guided our strategies, that we are expecting for the 2 million individuals in prison, if we can expose them to psychologically brutal conditions and release bem, they will somehow successful and a strategy for reducing crime. >> there is a difference between a --oals of two rebuilds rehabilitate and i want to ask about that part to jason, you have said, we do not have an incarceration problem, we have a crime problem. explain what you mean. dual role, but a the first and primary reason we have prisons is to punish people for antisocial behavior and to

remove that threat in society. to keep us safe, whether they will rehabilitate or deter future crimes, that is secondary in concern, great if it happens, but the primary purpose of the present system is for those -- those tostem is for keep the community safe. true, widely were of punishment that last summer's longer, why so many consequences, where you not allowed to vote if you have a certain conviction in your background. why do you have a hard time getting public housing if you have a conviction. we do punishment well in this country, very well. and we do it so that these individuals, even when they're no longer contained, they are still being punished when they

go back to society. >> i think that is an effective tool for keeping violent offenders off the street, but at the scale we see today, we have andnded the net of control widened our pool of individuals that are incarcerated, to the point where there is evidence that our policies are doing more harm than good. >> let me read you a quote, " prison is no longer a rare event among the most marginalized, it has become a normal and anticipated marker in the transition to a doll head -- adulthood." these are your words. >> yes focusing on mass incarceration, for young black men today, the chances that a young man will serve time in prison, it is one in three and it rises 60% if you do not

finish high school. so we see these experiences become something normal and it is expected, more common than employment, then other institutional attachments we think are constructive for society. and we are reaching those proportions, mass incarceration, i think there is a clear sign we have gone too far. >> is a shocking statement. to say that prison has become a normal and anticipated marker for young blacks in cities today. jason: it was not for me. what concerns me is not the number of people in prisons, it is whether the incarceration rate is matching the crime rate and i think that should be the focus. new york city homicide rates have been in the multiples for

200 years, criminology wise, new york has been for most of its existence, a very violent place. even if you put aside gun crimes, americans kill each other without guns at higher rates than other industrialized nations, we do not know why that is. there is a lot we do not understand about the cause of crime, demographic, whether it can have an impact on it appeared but we do know, when you take an individual, put them in prison, you remove that threat from society. most crimes are committed by people who have already committed crimes. it is around 60% so i think that the reentry programs are very important. most people in prison will get out at some point. we need to talk about react when made in them to society, what worries me is this attempt to

release people early, trying to hard, wechoose, it is have a poor track record in this country of doing that. when we are wrong, the community pays the price. >> how do you break that cycle? >> i just want to respond to that point, there has been an uneven relationship between crime and incarceration. new york is a great example, over the last decade, they have reduced the incarceration rate by 20% and they have seen greater than average drops in crime, one of the greatest drops in homicide rates. even texas, they have seen significant reduction rates in incarceration and they have crime, soter drops in there is a model for reducing the reliance on incarceration

and improving public safety. jason: you start with $80 billion in the u.s. for incarceration, so people compare that with the cost of higher education, that is not an appropriate comparison, the comparison i want to know is the cost of the criminal justice system in terms of incarcerating people and the cost of the crimes in the country, i think you do not see that done very often. britain did it a few years ago. and they came up with a number of around 1.2 billion pounds in terms of cost of incarcerating people and they also kegley the cost of crime, that was around 60 billion pounds, so i think that is the appropriate comparison, we're not talking about tax dollars, we're talking about lives, broken families, deaths, there is a cost to crime.

exceeds the cost of locking up the people. >> what about the cost of the families, removing a parent from the household and incarcerating them, a wage earner from a family or society, is that relations of clear to you if you are looking at trade-offs? yes there is a benefit to moving someone -- removing someone dangerous off the streets, but some people are saying, what about the cost to the community? problem, thek the social problem you see in these communities predates mass incarceration. if you talk about mass incarceration and its effect on black families, the trend to the breakdown of african-american families, that goes back to the 1960's and mass incarceration

goes back to the 1980's, so i do not think you can hold irresponsible for something it pretty -- predates. >> how do you weigh the cost for like a minor drug offense. juan: will continue to talk about a president, but this is only one segment. we all know that nonviolent crime, especially drug-related crimes, which started with the nexen war on drugs and bloomed into today. enforcement for medical issues. we use law enforcement cure all these ills. it has not looked -- worked, so i will point can we separate them. may be ak jason setting up a fault dichotomy of either we have crime or

incarceration, incarceration is not the only tool to address the problem, it is the most expensive, it is expected in terms of dollars, it is costly in terms of human lives. there are nearly -- there are so many are tremendous -- alternatives and i do not want to stop the conversation with nonviolent drug offenders, there is a consensus that that is how we will reduce mass incarceration, if we cut the rate in half, we would reduce the prison population by 6%, that when i get us there. we need to rethink the management of all offenders and the evidence is very weak that the long sentences we have seen have a meaningful impact on crime. sentences are the too long, i think that is a debate we are having, the consensus looks like the pendulum has swung too far in

the other direction. new talking about applying guidelines, retroactively, saying that people in prison should be let out because we have determined that they are less likely to return to crime, again, that is a very poor argument. the justice department put out a study that tracked 84,000 people from 15 states over two years, nonviolent offenders who are safe to release, total percent of these nonviolent offenders committed violent crimes within three years, including more than rapes, 600 murders. and this pattern has been replicated at the state level, triedgeles try this -- this, we did a poor job of deciding who would be released. >> we have a healthy debate.

why 6000 reasons people being released recently is because the country woke up onceaid, -- cocaine, so that decision was made, the notion that it was wrong to believe with and enforce retroactively, that is the basis of justice, your deciding that a decision made earlier was wrong. powdered who use cocaine, this is mostly white people. for blacks.caine, the rates aret troubling, but think about what we are doing. we are exposing individuals to psychologically brutal

, we are releasing them into communities with the mark of a criminal record, making it impossible to find work, housing, we destabilize families, they are released into stressed communities. the fact they have higher rate of crime, what do we expect/ ? [applause] [applause] i will change the subject after your response. jason: i want to talk about the beingand powder disparity racially driven. juan: i am not talking about the motives. i do not care about the motives. i'm talking about facts. jason: the majority of the black caucus voted in favor of this charlie wrangle led the fight

because of what crack was doing to the community. it was the drug laws in the 1970's, a new book out called the black violence majority, talking about black community to do this, pushing because of what was happening in their communities. and later, when we see the racial breakdown, i do not think it is fair to go back and say it was racially motivated at the time. it does not mean that was the motivation in the first place. i think it is important to point out. would you argue that current incarceration policy as it stands in america today is working? jason: no, not as well as it could be working and that is why the debate about sentencing

guidelines is a fair one to have, i think we need to be careful about applying things retroactively to people already in jail. focusing one been incarcerating people, what does de incarcerating people look like? just this month, president obama -- forking about banning federal agencies. [applause] many people have been following this idea of you do not ask, or asking in an interview, do you have a track record with the incarceration system. you conducted an experience -- experiment that speaks to why this is an important step forward, you dispatched black

and white students, 350 of them to deliver job applications, what happened? >> these are young men i hired and i had them present themselves as having a criminal record, serving them in prison, and you put on application forms, entry-level jobs all or the city. just checking that box saying i have a felony conviction, a reduced the job offers by 50%. host: were you able to control that those with those records had less education, less to offer? >> they were articulate, they were students, they presented themselves well, which is the best case scenario, suggests checking the box -- so just checking the box, this , is what they

presented to employers. host: i want to ask one more moment inare we at a terms of political tides shifting, no bipartisan consensus on anything these days, there appears to be some consensus that we need a reform in the justice policy. we do not know what it is, but there needs to be change. we will hear from each of you. jason: do i think? all know this is a problem, maybe some possibility of change? jason: absolutely. -- for changes out there and my concern is that we make the right change and take into

account, what we have learned from past efforts. we need to change, that is because the weight of the problem has been here for so long, that the solution -- is not working. that, imagine that, as much as wentend, that it actually to a prison and went to presidential leadership. a lot more has to be done. very quickly. many --nos, there are latinos arrested. the national crime victimization survey does not do it, in -- iss states, the significant. we have a justice problem. right now, we are at the moment and i think it is about time.

across the board, economic issues, it does not make a difference as long as -- host: opening it up to the floor, is there a question? also one of myr, family members will soon be incarcerated as he comes out of parole, and it has affected my whole family. i have a question about the role of women in all this, before we began talking about the issue of mass incarceration, there is a lot of publicity about the fact that one of the fastest growing populations in our prisons is women, black women, latina women , now we are talking about solutions come i would like somebody on the panel to talk mix. women in this

host: who wants to weigh in? do you see this playing out as a women's issue, maybe in a different way, because this debate tends to focus on young urband men of color from communities. jason: women at the front of the a lot of policies. juan: and activity in drug matters. women are at a different end of totem pole,ol -- and not able to negotiate better deals because of marginalization. statesrageousness that still shackle women to a bed when giving birth and then when they come out, how do we restore the family, giving them

assistance. those are unique issues. issues within a system that has not been -- that has been historically developed for men. next question? get your hand up. >> hello, my name and cheryl and i have been a criminal defense lawyer for 33 years, so i was around for the beginning of this and i think i may have stuck around long enough to see the end of it, which delights me. so, i want to say, i agree with everything about the racial origins of it and i do not disagree with what is said about how it is grown, but this is an important issue on the economic prison -- h is the [inaudible] [applause] [applause] i think that future

generations will look back and wonder why we claimed to be civilized. the problem is, there is so much money involved in this corporation, and quite frankly, the correction officers union just keeps lobbying for more prisons and if you build them, you have to fill them up. and then they work with organizations to pass more and it lengthier sentences, then there are more crimes, so this creates more money. we have to make it illegal to have prisons for profit. it is a lot of the driving force. the last thing, then i would like you to comment, which is the two point decrease in crimes and everybody who has got now in

two years, has decreased, so we would've had to do with this, i do not know why it would be different two years from now. [applause] >> it is important to recognize that only about 10% of the prison population is in private prisons, but as the commentator mentioned, there is a disproportionate impact in terms of lobbying, political power, so i think that prison unions in public presence play a strong role. where i want to direct your attention is in increasing use of private facilities for community corrections. as we move toward think about de-carceration, that is where i think there are troubling evidence from public corporations -- private corporations running these programs, in order to provide service and support, they will thereeople out of prison,

is not a prophet motive. -- profit motive. juan: by law, by contract, 43,000 beds must be filled. post: -- point,t is an important it is an industry. jason? jason: nothing to add. host: one more. >> good morning, i work on the inrs organizations -- i work various organizations and i have a concern that we are not looking at the fact that these institutions are failing. if we look at the political a purposeacism serves

in many ways in our system where incentivess at major as a reason to make economic decisions and the more you can isolate a community through cultivating and maintaining it, the easier it is to exploit them and actually hold them hostage to the white working class and we are any situation right now where there is poor employment for all sectors in this country. the major source of employment in many rural white communities is a huge prison complex where ,ou have people of color particularly african-americans, latinos, and they are giving employment basically by their presence to the white workers in that community.

so i think that if we do not look at the overall political economy and purpose that racism serves, that we will fail to realize what we are doing. [applause] jason: one of the first questions you asked refer to a statement about the incarceration problem not being a crime problem. that is why do not think that they are reversible. back in the 1960's and 1950's, the black incarceration rate was lower than today. in a time where it was obviously much more races, black poverty, there is a lower crime rate and lower incarceration. i think the trend we see today could be turned around and we ought to focus on doing that. crime often gets connected to poverty causing

crime, i think the truth is closer to the opposite. host: how so? them, peopleo with have to travel further to buy bread and milk, housing values decline, that is why i think the truth is closer to the opposite. >> i will respond to the question about the racialized dimension of the problem, it is important that we keep in mind, in addition to employment, we have an upcoming election and implications for disenfranchisement and the racial dimension of that is a critical feature of our democracy and this is one thing i want us to think about, even if you were successful in reducing the prison population down to levels of the 1970's, if we continue to issue convictions at the rate we are, even if we

are supervising people in communities, on probation, that criminal record will continue to be a massive source of disenfranchisement and we need to think about using something other than the criminal justice system to manage this. host: thank you. we will leave it there. [applause] [applause] ♪> mr. bennet: hello, again. i think they are going to cut the music often a second here. there we go. the music was good. it is an honor to have us this morning mayor mitch landrieu of new orleans, in his second term. actually a lawyer by training, and previously lieutenant

governor of the state of louisiana and before that a member of the state house for 16 years. i think what is particularly great about having you here today, you are attacking the entire problem that we are talking about. you are trying to cut the jail population in new orleans, you are cracking down, trying to root out violent crime at the same time, and i would like to talk about the actual formula, beginning with the incarceration rate, which is the fancy word for this process. before katrina hit, new orleans was incarcerating people five times the national average. it is still really high, but you brought it down by two thirds. how has that happened? mayor landrieu: it will fit right in the sweet spot. before i came here, i was lieutenant governor, and i