reckoning: living in the aftermath of tragedy." and david keene with his book "shall not be infringd: the newest assaults on the second amendment." and then author and journalist joanne lippman discusses her book "that's what she said." what men need to know and what women need to tell them about working together. and journalist jorge ramos examines what it means to be a latino in america with his book "stranger: the challenge of a latino immigrant in the trump e era." and our fiction edition is life with best-selling author jeff shaara. watch book tv on c-span2 all weekend. next, a form on incarceration and the criminal justice system. senate judiciary committee members cory booker and mike lee and connecticut governor dan

malloy joined writer, criminal justice analysts and former inmates at the event hosted by "the atlantic", a magazine and multiplatform publisher. this is three hours. [ applause ] >> thank you, thank you. i would like to start off with a poem. southeast d.c. where the curtains are bedsheets, bad examples with good intentions, lacks of glamour that they never mention. the pain, trauma and a jail sentence. i was a part of a life where no one gets to win. the visions of my youth is where it all began. a ladder roams our label right. so how was i supposed to know i was wrong? i was strung along. praised for being the boldest, big and bad. that's right, being mad. but how could you tell me that

i'm super young and i need proper guidance? no one hear yourself cries to be taught the right things, as they call it. so i did what was wrong. but i thought it was right. i went to prison singing the same song as the ones before me, baited in by the foolery, money and jewelry. it all started in greater southeast. that's the end of my poem. and now i'm basically is a little insight on what led to my incarceration as a juvenile. i was incarcerated at a very young age, and i served five years in federal prison. it helped me discover why am, and it was kind of therapeutic to me. >> was a release whenever i felt a certain emotion or whatever, i isolate myself. and just write or read, you know. and that helped me say being a great poet ambassador for free

minds book club. it's a nonprofit in washington, d.c. and i start off as once i came home, i started off as apprentice to the program and now work fulltime in the office. and i go from school to school. if you're aware of the d.c. area, i go to school like cesar chavez and trucedale, things of that nature it's elementary schools from the d.c. area. i go to outreaches talking to kids, trying to get them to understand that there is a better way, you know. don't listen and let what you see in your everyday life influence you to do the wrong, wrong things. that's basically what i do on my day-to-day life. i made my mistakes as a young person, but helping and being a part of the solution to, you know decrease -- [ applause ] >> thank you. >> thank you.

thank you very much. >> thank you so much, james allen. that poem that james just read was written just for all of you hear today. and we thought it would be meaningful to begin this morning with poetry capturing the experience of a young man in southeast behind bars and beyond. so thank you, thank you. good morning and welcome, everybody. i'm margaret low. i'm president of atlantic live, which is the events division of the atlantic magazine. anded we bring people together to talk about some of the waittiest issues of our time. and we think the conversation this morning about criminal justice certainly fits that bill. this morning's gathering is the third in our defining justice series. we kicked off in oklahoma last fall in oklahoma city. we were looking at why oklahoma sends more women to prison at a higher rate than any other state in the country. after that, we were in l.a. to consider how media and

entertainment influence how we think about incarceration. and today, the last in our three-part series, we're in washington, and we're going to explore the policy landscape and also hear about conditions of confinement affect women and children involved with the system. before we get rolling, i do want to thank google. they made today's event and the defining justice series possible. thank you so much to google for that. [ applause ] i have a few very basic practical notes before we get started. please silence your cell phones. but as we like to say, don't put them away because we'd love you to join the conversation on twitter. we are at atlanticlive. the hash tag is defining justice. after each session, we're going to make sure we have time for your questions. we will begin this morning with senator mike lee. he is a republican from utah. he serves on the senate judiciary committee and is a co-sponsor of the sentencing and

corrections reform act. among other things, that act would roll back mandatory minimum sentences and require educational and therapeutic sentences in federal prisons. please welcome senator lee. he is here. welcome, senator. and he is here with my colleague, atlantic executive editor matt thompson. take it away, gentlemen. >> thank you very much. thank you, margaret. thank you, senator lee for joining us this morning, and thanks to all of you. senator, your last book, "our lost constitution" was an argument that america has created a large governmental bureaucracy that has in effect taken over some of the law making functions that were in america's original design reserved to congress. and that shunted aside in so doing the constitutional protections for americans, the constitutional limits on the

government's power. as we speak, one in four people that is imprisoned around the world is imprisoned in the u.s. what is the constitutional failure do you think? does that reflect the constitutional failure? does that reflect the misunderstanding of what the constitution says the government is supposed to do? and if so, what is the misunderstanding? what was the failure there? >> i think there is an argument to be made that is one of many manifestations of our drift away from some of the fundamental protections s is in constituti what i call the structural protections. the vertical protection we call federalism that says most of the government should remain with the states and close to the people where it can be turned around and where it can reflect local preferences. and then the horizontal protection, what we call separation of powers that says we're going to have one branch, congress that makes the laws. another branch headed by the president to enforce the laws. the third branch headed by the supreme court that interprets the laws.

when each function of government is allowed to perform only within its design sphere, you have government more account to believe the people. we have drifted from that. it's maybe more of an attenuated connection, especially given that we've got a lot more people incarcerated under state authority than federal authority. but i think we have a whole lot more people incarcerated under federal authority than we should. our federal prison population alone has increased about 900% since the early 1980s. this does not in my opinion reflect a 900% increase in the crime rate. it instead reflects a few trends in the law that i find disturbing. the overcriminalization of the law in this country, the overfederalization of criminal law, and the excessive use of often excessive minimum mandatory penalties within the system. >> you have been and part of the reasons you joined us here this morning is you have been an active voice on especially

federal sentencing reform. you co-sponsored a bill by senator chuck grassley to address federal sentencing reform, to try to reduce some of the mandatory minimums that federal prosecutors can apply in sentencing. now, this has been an area that for the past few years has seemed to be moving towards a rare instance of bipartisan consensus. and your bill reflects that. within the senate judiciary committee, your sentencing bill drew votes from both democratic committee members and republican committee members. however, there were a few holdouts, including yours and your colleague from utah senator orrin hatch. what was -- what is the disagreement? what was the disagreement within the committee? what were the problems? why? who on earth at this moment is trying to keep mandatory mini m

minimu minimums as having as much as a role in the system as they do and why? >> without speaking for any one colleague, i usually try to avoid being anyone else's spokesman. >> so senatorial. >> but i can speak certainly in generalities about those in my party who express opposition. one of the thing i hear from my republican colleagues is i don't believe we have an overincarceration problem. some of them will go so far to say if anything we have an underincarceration problem. i don't find that persuasive at all. >> they say he we should have one in three prisoners? >> perhaps. or maybe all of us should be in there in a sense. i don't know. not all of them feel that way. others will take a more nuanced approach and say i could support this, but i want additional reforms in there. if you could throw in mens rea reform, requiring a certain level of intent as a federal threshold matter on federal criminal offenses. and i understand that. my response to that one is this

doesn't deal with substantive offenses as much as it deals with the terms of sentencing and incarceration. that's more appropriate to address elsewhere. this has been an issue that has been building over time. when i first got to the senate after being elected in 2010, i decided i wanted to work on this. it was difficult thing to start initially. i started looking for allies on the judiciary committee. and i got together with dick durbin. dick durbin is a liberal democrat from illinois. i've never been described as a liberal democrat or as democrat for that matter. he and i see eye to eye on this issue and the need for reform. and so we put together something called the smarter sentencing act. and that got a little support. and we decide we wanted to expand it. we got together with chairman grassley. and ironed out a series of compromises and put together the sentencing reform and corrections act. that passed out of the judiciary committee by a bipartisan super

majority vote of 16-5 just two weeks ago. and so we're making progress on this. and this could be a big bipartisan win if we would just bring to it the senate floor. >> yes. and there is one key -- there are a few key actors in addition to some of the holdouts in the senate committee. it passed with flying colors and has many proponents in the broader senate. but the white house has had an uncertain posture on this bill. and i'm curious if you could take us for a moment into a room that many of us don't get to be in for a while. you spent some time with the white house, with attorney general jeff sessions who described this bill itself as a grave mistake. what's the flavor of that disagreement? why -- what has the cooperation with what messages are you getting from the white house and what cooperation do you expect looking forward on these issues? >> so far we've had enthusiasm

expressed from the white house on title 2 of the sentencing reform and corrections act and not title 1. let me explain what that means. title one deals with sentencing reform and makes some necessary adjustments to some of our minimum mandatory sentencing laws. title 2 deals with some reform programs, what we call the back end reform or reentry reform, helping to reform current federal inmates for their reintroduction into society so that they're ready to go. they've got some job skills, and they're less likely to recidivate after they get out. the white house has been more warm to title 2 than to title 1. i still hold out hope because i still think this is good policy. and i think it's very difficult to argue against either title 1 or title 2. i think they're best put forward together. >> and part of that hope, as i understand it as an outsider rests somewhat on within the white house. jared kushner, the senior white

house adviser has made sentencing reform among his bailiwicks. and i hear that as of last night john kelly has cleared aside some part of his foreign policy portfolio. so he has more time perhaps to apply to criminal justice. how has it been -- what has mr. kushner's engagement on the issue been from your perspective? >> jared has a lot of very refreshing ideas. he's also got a refreshing amount of intellectual curiosity. he likes to learn about issues like this. and he asks a lot of good questions. he has a lot of enthusiasm as a reformer. so i've appreciated the opportunity to work with him. >> so i want to turn for a moment to the policy itself, to sentencing reform as one aspect of the broad problem i think it's fair to say of incarceration in the u.s. and

its spread. some would say that sentencing reform, and especially federal sentencing reform is kind of nibbling around the edges of the scale of the problem, that because relatively -- a relatively small percentage of those under correctional observation in the u.s. are federal prisoners, now this is where the matter of women is most directly affected, of course. half of drug offenders that are imprisoned at the federal level are women. but it's still a small number being imprisoned in the country overall. most are in state and local prisons. so what would you say to the argument that federal sentencing reform is kind of small ball? >> it's a little bit like saying i don't want to take the analogy too far, but if you look it up, a mile-long train.

the engine of the train is a very small train, but it's what's driving the train. in some respects, the federal system might be driving the states. some of the states will look to federal law as a model in some instances. in other instances, you'll actually see state prosecutors or local prosecutors interacting with their federal counterparts and deciding which entity will take a prosecution in a particular instance, depending on which one is likely to produce a longer sentence. it might be one of the reasons we've seen such an uptick in the federal prison population in recent decade series because that sort of thing has been happening. they see a longer sentence likely at the end of federal prosecution, the case is likely going to go federal. so, yeah, even though this is a small segment of the overall incarcerated population in the united states, it is an important population. most importantly for my purposes as a federal lawmaker, it's the area that i'm supposed to focus on. so i'm going to try to reform

this one, hoping and expecting and so far frankly seeing that as we do this, we interest more legislative bodies in states to undertake similar reforms. >> is there a risk in the other direction that if the -- if you do achieve a bipartisan success, legislation passes on sentencing reform, that it in essence makes a broader set of policies on incarceration less possible down the line, that it limits the political will to come back to the subject and address some of the other areas that are where there might still be problems? >> perhaps if it backfired that might be the result. i don't think it's going to, though. i think if we were to pass the sentencing reform and corrections act, i think we would see some very favorable outcomes. that's why i'm very optimistic about the future for criminal justice reform. i think something like this passing is inevitable.

i want to see it happen sooner rather than later. i would like to see us pass it this year. and i think we would see the fruits from that. i think they would be favorable and beneficial. and i think it would bring about more reform in this area that's needed. >> i want to turn for a moment to the matter of the public and public opinion. we are having this conversation at a moment where there is broad agreement among americans that the size of the american incarceration state has grown too large, and that we should explore alternatives to prison for some of society's ills that previously were construed as criminal. now this happens at a moment when crime in america, violent property crime, drug crime is at a decades low, still. every year we see a few headlines about potential spikes in some cities. but by and large, crime now in

the u.s. is far lower than it was at the peak when several mandatory minimums and harsh sentencing guidelines were put in place. what if that picture changes? what if this goes the other way, like in the '80s we stand possibly on the precipice. we are amidst a huge drug epidemic again? there is an argument -- some are arguing that criminal penalties should be a solution to apply to that situation as well. what if law and order and tough on crime begins to get purchase in public opinion? do you think that these -- the successes so far in achieving bipartisan consensus in this are at risk? which a representative government, it is hard for me to see it going in that direction. i don't see the will among the american people, the desire

among the american people to say yes, we've got this problem. and the answer is more cowe bel. add more fuel to this fire. a friend of mine used to say when you're holding a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. and thing is grave danger in that when it comes to the criminal justice system. if we see the government is wielding only one tool to combat the problem, the problem being broadly defined as crime generally, or even being defined as drug-related crimes, i think we're going cause problems. i think we have caused problems to the extent we have done that. i visited a place recently in salt lake city called the other side academy. it's modelled after a recovery home called delancey street that started thought san francisco. branched out and opened another location in los angeles.

they've had tremendous success with taking people who have served time, who have had problems with the law, often problems with substances, and they work together. they hold each other accountable. and they keep each other clean. and off the streets, and focused on gaining job skills. and on becoming contributing members of a community once again. they've had tremendous success. they've been in operation now -- they're in their third year in salt lake city. and so far they have had a 100% success rate. this is not a government operation. but in some instance, it's been used as an alternative to incarceration. there are some judges who have allowed people to go through this program rather than going and being incarcerated for a period of time. i think we need to look more at solutions like that if we really want to solve this problem. this is best understood as a human problem. and we have to examine not just

the financial costs of lengthy mass incarceration, but also the human costs. the problems arise when somebody's son or daughter or mother or sister or aunt or uncle is put away behind bars not just for years, but for decades at a time. there is a significant human cost attached to that. and i think we're reaping some of that. and that's why we need to look to other tools. >> in a moment i'm going turn to the audience for a question. and first, i wanted to ask about separate but related matter. i would be remiss given our moment and that we are still in the aftermath of the tragic shooting last week in parkland, florida, at marjory stoneman douglas school in florida, there is one gnash has been endorsed by the nra to fix an act that is intended essentially to strengthen some of the incentives around reporting gun

purchases to the federal government. and it has a fair amount given that it is endorsed by the nra. it has a fair amount of support from across the aisle, as it were. but you don't support this measure. and tell me a little bit about your objection to it. >> i'm trying to reform it. i'm trying to fix it. i'm trying to fix. there is a fairly simple fix that i have drafted there are some others available out there. let me explain briefly what this does. the niks system is a system that alerts when someone is buying a gun that shouldn't be trying to buy a gun because they fit under one of 900 category, people who have been convicted of a felony, of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, dishonorably discharged from the military, or one of the other nine categories. among those nine categories is some language put in there i believe by mistake by congress. someone who has been adjudicated a mental defective.

the problem with that is it's not a thing. no one really knows what that is. and the concern there is that you could have among other people veterans who are returning with ptsd, somebody in the veterans affairs administration has identified them as having ptsd and given them assistance managing their affairs in order to help them with that. they could be deemed by a combination of action by the v.a. and a regulation put out by the atf to have been adjudicated a mental defective and therefore deprived of their rights. now that may seem like a simple problem to correct, but once you do that and a culture develops among veterans where they're afraid to get help upon their return, you could end up with some real problems. you do not want returning veterans refusing to get treatment or help from the v.a. simply because they fear that they might be stripped of their right to carry that which they've been asked to carry in defense of their country. i'm trying to fix that i think we can get to a fix on it.

but it does need to be repaired. >> let me turn a question from the audience. right over there, i think. >> hi, senator. thank you for being here today. i have a question related to -- >> please quickly identify yourself. >> my name is anna and i work with the public defender service here in d.c. and i have a question actually related to what you just mentioned with mental disabilities. i know in the past year congress passed an act that allowed people that were severely mentally incapacitated to -- people that have other people, for example managing their benefits, that used to be a prohibition that you couldn't go and get a gun. but congress passed a law that allowed people like this to get a gun. i see your example about veterans and i understand that. but when we're facing a culture

of mass shootings in the united states, how can we both address the very real mental health issues that exist while also making sure that people like that are not capable of owning and purchasing a weapon? >> yeah, yeah. it's a fair question. and first of all, thank you for what you do. public defenders perform such a valuable role in our society. and i appreciate what you do. >> i'm sure she'll remember that in the appropriations process. >> yes, yes. exactly. i think it is important to make sure that people who should not have a gun don't get one, including people who have violent tendencies or propensities, people who are mentally insane, anyone who has been adjudicated, for instance, as unfit to stand trial, not guilty by reason of insanity, someone who has been committed

to an insane asylum or has been deemed to be a harm to themselves or a harm to others. so that's what we're trying to tweak there is we want to make sure that there is a definition behind that rather than this broad term of "adjudicated as a mental incompetent." to conflate that with someone who is returning home having served in the armed forces with ptsd and who needs help managing their affairs, that is not the same as somebody who has truly been adjudicated as someone who is a harm to themselves or a harm to others. we've got to make sure there is due process in that. it's also helpful, i think, to rely on what a number of states have been using. and i think we need to examine our federal laws to figure out whether we should supplement

federal law with what something like a number of states have adopted with domestic violence restraining orders. when a close family member sees something in another person that they cause -- that causes them to believe that they could be a threat to someone else. they ought to be able to report them to the authorities. and at least for a period of time until they can get it worked out. have that person put on the list of people who are unable to acquire or possess firearms. >> senator lee, thank you for your answer. it's been -- >> thank you. >> a great start to our morning. and enjoy the rest. >> thank you. >> thank you, senator lee. and thank you, matt. connecticut governor dannel malloy has led the way on justice reform efforts in his state since he took office in 2011. before entering politics, he was a federal prosecutor. and during his tenure as governor, the state has ended the death penalty, changed the

bail system, reduced sentences for drug possession, and made it easier for nonviolent offenders to apply for a pardon or for parole. i'm grateful that governor malloy got up i'm told by him at 4:00 a.m. this morning in hartford, connecticut to be here with thus morning in washington, d.c. thank you, governor, to talk to my great colleague, steve clemens, washington editor at large. >> hey, everybody, good morning. good morning. >> everyone. you know, i'm really grateful that all of you are here there are so many people here and in the other room. i know we have croissants 230er you. when we come to questions, ask them. you're putting in time here. let's make this fun and interesting for everybody. governor, thank you for joining us. isn't it kind of strange that you hear a senator from utah who might make a great candidate for the governor of connecticut. i mean you guy sounsd so much on the same page. >> not on the last part. >> i just want to ask you, though, we were talking in the green room about the hard choices you had to make as

governor during your tenure. and i know you're leaving in january of this next year. you're giving up this position. and you have taken the state in some very interesting directions on sentence reform, on prison reform. and i mention the hard choices you were talking about. are any of them in this arena? >> i think the they think we've done in arena are relatively easy. because they're, you know, they're smart. they're based on science as opposed to perception. and we have learned in connecticut and elsewhere what works and what doesn't work. so i think this has been relatively easy to propose. you know, some of the proposals i've made haven't been enacted in my own state but actually have been enacted in other states, which is interesting. but no, the criminal justice reform is the smart thing. >> you know, i was reading a lot about you in the last couple of days. and one of the features that came out was your wife kathy.

and in particular, there was this discussion of confidence conference you organized. you did a conference called redefining justice. you reached out to the koch brothers, the koch foundation to help fund it. and kathy just comes through the pages as someone who at a human level really into this. what's going on there? >> first and foremost, we're partners. we met on april 6th, 1974 at a party in brighton, massachusetts. >> you i know the minute and hour? >> pretty much. and, you know, my body of work and her body of work have been in tandem from the very get-go. i think one of the most extraordinary things about my wife is she is mentoring a person who -- a woman who was incarcerated for 23 years for as you might imagine, a very serious offense. we take this to heart. we talk about criminal justice reform and justice generally in our daily conversations.

it's part of who we are. >> so i'm trying to understand how you've approached this ecosystem. you just made a comment about it being logical, it being science. it is very political in a sense that when you begin laying off workers in your prison system, which connecticut has been doing, 180 workers you've laid off recently. you've got declining room, declining beds, or -- i shouldn't say beds, but declining incarsees i should say. and you've succeeded on a recidivism in four different areas. when we were in oklahoma recently with mary fallon, the governor of oklahoma, she gave much the same line. i am interested in the degree in which your example, the frame that you have if there connecticut is what we're seeing in oklahoma, what we're seeing in south dakota, we're seeing in a lot of red states as well. and what are the similarities that you're finding as you talk to governors about what the buttons are to push? >> first and foremost, i hope we're pushing it a little bit further than other folks. i think that the science of

human development, particularly with represent to young adults, people between the ages of 18 and 25 most particularly, where we've actually started units in prison specifically tending to the needs and quite frankly some of the possibilities of that age group are very significant. i think criminal justice reform can be driven because you want the save money, or kit be driven because you want to save lives. i'm -- i'm in that group. >> right. >> and i want -- i think it makes little sense to send people who you don't have to send to prison where they're likely to get an advanced degree in criminal behavior. and i think, you know, as a former trial attorney, as a former prosecutor in new york city, i saw too many judges send people to jail because they were frustrated with this young person who appeared before them. not because the crime itself required necessarily that that

person be incarcerated, but frustration took over and then all of the sudden you open up this opportunity for a lifetime of criminal behavior. you asked a specific question. are there similarities between folks who simply want the save money and those who want the save lives? there are similarities. but i think there are separate motivations. i think every wasted soul is just that. i think every damaged individual because of incarceration who really didn't need to be incarcerated wasn't in their or society's best interest is a potential problem for society to deal with on a much longer term basis with respect to employment and cost of benefits because they can't get employment and forced involved in future criminal endeavors because we do have gang communities in some of our state prisons. we've got to be careful about this stuff. we've got to be more careful about this stuff.

>> i'm interested in how you talk about the justice or the judge being frustrated with the person being sentenced or dealt with. and what comes to mind right now is i -- and i am just reading some things about you. how bigoted is the prison system in connecticut? >> i hope less than other places. >> but when you talk about the behavior of someone who has committed some crime, part of that frustration, what you're saying is that judge is allowing other factors than the crime to come in. and when you look at the massive incarceration of blacks, of hispanics and others in the system. how do you undo that? >> listen, i talk about race all the time. because i think that it does represent this great lasting divide in american society. it's one of the lines of that great divide. i'm not accusing people who sentence people to jail because they're frustrated with racism,

although it may have disproportionate impacts on a black community versus a white community. but what i really want to get at the heart of is we need to have more opportunities to deal with -- particularly young people, young offenders than we currently have. and if we create those additional opportunities, then we're likely to have better long-term results as opposed to simply managing someone's life for the next 39, 90, 120 days or three years. i think we simply can do better when we use the science of brain development and maturation to our advantage as opposed to our disadvantage. >> and i was also noticing again on the gender issue that in connecticut, your declining prison population the percentage of men is down 20%. the percentage of women is down 7%. why the gap? >> i think there are societal

reasons. i think that criminal behavior has become more universal as opposed to less universal. but i also think that we were not paying as much attention. we have one woman's prison. and i think that now that we are paying more attention to that prison, and quite frankly a very gifted corrections commissioner in scott simple, we're going to drive that population down. i think we're actually now getting closer to 10%. the male population is down about 21, 22% since i became governor. we are -- we can within the next administration, whoever will be governor have actually halved our prison population based on current populations using crime statistics, recidivism statistics. we're in good shape to do some of these things. now it cost us $168 a night to house somebody. we can use that money more effectively in other arenas, including addressing some of the underlying traumas.

women in prison are more likely to be drug or alcohol-dependent, statistically. certainly have suffered as many if not more traumas. and those traumas are frequently as a result of spousal or familial abuse, including a rape. so we're dealing with a very difficult audience of people, perhaps more difficult in women's prisons than male prisons given those traumas, those sets of traumas and behaviors. >> one of the questions we have, we've seen -- >> which simply meeans we have o work harder, and we should work harder. >> a lot of our news right now is focused on the tragedy in parkland, students standing up and having for a very, very different gun environment, different sort of stewardship in states. this is a real tragedy. i guess in anticipation, i wanted to ask you really a question about the resiliency of

the reforms you had. if nikolas cruz had been in stanford, if this had unfolded in connecticut, what would be happening as you were responding to this? and would it be harder or easier to stand by this science and by the results you have generated, or would you see a tsunami of reaction that we need a very different system? harsher system? >> we had that experience at sandy hook. and it did not way lay us from the overall commitment to doing a better job in criminal justice systems, including the correction portion of that system. so i've been there. >> right. >> having said that, in connecticut, based on some of the laws we changed, you couldn't buy that weapon that was used in connecticut. and that's true in seven states and the district of columbia. and what i would also say, picking up on latter part of the

discussion that i just witnessed, listen, i think we absolutely have to be careful about people recovering their access to guns when they're healthy. i don't think that that should stop us from making sure that they don't have access to guns when they're not healthy. and therein i think lies the great divide. i mean, the idea that taking someone to a gun range to fire a an ar-15 as part of their therapy when you're actually not treating the underlying difficulties doesn't make a whole lot of sense. and don't be surprised if bad things happen as a result. >> when you're talking to gun owners, at what point putting yourself in other folks' shoes, what is the line -- i know it's complicated to ask. but what is the line where gunowners' rights ought to be in place? how do you manage that

equilibri equilibrium? >> a safety, a balance of safety. and the second amendment. clearly our laws have been tested in the federal courts and come back and been upheld. and that includes not allowing the sale of ar-15s. you can do this. it can go through federal court challenge, and you can survive because the right is not absolute. you can't have a tank because we make tanks. you can't have a flame thrower because we make flame throwers. you can't have a grenade because we make grenades. obviously all of those things are types of guns. i think we just need a better balance in our society. and when a particular weapon has become the weapon of choice, and it is more like anything -- it's more like a machine gun than anything we've seen since the 1930s in effect with a bump stock or other devices, it is a machine gun, we should have a reasonable discussion about how we limit access to folks, or at

least how about this? i mean, really, this is the question that should have been asked. what is wrong with universal background checks? why should 40% of gun sales go unmonitored in the united states? in whose mind does that make any sense when 97% of the american people want that to happen? and overwhelmi ingoverwhelming, people, they think it already happens. >> senators manchin pushed that in relation to sandy hook. how disappoint ready you that so little happened after sandy hook, and that now we're back into another similar horrific tragedy? >> you know, florida had another tragedy in orlando. >> pulse. >> i'm reminded of what i said two days after sandy hook, that this is coming to your town. this is going to happen at a theater near you or a restaurant or a church or a school or a community college or a

university campus. the reality is because of the way guns change hands unregulated in the united states, without regard to how lethal they are, this is part of our societal shared experience. and the reality is that we've gotten used to it. it drives -- i hope this is different. i hope it's different. but i think we're more likely to make progress on a state-by-state basis than you are to serve -- to change the minds of united states senators in many cases whose campaigns were underwritten by the nra or change the mind of a president who accepted $30 million towards his campaign from the nra. so that he might be elected. you know, i noted that the president told people that he had lunch over the last weekend with the representatives of the nra, some of the top leaders. i hope he picked up the lunch

tab. >> you know, i know mark holden of koch is going to be on the next panel, and they have a thing at koch industry they're talking about safe streets, second chances. you have talked about a second chance society. and what bumps in their lives. what do we need to do -- what do we need to turn that from being a kind of cute boutique phrase into something that's felt more broadly in a society, there is a commitment that -- to bring people into jobs, opportunities, counseling, maybe mental health help and support? what are the other eco system pieces of this that we need to understand better than we do? >> well, we don't have enough time. no, but i'll say this. a, we should avoid crimes being committed, right? that's number one. number two, when crimes get committed by individuals, we should make sound judgments about their propensities to commit other crimes or not. if someone has to be incarcerated or should be

incarcerated because of the nature of the offense, we have to make sure that that incarceration is for an appropriate period of time and not driven by one's race, for instance. and then ultimately what we need to do, one of the things we've done very, very successfully in connecticut is have people spend their time differently. we get people ready over a six to 18-month period of time to go back to society, in which we reintroduce them to society in which we give them the training that they need. we make sure that they are immediately -- have available to them the resources necessary to be successful. particularly in the area of medical care and mental health care. if people have a history of addiction to opioids, we really should -- medically assisted treatment is the one most likely to result positively, then that service should be established before they're released. i mean, there are just smart things you can do. and, yes, we need to find more

jobs. now, a fully employed society is going to require that we do a better job and we should take advantage of that opportunity. but listen, we need to forgive. we need to move on and we need to start -- stop punishing people for things that they don't deserve to be punished any more. quite frankly we should stop punishing ourselves because we're so invested in being a punishing society. i think when you find the right -- when you can balance these things appropriately, you're going to have better results and that's what i think should be driving us. people do bad things, they make mistakes. they particularly do that when they're young. do you really want to penalize someone for the rest of their life, which means do you really want to penalize broader society for the rest of that person's life? >> just in a quick sense, i want to go to all of you in a moment, a quick snapshot, you had a panel experiment in germany of visiting a jail and apparently made a big impact, if the

atlantic article i read is accurate -- >> everything you read in the atlantic -- [ laughter ] >> so, but that you saw in real form in 3-d form a correction system, not a penal system, even for those that committed pretty horrific crimes. how is that just in short form, how has that shaped your frame? and what should we all understand from what you saw and experienced in this german system that we don't have a great facility with as we discuss these issues? >> we don't treat humans as humans if they're in prison. let that sink in. [ applause ] >> and as a result, they are less human when they come out. and i think -- in the german system, what you're invested in is changing behaviors. and what you're invested in is keeping families intact. and what you're invested in is using this opportunity for

education and job training. what you're invested in, for instance, is allowing someone to leave your campus after they've been trained for a job, getting ready to be released so that they actually maintain a job and have an experience of maintaining a job before they are fully released. i mean, we just can do better. we can change people's behaviors negatively or positively. for the most part we have chosen to do it negatively, and this is a broader discussion about how do we do that in a positive way. how do we actually invest in change in behaviors. i referenced our true unit of one of our prisons. we are treating 18-year-olds to 25-year-olds differently than we're treating the older population. why? because the science is very clear that, particularly in the male population, that maturation continues at least to age 25. that someone at the age of 18 is more like a 16-year-old than they are a 26-year-old.

and why don't we develop systems of treatment within our facilities when someone has to be incarcerated that is mindful of real science? not guessing, not old presumptions, but is based on where people are. in the german system you have more social workers and psychologists working in the system than you have corrections officers. corrections officers are as much lending guidance on how the operation should exist on the floor that day than they are people who are themselves involved in punishing people. >> thank you. let me go to all of you. we have a question, comment, right here in the front. we've got somebody. we'll get to you. i'll get to you next. >> hi, i'm sarah briar with the national juvenile justice network. i want to thank you, governor malloy for your leadership in justice perform. we've been holding connecticut

up for an example to the rest of the country for how to treat youth right. i was wondering if you can speak to connecticut's participation in the federal juvenile justice and dlinkery prevention act and how the act, or what your goals are for youth justice reform going forward. >> connecticut was late in raising the age for different treatment. and when i became governor, the law had been passed to take 16 and 17-year-olds out of the adult system and treat them differently. but i'm the guy who had to implement it, which meant i had to withstand the pressure of going back to the old system. it was the right thing to do. it moved us in the right direction, and, again, we have been very punitive -- and when you start to be punitive with respect to 16-year-olds for minor offenses or 17 or 18 or 19 or 20 or 21, it just doesn't make sense and it's not supported by the science.

we know we have a much better chance of turning that behavioral pattern around at that age than we do another age. we get somebody at the age of 23 or 24, and we do that successfully -- we transport them from having made a mistake in their life to a period of greater maturation and we do that without doing additional damage. that person is far more likely to be successful. that's what i'm doing. >> yes, hi. there you go. >> hi, governor. my name is quianna johnson, and i'm a returning citizen. you talked about the judges being some time over punishing. what is the recourse? the society is becoming more prevalent. how do we deal with that? >> that's a great question. i think part of that is raising statistics, help, changing the bail system help. all of a sudden we changed our

bail system so that people aren't staying in jail for the lack of a dollar or the lack of a couple hundred dollars. the damage that is done by separating an individual from the broader society for just a matter of days -- if you live in a single room occupancy dwelling and you don't show up that day, you lose where you live. if you had a job, you lose the job. you know, so we were doing some really -- the wrong things when it came to very minor offenses for which most people would never be incarcerated anyway. 85% of people who come to the courthouse charged with a crime aren't going to do a single day of jail. so, we need to make sure that that is broadly applied to hispanic population, asian populations, black populations and caucasian populations and we need to use statistics to hold ourselves to that. >> yes, ma'am, right here. >> hi, gabiela from convergence center for policy resolution.

i wanted to focus specifically on your work on reentry and also your experience as a former prosecutor. in conducting our round tables, we've had some difficulty having prosecutors and judges understand that they have a role to play in reentry. we're very firm in the belief that reentry begins day one of the sentence. >> right. >> so, how would you suggest getting those on the front end to understand that reentry is across the spectrum? >> thank you. i think we have -- first of all, if we can help, let us know. i've got some good people working on this in connecticut and they're not just political appointees. they're part of the overall employee base of the state. happy to reach out. i think more judges are interested in this than others. i think prosecutors are more interested in this than others. connecticut's violent crime rate has dropped more than any other

state in the nation over the last four years. how about that one? how about the idea that good positive change actually produces better results? that a crime prevented from happening is as important, if not more important, than catching the person who committed a crime, right? and i think there is this different way that you need to look at the criminal justice system which should be based on what the results of that system are as opposed to what the perceived goal of the system is. our goals have been wrong. if it's universal access to punishment including the broader society at great expense to itself and far worse results over the remaining life of that individual, then we need to reexamining those propositions. >> governor, just as we wrap up, i've spent some time recently with chuck robbins, he's the ceo of cisco systems and richard branson, of course, of virgin.

examine both of them surprised me by saying one of the things they were committed to were hiring people who had been convicts who have come out, who had great skills. who are some of the other heroes, if you know them, in the corporate community who are stepping out to do that? because that's also a political act in the business world and it's a risk-taking act. i'm wondering if that's part of what you think has to happen. >> there are companies in america that are doing that and won't talk about it. and that's a great shame. we need more leaders to step forward and the kochs are doing that. we don't agree on a lot of that. we share that, if you haven't figured that out already. [ laughter ] >> they're helping. their leadership on this has been very, very important, and we just need more companies to step out and do this. you know, this is the way i'll put it.

if i'm good enough to be a customer at your store or for your service, even though i have a criminal history, then i should be good enough to work in your store or in your business, all right. if you want access to the millions of people who have a criminal justice involvement as your customer, then you owe it to them to treat them with respect and there's nothing more respectful than a job. that's what i would say. >> ladies and gentlemen, connecticut governor malloy. [ applause ] >> thank you, governor malloy. thank you, steve. we're going to go deeper now on what's next in the criminal justice policy front. with a cross-section of leading thinkers on these issues and for that i'm delighted to welcome mark holden, senior vice-president and general counsel for koch industries. welcome. holly harris is the executive director of the justice action network, a bipartisan

organization whose mission is to make the justice system more effective and more cost efficient. and larry lyzer is the president of the nation association of assistant u.s. attorneys. welcome all, and welcome back my colleague matt thompson. [ applause ] >> thank you again, margaret. mark, holly, larry, thank you for joining us this morning. i want to start with a hard choice on you. hopefully it will come out in the wash. holly, i'm giving you an invisible magic wand. you get to choose one person, state, federal, could be -- could be xi jinping if you want to. and you can convince them of one thing. you can change their mind about one thing that they hold. who do you choose and what do you want to change their mind about? >> jeff sessions -- [ laughter ] >> criminal justice reform. i mean, more specifically, i'd

certainly love to change his mind about sentencing reform and i hope to have a robust discussion about that today. >> so, i want to ask a version of that question to you, larry. one of the interesting parts of this conversation that we're having this morning is in many ways some of the points of tension. each of you, mark, holly, larry, each of you represents -- has been active within conservative politics and is a leader within conservative politics broadly construed. but within issues of criminal justice, incarceration, justice, many of the immediate points of tension and disagreement seem to be within a conservative coalition. and so, larry, i am curious for your thoughts on a similar question. if you could change your

co-panelists' mind about one thing, what would you try to convince them of? >> probably several things, it would be hard to pick one. i'd have to say to begin, in order to keep my job as an assistant united states attorney, that nothing i say here today should be considered the position of my office of the eastern district of virginia or the department of justice. i'm solely here as president of the national association of the assistant united states attorneys. sorry to burden you with that, but i want to stay employed. [ laughter ] >> so, i think what i'd like to convince people of is that there's a lot of confusion in conflating the federal system of justice and the state justice system of justice. while there are problems in both systems, we should always strive as a country to make our systems of justice better and fairer, the idea that what the state system is doing is put on the federal system is just not fair to the federal system and inaccurate in many ways. so, i'd like to convince my colleagues here that they should focus where the real problem resides and the real problem i think resides not at the federal level but at the state level. it does president mean there

aren't things we can do to improve the federal system. there are. >> we're built out in 17 states. >> particularly given in an earlier conversation we stayed pretty much on the federal level. but state and local policy is a huge, obviously the much bigger part of this issue. but, mark, i wanted to come to you with the last version of the trifecta and i wanted to ask you, if you could change larry's mind about one thing, what would that be? >> well, you know, i haven't heard larry's position on all the different issues that we'll probably talk about, and it sounds like he left kind of crack in the door open for some reforms from what he just said. what i'd say is that we should learn a lot from the last three decades, the 1980s, 1990s. i love those decades. i had a lot of hair, could dunk

a basketball, life was good. i worked in a prison back then. i was out of high school and some of my friends were locked up and their lives were ruined forever from drug offenses. i think we've learned a lot the last two decades about what does and what doesn't work with regard to what the states are doing and how you can both reduce crime rates and reduce incarceration rates at the same time, and treat people individually and particularly when we talk about the war on drugs, there's definitely a criminal element there that needs to be dealt with, but then there is a mental health component. and then there's a public addiction, public health issue as well. we should -- a country as great as ours and system as great as ours we should be able to differentiate and i'd like to see that happen. >> i want to come back to the matter of how we define this conversation and this question. and, holly, i wanted to start with you. i'm going to ask each of you one of the advantages of conversations like this is that each of you gets it go places and talk to folks and have

relationships with them that the rest of us don't get to. i want to take advantage of that for our conversation. holly, you spend a lot of time in states working with leaders in states, working with members of your network who are advancing criminal justice policy at the state and local level. and what are you seeing -- i think particularly within conservative states, within red states, where are you seeing red states leading the way on policy prerogatives that you would just click a button and spread across the nation if you could? >> well, certainly red states have i think the most -- have had the most success with criminal justice reform. you look at a state like georgia, a state like texas, a state like kentucky. those are the states that have led the way and it's the conservative governors who are so incredibly passionate about these issues. governor matt bevin, good friend of mine, of mark's, is all over the country right now talking about the need for reform and i'll say he's probably the most

aggressive governor in the united states, is governor malloy still here? he's probably the most aggressive governor in the united states on criminal justice policy. but i do want to start by talking about an issue that is gaining momentum in the states and it's issues related to incarcerated women. last year in my home state, the male incarcerated population grew by 5%. the female side grew by 14%. and if we're not careful, we're going to have an epidemic on our hands. and one in four of those women who are currently entering our system are either pregnant or mothers to children under the age of one. so we're not just talking about an epidemic of incarcerated women, but we have to consider their children. so, we are now seeing more reforms specifically tailored to incarcerated women. i'll give a plug for my home state, senator rocky adams has a bill on the senate floor, 133. if you're on the twitter machine, say thanks to her for pushing this bill. if you get an opportunity to

watch the hearing in the senate health and welfare committee which is very interesting that it didn't go through judiciary because we are now looking at this as a public health crisis and i think we should. but if you get a chance to watch that hearing, i encourage you to do so because it was interesting. >> yeah. mark, i want to ask, you spend as the vp of koch industries, you spend a fair amount of time talking with colleagues in the corporate world, in the business world about criminal justice and you'll take this on as a business prerogative. i'm curious, what are you hearing? what is the investment from the business community in this issue? >> i mean, it's interesting. at coke, i've been with the company 23 years, for 23 years we've hired people with criminal records. in the last several years we banned the box, we removed the box from our employment application and we defer the discussion about a criminal record until we have a -- an offer of employment, conditional offer of employment out there. then we do a background check.

and what we have learned through that process over the years is that a criminal record is one data point. it's basically what the eeoc said for years, that you should consider that data point. you should consider a lot of data poins in whoever you hire. that's one data point. how long ago did it happen, what was the offense, what's the person like now? and so from our experience, it's always been a positive. you need to be careful who you hire regardless of whether they have a record or not. and in the past four or five years we've been more and more vocal about it as there has been more attention put on this whole issue, criminal justice reform in particular. and most employers, we have discussions with them one at a time, they're open to it. you have to talk to them about it and explain what it is and what it isn't. that's always important, what it isn't. you're going to make sure you're prioritizing safety for sure at all times and make sure you're hiring the right people. you need to do that with every person you hire. and we've had at wichita kansas, where i used to spend most of my time, i talked to a bunch of

people one on one, we start today hire people. my colleagues do the same thing. it's one person at a time. find one person at a time. hire that person. hire another person. just like anything else. i will say with the way the economy, thankfully, is hopefully picking up and booming and there is a huge labor shortage in this country, i think there is more and more appetite by employers to hire people with criminal records. the statistics is somewhere, a third or so of the people in this country, adults, have some type of criminal record. so for us at coke it never made sense to exclude potentially one-third of potential work force just because of a criminal record because we have 120,000 employees, global employer, we want the best people period. not those with and without a criminal record. i think more and more employers are seeing that you can't get just say one-third of the work force we're not going to look at because there is such, especially for skilled labor, a lack of that in industry. and what we've seen is more and more people are open to it and it's what -- it's a mutual benefit basically, the employer

needs someone. there are people now skilled with prison reform in certain places like michigan and other states coming out, qualified to do the work. and there's like 6 million jobs that need welders, electricians, that type of thing to go wanting every year. so i think it's one of these issues the more people talk about it, the more you socialize it out there, the more we get people who have criminal records and have background in it and thoor regular folks, speak for myself. i could have been caught up in the system. luckily i was on the other side of the bar. i worked in the prison. over time people change their minds about it. i think you can't force it. the government can't force it on private employers because that will turn them off. if the government wants to help, they need to reduce the number of collateral consequence that keep people from jobs and occupational license ands things like that. >> now, larry, you hear from conspencer christian wco constituency in this room that's rare, a community of our ausas and federal prosecutors who feel the emphasis on sentencing

reform certainly at the federal level, but obviously more broadly is somewhat misguided. that, in fact, enforcement and prosecutorial discretion here is a key -- a key tool in keeping america safe and enhancing public safety across the u.s.. and i'm curious, within -- given the gravity, the trajectory that this conversation has taken over the past couple of years, where do you see that perspective gaining traction and why? >> about less than 7% of our federal prisoners are women. less than 7%. we have about 58 -- excuse me, 28 juveniles currently serving a federal sentence. this is one of the distinctions that separates us from the state system and the federal system. we are not prosecuting low-level, nonviolent drug users. we are not prosecuting

juveniles. i have to go to the attorney general to prosecute a juvenile, get the attorney general to sign off on the authorization before we do so. those are the kiepds of crimes that a prosecutor at the state level. we've heard a lot about the success of the state systems. we've done some research recently on recidivism. recidivism is the gold standard f. your system works well, your recidivism rate should be low. recidivism rate at the federal system, three years out, after you're released three-year period, how many people in the federal system get rearrested? it's about 34%. should be zero in a perfect world. we'd like it to be zero. there's about 5600 assistant u.s. attorneys if they had that magic wand when a person finished sevging their sentence, we'll tap them and say you're never going to commit another crime again. that's not the world we live in. when you look at the state systems touting better programs, you have to ask yourself, what is your re-arrest, recidivism rate three years out? the states we studied, the so-called model states don't

come anywhere near the 34% that we achieve at the federal level and their systems cost more. so, our position is federal prosecutors is our system is working well, we should continue to do what we're doing. as far as the statutory prosecution, you've asked about how are we doing with the system we currently have. the system we currently have is done extraordinarily well. we had a crime epidemic back in the '80s that was just horrendous. and the congress of the united states addressed that by creating new statutes, new tools for prosecutors to use. as a result of that, our crime rate plummeted. did our incarceration rate increase? yes, because we are effectively -- we're prosecuting people who deserve to be prosecuted for the crimes they committed. you have to keep in mind the major goal of our criminal justice system is not only prosecuting people who commit crime. the major goal is to protect the innocent and to protect the public safety. we think at the federal level we do that very well. is there room for improvement? absolutely. should we tweak some things and make them better?

absolutely. but for the most part, facts show that our crime rate has plummeted as a result of some of the things that we have the tools that we currently have, including mandatory minimums. i know that's a hot topic. that have worked very, very well for us over the years. >> so, a big part of what we've heard in each of your answers is a very different framing of success. what it looks like, who it's for. we've heard from mark the employers across the country who are seeking candidates, people to fill jobs and actually have a scarcity of people because, again, one in four people in prison across the world is i imprisoned in the u.s. why -- in that problem, we heard from holly some of the collateral consequence include the consequence of, for example, dick knit for women. one version of success that one could construe is that everyone

feels their dignity enhanced. why center the point of solution on rearrest rates? what do you think -- there are many components, of course, to public safety. but what's the argument we're making, your definition of success here, a stronger definition of success than, say, the number of people who are currently behind bars who could be in jobs? >> well, you have to have some way of measuring how your system is working. and the gold standard in the industry, if you will, of criminology is what's your recidivism rate, is it 3 years out, 5 years out or 8 years out and it's based upon -- should be based upon rearrest. what some of the state systems do is they don't look at rearrests, they look at reconvictions. when you look at reconvictions that drives the number lower and makes it look like you're having a successful program when that's not the case. one of the things we have to

recognize is there is nothing we're going to be able to do as far as our criminal justice system is concerned that's going to eliminate the real problem. the real problem doesn't begin when you get arrested. the real problem begins when you get arrested. we need to figure out what we can do to convince people they should choose a law abiding way of life. what incentives can we have out there to fix the problem before it, quite frankly, starts. when we do that we'll go a long way of fixing the ultimate problem we're talking about today. >> and if we could spend less money on throwing people behind bars, we can invest more money in education -- [ applause ] >> and economic development, infrastructure improvements, areas where if we were investing more resources, perhaps we wouldn't see as many people entering our justice system. but if we are going to talk about this in the context of public safety, i do want to throw out a statistic over the past decade. the ten states that significantly reduced their incarcerated populations through the reforms that mark and i support saw an average drop in our crime rates of 19%.

conversely, the ten states that most significantly increased their incarcerated populations through the old, you know, tough on crime lock them up and throw away the key policies of the 1980s, only saw an average drop in crime of 11%. so, i mean, i think the strong argument for reform is that it does make our community safer. >> can i just chime in? i don't want to -- i have a lot of respect for larry and what he does, but i have to make one note. i know i haven't looked recently, but a few years ago there were over 2200 people sentenced to federal prison for simple possession. those sound like low-level nonviolent offenders. that is not an accurate number, mark. it's about -- >> i have the -- i don't know where you're getting it. >> i'm getting it from the bureau of justice -- >> since i sadly don't have it in front of me right now, i guess the question is how much is -- how many nonviolent -- >> right. all i'm saying is there are in the system, i think.

let's put that aside. manned mandatory minimums, i was around when they started. i've heard that's what led to the reduction in the crime rate. i've talked to prosecutors who i respect a lot who say maybe 30%. that was the reason why it dropped. there were other factors. so, i think saying just because those were long sentences, i don't think that's right. i think a lot of it -- look, i lived in d.c., i lived in worcester. i saw a lot of things with drugs over the years in that era. i understand what drove it. it was bipartisan. it was good intentions. but i do think that we probably overshot on it and that's why i'd say that even though larry says the states are different, what they're doing is what we should try to do at the federal level as well, i think, is divert people out. right now we can't. we don't have specialty courts obviously. i don't know if that would ever happen. i do know the white house last september -- and there were a couple representatives from the department of justice there, it was a great discussion with

advocates, elected officials and others. and one of the discussion points that the d.o.j. seemed interested in was maybe specialty courts like keeping people out of the system. that would be sentencing reform and that's worked in the states. does it work all the time? no, but it's a tool we should use to differentiate and deep people out if we can. and by saying all of this, i'm not saying anyone has done anything wrong in the system up till now, right? i'm just saying we know better. we've learned a lot and we've seen what works in different places with different states with different approaches. and whether it's okay for someone gets out of prison or doesn't go to prison to begin with, great. they'll be there a long time. we need to do something when they're there. to holly's point on education, one of the things that can level the playing field for anybody regardless of socioeconomic status is a good education. but we know that's a big problem in a lot of places. so, my point of view is the things that generally keep you out of prison to begin with are

someone -- hopefully a family member that loves you and mentors you, a job and opportunity and an education. but if people don't get that and they end up in prison, they definitely need it upon reentry. that's what we're focused on, prison reform and reentry reform. it's not a secret. those who do get it in prison, education programs, the study shows by d.o.j. study, by the way, that for every dollar spent on in-prison education you defray $4 of incarceration costs. it works. >> larry, i want to give you an opportunity to respond and i want to double down or reinforce something i heard implicit in your question. >> well, education i think is key. this is a inmate's prison record of the courses that the federal bureau of prisons offered this one inmachlte. i'm not going to read all four pages. this is what the inmate was exposed to. havc, self-study, residential wiring self-study, fair job

intervention, your strategic future, keyboarding self-study. job survey, computer lab, french 2, classic western movies, history of the world, comedy film study, medicine ball, stretching, fair health, legendary adventures, i can go on and on and on. this idea we put people up in the federal system and lock them in a cell and give them bread and water is a fallacy. we do everything we can to try to rehabilitate. yes, you have to be punished for committing a crime. for every crime there is a victim or many victims if you're a drug trafficker. maybe thousands of victims. this idea that we're focusing on the criminals, it's a good idea. we should do the best we can to rehabilitate people but we can't forget that they're there for a reason and they victim eyes people and we need to not lose the reality that there is a consequence to the crime these people commit. again, what we need to do is stop people from committing crime. once they committed that crime,

yes, we should rehabilitate them. we should do everything we can so they wouldn't commit crime again. the federal bureau of prisons does that. 18 months before you're released as a federal prisoner, they begin a process to get you back in society. six months before you're released you go to a halfway house to get a job, a place to live. after your sentence is over, you're on a period of supervised relief where you have a u.s. probation officer who works with you 2 to 5 years to ensure this person does not go back to a life of crime. we fail 34% two years out. >> we can dive in quite a bit on the question of how do we make the experience for folks who are caught up in the broad system of correctional observation in the u.s., how do we make that experience one that does not essentially trap them in that system. we can talk about that for sometime, but here's something implicit in your line of questioning, larry, that i want to tease out. because i also even hear reformers beginning to ask versions of this question, which is, are we just talking about

the low hanging fruit? are we just in talking about particularly when we talk about nonviolent drug offenses, are we dancing around the much larger question of what is america to do with the all of the people who are currently incarcerated, especially violent criminals? we'll come to a point in this conversation where if, holly and mark, your efforts succeed, where we will have somewhat addressed the harsh, perhaps over harsh sentencing of drug offenders. but what happens then? if the majority of folks who are behind bars at the state and local level are there for offenses that include violence, what's the argument to the public? how will we actually make americans productive and send

them off to jobs and education with that reality? >> to larry's point, i'd just like to say the reforms we favor are pro crime survivor, pro victim, pro community, pro law enforcement, pro family. that's what we're about. we're not about trying to coddle criminals, we're hopefully going to make them better people with the programs we're going to talk about. to your point, the bottom line is whether people like it or not, more than 95% of the people in the system come out -- they're all coming out. it's not a matter of if, it's when. so, we as a society have to decide whether we want them to come out better or worse. that gets back to the programmatic activity, at the federal level there seems to be a lot of consensus. i'd like more but i would like to get something done. but -- so, what we need to do is hopefully make reforms so some of the people are staying out who aren't a risk to public

safety that can be dealt with less consequentially from an economic perspective and human cost perspective by locking them up. we know over time people get more violent if they're in prison than they were to begin with. trying to keep people out will help. to your point there are people with violent felonies, dangerous felonies. but people can change. it's a tougher sell for sure with the american public. and i get that. but that's why we need prison reform. we need reforms where people get educated, people need skills, people get therapy, faith based, bhafr it is. we work with groups that -- the list you had was great. a lot of great stuff. we work with groups that are, i don't know if they're nontraditional. they're not profits for sure, the 5 inchers. fellowship program, it goes to the most dangerous prisons. pelican bay super max california. i was there last summer. they have people accused of

violent crimes in there a long time working across gang lines productively. some of them are getting out, getting jobs, they have entrepreneurial skills. we work with hudson link which is a great education program. prison fellowship, a great program. there's all these different programs out there and one of the things i want to talk about real quickly, ton monopolize the time, i'm lucky to work with coke and we're lucky to partner with a lot of groups including holly's group. right on crime with the texas policy foundation, we are starting -- we have started safe streets and second chances which we think is going to hopefully be a game changer in reentry reform in this country and reentry in general. it's right now in four states, four pilot states. we hope to scale it up and the whole idea is that someone else said in the earlier session, re entry needs to be day one of incarceration. not eight months, 16 months out.

the tools we're going to bring in the state facilities, there's going to be 30 facilities in four states, texas, louisiana, florida and pennsylvania to start with showing that -- and it's going to be randomized, violent, nonviolent, everything. we can hopefully reduce the recidivism rate over time through the programs that make people better. and we'll see what happens. the groups we work with now, ones i mentioned, they have recidivism rates on the small scale between 2%, 5%, 8%. if you can scale that up -- i'm not saying we can -- that would be remarkable and a game changer. >> holly, what do you think is the most needed intervention to make any encounter with the criminal justice system not a trap? >> i mean, look, i think we've got to be focusing more on treatment. and i know we talk a lot about how reforms save money and that's great. but we've got to start putting -- this is where a lot of the prosecutors have really

been wonderful to work with because they are deep believers in treatment. and we don't -- we just don't have enough opportunities for treatment. i come from a state, kentucky -- i know you thought i was from connecticut. [ laughter ] >> i come from a state where everybody's sick, everybody's sick. i want to say something about -- we keep talking about these people, the criminals, the people who break the law. i mean, i come from a family -- my dad was a doctor. my mom was a stay at home mom and basically a stalker. i mean, you know, i had every privilege that a child could have, basically a perfect upbringing. i've struggled with alcohol abuse my entire life. my brother, 6'6", gorgeous, you know, a basketball superstar. i hated him growing up, you know. he had a serious brain injury

and had surgery, then he became addicted to the pain medication that they gave him. so, we're all in this together. let's be very clear. so, i just want to be careful -- [ applause ] >> i just want to be very careful, you know, how we talk about these people, because it's -- [ applause ] >> at a certain point, when i was talking with a fellow journalist in the newsroom, we were talking about the fact that in particular neighborhoods in milwaukee, and we were talking about milwaukee, his parents had told him -- he was thinking of going to school in the university of wisconsin system, that his mom sat him down at one point and said no, because for black men of our age, one out of every two of us would be pulled

under some sort of correctional observation. so, either it was going to be him or me, one of the two of us would have been in incarceration observation. there is one of the strange dimensions of the spread of this problem as we have been talking about is that it is very concentrated in some areas. there are folks who have almost no sight line into it at all. and i'm curious, from your perspective, larry, to come back to you, what is the -- you talked a lot about the prevention of reentry. but what would you do, if you could control a state budget and someone were to ask you the question, which is a question that a lot of governors get asked, do you put that extra dollar into better prosecution, more enforcement? do you put that extra dollar into making the experience of incarceration better, more

enriching? or do you put that extra dollar into getting it into the hands of folks who can connect it to someone who is getting overdosed, where would you put the extra dollar? >> i would put it into everything to convince people not to lead lives of crime. >> is that education in marketing? >> whatever it takes. we need to focus on crime prevention. we need to create an environment where people no longer turn to crime. one of the tragedies in our country is that our minority communities are the most victimized by criminals and it's a tragedy that we need to somehow fix so that your other person there wouldn't be looking at the possibility of going to jail just because of his race. we need to fix that. >> at the same time, we are right now in the midst of another drug epidemic, the way that we were in the '80s when harsher sentences, many of them went into effect. right now states are considering

this question. is the opioid epidemic a public health emergency, or is it a matter of criminal enforcement? and it's a matter of dollars and cents for a lot of jurisdictions. where do you put those dollars and cents now at this stage when we can intervene? is the criminal justice system the best place to invest? >> i don't think it is an the best place. the thing that worked for us in the past, the things we want to continue to use, is it going to solve the problem. 64,000 of our citizens died in 2016 as a result of the opioid heroin epidemic. we are trying to stem the tide of arresting those people. they sell poison to citizens for profit. according to the sentencing commission, 4% of our prosecutions are for possession and those 4%, about half of that comes from my brothers and sisters who are prosecutors on a state border with mexico who

capture people coming in with 60, 70 pounds of marn, and there are so many of them they down plead it to a simple possession. other possession cases, federal park, you're driving down a fed rael highway and you have a joint and you get stopped for speeding, yeah, you're going to get possession for marn. we put those people in diversion programs. they don't end up at the end of the day, we have pretrial diversion programs. if you're committing a difficult minute miss crime possession of a joint, at the end of the day you're going to get no record, probation for a year and it will go away. we do a lot of good things in our federal system and we need to continue doing those. but no natter what we do as prosecutors, until we face the issue of what are we doing to keep people from leading a life of crime, we're always going to be in the mess we're in right now. >> we need to give them alternatives. [ applause ] >> need to be jobs, education, that's what we need. >> look, i'm not excusing any criminal conduct, but the reality is people have to survive sometimes and they do things that they probably shouldn't do. but they do them.

and i think that the fact that we know where a lot of these -- at least i'll speak, again, 100 years ago in worcester, mass marks, a bun frp of poor white kids locked up, poorly educated, didn't have any supervision they ended up in the system. i'm not excusing it in any way, but they did it. there is a reason it keeps happening again and again and again. i don't think we need to keep fighting it with the same tools. the war on drugs, drugs won. that's the reality. so, we need to treat it. there is a criminal element, definitely treat it like that. but there is something much more deeply lying underneath it, particularly for the people who end up -- i'm not saying the dealers, but the people who are addicted. i'm glad we're not going to take the same approach we did with crack, treating it like a criminal issue. i hope people can get treatment and help and have fulfilling lives but there have to be opportunities out there. there is a lack -- right now i think a lot of it is a lack of hope. that's to that is out there in prison. there is a lot we can do as a society to enhance and protect public safety with the great

work that u.s. attorneys do and all the prosecutors. my colleague said we're all in this together and i want the same thing. >> thank you, mark. i heard many points of possible tentative agreement among the three of you. i know there is a much broader universe of issues to dive in deeply. thank you, mark, holm i, larrly. thank you for your time today. [ applause ] >> yes, thanks again, mark, larry, holly. thank you in particular for your rare personal candor. and thank you, matt. next up, a session from our underwriter. in a moment we're going to welcome google's susan m oln ari, vice-president of government policy and affairs, and malika, senior counsel on civil and human rights. they're going to talk about using technology to advance the conversation about criminal justice. but before they come on stage, they wanted us to watch a few minutes of a documentary supported by google about

conditions at rikers which is new york city's main jail complex. hit the tape. >> i remember it like it was yesterday. i remember them taking me to unit 1. they beat me so bad that i didn't even remember what happened or where i was until 90 days later. >> rikers is sadness. >> rikers is humbling. >> full of hate. >> lawless, too. >> i hated it. i hate -- i hate that place. >> on any given day, rikers

island jail in new york city confines nearly 8,000 people. conditions on the island are brutal, horrific, worse than most prisons wherein mates serve long sentences after a conviction. but rikers is a jail where 80% of the people locked up are awaiting their day in court and have not been convicted of a crime. they are innocent in the eyes of the law. >> 50 years old, my innocence was robbed from me. >> what happens in life you are subject to getting raped in the bathroom. i had to have survivors sex in the bathroom. >> i wasn't even scared. i just ---ist helpless. i didn't know what to do. that's when i really realized, like, you're only on an island. >> even though he was charged with a crime, my son was never a criminal, he never had a criminal record. >> my son ended up staying in

rikers island for six years waiting for trial. he thought that he was going to die there. >> i still deal with the trauma. trauma is real. i don't care what nobody says. trauma is real. >> ten years of waiting in rikers means ten years of more dreams. i have seen how rikers island has destroyed communities. i've seen how people come back to the bronx and come back to communities all across the city and they're different and they are changed and they are fearful and they're hesitant to go and walk down the block. and they look at parole officers and the regular cops and the community in different ways. how do we allow this to continue?

[ applause ] >> kind of a heavy thing to try and follow, so. >> it is, it is. but i want people to know how that piece came about. first of all, i want people to know that that piece that we did is in honor and memory of mrs. broader, kalief browder's mother. we did that video in partnership with advocates who are working on the rikers issue, in partnership with formerly incarcerated new yorkers and their families, and we actually have the director chris jenkins over there who pulled together this beautiful piece for google. and it will be shown on youtube.

so, i want you all to know where that came from because it's an example of the work that google is doing around criminal justice reform. and i guess susan, my question to you is why are we doing this? why is google doing this? >> well, so, first of all, thank you all for being here and allowing us to have this conversation with you. and i guess -- so, i grew up in staten island, new york. i actually was a former city representative and then i was a member of congress from staten island and brooklyn. so, i could see rikers while i traveled throughout the city. i never knew half these stories. i never knew any of these stories. why didn't i know those stories? because the gate keepers kept them quiet. so, i think there's two things for why google -- why we wanted google to get involved in it, and it is, number one, because as holly said, it's all of us,

right? when you get to meet these men and women, these boys and girls, you see a different face. you see a different side. you hear a different story about who these individuals are and how they got to be where they are and what we're doing when we reintegrate them, and the power that we're trying to give them because, really, the difference between them and us is power. and if we can use the google power to help do a few things, number one, give them power, give them voice which with every individual that i have met, there is that recurring story. i had no voice. no one would listen to me. and then, of course, once you're incarcerated, it only gets worse. so, give them the voice. give them hope. and break down the gate keepers who only tell us one side of the story of the individuals who wind up in jail, who wind up in a system that only accelerates the burn and the hurt and destroys so many individuals, so many lives, so many communities.

so, to hallie's point, if we can put that face on, it makes us easier to have the conversation for individuals like myself who grew up thinking i was taken care of a community and representing a city, and was blind to a lot of what either the gate keepers didn't want me to see or, quite frankly, my heart and soul wasn't ready to see. so, i think google allows us to give voice and give a perspective that isn't times there, and allows us to have this conversation because it is a political conversation, right? so much of what we need to do are to rally those individuals to feel safe about taking these votes, feeling safe on a stage like this saying this is wrong, these are lost lives. these are good people. and i think the more we talk about it, the more we show it, the more it's on youtube or c-span, the more we have these conversations, the safer people

will feel to take up the cause because they know that there is a community of individuals throughout the united states who depend on it and who will support them in it. >> and, you know, if one thing we know how to do at google is to disrupt. we are disrupters. and if anything needs to be disrupted, it's mass incarceration. >> absolutely. >> and we are in that space of using these different platforms that we have at google, whether it's youtube or it's vr to be able to disrupt the human mass incarceration. >> absolutely. and it's all -- you know, i've learned this since malika came to work for us. it's all of it, right. look at that, 80% of individuals going to rikers are awaiting trial. so, presumed innocent in the eyes of the law in rikers for years and years.

why? because they can't afford their bail, right? that's the difference between the survivors and those not, is just bail. that was -- that's an education people need. why so many individuals plead to get out of there? the inhumanity, the soullessness, and the reintegration. you talk to these individuals who come out and we expect them to be able to reintegrate. and we as a society give them absolutely no equipment to do that under the best of circumstances. so, there are so many discussions we need to have in this country as we just watched so many individuals just waste. >> you know, i took a group of our leadership to rikers, and we -- clearly we got to curate a tour of rikers. but it was powerful to watch our leadership, you know, walk the halls of rikers. none of them had either been to any form of jail. the individual who is vice-president of engineering

said to me, i didn't even know there's a difference between jail and prison. >> right. >> so, i guess my question to you is, how do you feel that doing this work around engaging in criminal justice reform and choosing to tell some of the stories of the human cost of incarceration, how do you feel that's changed us in terms of leadership and changed the company? >> well, i think for sure, look, the individuals that work at google throughout the country, throughout the world understand the value of this social platform. and the more that they learn about these issues, the more they want to get involved in using this platform for good. again, to highlight these stories, to not allow this to be that conversation that only takes place in certain neighborhoods because that's not where the change is going to be. and so i think it really has changed google in many ways to see that this platform can reach

people while they're looking for cat videos or whatever else they go on youtube for, or searching for answers on medical equipment, that we can also then bring them into a conversation that is really difficult to have, right? i think malika and i got to know each other because she ran a foundation for trafficked young girls here in the united states. before that, i worked on child abuse. and i think there's a pattern here, right? it's the difficulty -- it's not that people don't want to fix it. it's not that people say the heck with them on all these things. it's that if you are a good person, it's so hard to believe that these things are happening. so, we just turn away. i've been through so many things where we talk about parents who sell their kids. when you have these conversations with legislators or leaders in this country, they don't want to hear it. they can't believe it, right? because there is that evil, that

inequality, the evil that just makes it easier to say, i'm not going to read that article on the child who died. i'm not going to read the story about mass makes it easy to say. i'm happy to read that article on the child who died. i'm not going to read the story about mass incarceration and the loss of innocence and what's happening in there. i'm not going to read the story of 12-year-olds who are trafficked because people feel powerless to do something about it. once you say to somebody if you look at this you can help join and fix it, then they can pay attention to it. the one thing i hope to do, google is to give people these conveniences, to the stuff we do in vr and on youtube and to have this conversation around the country. it forces the conversation, but we also want to say to people, and here's ways you can actually

change it. and so, hopefully that's the mission that google has taken up on this. >> and part of this is also been having a policy conversation, where we've been bringing in both sides of the aisles, to google offices to talk about this issue on shared space and reform. as a former congresswoman i'm curios to know how have you seen this as we have senator lee and booker come and talk to us about they're shared perspective on reform? >> well, this is not going to be a news flash to anybody but there's not too many things that republicans and democrats agree on if this town lightly. when you have senators who have been an absolute champion, where they speak from the heart, i've seen senator booker speak on this so many times and i still cry when i hear his passion and his story, you know, there's an

opportunity here. there's a real opportunity to engage in this conversation. again, i feel hopeful about it, i feel that like, again, i keep saying the gate keepers, i keep beginning back to the "me too" movement, how many years this was taken place and then all of a sudden the gate keepers were gone because of twitter? we want the gate keepers to be that platform on the lives we're losing, on the solutions we're out there, to sort of say, okay, now weave seen it and met these people, they are you. let's do something about it. i think that to me is what provides such hope in this moment and time that we can now reach a larger group of people from new jersey to utah, and every place in between, and have this conversation and mobilize the public to, again, you know give voice to those who are not given the honor that you and i

are given at this moment to appear before a group like this and give voice. that to me is just why we're here. can i just say something, somaly ka is a force of nation. i got to know malika because i joined her board on anti-trafficking. malika's stanford georgetown brown. but wen she was doing her law degree she started working with women in prison. she went the other route because she couldn't get their voices and faces out of their head and that is just an incredibly special woman. after working with her i said to her, you know it's not at ngo, and its got core issues but you've got a pretty big flat tomorrow to try and make some change. we're grateful she was able to come over to google and help us increase our conscience. >> and at first i said, why

would i come to google, what would i do at google? and you really challenged me to be able to reimage and rethink how we can use a platform like google to be able to advance human rights in general, and in particular really thinking through how we can use our platforms to advance. you know what brian stevenson ask of us, to be approximate. how do we use these tools at our expose l to be able to bare witness to suffering that's not well known. i think what we're doing is exciting because it allows us to scale the prison walls to be able to give the lived experience, even if a brief period of time of what incarceration feels like for a grown man and a child. i'm grateful that you have the

leadership and moral courage to bring google to this incredible place of opportunity on the issue of justice reform. at this really powerful moment where so many people are coming together. >> i understand why you did what you do, because once i started meeting some of these women in particular, that malika has brought to our attention, who has been to hell and back and still have such power and commitment you don't forget or turn away. >> i want to close by giving thanks to so many of the advocates in the roam. with you talk about doing the work around women behind bars, i do that work because women like shakira washington, so many of the individuals who are in this room have been the powerful fearless enjoying advocates to make a better system out of our criminal legal system. i want to give thanks to them and all the partners who have worked with us so we can do this

with humidity and commitment. i want to give a remarkable thanks and deep abiding gratitude for the atlantic to allow us to do this series. it's been a real honor. >> and i do want to end by taking advantage by the fact that snaer booker whose off the stage, to thank him for his leadership. honestly he engages in this relationship with a bipartisan feeling to have a conversation that places blame nowhere but provides hope and solutionings every where and we need more leaders like that in washington, d.c. so, thank you senator. thank you everybody. >> thank you so much susan and malika, and thank you again to google for making this conversation this morning and the series possible. new jersey senator corey booker has been standing on the side of the stage waiting to come on.

he's an advocate for justice reform, along with mike lee, and the legislation that will role back him sentences. he also introduced the -- women act. that will ban shacking for pregnant women in federal prisons and require all women in these prisons get feminine hygiene products. also the act will make it easier for women to communicate with their children by keeping them in prisons close to home. it is my pleasure to welcome senator booker to the stage. >> thank you. >> he is here with atlantic editor julian wright. julian take it away. >> hello senator. >> hello. >> when you took officer three years ago it's safe to say the political landscape was a lim different. >> now. >> what i want to know now with trump in place how many reform is possible in this area?

>> i think it remains to be seen. you know, baldwin at the end of this great book, fire next time, he goes, judge i'm asking you the impossible because the possible is weak in demand because we're emboldened by the people in its history, american negro history in general -- so the landscapes look harder to me. we don't see an appetite to make this kind of changes, we have critical folks that block this legislation under obama that we got out of committee on the floor, and often uses tactics that are akin to willy horton, like are we going to let people out of prison. i heard that in the committee vote we just had on the piece of legislation that we pushed forward. but i still think anything is possible if we can race enough conscienceness in our country to permit movement.

parkland shooting is an example when the conscienceness of our country gets producted. i'm hopeful this issue is gaining bipartisan transaction, more and more people are beginning to realize, i think we can shift the realm of what's possible if we continue at it, i don't care whose president of the united states. >> so i want to talk a little bit about that bipartisan traction. are you seeing others who are signing on seeing the conversations grow and are interested in working with you working with them on these reforms? >> i try to push a full court press across the entire justice system. sometimes i'll pick up a partner like i had in senator johnson. sometimes i can pick up a friend or ally like mike lee on

reducing mandatory minimums. sometimes i can pick up somebody on marijuana reform. there's a lot of field in the injustice one our criminal justice system, from arrest to the drug war, to incarceration. and given the moral urgency, if you live in this space, i'm the only senator that lives in an inner city, low income minority community, and i see every single day the daily carnage that the broken criminal system has. i'm looking for allies to pick them up anywhere possible. and i have seen movement, chuck grass son wen i got to the senate in 2013 was on the floor giving speeches on the very same things i was trying to do. one of the reason i ran for united states senate, and i saw the coalition between he and i.

i look at history, civil rights legislation didn't pass because strom thurmond sat there and said, you know what black people should get equal rights. no. it happens because of certain movements in this country and you saw people change their minds. the real on tackle to change right now is not simply the people sitting in office, it's that so many americans are vastly unaware of the things that are going on in their name. we see the state versus, or the people versus, we're the state, we're the people. these are horrible thing. i sat down with a u.n. person use discussing the human rights violations going on in the united states. not talking about other countries but the daily human

rights that are beginning on in our country in our name. i have such a love for this country, i always say, if this country hasn't broken your hear, you don't love her enough. i love this country, i'm anguished by the ignorance of what's going on every day to millions of americans, but i am knowledgeable that our country when we can become aware, we -- we react and we've seen that from may of '63 in birmingham when incredible protesters, children demonstrated exposed the decisi bigotry. i can go through more history that buns this country has moral image nation is primmed, goes from comfort to discomfort is made and that's what we need in this point. >> i want to talk more about the

administration. do you see any partners there? i know my colleague mentioned jared curbfer stated this is a re -- >> look i am a beacon of hope. i will tell you this, jared kushner's father wen to prison, i was a guy that was communicating with him while he was in prison. when he came out of prison he was just animated because he saw from the inside how broken the system is. the first time when i went to rikers island to meet with kids, when i was stunned and going around talking to children incarcerated, who haven't had a trial yet, kid after kid was telling me i've been here three months, five months, ten months. no trial even. the person that brought me to rikers island, insisted i go was jared kushner's father, charley

kushner.this is a family issue. i know there's intention to make change. i still do not believe we're going to make the kind of massive change we need unless the pressure is allied -- applied. and we have jeff sessions, the most anti-criminal justice reform, someone who's brought to a haul the civil rights accountability, the voting rights accountability, the police accountability and the justice department, brought toyota a halt. someone who blocked the legislation the last time he was there it gives me a pause to be sober of whack be achieved. there are a lot of activity, my friends are aggressives, been to the white house and had discussions. james baldwin said it very clearly, i can't believe what you say because i see what you do. my thing is look-of-time to

judgment or draw conclusions. every single day for me, every single day for me it's very painful to see what people are suffering, every single day. i'm going to go to the floor of the senate today and try to wake people up, that i foe parkland is painful and to see these young heroes on t.v. is so beautiful, but, since park land, hundreds of americans have been shot and killed in community of color. i had a 10-year-old boy in atlantic, where's his headline, why is his family not being interviewed? young man killed in newark, where's his national -- so, the cost of inaction, the opposite of justice is not justice. the opposite of injustice is inaction, it's apathy, it is ignorance and that's the awakening that we need in this

country. and to see each other's dignity, to see each other's beauty. i mean i -- i -- and i'm guilty, i've made these miss stakes in my life recently. as we sit in the former panel i'm running around the country talking about criminal justice reform. the reason why i introduced the dignity act and pulled elizabeth warren in to partner with me because women were getting up in my face. >> yeah. >> and saying to me. i remember once we had alishia keys came in, one of these criminal events in the capital. this woman after i give me speech, she brings me over -- and there is what i love about certain folks who like, they don't give a damn what my title is, she's up in my face talking to me like my neighbors do still. and she's like, why do you never talk to the particular concerns of women in prison, and she started breaking it down for me. and finally, i'm kpaersed to say

this, identify visited many prisons from immigration lock up in texas, to rikers island, but i never visited a women's facility. when i went to this women's facility, first i met with incarcerated women and they were breaking down stuff i'm here in the united states senate that i just did not know. this gets me very emotional because when i went to go to the lock-up in dan berry connecticut, their federal facilitate, i still remember this warden, she said, this leader this warden of that prison, tough, talking to me, she had a swagger about her. and i remember walking in i asked her, how many women in this facility are survivors of sexual violence and trauma. and she stops and looks soft and vulnerable in a can yourageous

and she says to me, 95%. 95%. we are the society that takes the most harmed, hurt, victimized people and our answer to their pain is to throw them into jails and prisons, and to compound -- and to compound their injustice. and so, i remember we had a lot scheduled and i ended up sitting there at a cafeteria bench talking to these women, using all my time. listening to their every day stories about having to make decisions between buying sanitary products and calling their children who are often celebrated between two and three places. hearing them with detail how they're -- how they're -- create -- they try to make tampons in prison. that's outrageous and inhuman.

so, we have a -- we cannot say that we -- i'm a big believer that has this believe before you tell me about your religious show it to me and how you treat other people. but there's a specific gospel that we all know, just like when i was a little kid growing up in church singing, we have our song, we swear in oath that we'll be a nation of liberty and justice for all. i'm sorry, we are so far from that wen it comes to our criminal justice system and what we do to people. so i love the progress we're making, but even the bipartisan bill that we brought out of congress last congress was anemic compared to the concerns and challenges we have. >> that's my other question. the bill that you brought out did it address other things that you mentioned, sanitary products, ability to call home for free.

what are the other things that we haven't met for women? federal prisons only have a -- so, how are we addressing that? >> to clarify there was a comprehensive sentences that made it out, the dignity hasn't moved ate all. the one thing that we have moved -- by the way, if you want a fierce partner, grab elizabeth warren. and i'm going on t.v. talking about tampons and pads and just before we leave in 2017 to go on our summer recess, very quietly the bureau of prisons puts our directives that these products should be provided for free. sometimes, you don't have to pass legislation but calling out the injustice. we still have work to do, again, baldwin quote, i can't believe what you say because i see what you do.

we got to make sure the people are doing what the bureau of prison said. the second thing that's starting to happening, this is because of grass roots activists, so many around this country saw this bill which address so many for women. drama informed care, issues of understanding placements of women in relation to their children. one, call them survivors. one child who told me his mother was incarcerated. when mom goes to prison the whole family goes to prison. our bills are very comprehensive, we start seeing eight states now have picked up the dignity act or bills modeled after the act. eight states are moving. that's important to me because the federal government only have eight, ten or 12 of the prisoners. to write a piece of legislation

now that's been picked up is something i'm proud of. that guess to show this is a much larger movement and much larger urgency because what we do on the federal level is important. but where a lot of this museum has to happen is on the state lever. >> with the audience we want to try and get one or two questions in after my next question first. senator booker, so a lot of the push back we hear when it comes to sentences reform is around community safety. can you talk to me how you address those concerns and how the incarceration and deal being these issues? >> first of all, if you're really concerned with community safety before i talk about all this false division between violent and nonviolence. if you're really concerned about community safety you wouldn't take a drug war and take it to the community. you would take parents away from children and -- you would give

lifetime sentences to individuals when they're coming out of prison for drug crimes, sm members of congress has done, and for the rest of they're lives tell them you can't get food stamps, public houses, business licenses, jobs. so devastating. people are yelling out there's 40,000 consequences for people who were incarcerated. what does that do to a community in terms of violence and safety when you take away hope for human beings, being able to provide for their families in already stressed communities. i think it was vinder built said we'd have -- this is profound economic punishment. and so, i will tell you right now that our criminal justice system has created more violence than it was trying to say that it was trying to solve. what i mean by that is, this system awaits stands -- the way it stantds right now has driven

crime rates. what we're seeing from some states, most states are lowering their prison population, you see crime going down as well. again, if you treat people, if you deal with from everything from mental health to trauma, you will have a much longer term success in lowering crime than if you take people who have been traumatized, injured, hurt, addicted and stick them in jails, further traumatize them with solitary confinementment and experiencing violence if prison, then release them, hurt people are going to go on and hurt people. that's the reality. the last point about this false distinction, what we've created as vinyl crime, having met people who have driven a car and didn't foe that a gun's being used and that person's got a label by a crime. and the last thing i say about

vinyl criminal is a guy who was heavily testosterone laiden environments like a locker room where fights break out. one bar fight, one person tripping and falls is violent. and to think people make mistakes and don't have the time for redemption. the whole society comes up against the ideals of redental, second judgments. your whole life should not be defined by one moment. that's why i don't buy the arguments being used by people opposing reform. >> i think we have time for one speedy question over there. >> hi, thank you so much for your leadership on this. i'm also one of those people and a director of transitional housing program for women coming out of prison. we can only take 26 women at a time. it's incredible, we're

overwhelmed and we get an application every day. women are out there in the system, they need help and leadership. you're right to talk about the federal issues. for us and these women that are with us today that live in our home and are on the program, they have terrible issues specifically to women. thank you so much for taking the conversation today back to women. women are not vinyl criminals. people sit up there and talk about mass murders and all this, these are not womens' issues at all inside the jail. the issues that you're talking about, the feminine hygiene issues, the ige. these women talk about how they can't get into classes, can't get treatment, can't see their kids. >> i'm sorry to cut you off, did you have a question? >> they have a question and it was how can they help us fix the issues not at the federal level but at the state levs? contracti

how can we do there work, how can we join you? >> so, we live in this distraught present where we are a society that's willing to do thing that are vastly expensive than doing moral thing that not only save money by empower lives to go on to prosperity and success. i've seen a t lot of the realities where people are coming out of prison that has no place to go, no support systems and they go to homelessness and it's vastly more expensive. i think organizations like yours who are -- and we have them in newark, the which i in which i live and these little islands of santaty and moral light that cast dark shadows over the way our society is doing things right now. i'm going out to seattle this weekend to help one of my friend out there. i love this housing group called

plymouth housing group. they analyze a small group their serving. they did analysis of what's more expensive keeping people on the streets and homeless or put them in supporting houses. a guy that one the city, it's expensive. 23 people on the streets or 23 people in supportive housing. they found they were saving the city a million dollars by taking people off the street, why, they end up in emergency room. so, with you start talking about women who are always the economic anchors of any society, any continent on the planet earth, you empower women, you empower society. if you savagely, brutally attack women, you devastate communities, you devastate a peoples. this is what we are doing in this country. again, i keep going to this

parkland thing that i so admire these children, i'm so inspired by them, but where's the conversation about domestic violence murder in this country and how common it is. and the story item hearing about the numbers of people being murdered but we're not having a conversation about what affects, what is a reality for women on a daily basis in this country. gend lin brooks said it eloquently, we are each other's harvest, we are each other's business, we are each other's magnitude and bond. in a sense this is not a dog eat dog country. i love the ideals of rugged individuals and self-reliance but rukd individuals didn't get us to the moon. self-reliance didn't map the human gee know. we are greet when we recognize the essential nature that we have to one another. this society cannot thrive when its casting such a large

percentage of this people, millions of these people into institutions that do more damage to their psyche, more damage to their economic well being, more damage to their families and children. this is what we're doing. we're costing ourselves our treasure. the only way this is going to stop is if we create a movement and don't allow people who want to demagogue other people. who want to fear munger other people. if we are at a point in our society where afraid of each other we will never tlief in generations to come. this is still a young nation, still trying to make real on its promise, still trying to tell the truth to this world that a democracy that means freedom and equality, things are the things we're trying to prove right over centuries, we're still a young country. i still want to deal with that ideal, our founders as important

as they were, they didn't refer to women at all. native america refer to them as savage. african-americans fractions of human beings. the one thing they understood, this pg the oldest constitution of democracy put into the country, it's not a theocracy or religion, this was founded on these incredible ideals that we're still in pursuit of. the end of that decoration of independence saying if we're going to make it work as a country we must mutually pledge to each other our lives and honor. >> and i thank -- >> this is what we have -- so, my call of action to this, my call of action is this -- i will not get off the stage until i make my call of action. i'm used to a filibuster. my call of action is this, all the activist in this room if we

did the same thing we did last year we cannot expect different results. we have to be more rebellious, more unorthodox, to be more challenging to people, to take a stage or two to let your voice be heard. there's too much sin in this country, we need to ascend in this generation above this tragedy in our company that's happening every day. thank you. >> all right perfect. thank you senator. >> thank you. thank you, snaertd booker and thank you jillian. i hope when i got here today some of you had a chance to watch one of the short films on juvenile detention. we're going to be watching one of the episodes again in a moment. this is part of a series

produced by our colleagues in atlantic study zooming in on the young offender who end up behind bars. nicole lins is the producers is he's here to talk about the project and what they discovered along the way. nick and adrienne, it's all yours. >> thank you, margaret. so, nick one of the videos you created features a student name sa coy beats. before we talked about her story how about we watch the video margaret just mentioned. ♪ >> growing up in a neighborhood

that i did was very violent. they had a lot of shootings and fights, people doing drugs. like the average kid it messes them up mentally because that's traumatizing. we grau up very fast, so i was doing things that a kid wasn't supposed to do. stealing money from people because i think i needed it. i wasn't real like a bad kid but at times i felt responsibility was calling so i had to. it was a rough time for me, especially as a 17-year-old. somebody was like, hey, there's this going on, in about an hour we're going to do this. i was like all right, i'm going with you i need it to. i second guessed it and every bone and nerve in my body was telling me not to. i was like okay, i still got to do it. we robbed a jewelry deal and we thought it was a good ideal.

and liked, i feel like i needed money. family was kind of struggling. i feel like sometime they was my responsibility, someone died in the mix of it, that's why it was a big situation. he just happened to be with me that day one i made the decision, he wanted to come too. so. i'm not going to say it 100 don't help and 100% do help but they're trying. how do you help a 16-year-old when every day experienced violence. how you gone tell me i got to ask you to go to the bathroom, a lot of kids wasn't used to that. they did need help but maybe they just needed to sit down and talk to them. when i went in i was 18, when i came out i was 20. it wasn't too different when i

came home, it was just, you know new buildings, building that they tore down, people i haven't seen in a while, kids that i used to baby-sit, they grew up, so it's kind of like, wow, all this happening in two years. before that, i was in detention for a few months, and then i was on house arrest. i really didn't see anybody for three years. it was kind of like weird, in three years a lot has changed. i got used to it very fast. come home from work i just sit here. i was like oh, my god. just walking around dancing, have a t.v., and what i wanted to watch, the music i wanted to listen to, you know, just getting comfortable. i'm lucky to have a family but i -- because i know if i lose this house, god for bid, if i lose this houseky go to my mom's house aunt's house and grandma's house.

and a lot of kids didn't have that. they go home and come back multiple times. and i personally talk to some that have, some say they have three meals a day, clothes on their back, they don't have to worry about struggling figuring out when the next meal is going to be, you know, where they're going to lay their heads. it was kind of rough because some people here don't have anyone on the streets. up there they do, they have staff, people, recreation. a lot of kids who don't have it they do appreciate that bah not a lot of people cared what they do.

so, nick, how did you find zacoy, what was appealing about her story to you? >> i was connected through her through the juvenile system in virginia. i've spoken to a number of kids inside and outside the facility. so, you know she's a fascinated person and has an amazing story. she -- we talked a lot before we decided to do this interview, she was really open and was very well spoken on sort of what she saw, what the issues were, she saw them. and, yeah, connected with her and it made sense to talk to her, and she has a great story. >> the clip left off with zacoy fwing to welding school, what's she doing now? >> she's currently in richard, virginia writing her entrance for the military. >> awesome. at the end of the clip she

talked about her support system how she had a mother, grandmother and aunt who could take her in and she stated that wasn't the case for the people around her. who else did you meet and what were her stories? >> yeah, the reason why we decided to pursue a story in virginia, it's a state that has a high detention rate for kids. it's over 7%, it's within 3 year regardsed rate, 7 o% of kids will be rearrested in three years upon release. so we wanted to unpact that by talking to kids in the facility, out of the facility, kids on parole. and she really, you know, summed it up perfectly there. a lot of the kids in detengs

don't have support net works. if you go to a facility you're mostly going to be released you're going tack to the same situation that got you there in the first place. >> it seems like bond air is -- >> yeah, that's another thing particular to virginia, is that virginia has seen a very rapid decline in their inmate population in secure facilities, facilities like bond fair. because of of that all the facilities in the state closed except for one. there's all of the facility in virginia for kids in detention. that facility is 10 miles east of richmond. >> this is one of three videos that you're participating in making.

tell me about the subjects of the other videos. >> yeah, this is one of three videos, also part of a longer documentary of the other three videos. we spoke to a young man, marquez jackson who is currently in von air serving a juvenile life sentence. he is from the d.c. area, so his family's also very far away. he has trouble getting visitation. and then the third is another young man named dare yan, and he was diverted out of secure care. so he was convicted of a number of charges, instead of being sent to von air he wen to a diversion program where he's living in an apartment paid for by the department of juvenile justice in virginia beach. >> what did you learn in the difference of those experiences? how does the ark of the experience help us learn about

juvenile detention? general? >> i think what we wanted to do with this series is tackle the idea of juvenile justice being this area of rehabilitation for juveniles in secure care. the goal is rehabilitation. they're going to be going home, how do they function at home after that. i think there's recognition within the department of juvenile justice amongst advocates, amongst almost everyone i spoke to in virginia, that this system as it is now isn't working as they designed it, and so there is more of these efforts on diversion programs, basically going to a facilitate far bae, removed from the community with the kids will be returning to isn't working, and they're trying to find ways to get facilities closer to the kids or get the kids out. >> so bond air is the last

juvenile facility in the state of virginia and it's part of the system as you said is not working in the numerous ways, what is the future of this facility. >> they are trying to close it. the director of youth of justice dimmited an application to open up a facility which would be a three hour's drive from each of these communities, unfortunately it was rejected by the local town council. there was, amongst add voeks it was a feeling this was still too large, it was a 60-bed facility among the community. it was a feeling that it could affect property values so it was shut down. as i understand there's another pro-p proproposal in the works in that region but it's an ongoing effort. >> as we talk about the criminal justice system, reducing the

population seems like a goal, did you see any resistance to that and problems with the way this is playing out in practice? >> i think as the population declines you're starting to see the problems more clearly. a decade ago there was over 1300 kids in secure care in virginia, now there's 200 boys and girls in bond air. all the kids i spoke to were african-american, most of the kids they were african-american. in virginia if you are african-american you are seven times more likely to be arrested than your white counter parts. so, while the population is going down it's exposing other thing. >> absolutely. i want to close out by talking about your experience reporting. what keen of stuck with you? what was your first impression of bond air as a facility and

how does doing this story in vr affect the way you approach this story title? >> i'll start with bond air as a facility, it took me a while to find it, it's kind of tucked away in the woods. when i walked in, at first it seemed like kind of an old school, you know, there's a school on campus. then i got into the maximum security side and it felt like an adult prison, maximum security adult prison. so, it's massive, it's really big, it's split up into the maximum security side, schools, it covers a huge area. overall it was just struck me as being very large and kind of complicated. in terms of using the vr, that was a decision we took early on.

we were interested if trying out story time with this. i think this is something that's particularly suited to these sort of stories. we had some concerns initially about protecting the kids' identity, making them feel comfortable. so the specious of having to look through their eyes and not show their faces. we wanted to bring people in and give them an idea of what this felt like, what these kids were going through. >> we're looking forward to seeing the other two shorts in the feature. thank you so much. >> thank you. >> thank you nick, thank you adrian and thank you again to atlantic studios for sharing their experience. we're going to spend the rest of the morning looking at the

women's police. we are delighted to welcome topeka sam. she's the director of women's home ministries, it's an organization to help women reenter life outside behind bars. and piper carmen. she's the author of "orange is the new black. "julian white is returning to lead the conversation. >> all right, so piper i want to start with you. people probably feel familiar with your life story but only in this small swap from the book and from the show. can you talk to us about what you been up to since you published the book? >> okay, the book was published in 2010. i was so fortunate to have the opportunity to write it, to be

able to make sense of this experience of incarceration and to think about how my own personal experience related to this much broader question of mass incarceration, all the issues of race, class and gender that are present in this conversation today. and netflix adaptation of the book was released first in 2013, and that was a trip. and in 2015, i moved to ohio from brooklyn, which is where i'd lived for a long time. and i moved there to teach in one of the mens' prisons and the primary womens' prison. there are three facilities that house women in the state of ohio but the main one houses holds,

incarcerated 2600 women. so i had been there for about three years working with a lot of students. at this point we'd had about 30 students go through the program, the program is quite intensive. at this point we began collaborating last year with a university in ohio which is conferring college credits to my students. that's been a really fascinating experience as well to get the opportunity to work with both men and women on their personal narratives. they're writing personal narratives, many people would call it memoirs, writing class. and they're writing skills are of course tremendous. they're astonishing, heart breaking, and people sometimes chose to write about what's important to them. the goal of doing that work and

why i went to ohio, was that we need far more stories to come out of, certainly the correctional experience but also the much broader experience of criminal justice system involvement in order for us to really understand this sort of beast that we constructed really over just 40 years with a long legacy of racial and class violence backing it up. >> so, this question's for both of you. you mentioned 2010 when the book came out, we're almost a deck katie past. i'm wondering what changes do you think have happened in the criminal justice system when we talk about bottom who wewomen w incarcerated in the past? to pika i'll start with you. >> well first i'm hearing more women have been incarcerated. and first of all i want to limit my remarks for a moment and dedicate them to moe that brant,

a sister of ours that passed away this weekend. about two years ago -- she served 21 years in prison for a first-time offense, nonviolent. and you know, my heart is broken but also i'm angry because therapy didn't have to happen. she was a victim of abuse. she was a battered woman. and you know, when i think about my experience of incarceration it pails in comparison to her and the many women that are incarcerated and the federal system that piper and i both were, they're incarcerated for life, and federal prison life means death. and when these laws are changing and that you laws are spruced there's no retro activity so people are still stays in

prison. wen someone got arrested today for the same crime they wouldn't have the same type of sentence. so my heart is really heavy. ra moe that is a brilliant grateful woman. and she stepped out of prison and fwaif her life to fighting for injustices of the system and also for the sisters that she left behind. it's frustrating to know that from the time she was incarcerated, and i believe it was 1994, my first year in college, to her being released 2015. that much has not changed. >> piper, do you see any sort of big changes? >> when we look at the question of reform in the criminal justice system or transforming it which might be better than reforming it, we have seen progress in areas like the

juvenile justice system, in terms of reducing the number of kids locked up in ju visit prison, though as the previous session revealed, thing like racial disparity are darker. sometimes when we introduce reform we don't address problem machk and unacceptable injustices. so, when it comes to women though in the system, i think ironically even though there's far more discussion for the situation for women and girls in the system, we have seen far less progress in reducing the number. in many women in this country, the men that have been incarcerated has either been reduced hat plateaued, but for most in this country the incarceration for women continues to increase. in ohio again where i live, the incarceration rate for women keeps on going up and many of

those commitments are for very short sentences. so, i always think that wen we talk about women and girls in the system, those examples afford us a very ordinary every day example of this incredible commitment to punishment in this country. when we talk about the death penalty or the facts that we're the only nation in the world that sentences children to die in prison, juvenile life without parole sentences, those are very harsh sentences and they attend to attach to serious crimes and vinyl. but when we look at women and girls in the system, what we see is far too many women like ramona who essentially has their lives stolen from them. i can't emphasize, ramona brant, who was a remarkable human being, just to meet her briefly a few times, you're like wow,

that's a spirit we can all learn from. her offense just wasn't that different than mine. she was involve in a relationship with someone who was involved in narcotics just like i was. she had never been arrested or charged with a crime before, just like i was. and i received a 15-month sentence and she received a life sentence. and, you know, we have to look at why that is, yeah it's overwhelmingly about race. access to justice, access to council but it's fundamentally very much about race and these things are not been transform in the system. when we look at women and girls in the system shlg i'll offer one more example, we have to get down to the ground where these sentences are happening. in ohio where i live, there's a small rule county in between

columbus and cleveland, crawford county, and the collections folks who i collaborate with to do my program, told me, yeah for years and years they would send an average of two women into the system, right. they're sending an average of two women to prison, state prison. then a new judge was elected in that county and he sent 62 women to prison, right. and its this combination of the work, actions of judges and actions of prosecutors that are sending women into the system for drug offenses and for property crimes and often for very low level ones and that has not stopped. >> to pika i'm wondering if you can go back and speck to what piper brought up, the discrepancy based on income and race. how have you seen that affect who winds up incarcerated and how does that affect some of the work that you do? >> well it definitely, as piper brought up and i think everyone knows race is the driver of

incarceration as a whole. same with women, women have been kid napped from the streets into the system and it's despairingly is people and communities of color. what i do, my drive is to help to make sure that women, one have a platform such as these to use their voice to make sure we are making recommendations. but also that we are leading and work and providing resources that our sister else need wen we come home, because we know what we need first, right. when i came home there were other former incarcerated women that took me under their wing and said, hey this is what you should do, let me show you how. it was not the systems in place, not parole, it was not someone in surveillance over us in our communities. when we look at what's happening in the system we have to tie it into policing, right and what's

happening with policing and what's happening with criminalization with people of color. it's the same tied in, and the only way we can dismantle the system, in a perfect world we'd love to transform it. but crow cannot reform something that is in place as people have said time and time again to do what its done, disrupt communities of color and break our families apart. for me, i think we need to come to friendships it's about race, right. it's look at where we come from and look at where we go. put those things in laws that will take our people out of prison first and keep our people from going in. >> when we think about some of legislation pushed forward and some of the work on criminal justice reform it always seems

to be formed around men. i'm thinking do you guys think there need to be specific progra programs formed around women to deal with new charges they face, or is there a trk l down effect if we change the system it will help women? >> right now in my program, the former incarcerated women have helped to draft -- for the dignity incarcerated women act. piper and i were talking earlier, it's unfortunate that we have to write legislation to make sure women have to have their hygiene met. it's terrible to write legislation to make sure children are within a proximity with their parent so we don't have to break our family unit. put we do. within that, i want to take a minute and say, i heard earlier about human rights, and i have to look at that as humanity.

we have to stop saying, as i come into my political place into there world, left and right, plus and red, all these other things instead of looking at it as right and wrong. how do we make these changes -- that we remember where we are. and it's important that while our sisters are waiting to come home that their needs are met. >> piper, you're working with incarcerated men and women, i'm wondering if you notice any differences in the experience and the stories they're telling you as you work with them? >> i echo everyone that top ka said, it's aston issuing that we're trying to recognize those

thing within the dignity act, the dignity act need to be passed and working within the state lev, because we have to hold them accountable as well. the federal government will do so much. some of the other things that have gotten more attention and are gaining more steam and having more proof points will definitely benefit women like bail reform or the abolition of cash bail, right. so we know that the front end of the system has to be our focus, even as we try to make existing correctional facilities more human and rehabilitative even as we work to make sure more people have safe return home and the opportunity to succeed. when i think about my students in both facilities, in the women

and mens' facility, what you start to see is all of those factors like bail and access to justice at the very beginning of contact with the criminal justice system. you start to see all of those issues around what is the safety that a person might return home to. are they returning home to substance use disorder issues or a break and access to health care if they have mental health concerns and other chronic disease concerns. what you really see overwhelmingly is this experience of that you pa. we know that the race of trauma survival for incourse cars rated women and girls are 89%. i would say after three years of teaching in a medium security mens' facility that my students' drama is high. and it's the same kind of trauma

that we talk about and ask for gender programming for women and girls. the men in my classes have also survived sexual violence and expose you are to violent at a heart breaking young age. they think about it in a different term than we do as women because of some of these inequalities which are present in the community and even more drausk and exacerbated in a place like a prison or a jail. a prison or a jail is a place that is built to be unequalism it is inherently hire ark call. dominance or noted and function under the threat of violence. that's how a prison or jail works right? we put people in a prison of jail and the one way we keep them there is buy the threat of

violence. so the idea that people who have survived violence that's tethered in those -- and a setting like that is very questionable. and also if someone's offense is related to those hire arkies and equality, i always feel like those stem from inequality, prison jail reinforce all of those behaviors. so there's the problematic idea of thinking prison or jail can restore people and bring them home safe. >> we're going to save time for a couple questions at the end so start thinking about them now, condense them all the way down and make sure they are questions. thank you. so, i want to talk a bit about reentry, especially when we talk about women of color, we think

about black men coming back to their community and all the unders they face trying to reintroduce themselves. topeka can you talk about the reentry of women of color? >> absolutely. you think about women trying to get their children back who was broken up whether it's foster care or a grandparent that's somewhere and they're not age to connect. we talk about healthcare, women of color again don't have access to these thing. the issue of women of color, uterine fie broids, thing that we go through and being on home admonish. i'll give you a prime example wen i had the ankle shackle on, i had uterine fibroid and i needed surgery and i couldn't

get a certain test done because the machine wouldn't get me go through with that and they conremover it. by the time i got the thing off and got the test done the fibroid went from 10 inches to 16. it was a full myomekt pi when it could have been a partial. the thing about access to education, different resources, access to being within spaces that gives opportunity for job placement. when i was in dan berry, i was thinking about gender responsive programming, they offered us adult programming knitting and coe shaying for women. how is that going to help a woman return and be mark bl and get a skill set, sustain themselves and get their family. and housing, the number one

thing when people come home and safe housing. in new york they go to a shelter, temporarily rehabilitated, there's violence things happening in there. to fete your kids back they require you to have a three bedroom apartment. i know how much i pay for a one bedroom in new york, let alone three. these houses don't have enough beds to house women. what we did in new york was hope house which is a safe house and space for women and girls. even when our five rooms in the house for the women we're having community set back. so it's internalized raicism in your own community. and worrying about being under surveillance, having these

random drug tests where maybe you don't take drugs. having to continue to be dehumanized and demoralized and treated as if your ir sterile, whatever the system felt that you were. i know depend being a woman of color and having recourses when i came home, i wasn't treated any different. so, i can just man the women not having those recourses and how they're being treated. so that's why we're doing the work. i know there's organizations ran by sisters right here in d.c., like the wire and mission launch. make sure that you connect with these sisters here so you can help them push their mission forward. >> i wanted to reenforce that we about housing, so many things that face women coming home.

we know there's consistent shared challenges for men and women but that housing question is so significant for women. when you think about men being released from prison, often they have a mother, a sister, a girlfriend or a wife, or, you know, there's generally a woman worst going to offer them safe haven and that's much less true for women returning home out of the system. for women, safe housing is important for men, but men and women have different questions and considerations when it comes to being safe. that's why hope house is so important, and other work like that. susan burton's working in l.a. >> absolutely. >> really important. >> yeah, for sure. >> i want to make sure i give the audience a chance. do you guy haves any questions? >> i'm reese with citizens united rehabilitation.

one point i wanted to make about education, and this relates to the federal system that the usa attorney -- the sfaent u.s. attorney earlier said the system is doing really well. and -- but, to point it out --