ronald reagan had an attempted recall. our current governor, jerry brown, when governor prior to who had been dad, governor, were both recalled but unsuccessful. gives ag old buildings feeling of solidarity. things valuable than are still valuable now. the original intent of the building was still here. >> throughout the weekend, american history tv is featuring sacramento, california. our staff recently traveled there to learn about its rich history. learn more about sacramento and other stops at www.c-span.org. you are watching american history tv all weekend, every weekend on cspan3. ,> next on american history tv a panel of scholars looks at the history of incarceration and prison reform in the united

states. the panelists examine different e ands in prison structur inmate control from the early days of the republic to modern times. they also discussed the issue of race in the prison system. it is a little over one hour. >> good afternoon. my name is dane kennedy. i'm the director of the national history center, which is associated with the american historical association. i want to welcome all of you this afternoon to this congressional briefing on the history of incarceration. i should say as a preface, this is part of an ongoing series sponsored by the national history center that brings historical perspectives to issues that currently confront congress. the center is strictly nonpartisan and the purpose of

the program is not to advocate for any particular policy or set of policies, but rather to provide the historical context that can help inform policymakers and the public as they deal with difficult issues. i went to acknowledge the financial support of the mellon foundation which has made this program possible. and also the work of the assistant director right there and frankie lyons for organizing today's event. the history of mass incarceration, or the issue of mass incarceration has reached a critical mass of attention in the last six months or so. there have been initiatives like the senate did this week and in various other venues as well, all of them calling for reform of the system of incarceration.

what is interesting is this has been a bipartisan initiative involving democrats and republicans. it's a response to what is clearly a serious problem. i want to offer a few brief statistics to highlight this, the united states today incarcerates about 2.3 million people, which is a larger proportion of our population than any other nation on earth. the united states has 5% of the world's population, but nearly 25% of the world's prison population. the issue today is how did the united states become what the "economist" magazine recently referred to as the jailhouse nation. we have three leading historians who will tell us how we got where we are today. sitting right next to me is the associate professor of history at indiana university, also interim director of the american

historical review, the author of various work on the history of prison labor. it was one of the first works to point to the link between the growth of incarceration to these earlier historical antecedents. next to him is the director of the new york public library schomburg center for research in black culture. he's the author of "the condemnation of blackness." he is also a contributing author of the 2014 national research council study, the growth of incarceration in the united states. last but not least is heather thompson, professor of history at the university of michigan. she's written widely on the issue of mass incarceration and

has a book coming out. that is on the history of attica. she sits on the board of the prison policy initiative and she recently served on the national academy of sciences blue-ribbon panel on the causes and consequences of incarceration in the united states. we have a great panel here this afternoon and what will happen is that each of them will speak for about 10 minutes, and then we will open this up for questions, answers, discussion, and the like. we have about an hour in total. i turn it over to allen. >> thank you for coming this afternoon. to the national history center and frankie and amanda for arranging this. it is an honor to be here with khalil and heather. we have worked on these issues together for a long time. my task is to talk about about the deeper past, the 19th century in this case. looking at the history of that period makes me skeptical and

cautious. it seems obvious that of necessity we are poised on the edge of prison reform. the current system seems to many people on both sides of the aisle to be cruel and unusual. the latter because it is in fact unique in the contemporary world in its intensity and unprecedented historically in its scope in the united states as well as around the world, certainly i know khalil and heather will speak to how we move from a system of incarceration to one of mass incarceration over the past half-century. whatever one thinks of our criminal justice system is reliant on incarceration, its injustice, its ineffectiveness, and it's obvious racial disparities. we can all agree it is simply fiscally unsustainable at this point. i think that's the reason for bipartisan concern with the reform. nevertheless, as i said, the history of prison reform makes me skeptical when i hear

enthusiasm for new ideas. more often than not, the history of prison reform has been the history of new forms of brutalization and human exploitation of the incarcerated. when charles dickens visited the showcase prison of the united states, the model for the rest of the world at the time, the eastern state penitentiary in philadelphia in 1842, he observed and wrote, "it is well conceived that the penitentiary is kind, humane, and meant for reformation. but i'm persuaded that those who designed a system of prison discipline and the benevolent gentleman who carry it into execution do not know what it is they are doing." dickens recognized that the eastern state penitentiary in philadelphia which emphasized labor in solitary confinement lay in the grand designs of the first generation of american penal reformers.

as forcing people into mandatory in the tents. hence the term penitentiary, and in doing so they have built a prison they thought was adequate to the needs of a virtuous new nation. this is in the first decades of the 19th century. in doing so, they hoped they would improve over the monarchical states raw capacity to torture and physically punish wrongdoers. this was a reform, penitentiary arose as an explicit reform. while dickens condemned the penal experiment, he observed a new system had already risen to take its place. that was the so-called auburn system named after a prison in new york state which still stands. as does the eastern state penitentiary. it is a museum now. the auburn prison was called by the boston prison discipline society in the mid-19th century, " probably the best prison in the world, a model worthy of the world's imitation. instead of confining prisoners

to isolation in their cells, the auburn congregant system brought them together into a single space so they could engage in common labor, still silently, however. in essence, the auburn system turned the prison into a factory. it was probably no accident that the auburn system began to displace the philadelphia system as a model prison at the very moment in the 19th century that the factory had begun to replace there it is and all -- the artisanal workshop as the main site of industrial mechanical production in the united states. nevertheless, this innovation was most certainly touted at the time as a reform of the existing solitary system in philadelphia, whether because of its allegedly more salutary effects on the prisoners or more productive capacity in the manufacturing sector, however, it's hard to say. whatever the original intentions of the auburn system, these two were soon overcome by the desire for profit.

as congregant labor wedded with penal discipline created a system efficient enough to be out to the highest bidder. essentially all of the commodities of a growing industrial and consumer economy in the 19th century. much the way goat cheese and farm raised to lap you are today -- and tilapia are today in prison systems. this system of the prison factory unfortunately does seem sometimes to be regarded today as a potential solution to soaring penal costs. this would be one way to try to defray the costs of mass incarceration. now, as in the 19th century. in any case, a progressive penal

the-- reformer in the progressive era indicted the prisons of his day, pointed to none other than the auburn prison. he spent a voluntary week to study conditions as a prisoner. osborne pointed to auburn as a cruel system of punishment that did more to brutalize and harden prisoners than to reform or rehabilitate them. in other words the previous reform was the next generation's example of brutality. the 19th century south lagged behind the north in penal innovations. many of the people would normally be subject to the penal discipline of the state and were instead disciplined by their masters. they were slaves. emancipation in 1865 change d that, drawing 4 million new citizens into the labor market and potentially into the criminal justice system.

looking for a new tool to replace the overseers whip, many whites in the south turned to the sheriff's badge and the judge's gavel. but the south was poor, there was no money to open or build new prisons. the solution was to lease prisoners out to the highest bidder, have them build railroads, mine coal, make bricks, prepare levees, and do whatever other working entrepreneurs thought was necessary. it would be a mistake to see the convict lease system as a new system of slavery or throwback to a darker era. in fact, penal labor in the late 19th century south just as it was in the north was a modern system, even if the leasing of that labor took place outside of the prison walls instead of inside them as it did in a place like new york. unless one thinks the system should be laid solely at the

feet of southern democrats, in fact it was the republicans of the reconstruction governments who wanted to rebuild the south, who pioneered the system is what they saw as a potential reformist system. this too can be seen as a penal innovation and a reform in its day. convict leasing which came to represent the most brutal aspect of southern punishment only fell into bad odor in the south when what was seen as a more progressive penal system began to take its place. that was the chain gang. that's right, the chain gang, the most notorious symbol of southern racial and penal brutality of the 20th century south was implanted as a progressive era reform designed to displace convict leasing. it used penal labor for the benefit of the public to build roads. it returned prisoners to state control. it offered a healthful outdoor activity to keep prisoners busy. that is how it was sold as a reform. yet the chain gang itself fell

into disfavor during the great depression when it was exposed by films and other exposes. by the 1930's, not only was the chain gang condemned as brutal, but those convicts on the road were seen as taking jobs from the needy. people who needed those jobs. let me put it this way. every innovation in 19th and early 20th century few knowledge enalogy, the convict lease system after the civil war, the chain gang, every single one was advertised by its advocates as a bin of assent and necessary reform of a penal system regarded as a cruel and ineffective and in need of a dramatic overhaul, even in our own era i suspect the super max, the notorious super max prison, a return to the hyper isolation of the first penitentiary, i might add, even though it was as early as 1840's doctors were pointing out that extended

periods of solitary confinement drove people mad, even the super max was probably developed with a beneficent ideal in hand more recently. every system that grew from these reforms brought with it new horrors. i don't recount this to dissuade anyone from reforming history. as far as i can tell this is about the only thing the democrats and republicans in congress can agree over it now. we need some kind of penal reform. as a historian i want strike a cautionary note. i want to say we need to pay much more attention to why we punish and incarcerate and who and how much and for how long in addition to how.

in thinking we can improve the latter that is the prison system we avoid wrestling with the more difficult questions about who is sent there and why. let me ask about my comments with dickens own conclusions in 1842 which stands for itself. quote there is surely more than sufficient reason for abandoning a mode of punishment attended by some little hope of honest and fraught beyond dispute with such a host of evils. thank you very much. [applause] >> to director kennedy. thank you for inviting me to join this very important panel to discuss the history of incarceration. millions of people in our institution represents the nation's most urgent threat to democratic governance and civil liberties. thank you for joining us this

afternoon. i am honored to share this space with my colleagues. building on his key point i want to first emphasized the deeply historical nature of racial criminalization as a pillar of incarceration. in short, how the very notion of punishment assumes a citizen and noncitizen type. constructs which were fundamentally tied to racial and social -- white and free black and slave indigenous and colonize. it serves to remind us that there is no moments in north american history with crime and punishment have not been shaped by these ideas. in light of what alex noted about the history of the practices. as a punishment regime the criminal justice system and political economy that was neither backwards or premodern is in fact a crucial

forward-looking innovation. i will link the progressive policy is the punishment in the south to the urban north in the early 20th century. how contemporaneous are our ideas? as compared to a century ago. present is a modern invention. 18 century military ensign religious leaders conceived and designed as an alternative to brutal and torturous forms of colonial punishment such as branding, dismemberment and beheading inherited from old world europe. it was intended to be a rational instrument of social control. early prisons sure many comment features such as solitary confinement. they were also overcrowded with men of european ancestry. they were conceived in opposition to slavery. slavery was the great national scandal of the antebellum age of

the reformers who built the 20th century belongs to anti-slavery circles defined their institution against the brutality of the plantation. they represented the discipline of slavery is a dehumanizing violence in their own punishment by contrast is a set of refined chastisement that prepared the convict for freedom and self-governance. the enslaved black and indigenous native american population remained out by his gaze subject to brutal and capricious physical punishment. wasn't a problem. when did the demographics change with the earliest prisons were not yet defined by huge disparities in incarceration it was not stigmatized by black people is prone to reality.

-- prone to criminality. the idea of black criminality is embedded. the report in opposition to the reality. as early as the 17th century. it shaped the concept of modern prison. puritans took seriously the conventional image of the black and black and character of a -- i'm virtuous behavior. the demons who possessed young white girls during the witchcraft hysteria of 1692 were described as black. this is not an isolated incident or literary metaphor. between 1676 and 1800 the

identified 33 published execution in reference to the criminal offenses. the racial criminalization was a common theme. deep racial anxieties took root in the name of black criminality is. much current research turns on racial disparities as a measure of of unit of punishment policy american drug and crime policies have disabled for young black men from successful participation in american life and thereby damage not only that but also their families and communities. the racial disparity data notes are legion.

it is now common in scholarship the news and even congressional debates to know the orientation of blacks in the criminal justice system. we add our voice to the growing group. bruce weston, another renowned scholar adds that the novel social experience is wholly outside of mainstream social life. how many black babies born today the research literature was not always this way. it was not always read as evidence of negative pathology outcome. there instead evidence of pathology.

as one noted harvard scholar of the late 19th century, statistics will lead the way to a new understanding of black one of the earliest promoters of racial disparity data in the 1890's. new the turn of the 20th century the scholar and many other nations built an enduring for work throughout the study the stuff. health, education, family, housing, and of course, crime and punishment. they established like crime statistics. as evidence of group dysfunction. as he noted, in the statistics

neither religion nor education has decreased to an appreciable degree. several leading social scientist followed his lead. using the disparity of punishment that was just described. in the following example i will sketch a relationship of white criminality in the early 20th century. in other words, children are the young and old are afraid to walk the streets of some neighborhoods. gangs have overtaken many -- mothers and ministers are organizing into

violence campaigns. juvenile delinquency experts are working together to stop crime. those of us who live in chicago last year they were arrested and , brought into court. the year is 1909, not 2010. no politicians were calling for the national guard to intervene in chicago's most troubled immunities. no government that the kids were anxiously waiting the supreme court's decision that overturned 20-year-old handgun bans in chicago.

playgrounds were still the focus of public safety, not prisons. nativeborn whites and european immigrants are still safe. -- still the face of inner-city crime. down chicago much as changed, , but not the killings. well before al capone gained a reputation for being the most violent place in america. young white drug pushers and mom and -- common thieves and murderers terrorized the law-abiding residents. most influential social worker. after describing the grizzly details of a game related taleing, adams wrote, this could be duplicated almost every morning. making merely a boy scrap turned into tragedy.

another white teenager, she added a transplant from a little , farm in ohio the shot policeman. he was now awaiting the death penalty. chicagoans grew heartsick over the mounting tragedies just as we do today. how did this happen? that the circumstances of chicago's white on white problem could produce ultimately the air of rehabilitation. on the heels of the great migration of 6 million black people moving from the south to the north. in many ways what is less than that modern architects of social policies left inner-city black folks at the solution. based on his age-old notions. antichrist crusades. were for whites only. even then he will opportunity

reform was often short-lived. the war on quickly evolved into the war on drugs. there were victims of the dehumanizing effects of poverty and isolation. great army unfortunates. by contrast the blacks were less poor -- you take all self-destructive and pathological. their own worst enemy. progressives deemed white criminality problems and told blacks to work out their own salvation. let me close with the area of rehabilitation which brought for a number present programs based on london's movie theaters trustee systems. a great army of unfortunates. by contrast to blacks they called self-destructive, their own worst enemy. they were sold to work out their own salvation. let me close with the era of rehabilitation which brought

forth the number of prison programs, baseball diamonds, movie theaters, trustee systems. cap on the incarceration rate. in general is understanding of prisons cannot be the solution to social problems and americans society. and indeed, for a short time, the possibility for mass incarceration resulted during the prohibition era when the series of law enhancing only positions of use of guns and other weapons as well as multiple strikes against felons resulted in a mandatory life sentence for four strikes convex. that law lasted for six years and it ended in 1933 with the repeal of prohibition, precisely because it was a recipe for mass incarceration. except in that era, the clients of that system, the face of

criminality, those behind bars were and overwhelming white population. from that moment to the next it opened up the era of the new deal. the moment itself that thought deeply and progressively. -- about crime prevention and how to put young men to work, who only a generation before been shooting at each other on the streets chicago area thank -- on the streets of chicago. thank you. >> good afternoon. i will try to keep my remarks brief so we had a chance to open this up. i really want to thank the american historical association and also the national history center for writing is here. -- for bringing us here. it's a wonderful day indeed when people ask the question of what matters in history it makes us very happy. we are all very glad to be here and actually i also went to see we have historians in the room who work on this. so i really look forward to

opening this up for discussion. we are here to get the broader history of this and for that i'm very grateful for alex input. we are also here fundamentally because it would love to know how we got to this particular mess today. i think what i like to do is synthesize some major points that we might take away about that. you had for my colleagues about the american criminal justice systems earlier history and also about how that history has very consistent themes throughout it. firstly that it's always been shaped by economic concern as well as political desires. you've also learned that this is a system that is consistently dispensed justice not blindly bit very much in terms of very specific economics and very specific demographics from the civil war onward the american criminal justice system has police arrested and incarcerated our nations for citizens as well as nonwhite citizens in ways

wholly on the with you actually breaks the law and indeed the law but under that system were themselves deliberately criminalized the actions of an space is inhabited by people of color disproportionately and specifically. and so that was true from moving forward as he takes us through all the way through to the new deal, if it is always in the case of this criminal justice system has been informed by political concerns and economic interests, policy decisions far more than determined by something called the crime rate which orders has fluctuated throughout the time. then those are the tools i think we need to think about. at least the critically at how we got to the highest rates of

incarceration that we have today. that are both historically unprecedented but also internationally unparalleled. i want to make the case that all of the groundwork was laid hereby alex and khalil about the way the system is racialized and also shaped and formed by political and economic interests is perhaps at no time has gotten more obvious than in the four decades that followed the civil rights. for decades that include today. i will not presume to speak for all of us in the room. what i would like to do is disabuse us of what the origins were not. we often assume that we got mass incarceration because our hearts were somehow historically unprecedented in that we might not like what we end up with. but that there was a historical imperative that let us here.

i think we are beginning to learn as a nation that was not the case and in fact when we begin the war on crime which is really in 1965 earlier than we think, historically primates were not particularly historically remarkable. indeed they have been higher than reiterated that higher at other points in american history area eventually crime is going to rise. it will rise and fall again in ways separated from the incarceration rate. to understand when we do this later one of the last four decades have been devoted to incarceration, i would like to bring us back to what dr. lichtenstein talked about. this moment right after the civil war when there was a massive change in the political system. in the case of three to 4 million human beings from bondage. the moment he describes in the american south and particularly white settlers in power were worried about what the abolitionists newly freed folks will be. there been a policy and a desire that people have for housing and

voting and so forth. jobs. they responded to this in a number of ways the one the primary way they did was by criminalizing this aces in which african-american live. making things illegal that had not been illegal for, making things that have been illegal have much greater penalties. overnight so that institutions became all-black not because white folks stopped committing crimes, but because the policies changed because they were driven by political and economic considerations and concerns. something eerily similar happens after the civil rights in the 60's. notably southern politicians have long thought that civil rights protests were merely criminal behavior. the northern politicians are at least for a while willing to make a distinction and willing to come to southern states into enforcing rights law. when they moved north however

the politicians became much more prone like the southern counterparts to equate dissent with criminality. very quickly we start to see northern and federal politicians starting to the crime rhetoric again for crime becomes particularly remarkable at it again very racialized. we get the apparatus for the war on crime in 1965. with the law enforcement administration. and we get the ability to wage war on crime before the primates -- crime rates really become remarkable. we create the apparatus lyndon johnson that every president afterwards create and have added to this apparatus. we had to the world crime to the war on drugs. the war on drugs is accompanied by efforts on the part of certain political interests to take votes from people who are incarcerated.

also to react prison labor. just like after the civil war we criminalized african-americans faces, we overwhelmingly lockout black communities. we take away the right to vote and we put people back to work. we do so in the criminal justice system through the criminal justice apparatus. eventually there many things going on because essentially communities do suffer from a world drugs eventually violence increases of people start climber at its origin is is very much a political and policy choice. it was a choice that was bipartisan. it was only chosen every moment in our history. this is important because his

historians we can see that the policy choice for a much shape the entire latter half. beginnings of the 21st. because generous crises in cities across the country in poor rural areas across the country. undermine the economy by making only people permanently unemployable. it distorted our very democracy by taking away the right to vote for people who have been formally incarcerated but also by shifting. and by doing all of this we created a policy -- it had dire repercussions for the 20th century. as historians are now beginning to trace out exactly how responsible changes are. in communities that are already fragile. one of the things that we know is that for example during provision when we made alcohol illegal paralyzes basis. we had chosen that time because we can see that that was leading

-- one would criminalize those spaces, there was higher gun deaths and people in those communities suffered mightily. we had chosen that time because we can see that that was leading to draconian sentences. and i think we are perhaps at that moment where we might be on choosing it again. that is the good news, but i think that all of us here as historians would offer a bit of a cautionary tale. every criminal justice system has been as we move forward when

we look for political solutions to this would bear that history mind. [applause] >> we are open for questions and comments. anyone? [indiscernible] what your comments add up to is that governments make a difference. let's speculate for a moment here what would government action look like today that would alleviate the kinds of conditions we've been talking about.

>> i want to add to that question. part of the reason for using the example is to say congress in -- say to congress in part that we set ourselves up for a false trade by simply focusing on how many people are in prison. if we are not also having a conversation about pro social interventions in the very communities that have been targeted for incarceration. we need to be thinking together about the role of government in addressing social disadvantage which is a common theme perhaps as long-running theme is is the racial story that i told. we dealt with social disadvantage here differently starting from the colonial.

all the way through to the 20th century. i appreciate the question because that is not something that we are rallying around in a bipartisan debate. it has always been a tool that was discriminatory and its intense and its impact. we also need to be thinking as a government about the role of how we treat disadvantage and property in the society. >> i would like to happen to me the point is mass incarceration is a government program. that's essentially the government program that we collectively as a society have chosen over the past half-century to deal with -- i don't think it's an idea of saying we cannot government programs for mass incarceration mass incarceration is a government program that's not working.

to me that's why thinking about it. >> i agree with all those points. i would say one of the interesting things about the current discussion is we do need to worry a little bit about focusing too much just on the numbers. improves people circumstances and i hope that bipartisan incarceration discussion will actually ship itself out by the criminal justice escutcheon area right now we're still talking about fixing this problem within the system. i think of anything this history tells us that we really want to change this. we can't do it within the

-- if we want to do this, we cannot do it within the system. these are not criminal justice problems. of course the best example of that is the drug war. we use the criminal justice system to deal with drug addiction even though history is very clear that this is a public health issue. >> i would add if by some miracle the present incarceration rate were cut in half, it would still be three to four times its historic grade. >> >> i will jump in really quickly. it's not new. it reveals private interest will

always be deeply involved. people can make a lot of money. is now a huge apparatus. i do think the scale is exceptional but the idea of private interest in >> certainly -- this is no national. it is not just southern.

are bipartisan at a much deeper level and people can make a whole lot of money. element.om every mortar, it is now a huge apparatus. the scale is exceptional but the idea of driving interest withdraw from and fuel the criminal justice system, it is not at all new. >> certainly is not new. not causative.is it's not the privatization. i think as they suggest. it's a symptom. it's a response. we can just farm this out to

private enterprises. when you look at the actual numbers -- i forget the exact figures, but it's maybe 7% of the total prison population. it's almost as large as the total 40 years ago. right.ther is if you want to follow the money it's not to look at this -- it's selling all the goods and services to this massive juggernaut of the system. that's where the money lies. the people who visit have their conventions. those people are making money are happen hand over fist. right now i suggest you that their lobbyists are probably controlling the coffers are now

saying wait a second going to let out several dozen prisoners that's fewer we had sell you sheets for. >> just to quickly add he's absolutely right. it's hardly driving this. i do think it's worth noting if you look at the most importance forces driving some of the most direct laws in some of the most -- some of the most investment in the present system in general that is political it wasn't just private prison companies is private companies in general that much put their money where their mouth was. supporting bills that would lead to much larger sentences. in the 90's is just right with this. if you look in 1994 crime bill there are numerous political doctrines that directly increase incarceration that were not just politicians there was also money

behind us politicians and lobbyists. and everyone was very up front about that. >> with great about on filter colleagues as there is so much ground to cover area something that none of us said anything it's really important to mention is it was really course of profit driven models. it was confident in a way that eventually by the 1990 south of the border. you eventually have the circumstances of excess labor. it's almost a reversal of the actual economic forces that we turn to a program to deal of people who we cannot employ or exploit. >> if you look at wages they are flat. if you just look at the jobs

were gone. the below figure out a way to make money. i watched. the people in the privates are saying we need help. >> if you look at men who had nothing to do, the jobs were gone. people are going to figure out a way to make money to take care of family. so i watched. cabrini green used to just be an

open air drug area. the people in the projects are saying we need help. this, ifok at all of you don't deal with men's unemployment, jobs moving out, we have no manufacturing base like we used to. what do young men do now to earn a living who just graduate high school? >> where moving past what our charge was in this instant. let me say that i do think history is a guide here. and that's a powerful statement for both what the national history center in the -- we are surrounded by store on areas. possibly having a debate about -- by historical narrative. debateonstantly having a about states rights and federalism. all of which are predicated on some historical reading of the past.

never let anyone say why would you care about that? we need to worry about the latest euro of justice statistics. in some ways, this is a history of denying the historical resonance of its past. therefore, one response to your is, we chose to deal with the recipe for mass incarceration in the 1930's by establishing new deal programs to put people to work because not only aen as crime prevention act but also an save ourterally economy. the alternatives were all around the corner. we had more socialist mayors elected in the country in the early 1920's precisely because

the very structure of the economy seem to be fundamentally unfair. the new deal projects with g.i. benefits and veterans benefits was based on government programs that were -- mass poverty mass criminalization. all of the things you describe on a scale much greater. -- for a predominantly white population. >> that so crucially important. it means we do know how to deal with exactly what you described. has to be the will of the policies in place. this incredible evidence of using the government in ways that creates an entire

middle-class. [indiscernible] >> thinking about this sort of long history where we have institutions about control and coercion of brutality and often punishments now in the policy world's i see people wanting to move away from punishment. i think they really overstate the extent to which they are talking about broken and damaged -- khalil aims at half of the question.

i was hoping that heather can speak to this. using history to critique the little more. >> every bit of this history told at this table today illustrates the kind of reform to criminal justice system tended to generate more criminalization of color. more problems just in different

stripes. what we were just talking about this with for example you don't programs, those are not criminal justice solutions. we have to think about this is how you solve the system not by reforming the system. i'm trying to talking right now about evolution. i am literally talking about how would you address poverty, or address the need for child care or health care. but not the criminal justice system. unfortunately right now so much for discussion is only happening in the adjacent goals. except we need to be talking in other circles as well. >> it should be happening at the level of hh s as well as doj.

i heard something slightly different. i will respond by saying is are all these people are crazy or our society is crazy. wrong,y have done things but we feel better thinking they have mental health problems, so we will figure out how to address their craziness. we are not answering the question, is there something in the air that we breathe or in the water that we drink? is there something in this society that hurts people? because of their confinement or we can medicated. that is my response. >> [indiscernible] alumni. i taught six years in southeast d.c..

i saw firsthand the school to prison pipeline. i have two questions for you. do they see the schools playing any role in reshaping the way that we -- also any of the story and you have any advice for someone who wants to be and not havective their work brushed off? [laughter] >> this issue of the school to prison pipeline with her that -- we just throw that around. we know that it there. again, to the extent that people are trained to do with that i often again see that happening within the criminal justice system. so for example one of the reasons we get police in schools historically most districts

don't get police in schools until after the 1960's. usually their first in schools were there a lot of civil rights unrest. then police are just schools all the time. some of the meetings i've been in maybe the discussion hours maybe we need a different lease agenda it was. for example there's a hosel that maybe we need to have police officers conduct classes for the kids on the law. knowing more about the law and knowing your rights. again that's trying to reform schools assuming that the police are ready in the school. i hope that what were going to see the department of education is thinking about new ways to invigorate education. >> they can develop any test.

i only say that because he is on his way out. if you do your work. then you should feel free to say what you want to say. there is only so much they can say against evidence. >> also educators have a responsibility and obligation to take on those issues. both in relation to the students him him serve, administrators and college readiness in relationship to criminal justice system that is all too ready and willing to let their or educate behind prison bars. these are issues.

i will give an example from the past. exactly the kind of voice i don't hear enough, particularly in harlem where we have a lot of conversations about the criminal justice is my one hand and educational the other and very rarely do this to come together at the seams race area this is -- at the same space. this is from an african-american person he said schools for white children fulfill all the requirements of the ideal school. thousands of dollars are spent annually to make them architecturally beautiful and to get the libraries. a black schools are often dilapidated. like baltimore schools. black neighborhoods also suffer from malign neglect. city officials thought nothing of licensing's liquor stores in almost every colored neighborhood. instead police have done much to take away their sense of shame and self respect. and start them on their criminal careers. this is from 1905. i use the example to make the point that that kind of voice i don't hear coming anywhere --

this is published in the liberal journal 100 years ago. if they begin to speak to the relationship of that world and what they do in the classroom we would have a lot more allies around these issues. >> to take his original comments there's a certain depressing sense that comes from all of this. the one thing that seems to be extraordinary this moment is the bipartisan conversation about doing something about mass incarceration. that's where the defensive

actions. much of what we've heard today suggests that any genuine reform is predicated on not just dealing with mass incarceration by this implementing other kinds of social programs that will deal with urban decay on the loss of jobs poverty and the like. that's a conversation that is not exactly happening. the two things are now split. if consensus on one thing and no consensus on everything else. if you see progress on one fronts, is about to fail without the other? >> under bernie sanders, i don't want to be misunderstood. i think we're all saying if there's going to be reform it has to be claiming at what you're talking already the making a better present. the reform is about to be initiated is the incarceration of 6000 federal prisoners. they can said the federal prisons are overflowing there too many people let's build new and better prisons. that wasn't the bipartisan

consensus. the bipartisan consensus is beginning to flow the right direction. have you build a broad set of social programs? right now the moment of opportunity precisely because lefty cautionary not build more cellblocks. that's promising sign. >> i think we all recognize that politics is politics. to me, one resident example is the removal of the confederate flag. we did not talk about is the future aspirations of nikki haley as a presidential candidate, we did not bouts governor bentley alabama preemptively removing the confederate flag because he was concerned about the business

community, particularly the international business community of car dealers which is to say is the wrong better place without confederate flags? yes. am i looking forward to been they are handicapping -- the point being i think people who have the responsibility of governing this nation and the responsibility of doing both. >> can maybe help us to think about this on a more upbeat level? yes there is a lot of discord about what's the next step would be. i think it's really quite extraordinary is that there is many formally incarcerated people in this discussion of pushing this discussion. the bipartisan summit that i had the opportunity to participate in last march -- yes eric holder was on the stage and yes the koch brothers run stage and yet the aclu was on the states but there was also incarcerated folks that formally incarcerated folks on the stage talk about

what had happened. long-term questions about building a better society. i also think it's significant frankly that we are having this here today at the american store association. we historians from this woman's point are increasingly trying to push at these discussions and say we do know quite bit about what works and what doesn't work. ways in which we could shape his next discussion. at least so far we keep getting invited back and i think that that's is a very positive thing. in other moments in history, for example prisoners -- former prisoners were not speaking in washington dc about what has happened. >> on the relatively upbeat note, i think this might be a good time to bring this very stimulating session to end.

please join me in thanking alex and heather. [applause] >> you're watching american history tv all weekend every weekend on c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook at c-span history -- history. presents landmark cases, the book. a guide to our landmark cases series which explores 12 historic decisions including barberi versus madison, brown versus the board of education, miranda