about looking at people. where are the issues? there are so many veterans in our prisons systems. it is so sad to see a veteran with our >> i would like to add to the conversation. it is more than just low hanging fruit. 40urally projecting 30, years down the road because the reality is the men and women who are currently in prison who we are unable to look at with the same empathetic eyes started off as a child, right? psychopaths inw the world. that suggest that every child actually had an opportunity to not be a victimizer. of the men in prison

currently started off as victims. it is two conversations that have to be had at the same time and the juvenile conversation has to be getting -- pursued over theeme tenacity next 50 years so we are not having this same conversation in 100 years, right? it is like we see what has happened now. most of the children are crackly affected by the epidemic, the war on drugs, all of these different things that occurred in our history. most of these men who are now able to say i will never let you out started out as children. sted.ly we inve now we have an opportunity to do that and carrying both conversations at the same time. >> we have to look at those long stories and also acknowledge the

worst possible positions we put people in our very hard to control. if we say this is the worst person in the prison system so we will leave them in total isolation forever -- it is very hard to do that for only one person once you build a structure that does that. say is important the way we the way we treat people is the way the society has thought about and embodies the democratic ideals. in mud expanded to other people and those people may get out of prison and think about it from that perspective as well. we will move to questions. >> we want to leave some time to take questions from the audience. there are two of us walking around with microphones. we are recording this. it will be on our website first thing tomorrow morning so you can share with friends and family and colleagues. if you could please say your first and last name before your question i would be grateful.

c-span is here as well and it will be re-broadcasted at a later date. >> hi. my name is mary. i am a member of critical resistance. i am part of a statewide alliance in california and here in los angeles. does the audience know that there is $1 billion in jerry brown's new budget to delegate to new jail expansion? does the audience know that -- $2 -- do you know tw million are being spent to expand the jail system and what do you think of l.a. county getting over $1 billion over the four years of realignment and giving 90% of it to the chairs department and him is nothing to -- andty organizations

almost nothing to community organizations? >> i am probably one of the most sons against building additional prisons. form however we have to focus on what has happened with realignment. with realignment we have pushed more people into our jail syst system. that unfortunately are the mentally ill that need more educational programs and they are there. ..

need to be shut down and under no circumstances should we continue to increase the amount of i want people treated to tackle this systemic problem here. . >> next question over here on your left. >> my name is todd. i wonder if you could comment on the relative impact of things like the private industrial prison complex and the huge number of plea-bargain is that take place on prison sentencing? >> i am going to take that plea-bargain piece. as the person that has been through this system and

working with people that are currently going through this system and coming out, is not a plea bargain that people gate. it is a thread. and that is the real bottom line on that. if you don't take what they offer you the man they threaten you with three or four times the number of years that you are going to be behind bars. so, it is a processing wake, processing people through a system that we call the justice system. but there is no justice in that system for people that don't have attorneys. so what i say, it is not a bargain, it is a threat. that is just the way it is.

>> an airport topic, the lack of attorneys and representations' focusing in on this when it deals with plea-bargain, a lot of the people who are represented in our court system because we have a lack of resources for the state system did not even have public defenders. and they typically have panel attorneys. in panel attorneys are often given three or $400 for the life of a case. so that being said, if i can get this case out my door in the next hour and $9,300 an hour. i do my due diligence to the investigation, what it takes to actually defend the case which could be months. amelie given $300. and so there is, again, this incentive to push people through plea bargaining in county supervisor is actually working on an

initiative to get more funding for things like this . >> and similarly, an example of the perverse incentives to you are both talking about we change the incentives of the system away from justice in toward efficiency or financial gain, and that creates the problem. the u.s. has pushed have 34,000 beds mandated to be sold by undocumented people every day. so now required that those beds remain. so keep the system full. similarly with the plea bargain. >> next question. >> steve goldsmith, connected with the use services. we have affronted program where we set up meetings between victims and offenders, youth offenders. very effective. evidence based, but i don't imagine we have to many people from the juvenile justice probation or law enforcement here.

how do we educate them? that is really the folks that need rehabilitation, those front-line workers because they don't make referrals to programs like that. they have this idea that, in fact an operation department as a number of employees whose job is to go out and violate people. that is all they do, sending them back to prison. how do we change the system on the outside so as to reduce people going in to begin with? >> create dialogue. step one is to create dialogue between these two different groups and see that there is more commonality then there are, you know, the centrist. >> and that every county to miami many of the counties, particularly the bay area, they have councils where everyone is at the table, community-based organizations, the district attorney, the sheriff, the probation department, and they are all working

together. some of the counties have mandated that a huge percentage of their funding goes to those programs. they have done a lot of training with the probation officers to make those referrals and the performance reports are based upon the skies of referrals. so you have to change the law and your whole system has to be at the table, in my opinion, along with the community based organizations that either the help. >> as an example, san francisco, 33 percent of the funding they receive goes to programs. so that is what they voted to do. i think you have to do that at the local level to make that happen. >> good evening. my name is barry marlin. how do you get to the for profit motive out of the prison system? we really have not talked about that this evening. it is a business. it is a business upon which people are making money, whether they are the

lobbyists directing political contributions to my congressmembers who are proving vast growth and the private construction and private operation of prisons how can we conceivably direct the profit motive? that is what this country works upon, the rehabilitation effort ensued their restructuring efforts to get these people back into society with a lot. how do we stick the pen in the balloon of the profit motive of the prison system? >> and i would just throw out, the balloon has already been stuck in some ways. and you already see private prison corporation is betting very quickly and very nimbly to move into probation services, in to bail, and to a whole series of incarceration services

committee know, with the exception of immigration detention, private prisons are not really a growth business at this point. >> i think jenny mentioned this earlier, just the restructuring of what we spend our resources on. so if we are encouraging social impact, we are saying, if you are successful with reducing the population then and only then will you be paid. and i think we are encouraging a profit model where, yes, you can still make money, but you will do so by reducing the prison population. >> we will even give you more. >> this is also an area where i think there is a black-and-white. it really is inappropriate to allow anyone to profit of the punishment. that is what we have allowed one we sentence people to probation and have them a private companies i interest loan. they agree to be on

probation. when we put them in private prisons. so rehabilitation is maybe a creative idea, but profit enough punishment inevitably creates perverse incentives. there are many things are black and white to me, that 1s. >> i think we also need to decide what the purpose of prisons to be. an appeal codicils as punishment. really the sentence is the punishment. the focus of prison should be rehabilitation. and, you know, i think we have to really be clear what we expect people to achieve. >> next question comes to your right. >> hi. actually went through the program. >> thank full. >> wonderful. so my topic is poverty. whenever i read books by civil rights movements back in the day come martin luther king, dr. sherman, and every criminal justice books commanded seems like sometimes they have the same common theme to my attacking poverty.

okay. the rich get richer and deported prison. a state that has the most income and people make money , hire the prison population. dr. thurman says people, all morals are out the door when you're in survival mode. martin luther king says if you empower somebody let them know that their voices mean something and have a skill that they can focus on . fixing crime ever becoming a civil rights type? it seems like that becomes part of the problem, i guess , but how can it ever goes that route where we are hurting our own citizens but that empowering them and educating them in treating him like a human being? >> mass incarceration is the final frontier in the civil-rights movement. >> is something nice about privatization. highlights for us in no way

that this is a civil right. when you read about people in ferguson, misery not being able to pay their fines and essentially being in debtor's prison, we really see that we have violated the civil right in a way we have a much harder time seeing when it has not been privatized. thanks to privatization for and lightning people in that way, i guess. >> we have not touched on race in this conversation. you know? [laughter] [applause] we have not touched on race, the 13th amendment, when you are imprisoned. in that really needs to be in the heart of this conversation. when you see so many black man, so many black boys, the numbers are astounding, the numbers that are incarcerated. when you're in that place and you are getting $0.8 an

hour for picking pecans or making a desk. you get out and have these fines are get with $200 to. but we have not touched on how race is driving this. so 70, 80, 90, 100 years ago being black guy was, you know, pushed out. but now today having a criminal history and pushed out. and so many of our young men, so many of our women of color, men of color are pushed out and incarcerated and worked as a slave under criminal justice system. so we, you know, deep conversation that we must put race into this. and mass incarceration of

black and brown folks in this conversation. [applause] >> we have time for one last question. we have run at a time. what take time to thank all of our panelists for sharing the evening with us. all of them will be at our reception. everyone is invited to go up to them individually and ask further questions. want to take a moment to thank the california endowment for hosting us. we could not have done this without them. now will ask questions. >> hi. i am here to talk about rehabilitation. my brother just got out after drawing cheers. he basically went to jail because he was trying to feed his family. he shot a man and it just so my brother it would have done less time if he had killed the man. i did not really believe it, but i was there when he said

it. so try to figure out, once you get out of prison car rehabilitation like what is next? is in no, once you're a felon there is no really opportunity or access to jobs, especially as a black male, you know, hard for me. you know, what is next for us? we have all this money, but no one is getting jobs. by brother as a child on the lake and the can't get any work. >> so having been a co-founder of the arc to while we are two-pronged. one, 50 percent of our time is still with adequacy. better policy. the other piece of it is looking for individuals were going to commit to being drug-free, crime free, of service to the community concerts of employment education. we have just created a housing model for that is

right across the street from an existing college. and it gives folks an opportunity to live. they pay a certain amount of rent, but it goes back to them when they leave out of college so that they can actually have more money once they are successful with their college degree. and i think for your brother, unfortunately we do not have an immense amount of re-entering the programs today, and that think that is the point of this panel to talk about how we get there in the meantime or in the interim. the nrc is a source of hope and something your brother or others can utilize. if we don't have the resources we can try and connect. and i would encourage anyone who is a ceo or president of the nonprofit organization, it is vitally important that you all communicate with others, nonprofit

organizations because what is happening, people like your brother will come home, and there is only this one small organization in south central that can fulfill his needs, but there may be others, and there is no communication between the two to actually get the help. >> and if i could just comment, i know there's somebody in the audience to provide jobs because they e-mail me. is it you? >> called on one second. but while we are getting a mite, let me just say this, there are many organizations popping up around the state to help people get employment. i have gone out and spoke to employer groups. explain to them why they should hire someone coming out of the prison system and educating employers as to the benefits of firing people. tax breaks, all kinds of things that the state is

offering when you hire somebody that has been a criminal justice system. >> we are from a recycling company and e-wis corporation here in chinatown. we hire the population and we train them. it worked extensively with them. so we are trying to have a good story instead of, you know, you getting out. [inaudible] to find work. we need more. the more jobs, the more it waste we get the more jobs we can provide. we are working with large corporations trying to get the message out. >> i would like to connect with a young man at the breaktime try and in south l.a. we do organizing with incarcerated people. we worked extensively with both male and female on the organizing side. and we're also working with the mayor's office. so let's talk during the break. >> everyone talk during the

break. let's go out. see you at the reception. [applause] [inaudible conversations] created by- america's cable companies 35 years ago and brought to you as a public service by your local cable or satellite provider. in his weekly address, president obama explains his administration's efforts to contain the ebola disease at home and abroad. response,epublican u.s. house candidate for new

york's first congressional district lee zeldin. today, i want to take a few minutes to speak with you directly and clearly about ebola. what we are doing about it and what you need to know because meeting a public health challenge like this is not just a job for government. all of us, citizens, leaders, the media have a responsibility and a role to play. this is a serious disease, but we cannot give in to the hysteria or fear because that only makes it harder to get people the accurate information they need. we have to be got it by the science. we have to remember the basic facts. what we are seeing now is not an outbreak or epidemic of ebola and america. -- in america. we are a nation of more than 300 million people. we have only seen three cases of ebola here.

the man who contracted ebola in liberia came here and sadly died. and the nurses that were infected when they were treating him. we are doing everything we can to give them the best care possible. even one infection is too many but at the same time we have to keep this into perspective. as the public health experts point out, every year thousands of americans die from the flu. second, ebola is actually a difficult disease to catch. it is not transmitted through the air like the flu. you cannot get it from writing on a plane or a bus. the only way a person can contract the disease is by coming in direct contact with the bodily fluids of somebody who is already showing symptoms. i have met and hugged some of the doctors and nurses who treated ebola patients. met with any bowl patient who recovered in the oval office and i am fine. third, we know how to fight this

disease. we know the protocols. that when they are followed, they work. so far, five americans who got infected in west africa have been brought back to the united states and all five have been treated safely without infecting health care workers. this week at my direction, we are stepping up all of our efforts. additional cdc efforts are on the scene in dallas and cleveland. we are working quickly to track and monitor anyone who may have been in close contact with someone showing symptoms. we are sharing lessons learned so other hospitals do not repeat the mistakes of that happened in dallas. the cdc's new ebola rapid response team will deploy the -- quickly to help hospitals. are nowening measures in place at airports and receive nearly all passengers arriving from liberia, guinea and sierra leone. we will continue to constantly review our measures and update them as needed to make sure we

are doing everything we can to keep americans safe. finally, we cannot just cut ourselves off from west africa where this disease is raging. our medical experts tell us of best way to stop this disease is to stop it at its source before it spreads even wider and becomes even more difficult to contain. trying to seal off an entire region of the world, if that were possible, could makes the -- make the situation worse. it would make it harder to move health care workers. experience shows ticket also cause people in the affected region to change their travel to evade screening and make the disease even harder to track. the united states will continue to help lead the global response in west africa because if we want to protect americans from ebola here at home, we have to end it over there. military'slian and personnel serve, their safety and health will remain a top priority.

as i said before, fighting this disease will take time. before this is over, we may see more isolated cases here, but we know how to wage despite and if we take the steps that are necessary, if we are guided by the science, the facts, not fear, i am confident we can prevent a serious outbreak here in the united states and we can continue to lead the world in this urgent effort. and ilo, i am lee zeldin am the republican candidate for the works first congressional district in long island. 's special place where i was born and raised. levy start by saying our hearts go out to all of those affected by the ebola outbreak. right now, the president and his administration need to be taking every necessary step to protect the american people. today, i just want to share with you the most important reason i am running for congress. there are two of them acta ually. they are my beautiful twin

daughters. toy inspire me and my wife do everything we can to provide them and their generation with more opportunities. that is just the american way. that is not the path we find ourselves on right now. our government spends more than it takes in, fails to keep basic promises to our veterans and squatters opportunity after opportunity to create good paying jobs. instead of courage, we see caution and in action. aren't we tired of the way washington fails to listen to us? this november for is our chance to send a message that the challenges we face cannot wait. it is time to turn things back into the right direction. we can start by focusing on creating good paying, private sector jobs. too often in today's economy, people find themselves taking second, third jobs and that is still not enough to make ends meet. we can do better.

and help families get ahead, not just get by. we need to fight for our veterans who fought for us. we cannot rest until we know the v.a. will be able to provide first rate, 21st century care our men and women in uniform deserve. we need to repeal and replace obamacare with something that guarantees more freedom and security. we have to improve our education system to put parents in charge of their kids education and give every child in opportunity to succeed. i know we can do this. it is going to take hard work, tough decisions and embracing the duty we all share to protect and pass on the blessings which our country was built. i proudly serve as a u.s. paratrooper in the 82nd airborne division and why i still serve as a major in the army reserves and why i am

running for congress now. together, we can and the dysfunction and restore the american dream for our kids and grandkids. they are what this is all about. thank you for listening and have a great weekend. >> the communicators is next with a look at how technology and media are a factor in this year's election cycle. that is followed by republican congresswoman michele bachmann talking about the tea party's influence in american politics. later, discussion how the media recently covers events in ferguson, missouri were a teenager michael brown was shot by a police officer fatally. c-span, created by america's cable companies 35 years ago and brought to you as a public service by your local cable or satellite provider.