this is an msnbc special presentation. >> i had so many thoughts leading up to this assignment as to what it was going to be like. going up on this road knowing it is a one-way trip. you have this moment where you

get a last glimpse of the world around you, but that glimpse is through steel mesh. louisiana's highway 66. its beautiful countryside is not lost on the countless men driven to the place where they will most likely die. that road ends here. the louisiana state penitentiary, former plantation the size of manhattan. 28 square miles. most people call it angola, named after the african country owned by the slaves. now it is confining about 5,500 men. today i'm heading into ground zero of mass incarceration. >> there's certainly a heightened awareness as i

walk-through here with no guards. >> for the next couple of days, i will be staying here, exploring key issues of the prison reform delate. juveniles sentenced to life without parole. >> we got children incarcerate sgld the lasting effect of the war on drugs. >> sentence was 150 years. >> power of rehabilitation. >> you know that you have done something. your life is worthwhile. >> and the demand by many for punishment. >> personally i think he's where he needs to be. >> i will also be staying in a cell. not to play prisoner, but to better understand the purpose and experience of prison all from the insides. >> life at angola prison isn't what you might advantage. the vast majority live just like

this. more than 80 men in open dorms sleeping on bunk beds. but i'll be staying on a unit next to death row for high risk offenders or in my case, a high profile guest. >> we're going to go down the tier here. >> my home will be on a tier called ccr or closed cell restriction. the men here are locked in their cells 23 hours a day. i'm given sheets, slippers and some toiletries and shown to my cell. >> cell 11, go ahead in, please. go ahead, close. naturally phones aren't allowed. all i have is my journal, a pen, a novel, my watch and an am/fm radio. i also have cameras all around me installed by our crew to record my experience and thoughts. >> as journalists we know that

to get to part of something you have to get inside it. the closer you are to something, the more -- the more is revealed to you. >> i soon meet my neighbor, william curtis who is serving a life sentence for second-degree murder. he tells me he's locked in ccr because he's tried to escape multiple times. >> how far did you get? >> not very. >> he's only allowed out of his cell one hour a day. >> do you go out? >> not very often. the last time i was out there was probably about four years ago. >> you haven't seen the sun in four years? >> four years. it's hard to imagine. i just want to get through the night. >> all right, man. you take care of yourself. we'll be here a couple of nights. >> i quickly learn that falling asleep in prison is challenging. the toilets flush loudly and often. cell to cell shatter that lasts

well into the night. and my bed is attached to the wall to curtis'. so when he moves around, i feel it. bed's not much for comfort. it is kind of a plastic mattress. but it did the trick. i slept okay. >> breakfast arrives at 5:30 a.m., delivered by a prisoner. >> in case you are wondering, it is scrambled eggs, grits and biscuits to the sound of a flushing toilet. >> no country on earth locks up more of its citizens than the united states. while we make out less than 5% of the world's population, we lockup more than 20% of the world's prisoners. politicians, academics and activists say mass incarceration

is an american crisis. >> we have gone from $6 billion in spending in 1980 on jails and prisons to $80 billion today. >> brian steven son is one of the nation's leading prison reform advocates. >> i think we have hundreds of thousands of people in prison who are not a threat to public safety. >> is it about safety, or is it about punishment? >> i think we have created a culture that makes it entirely about punishment. >> and you might be surprised who else thinks mass incarceration is a problem, the people who run louisiana's prison system. >> and i think nation-wide, you know, we lockup people too long and too many of them. >> seth smith is the director of operations for louisiana's department of corrections. >> it's not working. it's not giving us the results that we want. it's costing a lot of money. we send people to prison that aren't necessary a danger to society and we keep people that their time for danger is over.

they're no longer a threat. >> it is time to rethink prison from simply punishment to rehabilitation. >> you say it is about rehabilitation but a lot of americans think it should be punishment. >> we could make somebody worse. >> but as i'm about to hear, plenty of the incarcerated do believe it's just about punishment. >> another day in the field. -not this. ♪ -oh, what am i into? mostly progressive's name your price tool. helps people find coverage options based on their budget. flo has it, i want it, it's a whole thing, and she's right there. -yeah, she's my ride. this date's lame. he has pics of you on his phone. -they're very tasteful.

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much of angola prison is farmland. thousands of cattle are raised here and sold on the open market and a variety of crops are grown here as well. all of it happening with inmate labor. that's one of the many hot button issues in the mass incarceration debate. >> another day in the field. >> i'm on my way out to the fields riding in this truck. many of the men are convicted killers, including the ones sitting on either side of me. 28-year-old javonte sanders beat a woman to death and stole her car. >> what is your sentence. >> life. >> terry mays shot a man in the neck during a drug deal. >> you have been here how many years? >> 30. >> 30 years. >> here, like prisons everywhere

in america, most inmates get paid pennies per hour. >> how much do you get paid? >> two cents an hour. one time we made four cents an hour. and for some reason or another, the budget got cut. it's injustice. >> so this particular job is not one of the more desired ones. >> no. this is bottom of the barrel. the field? nobody wants to be in the field. >> angola is not like any other maximum security prison i have ever been to. all of this as far as the eye can see is angola, a series of prisons, they call them camps. you guys from camp d. >> yes, sir. >> and doing work like this. today we happen to be picking carrots. >> so should i be worried about my safety here?

>> if you was an inmate, yeah. >> yeah? >> if you was an inmate, most definitely. >> a majority of the inmates here are people of color. in fact, black men in america are six times as likely to be incarcerated as white men. i certainly can't escape the optics. look around. mostly black men working on a former slave penetration under the watch of armed guards on horse back. it is unsettling to many. >> i know this is a sensitive subject and it troubled me a little bit. most of them look like me, african-american. the history of this land as a slave plantation. do you see that as an issue? >> you know, i can see where someone would have an issue with it. these guys were sentenced to hard labor. at least when they're working with field, growing vegetables, it is something given back to

the prison itself. >> smith tells me the crops not only provide the inmate population fresh food, but he says it also saves taxpayers money. it costs $1.70 a day to feed each offender. this will be the life for many of these men were decades to come. and some have left young children behind who are among the five million kids in america who have had a parent in prison. javonte has two of them. >> you know the way it works sometimes is you're in prison because your daddy was in prison and your kid will be in prison. are you afraid for your prison? >> yeah, i definitely am. i mean, when i grew up, i didn't know my father. my father got murdered when i was three years old. i never knew him. >> it's hard to imagine knowing that you will be spending the rest of your life here, especially if you're convicted as a teenager. advocates like brian stevenson

say juvenile offenders should never be treated the same as an adult. >> we put thousands of kids in adult jails and prisons. we started prosecuting these kids. even today we have states with no minimum age. i don't think we should ever put children in adult jails in prison. >> what about ones that committed violent crimes like murder? >> we got children incarcerated. >> i'm sitting in on a support group. all these men committed their crimes before they were adults and were given sentences of life without the possibly of parole. they're called juvenile lifers. >> i was 16 years old when i committed my crime. >> 17 years old. >> committed my crime at the age of 16. >> there were about 2,000 juvenile lifers like them in u.s. prisons today. >> i was a lot different at 16 than i am at 60 now. but still at 17, you still knew right from wrong, so how do you

reconcile that. >> you have to be accountable. there is no excuses for what i did and there is no excuses for anything that any of us have done. >> if you want to change, it starts within yourself. >> they tell me they're no longer the boys they once were and say they are no longer a threat to society. but how do i know they're not conning me? >> we do get the opportunity to show that we are different, the people will be able to see. >> and in the past few years, they have all gotten new hope to make their case for a second chance. >> what gives you that hope? >> right there. >> this man. that's our mount rushmore right there for governor. >> montgomery versus louisiana is a landmark supreme court ruling named after the oldest and longest serving member of this group, 72-year-old henry montgomery. >> you were 17 years old when you were sentenced. do you remember what it was like being 17? >> yeah. young, wild, stupid. >> montgomery was indicted for

murder in november 1963, the same month jfk was assassinated. he's been at angola for 55 years. >> man, i'm behind 55 years, and technology i'm 150 years behind the times. >> in 2012 the united states supreme court ruled that mandatory life without parole sentenced for juveniles are unconstitutional pointing to science that it's clear that adolescent brains are not yet fully mature. that ruling didn't apply to montgomery who had already been sent away as a juvenile. that's why he took his case to the supreme court and in 2016 he won. now all juvenile lifers, no matter how long ago they were locked up can make a case that they deserve parol. >> mostly older guys here. >> this 78-year-old is one of

them. i went to see him in the dorm where he lives. >> this is my bed right here. >> this is your home? >> yeah. this is mine out here. >> he's been locked up 61 years. >> since you have been here, we have landed a man on the moon. >> yeah. >> think about that. >> yeah. there's been a lot of changes. >> hampton says six decades in prison have changed him and thanks to the man sitting next to him, hampton will now have a chance at freedom. >> why do you think you deserve parol? >> i wouldn't say that i deserve par parol. i wouldn't use that word deserve because i took someone's life. i would say that i have earned parole. >> in fact, both hampton and montgomery will see the parole board the same day, and i'll be there. >> how are you feeling? i have moderate to severe plaque psoriasis.

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these days we're all stressed. i hear you, sister. stress can affect our minds. i call this dish, "stress." stress can also affect our bodies. so, i'm partnering with cigna to remind you that your emotional and physical health are more connected than you think. go in for your annual check-up. and be open with your doctor about anything you feel. physically, and emotionally. body and mind. cigna. together, all the way. that's better. at verizon, we're building the most powerful 5g experience for america. that's why the nfl chose verizon.

because they need the massive capacity of 5g with ultra wideband, so more screaming, streaming, posting fans... can experience 5g all at once. this is happening in 13 stadiums all across the country. now if verizon 5g can do this for the nfl... imagine what it can do for you. the rate of incarceration in this country, you have to look at the numbers and realize, this isn't working. it goes beyond just locking people up. what happens after you lock them up? do they deserve to be locked up? are we putting one group behind bars disproportionately as opposed to another. >> the country is in trouble. this is a crisis.

>> one of the things that struck me while walking around angola was how many men i met who seem to be focussed on changing their lives. one of them. >> i just knew i had to do something different than just do time and die in prison. >> since coming to angola back in 2004, he says he's turned his life around by taking advantage of the prison's programs. >> i was selected to be a social mentor. >> at the prison, he earned a masters degree from a bible college. he even became an ordained minister. a couple of times a week, he gospel raps his former preaching to the population. >> it's hard to square the man

sitting across from me with the horrible crime that he committed. >> your actions caused the death of a baby. >> yeah. >> when he was 21, he was watching his stepson. he says the child was inconsolable. he shook the baby so violently he died. now he's serving a 60-year sentence for manslaughter. >> how do you move past that? how do you become a different person? >> at first, to be honest, i didn't know what i was going to do. it was sickening to my heart that i would actually have done something like that. >> he says he was filled with anger, which had its roots in his childhood. this is a picture of him and his father shortly before he was executed in the electric chair in 1990 in this very prison for killing a louisiana state trooper. >> you know kids watch television all the time, and

they're like, your dad is about to be fried chicken. and by me having the same name, when people would call my name, i would put my head down because i was ashamed of what i believed that name had meant. >> but over the years, he says programs at angola helped change him. opportunities that weren't available when his father was here. and still aren't available at most prisons across the country. >> there is a whole movement around trying to revive the rehabilitation debate we have abandoned. we have people locked up with nothing to do. and we know that education is transformative. it reduces recidivism. >> education and programs have also proven to reduce violence inside prison. angola was once known as the bloodiest prison in america. but things began to change here in the 1990s when the prison began to focus on more than simply locking up people and feeding them. >> go ahead. >> now in addition to its popular annual inmate rodeo,

there are a variety of programs. >> all right. ready? go. >> these men are training service dogs for veterans. there is even a radio station run by incarcerated men. >> the only one in the nation, the station that kicks behind the bricks. >> you can get a lot more freedom here depending on your behavior. you know, we have a lot of programs mentor led, led by other guys serving life sentences and it giving them purpose. >> it looks like a shop. >> yeah, it does. >> i talked to a master mechanic at the prison's auto shop. >> i didn't know how to change a spark plug before i went to prison. >> don't let the uniform fool you. he has been incarcerated since 1989 for killing his wife with a shotgun. even know he'll likely never get out, he mentors nonviolent offenders in a re-entry program. >> when you can see a man, come

in here change his life, go back out and stay out, you know that you have done something. your life is worthwhile. >> many graduates of the program now work at a car dealership outside of new orleans. but there are other nonviolent offenders at angola who might never get a second chance. this man was sentenced to more than a lifetime. >> my sentence was 150 years. >> you'll hear his dramatic story next. maria ramirez?

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i'm dara brown with the top stories. president trump will shop in north carolina to view hurricane dorian damage on friday. >> the u.s. coast guard says they have been unable to reach crew members unaccounted for after a cargo ship overturned near georgia port. >> now back to "dateline: life inside." >> in my three days at angola, most of the men i spoke with had committed violent crimes and received long sentences. >> life without parole? >> yeah. >> but like every prison, there are also nonviolent offenders serving long sentences that might as well be life.

john is one of them. >> i grew up in a middle class neighborhood. went to catholic schools. >> he is a gulf war vet who says he was lost and broken when he came home. >> well, i had no direction in life. >> in 2000, he was found guilty of running a massive drug ring between texas and louisiana. it was his second drug conviction. >> my sentence was 150 years. >> that's right, 150 years. he served 20 so far. his case is a prime example of harsh sentencing laws or both drug dealers and especially users. the legacy of the government's decades long war on drugs. more than 450,000 people in america are locked up for a drug offense. brian stevenson says criminalizing drug addiction is misguided. >> we said those people with criminals. and we didn't have to say that. we could have said their drug

addiction and drug dependency is a health problem. >> is that why are jails are so full? >> yes. >> but things have been changing. you may have heard of the first step act signed into law late last year by president trump, which is projected to reduce the sentences of thousands of nonviolent offenders in federal prisons. but that doesn't affect more than 90% of the u.s. prison population, which is locked up in state and local facilities. some states had already been relaxing sentencing guidelines like here in louisiana, which started in 2001. >> heavenly father -- >> but epstein sued the state and won, which earned him a date with the parole board. now he's just hours away. >> i'm not a troublemaker. i have done everything possible to rehabilitate. >> i'm a little antsy right now.

>> i was up late just thinking about things, just trying to get in my mind that the possibility of me being released. >> you're making them wait for all of us here. you have made it. >> y'all be blessed, my brothers. >> his 31-year-old son, a law school graduate came to surprise me. a three-member panel must vote unanimously to grant parole. our cameras weren't allowed inside the parole hearing room. about an hour later, his family walked out first. >> yes! [ applause ] >> we were there for his first steps as a free man in 20 years. >> what? should i go?

man. >> very good, my son. >> two other people are eager to follow him out that gate. henry montgomery and clifford hampton who have served a combined 116 years at angola are about to face the parole board themselves. >> do you think you should be paroled? >> i should be because i'm 55 years older, you know? i'm mature enough to know i ain't going to do that again. >> but that might not matter. this is montgomery's second parole hearing. he was just denied last year. and it seems clear to many why montgomery is still in prison. >> you killed a cop?

>> yeah. >> the man montgomery murdered was deputy sheriff charles hurt from east baton rouge. in november 1963, montgomery, then 17 years old, was playing ho hooky when deputy hurt came up to him. he was startled and scared, was carrying a gun and he shot him. >> i know i had the gun in my hand. i know i shot him. i know i did, and i'm sorry. >> it doesn't really matter how montgomery feels. what does matter is that he stays behind bars. >> an attack on a police officer is an attack on the very fabric of society. >> gravel is the victim's grandson, and today he is a police officer himself. >> there is no parole for charles hurt. his life sentence is permanent, you know?

and my mom, my aunt, my uncle, our belief in the system is that it's equal justice. >> the family of clifford hampton's victim didn't want to speak to us on camera, but they did tell us they don't think hampton should get out either. in 1958 when he was 17, hampton got into an argument with his 18-year-old neighbor. he flew into a rage and brutally stabbed her to death. >> and i realize what i had did. i walked to the home of the deputy sheriff and turned myself in. >> and hampton has another hurdle to overcome. in 1961 at age 20, he killed another inmate here. he told me it was self-defense. >> angola was like a jungle, you know. that's what you had to do, you know, kill or go under. >> hampton and montgomery will soon find out if they will be

granted parole. but if they're denied, they could eventually end up where i'm heading next, the prison's hospice ward. so ...how are you feeling? on a scale of one to five? one to five? it's more like five million.

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like every maximum prison, angola can be a dangerous place. on this morning a knife is found. and when that happens, this is the response, a shakedown. >> what we have here is what appears to be crushed up medication. >> we have seen a couple shakedowns. what do you mind? >> captains along with assistant warden anne marie say being a corrections you have officer is one of the toughest jobs in the

wor world. >> he isn't alone. studies have shown corrections officers have a significantly higher suicide rate than the general population. >> can you give me some specific antidotes of things that have happened to you? >> a defendant threw human waste out the cell at me. what can you do to that offender? >> here like in so many other states the institution is understaffed. >> go to home depot and make the same amount of money and not get feces thrown at them. >> one of the things that's helped is something i was surprised to learn, that the majority of the officers here are women. >> i think there is value in the female officers.

you know, ladies, we can sometimes talk an offender down a lot quicker, you know, just because we have a calming ability. >> and something else i didn't expect to hear. they believe that life without parole sentences make prison less safe for everyone. >> if a man has life and he has nothing to lose if he knows there is no chance in going home. >> i heard the same thing from many people who work here. tania faust works in the prison's hospice unit. >> i would love to see a lot of these guys get second chance. i worry about backlash i would get from that because i know that the outside public's perception is they're here. they're supposed to be here. >> does it surprise you to say that. >> my mother worked here as a security guard and i used to tell her all the time, how can you work there with those people. but no one is the same person

they are from when they were younger to now. >> decades in prison would change anyone. there is an aging crisis in american prisons, a gray wave as some have called it. more than 130,000 inmates older than 55 are incarcerated today. that's costing taxpayers more than $9 billion a year. the aging and the dying are the most expensive people to keep incarcera incarcerated. and yet they pose the lowest risk to society. this is what a life sentence looks like when life is running out. dying prisoners being cared for in hospice by other incarcerated men. >> 63-year-old frank has been in prison for 45 years. when he was 19, he and his younger brother robbed a store, a crime that ended with the murder of the owner.

now dying of cancer, he's asked for a compassionate release. but the vast majority of petitioners for compassionate release are denied, and so was frank. >> frank, how are you feeling? i'm from nbc, lester holt. >> oh, yeah. we had a nice conversation. >> frank, do you think you should go home? >> soon i know that. >> it helps my throat. >> yeah. i can open that for you. let me open that for you. there you go, frank. all right. i'm going to let you rest. okay?

well, he's a human being. i'm not here to judge him. but i don't know how you not have compassion. >> a few weeks later, i learned that frank died in his hospice bed alone. back in my cell, i had a lot of time to reflect about everything i've seen. >> i have personally wrestled with this question of is prison punishment? because if it is punishment, it's pretty bad. is it a place of reform? you can certainly see efforts to reform here. i can't help thinking as we're, you know, talking to men incarcerated when they were teenagers i think of my own self

at 16, 17 years old and it is all complicated. >> and now the two men i met that committed murders as teenagers, henry and clifford, are about to find out if they will finally get parole and walk back out into the world. -guys, i want you to meet someone. this is jamie. you're going to be seeing a lot more of him now. -i'm not calling him "dad." -oh, n-no. -look, [sighs] i get it. some new guy comes in helping your mom bundle and save with progressive, but hey, we're all in this together. right, champ? -i'm getting more nuggets. -how about some carrots? you don't want to ruin your dinner. -you're not my dad!

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if there is one state that defines mass incarceration, it's louisiana. known for decades as the prison capital of the world. the state's governor john bell edwards says that tough on crime approach hasn't been working. let's talk about mass incarceration. i suppose there was a time that that was a good thing, we're locking up all the bad guys. >> i don't know if it was ever a good thing, but we know now because of our experience that

it was counterproductive. we had the highest incarceration nation in the last couple of decades but our crime rate wasn't any better for it, recidivism rate wasn't any better. most importantly we weren't safer. it was costing $700 million a year just that louisiana, third only to education and health care. we couldn't afford it. >> in 2017, edwards, a democrat in the deep south, signed bipartisan criminal justice reform legislation, the most ambitious in the state's history. you have actually reduced your prison population? >> we have. but we are number two in the country at present. and it's a process. >> to see this happen in a deep red state, law and order south, is pretty stunning to a lot of folks. would you agree? >> it is. it's counter intuitive that you can overincarcerate and be less safe because of it. >> the reforms are projected to reduce department of corrections spending by more than $260

million over the next decade. some of that money will be invested into re-entry programs for those coming home. an important investment because every week an average of 12,000 prisoners in america are released back to society. >> 95% of the inmates are going to get out. and when you do next to nothing to prepare them for successful re-entry, then you are creating a future that is more riddled with crime. >> but louisiana's reforms focus on nonviolent offenders. so what about violent offenders? like the juvenile lifer group i met, or the men dying in hospice. we clearly met people in that prison who don't pose a threat to society. but in your opinion do some people simply belong in prison because what they did was just reprehensible? >> well, because what they did was reprehensible and there continues to be opposition in the community and among the victim's family. look, whether someone continues

to pose a threat to society is a factor to be considered in whether they get released. >> not the only factor? >> correct. it can't be the determinative factor to the exclues of all others. >> both henry montgomery and clifford hampton face opposition from their victims' families. what will happen to them when they see the parole board? montgomery is about to find out. and someone has come to support him. his name is andrew hundley. he might look like a lawyer, but he's actually the first juvenile lifer in louisiana to be released because of montgomery's supreme court case. >> all right, all right. today's the day. >> oh, yes, sir. >> hundley served 19 years in prison. at age 15, hundley was out with a teenage girl when they got into an argument. he became enraged and beat her over the head with a metal rod

and then tried to get rid of her body by burning it. you committed a pretty savage crime. >> it was a horrible crime. unexcusable crime. there's nothing i can do that will be able to undo that. thankfully they were able to look and see how i had changed. >> so if a parole board said that he changed after 19 years, what will it say about henry montgomery after 55 years? you're the first guy that got out. and he's still here. >> yeah, there's a lot of guilt. i went to prison whenever i was 15. a white kid. and got out when i was 34. henry went to prison a black kid at 17. and he's still here after 55 years. >> big day, big day. >> big day. >> the three members of the panel voted unanimously to free him. they were behind closed doors for more than an hour. this is the video from that hearing. >> my vote is to grant his

parole. >> my vote is to grant for the reason -- >> two yeses for montgomery's release. >> we hear a lot of these cases -- >> then came the third and final vote. >> for me today, unfortunately, mr. montgomery, i'm going to have to vote to deny your parole. i have a problem with -- i think you need more programs. today your parole's been denied. >> i caught up with montgomery right after he heard the news. he told me that he had already packed his bag. you were getting ready just in case? >> yeah. >> just in case they said you could go home. >> yeah. >> he won't get another parole hearing for two more years. but you're holding together? >> no, i got life. i'm going to keep by my own time to get out. you've got to keep your hope alive. >> clifford hampton's hope remains alive. he is about to face the parole board himself. i'm realizing he has been in

prison longer than i've been alive. that's -- i can't even wrap my head around it. it was a unanimous vote. parole granted. i was there moments after a surprisingly subdued hampton learned the news. now a new adventure begins? >> yeah. >> life on the outside. >> yeah. >> can you imagine what that might be like? >> it will be pretty exciting. >> a few days later, hampton walked free for the first time in 61 years. >> we'll stop and drop your stuff off at your apartment -- >> andrew hundley is here to help hampton, because in 2016, hundley started a nonprofit called, the parole project. so far it's helped more than 40 juvenile lifers re-enter society. >> that the spot? >> oh yeah. >> hampton's first taste of the outside world, a fast food hamburger with everything on it. >> first apartment. this is for you.

>> his temporary apartment, painted with bright colors to remind him that he's no longer in prison. >> i'm seeing so much that's really new to me. you know, i'm excited about it all. >> hampton leaves behind thousands of others, like my neighbor curtis, who will never go home. his today filled only with yesterdays. who is this? >> that's my son who was killed in a motorcycle wreck in '94. >> oh, man. in my short time here, i learned a lot about the human ability to cope. to accept. to survive. as i wrote in the journal i kept, it's too easy to look away

from prison and prisoners. dignity is earned. but hope is essential. it's been four months since i jotted down those thoughts inside my cell at angola. and now the journey for answers continues. once again from the inside. we've gathered some of the top authorities on criminal justice reform for a discussion inside the walls of new york's sing sing correctional facility. obviously your best day was getting out of prison. what was the lowest day? >> every time i think about that -- >> like so many other people, i'd heard about criminal justice reform. over the last couple of years