there are three key points that as law enforcement leaders, we should focus upon. real time information for officers responding to in progress calls community relationships and officer wellness. with a proliferation of cell phones, information is moving at lightning speed. the effect is that officers are arriving on scene much quicker while the offense is in progress. while this increases the chances of apprehension it also places officers in increasingly dangerous situations. to enhance officer safety, we must put information in our officer's hands at comparative speeds. we've been able to do this at the tampa police department through a software solution we helped develop. it provides officers with real time data on suspects, zone activities, hot spots alerts and bulletins without delay. we also monitor social media for information that may assist responding officers in staying safe as they come upon scenes. with that in mind, i would make

two recommendations. there should be a dedication to the research and development of solutions to mine law enforcement databases for information that will not only reduce and solve crime, but help keep our officers safe. this cannot be a one time endeavor, but rather a continual process. in addition, we must look for and publicize best practices and use of social media. currently, there is no better way to connect with the citizens. in law enforcement we are only as strong as our relationships with the community. if they trust us they will call us when something is amiss in their neighborhood. so, the question that begs to be answered is how do we build that trust. it begins with understanding ourselves and the citizens we serve. to this every law enforcement officer should be mandate aed to complete the course entitle td fair and impartial policing. it's to show that everyone has biases and that luiu critical

for officers to recognize this, make every attempt to set them aside when serving the public. a result will be twofold. officers will develop positive relationships with citizens and they will be safer in their day-to-day activities. we've spent years building relationships of trust with our community. and i want to highlight very quickly, just a few programs that have contributed significantly to those positive relationships. in 2013 we opened a safe haven for kids in a historically high crime neighborhood where no strategy could work for the proceeding decade. once this program was launched, crime dropped significantly. the neighborhood could see the offer officers cared and that's what made the difference. in addition, our squads are required to have front porch roll calls twice a week in high crime areas for a citizens front yard. these interactions allow citizens to interact with theg# aurs officers patrolling our

these practices along with our rule, that everyone is treated with respectè the physiological and emotional effects of trauma and emdr sessions. many of the officers have described this as a life saving experience. the underlying mission of law enforcement hasn't changed since the principles of law enforcement were authored in 1829.

what has evolved are the tasks law enforcement has become responsible for performing. the services continue to be cut, officers have become the de facto mental health prak tigs ners, social workers and the front line for those suffering with substance abuse. in addition, they absorb a higher level of frustration and anger for their inability to solve these issues. we can't do it alone. these issues require societial solutions. as a whole, i believe police officers do an amazing job with the multitude of issues they are called upon to handle most of which have no clear cut solution. of course, this is not the say we're always correct, but we must be careful to avoid holding all officers accountable for the inappropriate actions of the few. citizens should feel free to critique and criticize officers and we must be open and acceptable to that criticism, however, it should be based.

thankfully, the average citizen has no idea in what's involved in dealing with the criminal element. this means we are doing our job well. at the same time, we are creating a disconnect. it's impossible for citizens to know what challenges an officer must face daily. as a result, every agency should have a row best citizens academy where the community can learn firsthand how officers are trained, the need for specific equipment and how it is used. we are ride along as there's nothing more enlightening than walking in an officer's shoes for an evening. lastly, i would like to thank director comby for the thoughtful way in which he opened the door on police and race relations. as we continue to discuss the role law enforcement plays, there must be mean lful and

frank discussions about crime in america. we can all agree that economic disadvantages contribute to crime and disorder. law enforcement did not create these situations, but we can be an important part of the solution. we must all be willing to work together to make the necessary improvements, which will lead to safer communities and a safer working environment for our officers. it is my hope that the door detector comby cracked is not slammed shut, but opened wide, so everyone can be seen and heard. thank you. >> thank you so much, chief caster. our next witness is jerry demings, the sheriff in orange county, florida. it's nice to have some florida representation here on such bad weather in washington. >> good morning to commissioner ramsey and professor robinson and all member of the task force. it is a privilege for me to be here and provide testimony in the area of officer safety. as i provide testimony today i believe that it is necessary to

establish the perspective from which i speak. this is my 34th year as a law enforcement officer working in metropolitian orlando. as a chief executive, i've experienced line of duty depths, my offices of deputies nine times. in fact, this past february 11th, did mark a one-year anniversary of one of my deputies, jonathan scott pine who was shot and killed by a burglary suspect one year ago. he left behind a wife and three children under the age of 7. in may of this year, deputy pine's name will be added to the list of more than 20,000 names on the national law enforcement memorial. the first step in improving officer safety and wellness is to understand the range and scope of hazards police face in the line of duty. according to the officer down memorial page as of february 18th line of duty deaths are down 7% in 2015.

with auto related deaths remaining about the same as last year. thus far in 2015, officer deaths by gunfire with trending downward. that is good news considering the trend from last year, preliminary data indicates that 126 law enforcement officers died in the line of duty in 2014. a 24% increase from 2013 when 102 officers were killed. in 2014, 50 officers died by gunfire. this was a 56% increase over the 32 firearms related deaths in 2013. on average over the last decade, there have been approximately 59,000 assaults against law enforcement officers in the last year, resulting in approximately 15,000 injuries. i share these numbers because the conversation should not only be about those who have died,

but must also focus on those who live and what can be adobe to prevent injury to officers. i subscribe to that there is no substitute for training and experience. in striving for optimum officer safety. the use of simulation technology should be seriously considered in modern day police training. we should immerse our officers in training that realistically depicts what they are likely going to experience in real world situations. my agency the orange county sheriff's office in partnership with valencia college recently implemented a simulation training program. deputies and officers used simulated firearms in scenarios that required them to make split second decisions. it is recommended that agencies conduct traininging several times each year for all officers and invite representatives from the media to experience the training.

perhaps this would give both the media and members of the public a better perspective on the complexity of the split second decision making by law enforcement officers. the number of officers who die in the line of duty has not been below 100 since 1934 and police related accidents is major cause. the campaign is being embraced by many law enforcement agencies throughout the nation and is based on the principles of wearing your seat belts and ballistic vest. focus on what's important and remember that complacency kills. in addition to driver training it is recommended that as agencies replace the fleet of vehicles, serious considerations should be given to the purchase of vehicles with collision avoidance technology such as backing sensors cameras and lane incaters.

since september 11, our nation has remained under the threat of domestic terrorism. sovereign citizens pose a growing threat to law enforcement. the core belief is that the u.s. government has no authority over them. this movement is alive and flourishing throughout our nation. in fact, just two weeks ago several of my depputies encountered an armed sovereign who shot at them without provocation, i might add. he was subsequently mortally wounded when the suspects returned gunfire. we determine sovereign citizens to also be a threat to police. for these reasons it is recommended that more first response training be provided op the topic of domestic terrorism and in particular the sovereign citizen movement. in summary, the recommendations are develop training that is

realistic, look to include simulation technology. conduct high liability training several times each year for all officers. to build trust, invite media participation in simulation training. conduct below 100 training. invest in new vehicle collision avoidance technology and increase first response training on domestic terror. specifically the sovereign citizen movement. thank you. >> thank you, sheriff. our final witness for this panel is craig floyd, who is chairman and ceo of the national law enforcement memorial foundation. welcome. >> thank you. and let me say that in more than

the panelists before me have tone some of that. we have 20,267 names inscribed on the national law enforcement officer's memorial. about 55% of those officers died by gunfire. the majority. but in recent years, the last 15 in fact, traffic related incidents have been the number one cause of officer fatalityies in this country. about 29% of the names on the memorial are traffic related deaths, then finally 16% of those officers died from other causes. 840 of them by the way from heart attacks. job related heart attacks. over the last decade, we've averaged 146 officer fatalities

per year. that's a shocking number. one officer killed somewhere in america every 60 hours but the good news is that those numbers are going down. if you go back to the 1970s, we were averaging 231 officers killed in the line of duty each and every year that means the 146 number i cited is 37% lower than it was 40 years ago. and that's at a time when we have double the number of officers serving and putting themselves at risk. you would have expected perhaps that number would have gone up, not down. there are a number of factors responsible for that and i have enumerated some in my written testimony. i want to just spend a moment though reemphasizing the leadership that the attorney general of the united states eric holder has focused on the issue of officer safety and

wellness. i'm not sure that he is getting enough credit for his leadership. just a few years ago when deaths were spiking, 171 officers killed in 2011. he held a summit in his office with about 40 law enforcement leaders. and actually took notes himself about what we could doq to reduce officer fatalities and injuries. he launched a program called valor, which provides important training for officers. how to prevent violent attacks and how to survive them when they occur. he created a national officer safety and wellness group, which i'm proud to be a part of. it's jointly under the auspices of the cops office and the bureau of justice assistance. this is done tremendous good in training more than 15,000 officers across this country. finally, he's increased the federal granlt money that's gone to groups like ours and others who are focused on officer safety and wellness.

those are just some great examples of the leadership he's provided. i don't think it's any coincidence that as a result of all of those efforts, the last two years now, we've seen fewer law enforcement fatalities than any year from the last 50. that's a great credit to leadership and to this group and so many others focused on this issue. a lot more work clearly needs to be done. i look at canada as a great role model for us here in the united states. i've attended their memorial service, two out of the last three years. two years ago, they honored all the officers in canada who had been killed in the line of duty. one officer during a 12-month period. the last three years, they've always been below ten. so i asked toronto police chief phil blair, the couple of years ago, what were some of their secrets of success and he enumerated several.

he said they had a guaranteed arrival program that decreased traffic crashes by 70%, impressing the officers get to that call for service safely first and foremost, then render assistance. mandatory seat belt and vest we're policies for officers, which we're now seeing more of here in the united states. sensors in vehicles. checking the speed and seat belt usage along with in car cameras. the officers know they're being watched for safety om compliance and it makes a difference. aggressive education campaign showing officers what happens in a crash when you wear a seat belt and when you do not. it's pretty impressive and makes a difference, an officer safety question that meets once a month looking at injuries accidents and fatalities and figures out what we can do to prevent them in the future. then an aggressive promotion of their move over and slow down laws, thankfully with anytime sa

and us and other group, we are focusing on getting the driving aware of the laws. we need to learn from our neighbors to the north. consider these troubling statistics. last year, we know 24% of the officers killed in the line of duty were not wearing body armor. 32% of the officers killed were not wearing seat belts. 55% of the officers who died in auto crashes were killed in single vehicle crashes. and 15 officers were shot and killed in ambush style attacks last year. that's triple the number from 2013. other props we've identified officers failing to wait for back up and entering dangerous situations alone. many officers crashing their vehicles while rushing to assist a fellow officer. officers being killed with their own weapon. weapon retention is still a concern and issue we need to

address. here are recommendations, some of them, that we talked about with the national officers safety and wellness group. we must have a unified safety message with involvement and buy in from both management and the unions. you've heard that said before and i'm sure you'll hear it again later today. hire a safety officer like they do in fairfax county, virginia, and create a safety committee. establish a national clearinghouse for best practices. we are doing this now in conjunction with the bureau of assistance. let's get the number of injuries and deaths down to zero. that should be our goal we can all rally around. reduce distractions for officers and their vehicles. take a data driven approach to safety. if it matters, pressure it. officers will be more influenced if you give them the data to support the safety policies. bring families into the safety

messaging. create an environment that rewards officers for safe behavior and most importantly, change the culture. do not accept injuries and fatalities as just part of the job and thankfully, i think the best news of all is that that culture change has started to occur and with your leadership, this task force, your recommendations and i'm sure will come out of this, we're going to do a lot better so thank you very much for this opportunity. >> thank you so much. i'm going to start out the question with brittney followed by sean smoot. >> thank you very much for your testimony. my question is for lieutenant eastman. can you hear me? >> yes, ma'am, i can. >> thank you so much. i really appreciate your testimony and others regarding training for hemorrhage control and other trauma instances. my question is really about the policy surrounding that.

so, if the training is available, i'm wondering how we can help to man date and expect officers use it if the force is -- we saw a failure to provide to mayor rice in cleveland and for antonio martin in missouri where i'm from. so i'm wondering once that training is fully provided how do we create policy around ensuring that is providing even to potentially the victim of officers legal use of force. >> that's a great question. >> i think the answer is when you train people to do this, we haven't seen -- in my own experience, i have been a part of unfortunately stefrl uses of deadly force as a part of the s.w.a.t. team where even members of the team where i could move to get to the victim were

deploying some of these skills. we've seen officers use force and subsequently holster their weapons, move to the suspect make sure their safe and then begin treating them immediately. if you build the capabilities, the officers will do the right thing. but i think it's important to build in policy and procedure alex peckations to give them the legal protections they need if that happens, but i think you're going to be impressed with the dedication of the law enforcement officers trained to do this. look at the boston marathon bombing. those officers had no official hemorrhage control program in boston. several had taken it upon themselves and when they were faced with one of the biggest challenges of their career, they acted and treated everyone no matter what. not to use a pun, but if you build it they will come and these officers would use this stuff appropriately.

>> thank you very much. sean smooth followed by trace meres. >> one question for you, dr. eastman. first of all, thank you for interrupting your vacation to participate in testifying for the task force. >> you're welcome. my wife is watching. >> thank you, mrs. eastman. doctor if you know, what would be the cost on a per officer basis to equip them with a downed officer kit as you described in your testimony and the training to use that kit? >> yes so cost, it depends on scale. if you go large scale, you're going to talk about less than $50. way less. i think it would be up to the manufacturers of that equipment and those companies to deal with us on a scale pricing but if we're talking about a nationwide programming, i think that price would fall significantly.

we're looking at nearly a million law enforcement officers in the united states. in terms of the training, we don't exactly now how long to train people for. it's my belief we can do this in a couple of hours. in the dallas police department we have a multimodality training program where we start the officers with some online video viewing. they do some short, hands on training and we incorporate the downed office use into many other scenarios over the course of the training cycle so the officers get not only didactic training, but they get hands on. less than $50 an officer. >> thank you very much. if i could switch to chief castor for a moment and thank all of you for your testimony. chief, you talked about the safe haven house that you set up and

your citizens police academy program. you also talked about your front porch role call. so i have a two-part question for you. i usually do this. kind of getting the evil eye from some of the other members. with regard to you t safe haven house, are these thing that is you budget for out of your operational budget for your department or does the city port those programs by giving you approachuations to do them? gls >> that's number one and two, could you elaborate more about how your front porch role calls work? >> yes actually, the safe haven we have for the kid ss the second one we've opened up. we've had one in another high crime area for about 12 years and we just opened up a recent wup and one of my assistant chiefs went to leadership tampa through the program and they

took an old parks and recreation building and rehabbed that as a class project. i assigned police officers to both of those safe havens and the officers i've assigned have a background in education and so, they're very well received and accepted in the neighborhoods. as far as the operational budgeting for it hopefully, my mayor's not watching but the city takes care of the operational costs for that safe haven. as far as the front porch role calls, those have been a great way to connect with the community. citizens can call in and request those role calls and it's been very very, very successful and the skaud just shows up at someone's front yard and usually feed them, which seems to attract police officers very well and they get to meet the police officer that literally is

patrolling their neighborhood and they create those relationships and those bonds. >> is that similar to what they would do in the station? >> that's exactly what they would do in the station. a lot of it you and i are so old, they have a roll call board. now now, they get that through the mdts. they get who's wanted and what to look for in the community. the community gets to feel a part of the police department. >> tracy followed by sue. >> good morning everyone. this is really interesting and really eliminating. my question is for you, mr. floyd. i was going through your, the data you listed in your written testimony carefully and as i understand it, there was some very welcome news that fatalities are county, except that it sounds like in recent years, the greatest contributor is accidents, maybe vehicular

accidents? but i wanted to focus on the number of of injuries. in your written testimony you said something about the fbi saying there's 100,000 injuries, officers injured in the line of duty. i'm wondering about the relationship between that hundred thousand number and the ve hick lar accident point you brought up and it seems to me that we could not only save a lot of officer deaths but injuries. if we could simply convince people to wear their seat belts, so i'm wondering what the, in your view is the hurdle? is it just culture? is it something else? is there, there's no union representative. is it union resistance? if you have insight on that it would be helpful. do we need to put a 9-year-old in the backseat because i know

when i'm driving my car, my son says to me mommy put on your seat belt. what can we do here? >> a couple of things. the number of more than 100,000 injuries is come frg the bureau of labor statistics. one of the problems that will be emphasized later, we need better data on injuries. i'm working with the group called the police foundation, one of our board member organizations. they're doing a study on near misses. what we are doing here is collecting a lot more data on injuries and near misses because those numbers are going to be greater than fatalities. we can tell you everything you want to know about fatalities especially with this deeper dive with the cops grant, but i will tell you it's a cultural issue seemingly. i'm not a practice ner.

clearly in canada as i especially emphasized, they have a program they emphasized from day one in the academy and every day there after, that is guaranteed arrival. when you get that call for service, whether the it's to back up another officer, respond to another emergency, don't put yourself in the peril that so many officers here do. it's a wonderful thing that our officers are willing to put their lives at risk for others, but it's foolish when you drive so fast that you wreck your vehicle before you get to back up that officer or help somebody in need. when we talk about a culture change, we're starting to embed that message into the minds of officers at an early stage in their careers and we're professing that over and over again during their careers. we've seen it in a lot of agencies now that have mandatory seatbelt policies.

they are working with management to impress that message upon the officers and as a result, i think we're going to see these numbers of injuries and deaths go down dramatically because without question, traffic related deaths and injuries are the most preventable. >> in recent years i have had two law enforcement officers who died in the loin of duty in vehicle crashes. what i find, i have a fleet of about 1800 vehicles and we drive a combined 25 million miles on an annual basis. when we look at our traffic crash data what i see sometimes is a disproportionate number related to distracted driver. my deputies are on cell phones and they have the mobile data terminals in their cars and so, we have embarked edembarked on an educational campaign about how not to do that.

we've taken advantage of blue tooth technology in our vehicles now so that we are not predisposed to looking away from the roadway. we are going to biannual training now. all of my deputies are required to have the vehicle driver training, every two years. and our ultimate goal is to reduce the number of traffic crashes. we have a mandatory body armor policy within our policy as well. >> could i just chime in? i can't give you nonverbal cues to tell you i can answer. >> wave your hands or something. >> i was going to hold up a sign but i think the point that craig made about a culture shift is important. you described in your question,

these as vehicle accidents and as trauma surgeons, we don't ever use the word accident. an accident is an act by god. you throw your hands in the air you have no idea how to prevent this. these are law enforcement vehicle crashes and law enforcement officers injured in crashes and crashes are preventable. and if you, again, to just go back to the point of building a database, we don't really know if it's speed, if it's seatbelt, vehicle design, our equipment we wear, but again, building a database that captures some of these pieces of information and allows us to study it scientifically will help you design programs to prevent crashes. that's the whole idea behind seatbelts and air bags is because people studied vehicle crashes to make vehicles more safe. we need to study law enforcement and learn how to make that job more safe as well. >> chief do you want to weigh in on this, too? do you have a policy and what's been your experience with the culture in your department?

>> yes, i always talk about the seatbelt rule. that's something you have to and i use that as an analogy for everything else. you have to constantly remind people because it's a habit they get into and we have policy mandated wear and we haven't had any accidents where officers have lost their lives. i can't tell you that all of my officers wear them but we have a policy for that. and another that alex hit on very lightly that i believe is an outstanding program stars as far as the officer safety in general is the near miss program that the police foundation have put together and we mirrored that afterthe firefighter's near miss program. i think that's going to pay great dividends if officers put information in it.

if we don't get data into it, it's not going to be a benefit, but i see that as saving lives going forward. >> thank you. we now turn to sue, followed by jose lopez. >> dr. eastman, i want to do a little deeper dive from what sean asked you on the downed officer kits because i think that's one of the smartest things we can do. i'm trying to put that together and i'm wondering if it has to be a doctor, a firefighter that teaches that or by a trainer? >> it can be taught by a train to trainer. just got to get credible instructors. but i can tell you i've got 3700 officers in dallas and i don't teach every class. i've built a kad ray of instructors to train these guys and i talk to them regularly and we tweak the program and update it, but this has to be delivered in a train to traper model because we've got a million

people to train, and so if you don't, we're never going to get this done. >> one more question. >> i was really appreciative about your comment about the peer review and looking for liability protection for doing those reviews. i know in my experience, people are very, very reluctant because there's always a pendinging lawsuit. are you aware of anywhere in the country where those protections have been implemented successfully? >> not in law enforcement, but they're implementing successfully in all 50 states from a medicineal standpoint. the physicians responsible are still held responsible in a court of law. but we're able to discuss that in real time. usually in the same week. to make sure that error never occurs again. it's doctors reviewing the care

we provide. just to bring this example home, we have a, an officer in dallas who was killed in the line of duty when he approached a vehicle that contained a murder suspect and set his weapon on the ground to break out a window. dash cam video is out there right now. we've got it. we use it in our own academy but every police officer in america should see that video to make sure they don't ever do the same thing. we lost one life that way. why should we ever lose another simply because we haven't gotten the legal protections in place to allow us to have a frank discussion on a nationwide level and that's a lot about what the near miss project about. to bring those lessons to the forefront so people feel comfortable, but with legal protections, you could really improve the way law enforcement officers learn from each other. >> thank you.

let's turn now to jose lopez. >> my question is for chief caster and so i just wanted to hear more about the first responders retreat. wanted to know more about the focus or curriculum what are the areas you cover during the week long retreat. information around scale how many officers are tap edped through the retreat annually and some information around the evaluation process and how you're able to evaluate the impact of the program with the officers who use it. >> we lost two officers on a traffic stop in 2010. were shot and killed and i had a conversation with one of our police chaplains about how i felt that we didn't do enough. i couldn't do enough for our officers to deal with the trauma that they were exposed to an a

daily bases and she was able to go out to another state that has type of a first responders retreat and brought it back to tampa tampa. she heads the franciscanister in tampa and the officers go there for a week in house. the most traumatic portion of it is they give up their cell phones when they walk in, but one of the downsides is the, each group, each week is is only six to eight officers that can go through it and they have a series of group sessions where they get to talk about traumatic experiences that have followed them throughout their careers and one of the things they find is that they're not alone. everyone has the same feelings and issue ss they have. regarding trauma they've experienced. then there are a series of

psychiatrists that have volunteered their time to do the emdr that was developed for service members and that, i went through the retreat myself and the emdr was described to you, you would say there's no way that works, but if you go through it you'll find it does work. so, that and then we have a series of presentations on the physiological effects of trauma and how to deal with that. since it was confidential would choose the officers to go through it and you can imagine how excited they were at that possibility the first question is is what's wrong with me? how come me. i asked them all to come and meet with me afterwards and almost to the person they have said the it's the best experience they've ever had in their career. they wish they had had it earlier and would like to see all officers go through it. unfortunately, it's very expensive.

we've been able to put it on through donations. so far there's a lot of time donations from the practitioners and it's been in effect for a little over a year and we've put 68 people through it so far. i have all of the information i can share with anybody who would like more information on it. and usf i left out the one part. university of south florida is following the process to look at how successful it is and they've been keeping data and statistics on it. to date. >> thank you. our last questioner will be roberta. >> actually because of some question, our fellow panel members, both of my questions were answered. so i quickly developed another one so i don't look like i'm not

involved and this is for dr. eastman. you talked about that lioka does not give us the granular detail we're looking for and i wanted you to expand on that. as a law enforcement manager we look at usually the tactical issues and how did it happen and what was the situation, and you kind of touch on a little bit when talking about accidents or crash crashes and speed and sofrt, so, if you could expand on what type of detail? >> absolutely. if you think about the detail that's collected now, how far am i from my assailant? is it light? dark? was i wearing my body armor? what was the assailant armed with? but if i want to know as a trauma surgeon, what was injured? did this officer die because he bled to death from a arm wound that needed a tourniquet or did the, does the body armor not cover a piece of our body that

leaves us vulnerable for injuries and deaths? does the car crash that killed this police officer, again the crashes wouldn't be included in the data set because it's not assault type situation, but if we have officers getting you know, stabbed, fatally stabbed or injured seriously, are those wounds the results of bad tactics. what are their wounds? are they treatable? all of those things are absent from the data set so, a number of people trying to employ work arounds and we're talking with them now about updating the questionnaire. the timetable is i'm a trauma surgeon and a cop. i'm inpatient as can be. i don't do things on a five-year turn around or i would run for congress. so -- i'm not ready to wait another four years until the data set is updated again. we've got to do this now and take the imptous that you all

have put forth as the task force and president's office and legitimate a dayta set that can help us answer some of these questions. >> thank you. >> thank you so much. please join me in giving our thanks to this terrific panel. really appreciate all of you coming and doctor, we are going to be jealous of you being on vacation and enjoying your time out there. >> i'll be skiing, thank you very much. let me turn things over to our director now. >> we'll be breaking for lunch and the next panel will be at 1:00. just want to remind the audience that during a break, the task will not deliberate on items discuss today. let us enjoy a good lunch and for the tech people, obviously this one worked better, so thank you for making it work and we look forward to the same this afternoon and see everybody at 1:00. great panel.

thank you guys.

this forum on policing taking a lunch break now. they are expected back at 1:00 this afternoon. the next panel will feature representatives from various policy organizations like the fraternal order of police, the national association of police organizations and the national sheriffs association. we will return live when they wrap up their lunch and start up again at 1:00 p.m. ooen. elsewhere in washington, the national governors association is holding their annual winter meeting. president obama is meet wg the nation's governors at the white house today. he just addressed them a short time ago. we do expect those attending to speak with reporters at about 12:30 eastern. we'll have live coverage of those remarks on cspan. and the u.s. senate returns today at 3:00 p.m. eastern when north dakota republican senator will deliver the annual reading of president george washington's farewell address. then at 4:30, the senate will

continue debate on the house passed homeland security spending bill, that includes provisions to block president obama's executive order on immigration and at 5:30, senators will vote for a fourth time to limit debate to proceed to that bill. 60 aye votes are needed. watch live coverage on cspan 2. the house will be back tomorrow. this week, they're expected to debate a plan to expand the 529 college savings plan. they could also take up the homeland security spending bill before current funding runs out on friday, february 27th at midnight. see live coverage of the house on cspan. the political landscape has changed with the 114th congress. not only are there 43 new republicans and 15 new democrats in the house and 12 new republicans and one new democrat in the is that the, there's 108 women in congress including the first african-american republican in the house and a the first woman veteran in the

senate. keep track of the members of congress using congressional chronicle. the page has lots of useful information there including voting results and statistics about each session of congress. new congress best access on cspan, cspan 2, cspan radio and cspan.org. tonight on the commune communicators, we spoke with two industry exec tytives tat consumer electronics show in las vegas. senior vice president at ericson and cisco's senior vice president, talk about their companies and the technology in which the internet, emotional phones and cloud operate. >> we talk a lot about something we call the network society. it is a society where everything that can benefit from having a connection will actually have one and we put a vision forward in 2009 in barcelona in the

trade show that's going on there of the 50 billion connective devices in 2020, which has caught on very well in the world. and that i think opened many people's minds that the mobile industry is not limited to the smart phones and devices we carry around personally. it is a great technology to correct so many other things and to be able to build a better society based on those kinds of technologies. >> the internet started with this thing that people neated to get to somehow by dial up connection connections et cetera. we brought the ber net from that thing somewhere to your home. we brought that internet from being your home to be with every device you carry around. the next stage of the internet is about taking it from all these mobile devices to things, to information and connecting not just people, but things with people. information with people and processes with people and things so we can actually create a whole whole, what we call -- so, i

think we're at the early stages of building that up. >> tonight at 8:00 eastern o communicators on cspan 2. senators rob portman and al franken along with jim brener and danny davis took and james sensenbrenner and david keene talk about the criminal system and piper kerman, my year in a woman's prince, the constitution institution hosted this event. >> thank you, jenny. it is really a pleasure to be here with you for the constitution project to be sponsoring this program. and to welcome so many of you this morning, particularly those from house and senate staffs who will be engaged in many of the various issues over the course of the next few months. it is interesting because this is a city in which the common wisdom is everybody fights with everybody all of the time. that democrats and republicans, conservatives and liberals can't get along and don't want to get

along and want to make ideological points than solving the country's problems. that is not the case in criminal justice reform. democrats and republicans alike have come to the conclusion that the system that has developed over the course of the last few decades in this country isn't working. that we're spending a lot of money and some states second only to education is the prison budget to incarcerate americans for all manner of crimes that some of which didn't exist until a few decades ago and as a consequences we've looked at these things and come to the conclusion we have to work together. in this space, if you will, there are a lot of groups now that didn't exist some years ago. there are groups on the left, there are groups on the right. i was a founder with pat nolan and we were meeting before the group was founded on right on

crime. we were meeting with conservatives and libbers to find one way out of the impasse that resulted from grandstanding over the years. one of the problems in dealing with the public on these n it started with a fight among straw men. there was the prosecutor's lobby and the police lobby and forgotten in the middle with the survivors and the victims and the citizens. and we realized that had to be broken. what we had to do was look at criminal justice questions first from the basis of the reason we have it. some years ago when ken cuccinelli was attorney general of virginia and stepped down to argue the innocence of man serving 87 years in prison and got him off and was given him an award as a result he said that the problem with the criminal

justice system is that too many people forget the middle word in that frad -- that phrase. and it was our decision and our conclusion that we as people cannot afford to forget that middle word. there needs to be justice for victims and society and a just way that people can pay their debts to society and reintegrate into the civil society once they paid those debts. and that is what the whole bipartisan move for criminal justice reform has been about. to get away from rhetoric to see what works and doesn't work not to labby for prsks or for -- to lobby for criminals or the system but for a society for which it was set up and to serve the ends of just -- justice

rather than the i'd delogical social making. and there are groups that i'm involved with are on the right and there are groups that van jones is involved with that are somewhere else and then there is a group in the middle that tries to brings the groups together and this panel today presents a cross-spectrum view of this. and i'll introduce the panel members as we go on. but i have to say from the beginning our representative here from coke represents a group interested in criminal justice reform since the beginning. families against mandatory minimums was started with the assistance and support of the coke foundation and we appreciate that and appreciate all else that you've done. i could say the same if we had

liberal benefactors here because this is something that has attracted support from way different parts of the spectrum. we've got a number of folks dropping in. so we're going to handle this sort of casually. and congressman danny davis is here. i would like him to say a couple of words. congressman davis is from illinois. he has served in the congress since the '90s and he is one who has taken an interest in these issues before others paid much attention to them. congressman. [ applause ] >> thank you. thank you very much. let me say how delighted i am to see so many of us here and how delighted i am to see the diversity of this panel of experts and interested individuals and organizations that are involved. all of us are practically aware

of the fact that mass incarceration is one of the big issues that face our nation. that we are the most incarcerated nation on the face of the earth. whether you are talking about proportion of the population, or whether you're talking about actual numbers. even country's whose populations are minor compared to ours and of course populations that are major compared. i got interested in the re-entry question because i think it is one of the most challenging issues that we face today. fortunately we're able to put together a group who passed something called the second-chance akdct and it involved democrats, republicans

members of the house members of the senate grassroots groups, research groups, university groups, every kind of individual and group that we could coalesce coalesce. after several years of discussion. we managed to pass legislation based upon knowing two or three things concretely. one, that about 700,000 people come home from jail and prison every year. those who get no help are likely -- that is two thirds of them, are likely to do what we call re-offend, that is to do something that could get them back to where they came from. the level and quality of the help they get, will reduce their

reincarceration tremendously. the higher the quality the greater the reduction. the more opportunities they get the more help. monies have been appropriated. never enough. but we have actually had appropriations each year. there are about 600 agency groups organizations, who right now are and have received appropriation from the federal government to work on the issues. that is pretty significant. because they have also generated thousands of other entities who didn't necessarily money. some of the stall -- stalwarts on this panel who have pushed it and i like to mention senator rob portman who was one of the

original promotors of the concept and the idea. there are others who have joined in and others who have become a part but i'm excited that so many of you view this as an issue that we need to keep working on. i all say that -- i always say that we've only scratched the surface. we can never believe once we get to the basement that we're in the penthouse. and so we have much further to go. it is a pleasure to know that this forum is taking place today and we expect great things to happen. and gep, i can't help -- and again i help but mention the diversity of the interest gives me real heart that things will happen and i thank all of you for being here. so thank you very much. [ applause ]

>> thank you, congressman. as a midwesterner, i have to note that he mentioned now senator portman from ohio and congressman sensenbrenner is here as well. congressman sensenbrenner is here and i've known him since high school. and he's been tough on crime and sensitive to the need to improve and reform the criminal justice system. he's very sensitive and is working today in the area of the intersection of mental health and crime. a few months ago someone observed that in every single state in this country there are more people who have been determined to be potentially dangerously mentally ill in our jails and prisons than in all of the private and public mental

health facilities in those states. it is a real problem on the inside and outside and the congressman sensenbrenner is working on that and i noted today he has legislature on civil asset forfeiture and something that the late henne hyde fought to correct for many years when he was in congress. so jim. [ applause ] . . >> thank you very much david, for that kind and generous introduction. yes, you have known me since i was in high school. at that time my hair was black. there was -- and in the years that have gone by since there has been less here and more there. i guess that is the way it's going to be with all of us. but you're younger than i am and you never did disclose to this

group where you were when we first met. i'll leave it at that. don't want tmi here. i'm the former chairman of the house judiciary. the second chance act was passed and we'll have to reauthorize ! mñ it. we tried it in the last congress and it didn't make it across the goal line but that is one of the things we'll try again. and in the last congress chairman goodlatte created a task force on over-crimminalization and made me the chairman. it is an affront to personal liberty and an expensive and inefficient way to deal with a lot of problems. there are an estimated 4,500 forward crimes on the books and congress is adding about 500 new crimes in each of the past three decades.

and rules state this not abided by, can result in criminal penalties, including incarceration. the united states now houses about 25% of the world's prisoners, despite representing about 5% of the world's total population. over-crowded prisons are azz costly burden to taxpayers. forward prisons cost taxpayers 7 $7 billionjrf a year and states now spend more than $50 billion a year up from about $9 billion in 1985 which was only 30 years ago. and it is the second fastest growing area in state budgets trailing only medicaid. there are smarter and more effectiver-% ways to deal with criminals. and i'm about ready to introduce a series of bills that will address overcriminalization.

i don't expect any of my colleagues to vote for all of them. i also don't %m#tjtkrh colleagues to vote against all of them. but i think the best way we can get some legislation and hopefully a lot of legislation passed is to split it up and then have different coalitions coalesce around different proposals. first, congress should begin by going through-úyñç the entire body of tc with all of the statutes that carry jail time operating under the presumption that every statute should be eliminated unless it can be justified as essential. we need to focus on reducing recidivism among federal offenders, reserving prison space for violent and career criminals and ensuring governmenth g transparency and2x]ñ accountability. we should look at establishing earned credits for supervised

offender and incentives for drug planning and treatment for additional time off of their sentence and we needb inexpensive evident-based t programs that divert low-risk offenders from prisons and see= qñ what triggers sentencing enhancements. federal prisoners should receive programming that helps improve their re-entry chances and likelihood of success once theyjñx leave the prison. and i will soon be reintroducing the second chance reauthorization act which does just this, as congressman d mentioned in his remarks a few minutes ago. and finally, many states have led the way on passing reasonable legislation that protects public safety while reducing recidivism. it is time for washington to look to the statese

how it now in conclusion let&ux2p.l that one of the thingsrfnt that the over-criminalization task force came up with,x7v were asked how many regulations -- bureau cat passed rather than congress-passed laws, arvdgom carrynq prison n and congressmaníqul bobbypa[t of'e virginia is my ranking member and i sent a letter to the congressional research service that asked#],oñ them to tell us how many;chu of the regulations carry prison time and which agencies promulgated these regulations. we got alr>éñ letter vy back from crs saying they didn't have the

@r(t&háhp &hc% judiciary committee and hopefully both houses of congress can j.kkaddress. so th$i/x"r:ñhq6x an 11-year-old who found a.c[cd put=uqç it inm0asá a house for a few dayséi1íñ.9ej to/ñaj;j0duju th(t&háhp &hc% the birdcjí to0bbñr recoveraq6÷ izkp tof survive in thenxp( and threatenedimilñ with prison forcñ[ cagingói÷ up a might!-c÷n migratory bird. that is how ridiculous thetñva laws are and how this congress will address it and i look forward to your support in helping us lead the way to put sense into sentencing, to put sense into incarcejptn (t to make sure that the public is protected?fz"ñ from people who really badá ay things rather than helping a hummingbird regain the bird's strength so the bird is nydx killed when iti oes back outqggú8ó

into the wild is something that makes no sense and we ought to get rid of it. soy5e thank you.1mm 5 ->0nñvç=ia÷ hq÷a?5kñbñj5w0]ñ0ih%z that?añ;é"yáñ adds to the crimiz-sylc population+&h as well as prison bettertu other ways. that is one not only"8 l he judiciaryt s+ committee.g88zz=t97÷fé >> he has indicated he wanted to learn rather than lecture. so on to lectures. van jones, who you know, who was+++;u4%

anyway, but this is a historic tmé/ moment. it is -- it is funny but@1 shouldn't be. i think we've been talking past each other'xú;ñ for a long time. i think we have missed opportunity after opportunity/3í'-0 for a long time. and that iswzyb why you have 6¥95% growth inqxj heuo%7 federal budget and 4ñ incarcerationíd(wñ rates when probably both sides know there is better andp1q he! á-e)$i#x

it turns out our liberal side, with our great passion for justice and compassion is often not seen as being also equally concerned about community safety. and peaceful streets, and kids being able to get to school and back. also i think that there was a sense that people on the right were only concerned about being tough on crime and not being smart on crime. and there was not a sense that the christian values and religious values that every soul matters could be a part of this conversation. that we shouldn't be wasting money. newt said the prison system is a big failed government

bureaucracy. period. stop. and it does a bad job. the more people come back, the more money it gets. you shouldn't be for that. and i say that to say that we've gotten ourselves into an insane posture but there is now wisdom available. where is the wisdom coming from? it is coming from three places. number one, the juvenile justice foundation, quietly, according to the casey foundation, has achieved a 50% reduction in the number of young people who are locked up in our country with no increasing youth crime. nobody knows that. we already have in the juvenile system a 50% reduction, bringing incarceration and youth crime down at the realtime. that is real wisdom. it should be reflected at the federal level. number two. at the state level great wisdom. we already have a 4% reduction in the incarceration rate at the state level while we have a 15% increase at the federal level.

so in states like mississippi, red states, in states like texas, red states, governors are stepping forward with great courage and producing great results and they are just getting started. there is wisdom at the state level. that should be reflected at the federal level. there is also great wisdom now in the technology sector. you have -- from california, i get a chance to talk to tech leaders all of the time. they say this is the stupidest way to waste money and make a problem worse. nude gingrich talks about the fact that now because of smartphones, we could do a much better job of helping people reinforcing and monitoring people outside of confinement at a much lower cost and much greater effectiveness because we now have technology. we are using 17th -- 16th century technology. every other system is radically

changing, but this system is stuck not just a decade ago, but centuries ago. we can make positive steps forward. so the question is since the main source of the problem has been a lack of communication, a lack of trust a lack of honest discourse and dialogue about how to have safer streets, more successful young people and the most important thing that is happening, is what is happening now and i think we should have another round applause to this organization when it wasn't popular, when this organization was laying the groundwork. [ applause ] >> quietly laying the groundwork and getting leaders together to discuss this behind the scenes long before you -- spouting this big flowering. the first thing is to have the discussion. and the second thing is we have

to make sure that we don't miss this opportunity it. would be very easy to have big discussion tiny bills big, big talk, big, big rhetoric and minuscule results. and that is the big danger. you can see we had a hearing and if you want to go on you tube and hear probably the best speech i've heard on criminal justice. senator cory booker gave it last week. give him a round of applause. he is one of the big leaders on this thing. and he gave a speech -- we had a hearing -- a briefing on thursday last week. we didn't understand that when cory booker shows up it is beetle mania -- beatle mania and we couldn't get everybody in and he gave a speech that we posted

on you tube and i can't imagine how a single person in the country could say no to him and the rest of us in trying to get this thing done. what has to happen is this. this is the time for real comprehensive change. it is very, very rare that we have a moment where the stars have aligned in this way. where crime is down, the system is clearly broken and not just conservatives and liberals but libertarians, all three have come together to say we can do better. now in a moment like this where you have multiple bill and i want to nak check the bills out there, but you have multiple bills over there -- maybe i left it there. no i have it right here. you have multiple bills in motion on the senate side and now more on the house side. those of you that are here. >> you have the ear-- you have the ears of your bosses and your

chief of staff, the political staff and the members. they are going to get flooded with stuff we disagree about. this is your opportunity to go back to your office and say, you know what, boss, we can actually get something done. we can actually get a real result. there are going to be people in our communities who will actually have a safer better community and better neighborhood and better outcomes because we can get something done. and i want to pays before i sit down those leaders that have come forward. and first cory booker and rand paul have legislation put forward that needs to be taken seriously. and durbin lee. and they have the smart sentencing act. that needs to be supported. the recidivism act by portman needs to be supported and the public safety act, federal

reform act by cornin and scott needs to be supported and the record expungement designed to enhance employment, that is the cory booker and rand paul act. those need to be supported. the last thing i want to say is, i love debate and argument. i love ideology and i love ideas, i love theory, i love being right. more than you know. this is the time to put data above demagogery and aevidence above -- and evidence above ideology. if there is ever an issue where we have to be data-driven and evident based and when you are talking about spending public dollars to take someone's liberty in making the community safer, both of which are

precious liberty and community safety is precious, that is time to put that aside. there has been demy gogery aside and both sides are playing the race card and the other side hates everybody. all of that, i want to say to you as a partner and to you as partners and to pat nolan the great leader on this whole thing as you have this whole ball rolling a long time ago, you're not going to hear it from us. there is a racial dimension to this and we're going to talk about it respectfully. there is a gender dimension and we're going to talk about it and talk about it respectfully. we're going to lay down the demy gogery tools in the name of getting something done and arrive as cory booker said, at a country that actually does have liberty and justice for all. thank you very much. [ applause ] .

>> thank you van. and van said what needs to be said about pat nolan and that is that pat was in this space virtually before anybody else. last year at the conservative political action conference, we had a pam on criminal justice reform and one of the panelists was burny carrick of new york. and jenny said well that is the way to do. just take one of these guys and lock them up for a few months so they get a look at things on the other side and they came out changed and i thought there are a lot of people that ought to be locked up for that reason. but people get locked up for all kinds of reasons and get abused and mistreated by the criminal justice system. pat was the republican leader in california in the assembly a few years ago and did get roped in by the criminal justice system and learned what it was all about. and when he had an opportunity, he came out here to work with

chuck holson and do something about a system that didn't work. one of the problems that we face is the public doesn't care about this, because once you are locked up you are not part of the human community they don't care or pay attention to how you are treated or worry about what happens when you get out or worry very much about the legitimacy of how you got in. and van touched on a few of those things. but pat has been there from the beginning. putting together coalitions and the second-chance act that congressman davis and congressman sensenbrenner talked about is a tribute to the work pat nolan has done over the years. so van, you are absolutely right. if there is a real champion other than jenny, of course it is pat nolan. pat. [ applause ]

>> well that is an introduction. my father would have enjoyed and my mother would have believed. but really i attribute it to chuck olson. he's the one that had the vision when it came out. he could have gone back and pract ied law -- practiced law and instead dedicated the entire rest of his life to calling to attention to the fact of the injustice of our system and the dehumanization of inmates. and he offered hope to inmates. and he established prison fellowship for that. and i was blessed to work with him and prison fellowship for 15 years. and through that and my political contacts among conservatives, we helped build

unusual support for issues. and it is interesting because most people assume that conservatives are motivated for reform by economics and my experience is not that. it is the moral issues that motivate us. and van hit on that. the first issue after i got out of prison we were involved in was harry reid was trying to strip prisoners of their religious liberty protection. and it was ted kennedy and john ashcroft pat layhe and dan coates that stood up and said no and beat back that effort. and then passed the religious land use and institutionalized persons act which this last week the supreme court used to protect a muslim's right to have a beard inside of prison.

this was this unusual left-right coalition. following that, jean guerrero said what are we going to work on next and we thought the second chance act, that rob portman went to work on, stephanie jones and john conyers have been involved, danny davis and frank wolf, and again a left-right coalition. and the essential message of the second-chance act are prisoners are people we should care about. the future after they leave prison is something that matters to us. and human dignity is an important part of it. whether you are religious or not -- those of us religious know each of us is a child of god created in his image and it is that devine spark, the emago deity and the government should

not strip anyone of that and piper has done a good job of identifying prisoners. when i was in prison a little over 29 months a thousand times i was told, you ain't got nothing coming. you ain't got nothing coming. and it is said with disgust, it says you are nothing. you come from nothing. you will be nothing. now i came from a good background. i had a great education and leadership positions. and even though words hurt, i was able to take it. think of the young kid who came from an abusive household and got into drugs at 13 ran away and lived on the street. never completed their education. how are they going to take something like that? being told essentially that they are worthless. that they have no future. one of the things the second chance act did was say, we are going to invest in your future. we're going to put together

programs that will help you prepare to live a productive contributing life in your community. you can have a valuable life and this is not the end of your life. we worked on the prison rape elimination act, the dirty little secret nobody wanted to talk about and yet thousands -- literally tens of thousands of prisoners are raped each year. you think about it. one of the reasons conservatives are carrying more about prisons is there is no form of government domination greater than imprisonment. the government takes you from your home and your family and your community and your job and strips you of your ability to choose where you sleep who you associate with what you eat and what you do with your time. the normal decisions we take to protect ourselves whether it is going with a buddy or going in

lighting areas or arming ourselves to protect us from being beaten or raped, we are not allowed to do inside of the prison. the government strips us of our ability to defend ourselves and leaves us helpless so we are preyed upon by other inmates. one of the things that brought this to the table. teddy kennedy brought -- had been fighting this for year and it brought ted wolf to the table and a whole array of conservatives, was the idea that the government has a moral responsibility to take care. if we're going to strip somebody of the ability to defend themselves, the government has a moral responsibility to make sure they are not preyed upon. jeff sessions said it ted kennedy and sessions unlikely

co-sponsors, said i've sent thousands of people to prisons for terrible crimes but not one of those sentences involved being raped. and it was that moral statement so powerful in helping us pass it. so i just want to establish, there is a moral basis for it. the economics of it, the plundering of state budgets that could go for schools and roads and hospitals that instead go to prisons. all of that is important. the hole it puts in our state budgets and eating up so much, that is important. but it really is -- that is the thing that allows conservative legislators to explain why they are doing these moral things. why the impact on the budget is there. and i have to take my hat off to pugh, the data that pugh has provided not only the figures, but putting it in context the

publication one in 100, showing one in 100 americans was in prison or in jail and 1 in 41, those under government supervision, that is really something that opened the eyes of conservatives. one in every 41 americans is under government supervision. that is asounding. and it -- astounding. and it comes from overcriminalization and it comes from the government being in charge of so many aspects of our lives. and i'll leave you with this. an irs agent going through the capitol intimidating legislators in california said to one of my colleagues, senator, we can carve our paddle to fit anybody's --. that is pritening. if -- but that is what boria told

stalin. his chief of police. he said you bring me the man, i'll find the crime. conservatives and liberals need to care that the government has so much power they can create a crime from all of these available and i'm so glad mr. sensenbrenner and davis and portman are dedicated to help us stem the tide of this powerful government. making sure that our policies make sense and bringing together people left and right that care about liberty and freedom and public safety. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you. you know the problem we face consists of putting too many people in prison, treating them badly when they are in prison and then not doing much to prepare them for their release and going back into civil

society when they leave prison. and those are big big problems that have a lot of -- a lot of complications. and as i said earlier it really is, in terms of the public, that wants someone -- that once someone is sentenced and goes away, they are forgotten about. and in the institution, they are, as pat said, ordinarily treated as if they are less than human. as if that is part of what it is all about and it prepared them not for the re-entry into civil society as self-sustaining citizens and free citizens but it turns them into something that will ultimately end up right back where they started. chuck olson and pat brought faith to the problem. i remember at chuck's funeral, i told this story before, i was sitting at the reception and a

fella came up to me and said i met chuck when i was in prison and he said god has a plan for you and i looked at him and i said i have no doubt about that but it is a really terrible plan. but by having faith and respect for the dignity of individuals whether they are prisoners or not, allows people to re-enter into society. no system is perfect. not everybody who gets out is ever going to go straight, as they put it. there will be problems. but we owe it to those who have their freedom taken away by the state to see to it that they are treated well as pat said and they have a real opportunity. shining a light on the way people are treated once they go away is incredibly important to this. and our next speaker piper kerman, has done that. through her memoir of the time that she spent incarcerated and

the television show orange is the new black which came from that, she has shown to hundreds of thousands, millions of viewers, just what it is like and why we need to do something about it. it's your turn. [ applause ] >> pat, your words really remind me that for every single person who traverses our criminal justice system, it is a crucible. a crucible that you have to survive and that changes you in ways that arine in del-- that are in dellible. so thank you for your words. and i want to thank the members who made this day app.-- happen. all of them frxt both sides -- from both sides of the aisle.

and thank you for coming out and spending a big chunk of your time here. fantastic. and i want to say there are many members of congress who weren't part of today who have prioritized these issues in their own work and i'm grateful to them, again on both sides of the aisle and we know so much of the progress made over the last decade would not have happened without republican contribution and leadership. so i'm thankful for that. just want to tell you all, i made my notes in one of my prison diaries to just keep it real here. so in 2004, i was sent to federal prison and i was sent for a first-time, nonviolent one-time drug offense i committed in 1993. and i was joining a very large cohort because about 50% of the people in the bureau of prisons are doing time for drug offenses.

and 25% of the people in the b.o.p. are folks like me. low-level, nonviolent offenders. but unlike me, many of those men and women are doing serious time shockingly long sentences. those are prison terms that i think are a waste of taxpayer dollars, they are a waste of time, quite bluntly having lived inside of the b.o.p., i can tell you that is not time well spent, whether on the staff side or the prisoner side. and those prison sentences are a tremendous waste of human potential. because there is so very little rehabilitation going on within the bureau of prisons and within many other prison systems. i was so very very fortunate to do only 13 months of fed time. and when i say fortunate, i don't mean lucky, i mean fortunate. i mean that i was able to hire a

former u.s. attorney to represent me in court. i mean that i had many, many privileges that most defendants do not have. 80% of people who are accused of a crime are too poor to afford to hire a lawyer to represent them in court. and our criminal justice them the data shows very very clearly, that our criminal justice system disproportionately pursues and punishes people of color. so i went to bed on that first night in prison and what i was saying over and over again in my head in that top bunk was, i'm so lucky i'm so lucky i'm so lucky. and prison is by design a harsh and horrible place. so it might surprise you to hear

rough day. how are you doing? and how much time do you have? and i would say 15 months and they would calculate the good time they give. it is 87.2% of the sentence and they said keep your nose clean and you'll be out of here in 13 months. and it seemed polite to squeak back how much time are you doing? some of them were doing short time like me but a lot of them were not. a lot of them were doing much,

much longer sentences. five years, seven years and ten years and i went to bed that night thinking i can't imagine how i'm going to make it one year in this awful place, let alone ten. and as the days and weeks went by i came to know those other women really, really well because the buroy of prisons is -- the bureau of prisons is really overcrowded so you get to know people well. and as i came to know those women well i knew their families well their kids, their families and their own parents and i knew the women day-to-day so very, very well in a way that only really prison can do. it became impossible for me to believe that those women had committed crimes that were so much worse than my own offense. and the only conclusion that i could draw was that they had been treated very, very differently by the criminal justice system than i had

because of socioeconomics and in some cases because of the color of their skin. and so for me this inequity is the most fundamental reason to reform the criminal justice system. that is for me personally. so that some day all americans will really be treated as equals in our courts of law. but you know what, there are other less idealistic reasons to act right now. so we know we are wasting a lot of taxpayer dollars in the current criminal justice systems and we know that long sentences have proven to be counter-pro counter-productive counter-productive, not even counter productive. and many states that have reduced the prison populations the most have enjoyed the biggest declines in crime. we know that reform is what the public wants.

the research shows us that americans want common sense criminal justice policies to be put in place to fix the current system that we have. and i can tell you that i travel all over this country, i sometimes feel like that johnny cash song, like i've been everywhere. and i'm amazed i have like thousands and thousands of people that have come out all over this country midwest southwest, you name it i've been there and they come out and they want to learn more and they want to discuss these issues. and they come to campuses and libraries and other public forums and they engage with me and they engage with each other and it is really, really exciting. and when i hear from them is overwhelming agreement about very obvious reforms. like getting low-level nonviolent offenders out of confinement in prisons and jails so we stop misusing prisons and

jails on those folks. and i hear from folks total agreement about ceasing to put mentally ill and substance addicted people into prison and jail because incarceration doesn't fix those public health problems. and in fact, it often makes them worse. and finally, what i hear from them, is a huge amount of agreement about focusing substantive and to your point van, this is already happening but more substantive rehabilitation resources for children in the system and for young people not 18 and up but still young, so that we can get those folks out of the system because everyone understanding that those investments in those young people will yield dividends for all of us. so we know these things can be done because they are already being done. they are being done out in the states. we've seen state governments

move legislation successfully so we know it can be done congress. and we've seen them reap the rewards and enjoy reductions in crime and enjoy better, more mindful spending of taxpayer dollars. and so it is time for the federal government and for congress to catch up and comprehensive reform is exactly what is needed. because here is the thing about the criminal justice system. it is a system. if you go in there and you start just noodling around with one part of it, you're not really going to get very good results. so there is no, quote, unquote, fixing prisons if you don't fix sentencing and if you don't fix access to counsel and amendment rights. you have to do multiple fixes to make the system work better for all americans and now is the time. so thank you very much for all coming out. [ applause ]

>> thank you, piper. and indeed, preparing people who are incarcerated for the outside world is supposedly one of the things that the prison system does but it doesn't do it well and in some cases not at all. i remember some years ago attending a graduation for ged and junior college at a federal prison and standing next to a couple who had driven 12 hours to see -- to be there when their son, who was incarcerated, was receiving his ged. he was prouder i think, that day than anybody i've seen altay graduation on the -- seen at a graduation on the outside and they had to get back to work. they drove 12 hours they stood there, they got back in their car and they headed west back to their home and their job. but at least that -- that boy was going to have a chance because people cared about him.

and because he took the opportunity to do what he could to prepare himself for the outside. i'm not sure the system itself made it that easy but that is incredible important and something that we need to be looking at. senator franken from minnesota was coming by just another midwesterner interested in fixing the system. so if he's here we would like to welcome him. if he's not, i would like to recognize a nonmidwesterner a former member of congress, allen monahan. [ applause ] >> and then i would like to introduce mark holden. you know back when conservators and libertarians were think being this, koch industries were involved. they were there when pat was

involve and they are there today. and so it is a pleasure -- and i think what we would like to have mark do is not only reflect on what got him and those he works with involved in this struggle and i notice that not too long ago there was a statement from -- i don't know if it was from you or -- >> charles koch. >> saying that this year their major interest was criminal justice reform. and that is what they are working on. so it is really with a great deal of pleasure we welcome you to the microphone and i see you and van have survived. >> we are all friends now. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> thank you everyone. i have the coveted speaking spot right before lunch here so i appreciate that. but very glad to be here. thankful. it is an honor to be here on behalf of koch industries and glad to be part of this forum and more importantly glad to be

one of the voices and there are many here, mr. nolan and others who have been doing this year. we've only been doing this for the past 10 1/2 and 11 years. this is a great cause and important to all of us and the stories you're hearing today and many of you in this room have heard and many of you have had same experiences you know someone in your family or someone you know that have got caught up in the criminal justice system and focus on something that could help a lot of people and that is what we should focus on and i'm hopeful that the leaders in this room could hope us with that. let me say, i think the u.s. justice system is the best in the world. we have a lot of dedicated public service ants police officers, defense lawyers public dependers, they work hard and do a good job and they work

hard but our system still needs a lot of work as we sit here today. and we think it needs to be improved and so it fulfilled the promise of the declaration of independence and the bill of rights and that is what this is all about at the end of the day as americans and it needs to protect all americans ab especially the most dis -- and especially the most disadvantaged for society. and we've heard here today who gets hurt the most in the criminal justice system are those that can least afford those who can endure it and that is wrong and we need to fix that. since we had a public announcement about our partnership with the national association of criminal defense lawyer nacdl a project we are excited about we've had people saying why are you involved on this and involved in indigent

defense and in criminal justice and i would ask that question for you today for those that might have the same questions and let me start that by saying, it goes back over ten years and first we're drawn to these issues because of our belief in the rule of law. particularly in the true genius of the bill of rights. we at koch, charles koch had a respect for all ten amendments in the bill of rights. we believe the rights must be a reality and fulfilled promise for all americans. the bill of rights enacted over 220 years ago and still remains the foundation or it should of our free society. and it provides a blue print for free and prosperous society that we still think can work for everyone especially the most disadvantaged among us. an the rights contained in the bill of rights, they cannot be taken from an individual by government because theer are our

natural rights -- our natural and unalienable rights from our creator and not given to us by the government. that is an important point to remember. and we believe that everything at koch, business, philanthropic, government policy, we must help everyone improve their lives and this is particularly true in the criminal justice system and the bill of rights is focused on criminal justice issues and particularly the fifth amendment said we need to make sure before we take anyone's life liberty and property you have to have a due process of law. the sixth amendment guarantees the life of counsel. that tells us our founders realized as individuals in this country, the country's greatest overreach and infringement on our rights will come through criminal law and they have systems to protect it and we need to think about that as we

try to fix the system in the next couple moves right now. and you've heard it here today and the impact across the board. why coke industries? here's the story. many years ago what should have been an add tef proceeding became a case against our employees. began in november 1995, our employees met with the texas state environmental regulator, disclosed there had been an inaccurate report filed and that we were out of compliance. our people said we were going to work diligently to get back in compliance and that we would conduct an investigation, fix the issues and report back how long and how far we've been out of compliance. pretty straight forward. these meetings happen like this every day around the country. probably some going on right now. the state regulator documented these facts in an official record of that meeting.

our employees did all they said they would do, got the issue fixed, reported back. yet the case spiraled out of control. it was due to some innocent mistakes costly mistakes they made. criminal laws without well-defined standards of intent overly zealous prosecutors and curious activities during the grand jury process, the record of the initial meeting with a state regulator had been manipulated to create a false narrative. we were told by outside lawyers -- we were lucky, we could afford the best, plead guilty, cut your employees loose and let them fend for themselves. we did not do that. we could not do that. we did not believe they had done anything wrong. we stuck by them. ultimately six years later, the government's case collapsed.

after that, we looked internally and externally. what can we improve internally in our processes to make the world a better place or our company better, what can we do to try to make the world a better place externally. we fixed our compliance standards. and then we started to work on criminal justice reform. we did that. we, as a large company -- as a large company with resources in this system, we didn't feel we were treated properly, doctoring of evidence, what's happening to their constitutional rights. so that's when we found our way to adcdl and started working on these issues. we started because of our experience looking at legislation. the statutes passed, the laws passed, trying to get meaningful

intense standards put in. once we were there, once we got involved, we couldn't stop because the point -- every one of the touch point in the system, from entry to exit, they have a negative compounding impact on the next. if your laws are overly broad, 4500 criminal laws, federal we could sit here two years and i bet we couldn't name 4500 crimes that should be prosecuted. you have 4500 laws. then the next point with regard to how the law is prosecuted grand jury process, how cases are tried when someone is charged. then to the next opponent about what happens in sentencing and what happens on reentry, you've got to fix them all. it needs to be comprehensive and it needs to be big. and we need to do it. this will have such a positive impact on so many people's lives. about a month ago, there was an op-ed in politico by charles koch and me about our views on criminal justice reform.

we have five brackets a handout with five different areas impacted. we think they all need to be addressed. since then, we've received so many letters e-mails calls from around the country. across spectrum, doctors, defense, lawyers educators, hourly workers law enforcement inmates, prison officials former prisoners, prison officials, young old, urban, rural. everybody tell us some horror story with them and their family. my family experiences this. we all do. everybody has a story here. everybody has a story about how the criminal justice system has failed them or impacted them. this is something we can all work on. that's what's such a great thing. we think we have a great opportunity here with all of these groups and all of you in the room. we think we have a great opportunity to improve our criminal justice system and improve society for all americans. we -- you, me, all of us here in this room, others out there -- we need to try and seize it.

thank you very much. [ applause ] >> thank, mark. i think that mark's observation there the beginning on the good job that's done in the system is well-worth noting. in talking about over criminalization and treatment in the prison, pat likes to talk about the fact that we spent too much time punishing people that we're mad at when what he we shoumd be using the prison system for is to deal with people that we're afraid of. nothing should be taken an an endorsement from the left or the right that we should be lenient on pool that zhuszh separated from civil society. it should mean we ought to look carefully whether or not we're using too broad a brush and treating people badly. even the worst offenders need to

-- even if they need to be incarcerated, even if we need to keep them from the general population, need to be treated with some dignity within the system. i think that was an important point that needs to be made. senator franken is here. so i'd like to invite him up to say a few words. [ applause ] >> i've already commented on the fact that it's midwesterners that are really concerned about these issues. >> then you, i take it, are a midwesterner. >> yes. >> see how i figured that out. >> great. great crowd. thanks for warming them up. i want to thank the constitution project for hosting this important event. thank you, david, for that introduction. it's quite a feat to bring

together a group of speakers in such a broad array of backgrounds and perspectives. and i think that speaks to the importance of this and bipartisan aspect of this, which is simply about making our criminal justice system more fair and less expensive. i want to thank all of you for being here today and contributing to this critical conversation. as political diversity of today's speakers and crowd makes clear the need for common sense criminal justice, reform is not a partisan or particularly divisive issue or should not be. again, the fact that david introduced me just underscores

that democrats and republicans, law enforcement and advocates can all agree that the current state of overincarceration in the united states is damaging to the health of our communities and our economy and it is a tragedy for so many individual americans. i want to speak briefly about an important aspect of this problem, that is the use of the criminal justice system as a substitute for a fully functioning mental health system. tat isks speak volumes. in the nation's three biggest jail systems approximately 11,000 prisoners undergo mental health treatment on any given day. the three largest mental hospitals in the country on the other hand have a combined 4,000 beds. as the sheriff in my home state of minnesota put it, local jails

are the largest mental health facilities in the state of minnesota. and unfortunately this holds true across the nation. and burden of the criminal justice system serving as a substitute mental health system goes beyond our prisons. every day our police are called upon to intervene in potentially life threatening mental health crisis and our courts are overwhelmed with cases involving people with untreated mental illnesses. this doesn't make sense for public safety. it certainly doesn't make sense for taxpayers who are stuck with a bill for overcrowded prisons. and the cost of addressing mental health needs within the criminal justice system and just

the incredible waste of human capital and the waste of human beings, lives and time. in the face of these realities, we need to take a comprehensive approach. elected officials and stake holders at the local, state and federal level must work together to address the unique needs of persons with mental health conditions in the justice system. >> i will remind people in line you can provide comments through e-mail, facebook and twitter and will have a public comments portion at the end of the day. with that i'll turn it to our co-chairs to lead us through the rest of the session. >> thank you sir. and welcome back, everyone. panel three will focus on voices from the field. we're going to begin with