incarceration nation where the law does jailers in the world is it working when i start practicing thirty years ago a ten or twenty year sentence was a big deal now you can win in court and you get ten twenty thirty years people are given sixteen years for less than unifying factor folks that we're locking up and in this country is beyond race beyond anything is that we are locking up an alarming number of poor black folk a large number of poor latino four and a white folk who are locking up or poor to play on people make money in the system every time someone is arrested this money being made off of the blood sweat of people who don't belong in prison plus we have to humanize the people that we're locking up in this country if they just become numbers and just become race groups and just become poor folks we forget what you're tall next on larry king now.

welcome to larry king now today's topic is incarceration about which much discussion is required the united states is the largest jailer in the world is the american public safer fort or has it gotten over out of hand joining me today to discuss the issue hill harper mr harper is the award winning actor a new york times best selling author is latest book is letters to an incarcerated brother in courage when hope and healing for inmates and their loved ones our old friend mark geragos they were now on defense attorney who celebrity clients are with cooling chris brown the late michael jackson and he's co-author of a terrific book mistrial an inside look at how the criminal justice system works and sometimes doesn't another old friend judge joe brown he's of course the longtime host of his famous t.v. show which ended its fifteen year run earlier this year a social activist joe is now considering going into politics and. with us again is

kevin hagen i say again because kevin who was incarcerated for twenty eight years was released in two thousand and eleven from san quentin where rico probably impact program that stands for incarcerated men putting away childish things i say again because i interviewed kevin when he was a prisoner at san quentin hill who you're writing to writing to writing to everybody because we hope to for me i hope the book hits home on a number of levels obviously the book is for individuals who are are incarcerated or soon to be released specifically but but but on the bigger picture the bigger note putting this issue to everyone saying you know many of us are in mental prisons or in prisons not made of iron bars particularly with regard to our system of incarceration our mass incarceration crisis and what do you mean by childish things well i mean i have a tendency to revert back to what they know what they know where they come from especially kids come in the men coming from certain hoods and stuff like that in

this way you want to put it they don't know how to grow out of that because nobody has been to mentor them to teach them how to grow from that mindset so we have what we will we try to teach the kids in how to put away the chow to slow you in for i was in from a robbery. you do twenty eight you have to twenty eight and you are rightfully convicted yes and i will mark the united states accounts for twenty five percent of the world's inmates there more than two point three million inmates in our prison is most of that drugs almost all of it is drugs or drug related you can sit in the superior court here in l.a. on any day and just wait for an hour and a half from nine to ten thirty to watch the calendar ninety percent of the cases are either drug cases or cases that arose out of drugs and eighty percent of the customers of the courts here in california are minorities i mean it's this is not a white man's activity or club so judge of drugs were illegal we know that the prisons are good of him for that once there's something else going on at the top

end that percentage of the world's incarcerated population reflects the fact that as a society we have not addressed ordinary working man getting obsoleted by dust real take knowledge and computerization archie bunker keeps getting knocked down a notch and people drop out the bottom and the criminal justice system deals with these days i guess it's been morphed into something that handles surplus labor rather than crime so much so long as we've got dead problem we've got to have a lot of work in the criminal justice system and it's all tidy and it's got to do with dysfunctional lifestyles and a lot of the things did promote this prison population so drugs does happen to be the convenient. designer of crime of the morons logic but it is our it really comes out of this and i guess this is kind of the morphing of what you're talking about judge it comes down to money or lack thereof because because of the unifying

factor of folks that we're locking up in this country is beyond race ghani thing is that we're locking up an alarming number of poor black folk a large number of poor latino fork and white folk we're locking up a poor two so it's poverty is the unifying issue and lack of access. to jobs and educational opportunity and so what we see is if you ask somebody in a prison why are you in there they will raise their hands they are whatever i was doing was somewhat money related inlets they were the customer. of the anesthetic which is the drug well the other thing that you've got i would share of baka here in l.a. will tell you all the time he is now in charge of the largest mental health facility tell the ungenerous down to where we've got we've got nothing but the mentally ill get no give they get criminalized basically when they closed all the state hospitals most of the state mental hospitals in california they didn't take those guys and put them in the programs you know where all the all the women they took me stuff them in prison and if you go into prison today and you look at the people

lines there all the way around the block of most everybody in there is sedated and those people don't belong there just like you have the guys that have drug abuse problems you got to make programs for one because. it's a complex where this money being made off of the blood and sweat of people that don't belong in prison because they're a god lot of guys that don't belong there oh yeah i mean that look there is a vested interest in law enforcement having a war on drugs law enforcement has a war on drugs they get to forfeit assets they get to beef up whatever they're doing they get federal grants to get out there they bust people they bring them in but drugs are a commodity you have a public once we open the graves using and sticks a drug into you ok right so if you're dealing with the public me but i've often said this if you legalize that you couldn't have the problem away right can you imagine if you just taxed marijuana in california you wouldn't have to close down

schools or anything else and we're going to we when you have to go to you don't have to go to legalization or you can go to decriminalization this two different things i mean the legalization organ is very difficult and want to win it because judges there's a you know that is not a lot of stuff is one great thing it's hard to win politically but decriminalization is different that means you're not necessarily locking people up for drug problems you're looking for some of the solution is different look at it this way if you think of labor is a commodity like we corn a cotton when you get a glut in a commodity price drops this is the working wage you don't want to make the make the coming along again and blowing up another courthouse in oklahoma city so when you've got a commodity glitz you do three things store the surplus subsidize would be producer and cut back production. we put our surplus in a jail cell instead of a grain silo the subsidies the will fare and chicken the cutting back production is the banging out drugging out dropping out. so there's been a lack of a education and they do it to themselves they get

a felony record and they become very difficult to employ the make the communities chaotic so to not politically cohesive and they get taken out of the picture and they serve a function for the system because there's a lot of money to be made there yes and yet in a lot of the brakes or attorney general eric holder said in all this that widespread incarceration is ineffective and unsustainable. years ago i interviewed the famed dr call miniger the medical clinic until he get cancer and he said the biggest mistake in mankind's history is prison prison doesn't work you need another system denmark has a system where people go in there they don't get sentenced for amount of years their sentence and when they are about do they feel they should be released there were released sometimes they live prison run as a community where the prisoners over at the mayor of the societies we just incarcerate marcie said it's a failure there is a reason i look i think it's a failure you i was just in san quentin two months ago there's no way that you can

go to st quentin see the most beautiful land on the planet in california and then you go inside of that hell hole and you say to yourself what are we doing i mean it's medieval when you decide to do that or a minimum sentences obsolete well we one of the things you said is there used to be california at least it was indeterminate you put somebody in if they were ready you'd let them out then the politicians discovered you could you could make a lot of hay by poll of politicizing crime and when they did that then we started throwing out what i started practicing thirty years ago a ten or twenty year sentence was a big deal i mean that was you have to really earn ten or twenty now you can win in court and you get ten twenty thirty years people are given sixty years for less than it was that popular with the white population percent what you can trace it back thirty years ago it's a confluence of of a huge problem a super typhoon let's say you have extreme reduction in terms of public education

money and early childhood education combined with the fact that you have a war on drugs combined with the fact that you could literally lay graphs of incarceration rates over dropout rates city to city i was just in baltimore city they have a seventy percent dropout rate of after american males have about a seventy percent of cars race for a vacuum there is a system racist. there's a disparity in sensing is what you call it the bloody hand is more years than the was it by me and wesley come of the use one of one of my younger my younger kids it by being with legalized goes steals across a joyride joey in south central los angeles steals a car is a juvenile felony for him so he gets five years your we get community service and one of the only countries in the world washes layer on the only countries in the world that will lock up juvenile offenders for life give life sentences to a juvenile offender there's no other country in the world that doesn't judge the average american prison rape is seven times higher than the imprisonment of white

that's to be expected if you get into the dynamics there is a discrepancy in sentencing but it's not so much race as to where you find the races economically so. one of the things we've got to do is look at what's actually happening in terms of the demographics we've got this thing that still residual in a large part of the conferee where your income depends on how many babies you have and we're not doing anything about ten eleven twelve fourteen year old girl started to have the first of seven eight nine thousand and fourteen fifteen children is mostly black girls dads a lot of poor girls but over a lot of mine is is it's most noticeable in certain areas now we've got a thing that's fifteen years out of whack in the memphis area where if you take average american males between eighteen and twenty nine out of every eleven of them in certain areas that are predominantly black nine of miraculin doris rated and not on

probation or parole they're actually locked up when the federal system abolished parole that really got to be a mess it was a black man don't you take this personally and go and make a very you know that's why i wrote the book when i started getting letters from men and young men young women in prison it broke my heart in many ways because in many ways you know it's a type of a life sentence you come out of prison with no education and a felony on your record your chance of getting a job it's extremely difficult so you're that's why was it received in racist allies and i when i went to kevin for instance and asked him to contribute to the book i mean we have to humanize the people that we're locking up in this country because because if we just if they just become numbers and just become race groups and just become poor folks we forget it once you're in prison or forgotten person right it's goodbye right basically no you don't lose interest i was in a federal courtroom in orange county of all places yesterday and there was a judge there judge carter and judge carter takes the position that it was

astonishing to me that ok i'm going to sentence people under the sentencing guidelines even though they're not mandatory but when you're with least from custody every day at seven thirty. am and i walked in there yesterday at seven thirty he's got surgery or to one hundred of the people that have just been released from federal prison and he wants to see them first before they go to probation before they go to supervised release he shakes every one of their hands he started a program we'll have tattoo removals and he tells them the reason is i want to remove the tattoos from here to here so that i can get you a job i want you to get a job because i think if i can get to you and get you acclimated within the first month you've got a chance of not reoffend so it's an amazing kind of a concept but people don't want to deal with it up next life after prison what the criminal justice system does and doesn't do to help its felons get back on their feet will be right that. will.

please technology innovations all these developments from around russia we've got the future are covered. it was a. very hard to take. once you get on here. that that would that hurt their feelings.

for the people. kevin what above. well i contributed my letter to the book i just want to read a little excerpt of it be sure to surround yourself with people who help you along if you don't know something then ask questions get out of that man box what we call mr b s a lot of me know brought up with a family belief system men don't cry men don't share their feelings we have to learn this stuff all over again it's ok to cry it's ok to share your feelings it's ok to talk about it if you're overwhelmed don't stay stuck in that mentality in that box and my whole philosophy on that is you have to put the work in. you don't put the work in it does you know you could get. you gone for

a long time but it's up to the individual that's there that has to make the change on those hard to come out into a world after twenty years i thought it was great it was fast paced i got a new side i never got sidetracked but i got scared i had anxiety for about the first three months but after that i just got right in with everything else he's you know he's an example he's a hero in my mind and kevin says look i did something wrong i mean he readily admits he made a dire mistake when he was young a tragic mistake but that doesn't mean we need to throw away the key on him and the kevins like he'll. why do we well the judge should one thing you know the the second most powerful union in california is the correctional officers union and they give the most money next to the teachers' union and they have

a prison industrial complex for lack of a better term that they support in the correctional officers want to build more prisons they want to warehouse more people because that inhalants is their power and their ability to live on the motorway you they want more members and you've got to have people you have the take joe's expression you've got to have more of the commodity to warehouse it would you call it the silo you put it in a jail cell instead of a grain silo there's a lot of money here nine hundred ninety six i was running grand jury and shelby county and they had to check out all books and accounts everything of government entities and they had this thing about privatisation so i was going to go there was the phone system and what was going on is the scheme that the county commission came up with as one dollar approx six percent a unit when i was astonished when i discovered that the net profit for the phone system was ninety four million dollars and you go on like this got an even have an office he's got three part time secretary checks from phone companies when they

build their cars look at that is to muddy the lot and the vendors at the jails the vendors at the gentles are making a fortune when people make money in the system every time someone is arrested has twenty nine people on the line and then you talk about privatisation of prison and we can go right it seems the show's over anybody can get on the stock exchange and invest money in this is what's diabolical literally invest money in a corporation whose profit motive is locking up more people so we can bat and make money on locking up more people but you can't find employment for the people because you know government be just a business and they can run them selves so what happens archie bunker said before you don't have a job the american tradition you were hard to get here you know you're nineteen years old. get rated to settle down with mary lou and all the will is going to get you a job in a warehouse and learn how to drive a fork trip well before you can get a will he's been with the company for nineteen years ago it's a paint slip says by sucker you know we got taken over by some young exacts who

want to be billionaires before they get fifty so we're downsizing for corporate profitability go find something for you to do screw you mortgage sending kids to college car note as your problem not mine what keeps you going. when you were in prison hope. my mom. or my son and just a will to write my room. and not everybody i can say that everybody had the added to the of the take on it that i did but my thing is i had opportunities people for volunteers from they came into the institution they were then and while these people volunteering their time to come in here you know what they do think i have some serious work you know because i don't know if every person does but i went through a period in my life where i don't have any self-worth anymore the good doctor i'm told of doctors tell me this always care about the patient they lose

a patient they sometimes blame themselves when you have someone in prison that you represent you think about them a lot a lot keep in touch a lot. it depends on who the client is but i try to keep in touch with the write letters i mean inmates have a lot of time on their hands one of the things they do is write letters of a nothing nothing scars you to the core my people always ask me because i do so much criminal defense how do you sleep at night of so if you know somebody is guilty and you get them out i always say that is not my worry my worry is with i've got somebody who i think didn't do it and they're going to get convicted that is what i lose sleep about imus drive you nuts it's not you know someone though that you defended that's in prison you know didn't do it absolutely absent out of you walk around i mean it's just it drives you crazy i mean it just there is the the system does not work it has not worked for years it you know is very good at

processing people it's excellent processing people unfortunately we've gotten to the point now where a lot of people feel like getting the trains run it on time is more important than justice ninety seven plus percent of the people in america invented injuries pled guilty. got found guilty and eighty five percent of those did pled confessed. but the system has gotten locked into a situation now where they don't really profit by people's changing their lives it actually serves a viable function for the overall society that is tamped down in kid you know white ninety seven percent of the people for of in the last he did him another jew was not just keep him in you want him to keep committing criminal acts are you kidding that's a state that at the set of of our population but i believe if folks understood what i am about to overall thing if you back off and look at it in a political science function and you take the entire thing nobody can expose the

here with there but there is a connection so when you look at it there is actually a functionality to a crime service for this system that has come to depend on hill in this book which i can't wait to get a lead as to an incarcerated brother. you say that the prison system is larger than the entire university system and it costs more to send someone to jail then to go to an ivy league college yes that's bizarre so social and that's that's what the the general public the general us public doesn't know that because like market just said politicians have done a great job sending one message you know i'm a lock i'm up king rather than you know if we were smarter we'd actually be electing public officials that are smart on crime not tough on prop the state he had to the statistics state and federal prison population decreased by one point seven percent last year just because of the demographics oh that's all it is my

father who was a criminal prosecutor for many years used to say if you want to solve the crime crime problem just lock up all males between the ages of sixteen and twenty fourth crime would plummet immediately because eventually once you get through that age group and is they as they age crime goes down i mean that's just a simple lation we have seen a social media question steven burrill of facebook by what percentage with the population in prison system be creased if marijuana would be criminalized. do we know many do but i would say the minimum of fifteen percent animal fit in the invisibility prison and yet no one is going to be legal for the some it's going to be pretty it's going to be legal die it should be people in jail for smoking something that people outside of smoking all of congo one of the reasons i never became a prosecutor i was following my father around who was a d.a. and i was in high school and i went to one to watch it work and he was locking up somebody an eighteen year old kid he was the da for eighty year old kid for sixteen

months in state prison for being in a room where marijuana was smoked he didn't smoke it but he was in the room that used to be a crime sentenced to state prison in the couch in california progress in and out of mt i want to use a second clinton oh yeah yeah yeah and raymond will be united states that clear that the war on drugs is a failure and come up with a more effective palls the war on drugs failed right right but i know we don't even know who i agree with joe if you don't take a holistic view of this you're doomed to just repeat it it's like pushing down the go for here and he's going to pop his head up over there and see you have to on the stand a lot of what goes on officially is not for prove purposes there is a big problem with the us embassy and state department system so you daily would make sicko a lot of the drugs and guns that come into people get nervous about coming through the embassy they're trying to generate on that whole thing they had with what was it. where they had to staying did went wrong and some border patrol even fastened

to fear by fast and furious what they were trying to do is get in the. a treaty treaties are ratified treaties become part of the supreme law of the land and some people lead idea they wanted to defuse the second amendment by getting an appropriate treaty would make a call when they thought that was valuable enough then to the day to do well they wanted to do not issue the issue here it's education and job but education and. the issuance is right but you have to look at the whole societies we are where we are because of education intake knology but all across the spectrum everywhere they have made it more and more difficult for somebody to get an adequate education even the ones like goldman who are burnt because we cut out we cut out the these the subsidies for education and we subsidize building prisons in which warehousing more people don't even get idea how expensive it is for prisons most states spin

somewhere between forty eight hundred hours a load of maybe about seventy eight eight thousand per student through high school years but if you take in all cost considered you're running somewhere between eighty five in about one hundred thousand dollars per inmate yes add an institution per year now that i know ed but i go. to what do you suggest to the average citizen does it there's a few things you can do immediately today every time you walk into a store today whatever your regular stores walk up to the manager and ask them how many x. felon direction cars for you to vigils have they hired to work at this particular store and encourage them to say you want to take a business also if they won't hire felons hire hire x. felons what has changed would you make tamara you if you had told you that i've already hired felons with their intentionally or unintentionally the there's something to be said for that i just because it was yesterday morning judge carter's idea of bringing in people when they're released and something as simple

as tattoo removal which i had never really thought of but he says he has or says the well it is it allows them to get jobs from people who are here because it's all economic based i mean people are not out committing petty crime because they like to commit petty crime they're committing petty crime because they want to get a fix because they're going to do this or they're going to what would you change do you. well i deal with the drug situation. guys are to strike out on drugs and try to find some alternatives instead assuming the prison and education but what i would do would go back go back to the neighborhood and put some of them programs back in those schools the data taken from them that those kids need so they don't get raised by the streets we're out of time but one quick thing you change odd change the child rearing strategies are not all so in full size education thank you much more on this thanks to my guests hill harper mark geragos and judge joe brown

those book letters to an incarcerated brother is in stores now i want to continue this conversation you can find me on twitter at kings things c.n.n. it's time. for a moment like. pleasure to have you with us here on t.v. today.

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