the conversation and talk about what happens when people leave prison. we have two wonderful people to help us with this conversation. we have heard lots of different stories, but now we are going to look at what happens when people actually leave. i have all the way to my right in red, nneka jones tapia. she remembers visiting her own father in jail. he was incarcerated and that was an active part of your life, thinking about what would happen behind bars, talking to him through plexiglass and now you are the warden at a prison with a very different approach to dealing with prisoners and dealing with the outside community, so we will deal a debt. susan burton is the founder and executive director of a new way of life project.

after her sixth prison sentence in los angeles, she was fortunate in that she was given access to treatment services in santa monica. it made her realize if i have access to this service in santa monica, why can't we have it in south l.a. and south-central l.a.? now she runs a new way of life. she helped her first clients in an apartment she was able to get after she left the treatment center. we are going to hear about her story as well. thank you so much for being with us, both of you. your father was incarcerated and many people after that experience would probably run as far in the other direction as they could and now here you are as the warden of a very large prison in illinois. why did you decide to follow that path and how was your early experience as a child and how did it inform the way you run a

prison now? nneka: i'm a firm believer in god ordering my steps for me. i did not set out to become the executive director of cook county jail, nor did i set out for a career in prison but i do believe those early experience helped shape and mold a desire in me. i can say i never learned i was an at-risk youth until i sat in my first college course in psychology and hearing the definition of that, my reality was normal for me. my mother helped shape and mold our family unit. even know my father was in prison, we had sunday dinner at the prison. prison was much different. this was in the '80s and i remember her cooking our sunday dinner and we would take it in a picnic basket to the prison. by not running from that truth, i was able to grow into the woman i am now.

i obtained my doctorate in psychology and decided i wanted to help other people that might not have had that supportive network to help them to rebuild life and see life on the part of themselves. michele: how have you tried to change the system so it and make coming to cook county would have a different experience? many in the corrections system would think their job ended once the prisoner left the gates with that brown paper bag. you say the prison system needs to stop thinking that way. susan: yes. for a long time, the prison system stopped correcting behavior and we were guilty of letting go once the person left outdoors. -- left our doors. what i have come to realize and our sheriff has come to realize

is that in order for us to get to the root of the issue, we know we have to come from a place much different than that. we have to keep our arms wrapped around those individuals, so we offer therapeutic treatment and give them job readiness skills and education. alumniow them and have groups where they come in -- michele: prison alumni groups? that's a word that is usually connected with higher education. you chose that word carefully. nneka: yes. because, again, it's how you see the problem. i learned very early on that what isn't healed, it is handed down. you know they have a resource in us even post release, so we have alumni groups for people post-release from our jail coming in and talking to younger men about some of their experiences and talking with each other about some of the obstacles and we have staff members that help them navigate those obstacles while they are in the community.

michele: what are the greatest obstacles when you leave a penal institution? help us understand the challenges and the obstacles you face. susan: leaving a place of incarceration and coming back into the community, you are faced with the challenges of getting a job or having an id, having normal papers, things we take for granted so often. you are incarcerated and for the all the period you are incarcerated, whether it's one year, two years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, you are not able to make such a simple decision of what am i going to be able to eat tonight. when you leave an institution, all of those choices and living responsibilities are given back to you. so it can be very overwhelming

and daunting, and that's why i started a new way of life. michele: when you say all of those responsibilities are given back to you, it seems like that would be a gift. you get to choose what you eat and where you live, but you say that's something hard to take on after living in a place where everything is dictated to you. susan: it is. when you are incarcerated, you can ask something as simple as can i go to the bathroom? once you are released back into the community and there's no support, you are trying to figure out how you are going to make a good life for yourself because everyone i know that leaves prison leaves with the hope and intention of starting a new and better life. it can be overwhelming when there are no resources or

support to help you navigate that as you step back into a place where you are making these new choices and decisions for yourself. michele: and this began literally in your home at the kitchen table? susan: yes. after serving multiple prison sentences, i was given treatment in a wealthy area, santa monica. michele: do you mind if i ask you -- we had a chance to talk in the back. you say multiple sentences -- you were in a spiral at that point. susan: in 1981, my five-year-old son was accidentally killed by an lapd detective. my life spiraled. i drank, our communities were saturated with crack. i smoked drugs and i went to prison. and i went to prison over and

over again. when i asked the judge for treatment and explained to him my son had gotten killed, i was hurting, i needed help, he still sent me to prison. upon my last release in 1996, someone told me about place in said monica. -- santa monica. i made it to that place in santa monica and there i found a community that was treated much different from the community i came from in south l.a. people with the same amount of drugs or more were diverted to diversion programs and given court cards and community service. they were not sent to prison for multiple years and it dawned on me, like, what's wrong with this picture? when i left that treatment facility, i committed to helping other women in south l.a. find a safe place and begin the process

of healing and directing them back into the community. in my own home, i saved, work, i save money and bought a little bungalow and started a new way of life. [applause] michele: who was your first client and how did you decide you can do this? that is a daunting task. susan: after so much had happened, you kind of get angry. and that anger fuels the inspiration and determination. i would leave the house and go downtown, skid row, where women stepped off the bus and i knew them, they were my community, they stepped off the bus leaving prison. everyone comes downtown to the greyhound bus station.

it's a stones throw from skid row. i would greet them and say hey, girl, i have a house. you can come there and live and it is a safe environment and we have created a community of formerly incarcerated women supporting and helping each other. all of us were successful. out of that group of 10, we were all huddled up in there together, supporting, nurturing, and helping one another to overcome incarceration and break the cycle of addiction and incarceration. i want to say what i feel like is the trap of incarceration. when you are just sprung back into the community without any support, there's not much left for you to do but cycle back. michele: i imagine you don't want to see repeat customers.

when people leave cook county jail, what do they need that they are perhaps not getting enough of now to make sure you don't see them again? nneka: support. everyone has a different need but we know housing, education, many things we have heard about today, if you can't live independently and support yourself, you are destined to return back to that life. michele: but it's hard to get a job if you have to fill out a form and say you've been in jail or explained to a landlord that you have spent time kind bars. -- you have spent time behind bars. you can't get the education if you can't get a paycheck. nneka: with the program we started at cook county jail, it's called the mental health transition center. we started in august of 2014 and we had a job fair where we reached out to different agencies and said would you be willing to come in the jail and recruit new employees?

to see our gentlemen prepared, we gave them resume writing skills, interviewing skills and upon discharge, many of them are offered jobs when they leave. and so i kept in touch with them through the alumni groups and many of them are successful. to date, we have not had anyone returned to our custody. [applause] michele: is this emulated in other places? nneka: i don't think it is. but in speaking to some of the gentlemen currently in the program, they challenge me to move this toward our juveniles. i've heard many people speak in other venues about the need to prevent this cycle and if we are talking about true prevention, we need to look at our children. michele: we are at an interesting moment where prison

reform is being discussed at high levels and there are bipartisan discussions around us. there was an interesting moment this summer where president barack obama visited a prison and you can see pictures you haven't seen before in the white house, with a president sitting down with men wearing prison uniforms and the president walking through a high-security prison. no other president has done that. how is that viewed in the prison community and what do you make of this moment? what is at stake? nneka: it's about time. it's about time someone sees our reality and the reality is much different from what i heard the general and before us speak -- what i heard some of the gentlemen before us speak about. we are incarcerating individuals who should not be in jail and

prisons. we are incarcerating fathers who need to be the heads of household and incarcerating women who need to live successful lives and be mothers to their children. and so when i see our president go into such a venue, i applaud him. i applaud him for taking that step forward and recognizing we have been doing unjust things for so long and it's time to right our wrongs. [applause] susan: i was happy to see president obama visit a jail. first president ever to do so. he has talked about banning the box. in 2003, a group of former prisoners met in oakland at the center for third world development and we

coined the phrase "ban the box." we began to organize under the banner of all of us or none. the president has talked about banning the box. michele: you are talking about the box on applications? susan: applications on jobs, applications across the board. my thought is that, yes, we want president obama to ban the box, an executive order to ban the box on applications for federal jobs and contractor jobs. my thought is this is just the beginning. we have had 40 years of tough on crime, tough on our communities, tough on women, tough on men laws that have driven our criminal justice system to where we are with mass incarceration. i applaud him for that but i also believe it's just the beginning. need more years of

restoration to our communities. years of rebuilding our communities from the war on drugs and tough on crime laws. michele: i want to make sure we get at least a few questions from the audience. it is hard for me to see because the lights are so bright, but if anyone has any questions, we can get a microphone to you in short order. >> i have a question about the criminal justice system. a lot of times, the private sector is used to increase mass incarceration and keep people down. do you have any opinions on how the private sector can be used to get people jobs and decelerate mass incarceration? michele: could you repeat the last part of the question because it was hard for us to hear.

just the private sector and business, what role it can play in decreasing mass incarceration? there's an economic incentive to put people in jail but what about getting people out of prison? michele: economic incentives to keep able out of prison. nneka: i would say we could put a focus in the community and i go back to the children. what we see in chicago is a trauma-filled course of life for many of our children. when you can't walk to the park and walk to school without being in fear of being killed or being harmed, you know we need to intervene. for the private sector, i would encourage them and thrust upon them the need to reach out to our schools and communities and engage with them to figure out how we can reach our hand into that family system as early as possible.

susan: i would say there needs to be a deep investment, entrepreneurial skills within our communities to stimulate the economy and build real ownership among business. you can talk about getting a job, making a job, having a business. i believe our communities are going to be revitalized by business ownership among our community members that are formerly incarcerated and our community as our whole. i think that will stimulate the kind of economy and growth and allow our communities to thrive once again. michele: thank you for your question. and thank you both very much. [applause] >> of next a discussion of race

relations. ♪ >> good afternoon. i hope everybody had a great lunch. i know we did. , as you know. we are going to talk about something we spend a lot of time thinking about and talking about in private. we talk to each other through e-mail and phone. michelle: we're both parents, we both have teenage kids and we are both african american adults who were once children ourselves. so, we are now giving our children this thing called "the talk." preparing them for going out

into the world. we are thinking about all the things we were told. we come at this from different perspectives. is that fair to say? you have a son and a daughter. do you find yourself in a series of conversations, not just one? are there differences in terms of how you talk. what your daughter needs to worry about, does your son need to worry about the same? michelle: i also have a son who is 30-years-old. the talks have changed. it is different than what i had to tell broderick, junior, when he was this age. some things are the same and some are different. it is all born out of fear. when my children leave the house, you know, this worry

that, will they comport themselves in the right way if they encounter someone in a position of authority who questions them based on who they are. the reality that if my kids go bc -- dc, theyin have a rainbow of friends, but when they go to a store, there -- they are the ones likely to be followed. if they are pulled over, that is worrisome. when they do go out, if they are behind the wheel of a car, the advice you give them. i used to think the advice was different for my son then my daughter, but it is really the same. they both have to carry with them something that on originally many of their friends do not have to carry.