service in santa monica why can't we have access to these kinds of services in south l.a. and south central l.a. and now she runs a new way of life. she helped her first clients in an apartment that she was able to get after she left the treatment center in santa monica and we'll hear a little bit about her story as well. thank you so much for being with us, both of you. >> thank you. >> i want to begin with you if we could. your father was incarcerated so you grew up thinking about prison. many people after that experience would probably run as far the other direction as they could. now here you are as a warden of a prison and a very large prison in illinois. why did you decide to follow that path? how does your early experience as a child who visited a father in prison inform the way that you ran the prison now? >> to answer your first question i am a firm believer in god ordering my steps for me. i did not set out to become the executive director of cook county jail in chicago nor did i set out for a career in

corrections. but i did believe that those early experiences helped shape and mold that desire in me. and i can say that i never learned that i was an at risk youth until i sat in my first college course in psychology and hearing the definition of at, i thought, i -- my reality was normal for me. and my mother thankfully helped shape and mold our family unit so even though my father was in prison we had sunday dinners a the prison. prison was much different then. this was in the 1980's. and every saturday i remember her cooking our sunday dinner and we would take it in a picnic basket to the prison. that was my truth. and by not running from that truth, i was able to grow into the woman that i am now. i obtained my doctorate in psychology and decided that i wanted to help other people that may not have had that supportive network, to help

them to rebuild life and see life beyond that part of themselves. >> how have you tried to change the system so that an inmate coming to cook county now has a very different experience? you said there is a quote that you have that you said recently that many in the correction system would think their job ended once the prisoner left the gates. >> right. >> with that brown paper bag with all their belongings heading back into the community. you said that the prison system needs to stop thinking that way. >> yes. for a long time prison sis testimonies stopped correcting behavior and we were guilty of letting go once the person left our doors. what i realized and what our sheriff has come to realize is that in order for us to really get at the root of the issue, we know that we have to come from a place much different than that. we know that we have to keep our arms wrapped around those individuals even beyond the point of leaving our jail.

so we offered therapeutic treatment. we'd give them job readiness skills, education, and we followed them and have alumni groups where they come in and they teach young, other men -- >> prison alumni. >> it is interesting. alumni is a word that is usually attached to higher education. >> yes. >> you chose that word very carefully. >> yes. because again, it is how you see your problem. i've learned very early on that what isn't healed is handed down. so we wanted to really heal the individual. and know that they have a resource in us even post relief. and so we have alumni groups for people post relief 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. we have staff members that help them navigate those obstacles again while they're in the community. >> so what are the greatest obstacles when you leave a pennel institution? help us understand the challenges and the obstacles

that you face. >> so leaving a place of incarceration coming back into the community, i mean, you're faced with challenges of housing, you're faced with the challenges of getting a job, having an i.d., having, you know, normal papers that we take for granted so often. you know, you're incarcerated and for all the period while you're incarcerated, whether it's one year, two years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, you're not able to make such a simple decision as what i'm going to eat tonight. so when you could leave an institution all of those choices and living responsibilities are just given back to you. it can be very overwhelming. and daunting. >> help me understand this. when you say all of those responsibilities are given back to you -- >> and choices.

>> -- that seems like it would be a gift. you get to choose when you get to eat and where you live but you're saying that is something hard to take on after you've been living in a place where everything is dictated to you. >> yes, yes it is. and, you know, when you're incarcerated you can ask something as simple as like can i go to the bathroom? you know, but once you are released back into the community and there is no support, then you're kind of wondering trying to figure out how you're going to make it. how you're going to make a good life for yourself. a changed life for yourself. because everyone that i know, have ever known that leaves prison, leaves prison with the hope and the intention of starting a new and better life. but, you know, it can be overwhelming when there's no resources or support to to ally help you to begin

navigate that and support you while you step back into a place where you're making these new choices and decisions for yourself. >> you're trying to do that now for other people as they leave, other women. this began literally in your home at the kitchen table. >> yes. so after serving multiple prison sentences i was given treatment. i was given treatment in a wealthy area, santa monica, and -- >> do you mind if i ask you, you know, we had a chance to talk in the back. you said multiple sentences. you were in a spiral at that point? > in 1981, my 5-year-old son named k.k. was accidently killed by a detective, lapd detective. my life spiraled. i drank. then our community was saturated with crack. i took -- i smoked drugs. i went to prison. and i went to prison over and over and over again. when i asked the judge for treatment, and explained to him that my son had gotten killed,

you know, i was hurting, i needed help, he still sent me to prison. so upon my last release in 1996, someone told me about a place in 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 came from in south l.a. people were with the same amount of drugs or more were diverted to a diversion program. they were given court cards, they were given community service. they were not sent to prison for multiple years. it dawned on me, what's wrong with this picture? when i left that treatment facility, i left committed to helping other women in south l.a. find a safe place and to begin the process of healing and directing them back into the community. in my own home i saved, i worked, and i saved money and

brought a -- bought a little bunga lowe and there started a new way of life. [applause] >> who was your first client and how did you decide you could do this? that is a daunting task. >> well, after so much had happened, you know, you've got to get angry. and that anger fueled the inspiration and the determination and so i would leave the house and go downtown, skid row, los angeles, where women stepped off a bus. and i knew then they were my community. >> stepped off a bus? >> stepped off a bus leaving prison. everyone comes downtown to the greyhound bus station that's a stone's throw from skid row. and as they got off the bus i would greet them and i'd say, hey, girl, you know, i have a house. you can come there and you can live and it's a safe

environment and we created a community of formerly incarcerated women supporting and helping each other. i want to say that all of us were successful. out of that group of 10, you know, we were all huddled up in there together and we were all supporting and nurturing and helping one another to overcome incarceration, to break the cycle of addiction and incarceration. i want to say what i feel like is the trap of incarceration because when you're just sprung back into the community without any support, there's not much left for you to do but to cycle back. >> i imagine that you don't people ee -- when leave cook county jail what do they need that perhaps they're not getting enough of now to make sure that you don't see

them again? >> support. you know, everyone will have a different need, but at the very core we know housing, education, many of the things we've heard about today, and jobs. if you can't live independently and support yourself, then you're destined to return back to that lifestyle. >> but it's hard to get a job if you have to fill out a form and say you've been in jail. it's hard to get house first-degree you have to explain to a land -- housing if you have to explain to a landlord or someone you actually spent time behind bars. it is hard to get an education because it costs money. >> with the program we started at the cook county jail, called the mental health transition center, we started it in august of 2014 and we had a job fair where we reached out to different agencies in the community and said would you be willing to come into the jail and recruit new employees and to see our gentlemen prepared we gave them resume writing skills, interviewing skills. they had handwritten resumes

they gave. and upon discharge from the jail, many of them are offered jobs when they leave. and so i've kept in touch with them through their alumni groups and many of them are successful. to date we have not had anyone return to our custody. [applause] >> is this being emulated in other places? >> i don't think that it is but in speaking to some of the gentlemen currently incarcerated that are in the program, they've challenged me now to move this toward our juveniles. you know, i heard many people speak today in other venues about the need to really prevent this cycle and if we're really talking about true prevention we need to look at our children. >> we're at an interesting moment where prison reform is being discussed and debated at very high levels. there is bipartisan support, bipartisan discussions around this. there was an interesting moment this summer where president

barack obama visited a prison, and if you enter the white house you see pictures you haven't seen before in the white house with the president sitting down with men who are wearing prison uniforms. the president walking through a high security prison because no other president has done that. how is that viewed in the prison community when he decided to do that and what do you make of this moment right now? how important, what is at stake now that this is being discussed and we might actually see legislation? >> it's about time. it's about time that someone sees our reality and the reality is much different than what i heard some of the gentlemen before us speaking about in that we are incarcerating individuals that should not be in jails and prisons. we are incarcerating fathers that need to be the heads of their households so their children don't continue in that cycle. we are incarcerating women who need to live successful lives, to be mothers to their children.

and the mothers of -- they were intended to be. when i see our president to go into such a venue, i applaud him. i applaud him for taking that step forward and recognizing that we've been doing unjust things for so long. that it's time for us to right our wrongs. [applause] >> i was happy to see president obama visit a jail, a prison, the first president ever to do so. -- in had talked about 2003 a group of former prisoners met in oakland in the hills of 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 and the president has talked about banning the box. and i'm like okay.

>> you're talking about the box you have to check on the applications? >> applications for jobs, you know, for housing, applications just about across the board. my thought is that, yes, we want president obama to ban the ox on executive order on applications, for the federal jobs. and also contractor jobs. my thought is that this is just a 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 into where we are with mass incarceration, so, you know, i applaud him for that but i also believe that this is just the beginning. we need more. we need 40 years of restoration to our communities. 40 years of rebuilding our communities from the effects of the war on drugs and tough on

crime laws. >> we don't have a lot of time but i want to make sure we have a chance to get at least a few questions from the audience. i don't, it's hard for me to see because the lights are so bright. if anyone has a question for either susan or nneka we can get a microphone to you in short order i think right over here. >> my name is aaron coolman. i have a question about the criminal justice system. a lot of times we reference how it's used to increase incarceration but do you all have any opinions on how the private sector can be used to help give people jobs and accelerate demass incarceration? >> i didn't hear the question. >> again, could you repeat the last part of the question? it was hard for us to hear. >> just how the private sector and business, what role it can play in decreasing mass incarceration. we're always talking about how this is an economic incentive to put people in jail but do you know of any or have any

ideas what kind of incentives would get people out of jail. >> well, i would say that, you know, we can put a focus back in the community and again, i'll go back to the children. what we've seen, particularly in chicago, where i'm living now, is a trauma-filled course life for many oufer -- many of our children. when you can't walk to the park or to school without fear of being killed or being armed we know we need to intervene. for our private sectors i would encourage them and thrust upon them the need to reach out to our schools and our families and our communities to really engage them, to figure out how we can reach our hand into that family system as early as possible. >> i would say there needs to be an investment, a deep investment to build entrepreneurial skills within our communities to stimulate the economy and build real ownership amongst our business.

so, you know, you can talk about getting a job or making a job or you can talk about having a business and i believe if our communities are going to be revitalized there has to be business ownership amongst our mmunity members that are former incarcerated in our community as a whole and i believe that will stimulate the type of economy and growth and allow our community to thrive once again. >> thank you for your question. susan burton, nneka, thank you very, very, very much. [applause] >> up next, a discussion on race relations with reporters from national public radio and the atlantic magazine. ♪ >> good afternoon. hope everyone had a great

lunch. yes? >> good afternoon. >> we did. >> yes, i shoveled in some salad. that's enough fuel. > i'm joining tom, michele norris, with npr and founder of the race card project. we're going to talk a little bit about something we spent a lot of time talking about in private. the e-mail, we talk to each other on the phone. we are 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. you know, preparing them for what they need to know when they go out into the world and kind of -- we're thinking about all the things we were told. and we have -- we come at this from a different perspective. is that fair to say?

>> i think, yes. you know, the thing i was thinking about when i -- i believe our sons are the same age. >> they are both 15. >> you have a son and a daughter. that was the first thing i was wondering about. do you find yourself in conversations, i imagine a series of conversations not just one. are there differences in terms of how you talk to -- are there things your daughter needs to worry about and your son or the same sort of general thrust? >> there are differences. i have a step son also who is 30. >> hum. >> and so the talk has changed. i'm amazed at how much, what i have to tell my son now is different than what i had to tell broderick jr. when he was around this age. >> okay. >> some of the things are the same and some of the things are different. but it's 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 on the reality that if my kids to go school here in d.c., they have a rainbow of friends, but when they go to a store they're the ones more likely to be followed in the store. >> yes, yes. >> when they go out, if someone is pulled over, they're driving age which is frankly terrifying on its own. just the driving. >> right. right. >> its own sort of anxiety right there. but when they do go out, when they're behind the wheel of the car, the advice that you give them. i used to think that the advice was different for my son than for my daughter but i realized it really is the same. they both have to have that armor. they both have to learn how to deal with teflon. they both have to carry with them something that, unfortunately, many of their friends don't have to carry. and i used to think when they were younger, well i'll have to

talk to my sons differently than my daughter. >> right. >> i don't think that's the case. >> wow. i think it's interesting. i think you started off talking about the generational aspect of this, things that our parents said to us and things you have to say to your kids and that is sort of compounding. and i, as you said, i mean, it all boils down to fear. i was in a session yesterday at another place, not important because i'm here talking to you right now. one of the things i kept coming back to is the way which, particularly young african-americans, you know, because i think it gets a little easier as you age up but the ways in which you have to modulate yourself. there is a way of modulating yourself when you're talking to police officers and, you know, we have talks about that, about how to conduct yourself. in fact, when i was in school there was a way of modulating yourself and how you had to conduct yourself in school. one of the most disruptive