month we showcase our student cam wehner. -- winner. for middle and high school students. this years theme is road to the white house and students were asked, what issues do you want presidential candidates to address? prize highsecond school winners is from seattle, washington. leo pfeiffer, a sophomore at allard high school, once presidential candidates to discuss the criminal justice system and mass incarceration. his video title -- and incarcerated nation. : the unitedama states is home to 5% of the world's population but 25% of the world prisoners. we keep more people behind bars in the top 35 european countries combined. spend $80 billion

to keep folks incarcerated. >> this age of mass incarceration is violating our core principles in so many areas. we proclaim to be the land of onedom and liberty to have of four people imprisoned goes against our core ideals, and now is the time we need a revolution when i comes to issues of crime and punishment. nowe are at a place right where we are several decades into focusing on punishment and being more punitive. >> it is a billion dollar people -- their odds of returning their investment, and i'm going to put money into it, how my going to get more money out of it. washington, 20% of more of

the people have been diagnosed as seriously mentally ill. according to the department of corrections have drugs or addiction in their life. >> i think primarily based on race and socioeconomic status. discuss this conversation. obama: one in every 35 african-american men, one in 88 latino men is serving time right now. among white men, that number is one in 214. into many places black boys and andk men, latino boys latino men experience being treated differently under the law. >> who in their life has never broken the law? we do not ask on applications, have you ever broken a law? we ask, have you barry -- ever

been convicted of a crime? which is very interesting and very different. president obama: people of color are more likely to be frisked, charged, detained. prisoners -- it does not manufacture millionaires. it does not manufacture business owners. it does not manufacture the next president. >> and washington, the readmission rate is over if 2%. 50%.than half -- over more than half are returning with new felony convictions. >> finding housing and finding employment. >> most people have no family support. become poverty, and they almost have no alternative. really, truly have no

alternative than to go do what they need to do from their past life to support themselves, to keep them from being hungry. >> from racism, economic inequality, lack of opportunities in poor neighborhoods, prisons becoming the homes of the severely mentally ill, our criminal justice in prison systems are in crisis. with so many contriving factors, solutions must address them all. what can you do? program,ison education we meet the immediate needs. we have people come out of prison, we pick them up, and within five days they are on a college campus, within three months they have a 4.0. them on a college campus, the insanity stops. but the state will not pay for that. we turned down 85% of applicants and most are deserving

applicants. we are not helping them to the extent we should, or at all, because of lack of funding. >> what is most challenging is trying to shape and transform -- it opinion of current is easy to hate and stigmatize prisoners, it is socially acceptable to do so, and that is what makes this challenging. it is overcoming the perception out there. >> criminal justice reform can be an unpopular topic. there is more and more attention on criminal justice reform and seeing it as a civil rights issue and public interest issue. more and more people continue to talk about the importance and need of criminal justice reform. i think that is going a long way toward expanding the political will.

obama: people of all political persuasions are starting to think, we need to do something about this. movement is beginning to address this long overdue problem, but for any progress it is up to us. we must tell lawmakers this is important to us. imagine the progress we can make if americans demand that this is one of the most important issues during this 2016 presidential campaign. we can never forget the human toll it takes. , when youlity was have to lay down on that pillow by yourself, you begin to think about your life and the things you could be doing. and that is the real hard experience of being incarcerated, the trajectory of my life could have been a lot different. it could have went in a different direction. car -- of talking about

mass incarceration and speaking from a first-hand participant point, i could be speaking to you as a senator instead of how i did 20 years as a prisoner because of an institution that does not care about people. there goes my life. this is not fake. this is real. somebody is not doing their job at the system level, and it hurts. have had to dot if somebody did their job. prize winningthe documentaries. cam.org.udent q&a, ronunday night on chernow talks about the hit broadway musical hamilton that

is based on his biography of alexander hamilton, and the consulting work he did on the musical. >> he said, i was reading your book and as i was reading it, hip-hop songs started rising off the page. i said, really? he said, hamilton's life was a hip-hop narrative and i thought, what is this guy talking about? i quickly picked up on the fact that he had a world-class ignoramus on hip-hop. can hip-hop be the vehicle for telling this kind of very large and complex story? ron, i'm going to educate you about hip-hop, and he did on the stock. poptarted pointing out that you can pack more information into the lyrics than any other form because it is very dense. a rhymedot only has endings, it has internal rhymes.

he started educating me in all these different devices that are very important to the success of the show. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern and pacific on c-span q&a. >> washington journal is next. we will look at today's news and take your calls. the house is back at 10:00. then we will join a house hearing on fetal tissue research. later on c-span. hour, north this carolina congressman robert pittenger talks about congressional efforts to combat terrorism. he chairs a terrorism task force. then a conversation with california congressman brad sherman about president obama's trip to saudi arabia. he serves on the house foreign affairs committee. the national park service marks

,ts gentle nail -- centennial and the head of the national park service joins us. you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. >> i can think of nowhere i would rather have this victory. mrs. clinton: in this campaign we have one in every region of the country. [cheering] from the north to the south to the east to the west, but this one's personal. ♪ host: good morning. welcome to "washington journal" wednesday, april 20. we begin with donald trump and hillary clinton, victories in new york yesterday. 60% of new york republicans voted for donald trump. while hillary clinton beat bernie sanders by 15 points. what does this mean for both parties? with