of school the likelihood of you being employed today by the time you are 25 to 30 african american males is about 30%. about a third are out in the street and about a third are actually in jail today, not just probation, parole and that, behind bars today according to the study. and so once someone drops out of

school the trajectory they are on is a trajectory towards misery. we have introduced the youth promise act. it puts evidence based and cost effective programs into play at the community level. the act would mobilize community leaders by requiring the group to come together and form a committee consisting of anyone who has anything to do with getting in trouble. it is law enforcement and the school system, the health and mental health agencies, faith based communities, community organizations, after school programs like the boys and girls clubs, business community. everybody get together to decide what the problem is and what can be done on an evidence based -- with the evidence based strategies to reduce gang violence and youth violence. the community would then apply for a grant to implement the

policy. one of the interesting aspects of that is the people around the table also have to agree that as they save money 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 will just point out that if you just do the back arithmetic and look at a 2200 incarceration rate when 500 and above is counter productive and take the 1700 people that should not be in jail, their counter productive incarceration level and look at the amount of money times $30,000 you are spending. 30,000 children out of 100,000 people and do the back of the envelope arithmetic and you will notice that if you spent the money you are wasting on counter productive incarceration you could be spending $5,000 per

child every year with the wasted counter productive incarceration. ten states, you go through the same arithmetic and you find they are wasting about $10,000 per at risk child per year. so obviously we are spending the money now and it is question not of whether we can afford it but how we spend the money that we are spending. the youth promise act has gathered the support of over 250 national state and local organizations. many cities have passed resolutions endorsing it including los angeles, san francisco, santa fe, new mexico, new york, pittsburgh, pennsylvania and several 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 are working to gather

more support today. we have distinguished panelists today and before i recognize the panelists let me recognize a couple of people in the audience. judge bar net very active in drug prevention is with us and erin with the student peace alliance is in the audience. he has been very active in helping with the youth promise act. kaureen with the world vision has been very helpful. she is in the audience today, too. our first panelist is hill harper, an american film stage actor and author. he plays doctor sheldon on csi new york. he laz created a nonprofit organization manifest your destiny to -- he is a best

selling author and has written several books including letters to a young brother and letters to a young sister. he has graduated from brown university, earned a law degree from harvard law school and a master of public administration from john f kennedy school of government. after we hear from him we will hear from john, a human rights activest. he is cofounder of the enough project, an initiative to end genocide and crimes against humanity. he has worked for the clinton white house, the state department, two members of congress and many other organizations promoting peace and human rights. he has been a big brother as well as a youth counselor and basketball coach and a co author of ten books.

he coauthored unlikely brothers which with his first little brother in the big brothers program, michael madx. he is the coauthor of the unlikely brothers. he emerged from living in a homeless shelter as a child, dealing drugs as a teenager and then becoming a husband and father of five boys often working two jobs at once in order to support his family. he helps coach his sons on their football teams. we will hear from doctor catherine gallagher, the director of the college for policy at george mason university where she is the associate professor of criminology of law and society. her research focuses on improving the intersection between health care and justice systems to better address the needs of at risk populations and

public health in larger communities. she provides guidance to numerous federal agencies and holds a phd in behavioral and social science. we will hear from doctor leap, associate director of social welfare. she has worked internationally in violence post war settings with major focus on gangs and youth violence. she currently serves as senior policy adviser on gangs and youth violence for the los angeles county sheriff who is a strong supporter of the youth promise act and works in partnership with california wellness foundation and the advancement project. she is author of a new book, jumped in, what gangs taught me about violence, love and redemption. we have a copy of that book. then we'll hear from bobby kemper who is a former police

officer in new port news, virginia, founder of the national center for the prevention of community violence and best selling author of "no colors, 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 and certainly not least we will hear from frankie, a restorative justice activests. after spending 20 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit he has been exonerated and has dedicated himself to promoting juvenile and criminal justice reform. before we hear from our speakers we will hear from the former chairman and ranking member of

the judiciary committee, a gentleman from michigan who has a long career of advocating for justice, mr. john conniers. >> thank you chairman bobby scott. i would ask everyone to give you a round of applause. as a matter of fact, let's thank chairman bobby scott of virginia for all that he is doing. and with the tragic loss of one young man in our country, trayvon martin, which has electriified 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 safer. and on top of it it's cost

effective and it brings greater hope and justice for our youth. as chairman scott said we incarcrate more people than any other country on earth. it is way too many. i celebrate what we are doing here today. i close with this observation. hill harper was late coming to this forum. we 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. and now for equal time we recognize hill harper. >> thank you so much, chairman.

i was wearing my hoody and i got stopped on the way. so you know it's an honor to appear and speak on behalf of the youth promise act. 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 manifest your destiny foundation and we seek to service traditionally nrtd served youth across this country. and we hope to empower them, to give them access to college skills, training, academic programming and also pass along lessons i learned coming up out of the public school system and able to go to brown and harvard for grad school. i wouldn't be able to make that transition from ourpublic school systems to these great private institutions if it wasn't for

interventionist programs that served me and helped me overcome obstacles. i want to start with a letter r. you can probably see here it's a handwritten letter from a young man. a lot of different types of mail comes through my office. fan mail, folks want csi kind of paraphernalia, all kinds of things. this particular letter had a circuitous path to me. it didn't come directly to my office. this letter went on a very long path and finally found it way to me. i'm going to read a bit of it to sort of set the stage for my remarks. dear hill harper. 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 someplace in

new york and i hope and pray they fax these letter to you or give it to you some way because i really want to talk to you about a lot of stuff, hill. i just finished reading your book "letters to a young brother," it was the better book i read in my life. i would like to have your home address so we can correspond back and forth to each other. many young people don't have a role model. i didn't have one. that's why i'm in jail. the letter continues. i want to stop right there. hike you said in your book, many young people don't have role models. i didn't have one. that's why i'm in jail. the main focus of my foundation right now is to deal with the dropout crisis in america. as many of you know there's a direct correlation between the dropout rates and incarceration rates. if i was to offer a graph of increasing dropout rates in this

country and lay it over increasing incarceration rates those would look almost identical. it would seem to me if we take a smart approach and take a step back we'd say, let's deal with this dropout rate firsthand. to me the youth promise act represents that. as was mentioned earlier, the u.s. now has the highest average incarceration of any nation in the world. the slogan driven law enforcement such as three strikes you're out, do the adult crime, do the adult time, disproportionately falls on minorities, african-americans and hispanics. the dropout rate is driving the nation's increasing prison population. it's one of the nation's costliest problems. researchers at the center for labor market studies at north eastern found the collective cost to the nation over the working life of every high school dropout is $292,000 per

person. we lose tool 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 correction facilities which is critical because my foundation, we work in conjunction with many juvenile correction facilities. most of those facilities, unfortunately they focus on punishment rather than treatment and rehabilitation. and in a certain way what is sad is they foster environments that often harden our youth, thus making it more difficult for them to productively re-inter great 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, that we can deal with

the crisis, and there's overwhelming evidence to show that it is entirely possible to move children from a cradle to prison pipeline, to a 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 have been working with at&t and their aspire campaign where they've dedicated over a five-year period, $250 million. 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 regularly for at least one year are five times more likely to graduate.

46% less likely that are their peers to use illegal drugs. 52 less likely than peers to skip a day of school. without effective intervention, as many as 70% of children with incarcerated parents or care givers become involved in the criminal justice system. this letter came from a young man who is incarcerated. and i'm going to seek to close with finishing from where i left off. he wrote, you said in your book many young people don't have a role model. that's why i'm in jail. i have one now. his name is hill harper. i hope penguin give you this letter first class. if you do get it can you he's write me back. i read in your book that you play on csi: new york. i like that show and i also like csi: miami but i like your show

a little better. i read you went to harvard with barack obama, if you can please tell him i said hello. if i was at home i would have voted him president if i was older. i'm 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 read it on the 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, this young brian. tracked him down and 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 told me, he said, mr. harper, you sound like a very well-intentioned young man. i said, i want to change this

young man's life. he had the courage to write me this letter. it's a 16-year-old young man who's probably writing at a third or fourth grade level. you think about, did we fail brian, or did brian fail us? i didn't want to fail him. and the warden said, mr. harper, you're not going to be able to do much for this young brian. i said, i'm going to help him as soon as he gets out. he said, you must not understand something. you're going to be dead before brian ever gets out. i said, what do you mean? he said, he was tried as an adult. he committed a heinous crime. he's going nowhere. i won't be the harden anymore when he gets out and you won't be alive. that -- set me back in a way to realize there's so many brians and biannas out there. there's so many of them. and it's up to us to catch them before we actually lose them. to grab them before they're gone. before it's too late.

and 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, every briana 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. and the youth promise act represents a step in that direction. thank you. can i introduce the esteemed, ama amazing, the best number one freshman congress person -- >> in history. >> in history, of congress, my classmate from harvard, and

everyone talks about our president being an outstanding student. she was my classmate as well, and let me just tell you, she was better than both of us. she was smarter than both of us. and i can't necessarily speak -- she didn't get as good of grades as the president and myself but that's not because of her lack of intellect, it was more the fact that she was focused on so many things, you understand. congresswoman terry sue will. i love her. >>