including by a public broadcasting system that has sold its soul for corporate money that we might as well be mice squeaking against an avalanche to squeak we've lost. this. well i'm tom hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture when it comes to crime and punishment america really is exceptional we have the highest incarceration rate in the entire world why is our criminal justice system so uniquely repressive asked dr

bob. just and donald trump still hasn't said a word about saturday's terrorist attack in minneapolis minnesota because the victims were muslim shelby emmett and valerie irving internets big picture. donald trump has now been president for two hundred days and while his administration has virtually no legislative accomplishments to its name it is getting things done especially over at the justice department or attorney general jefferson beauregard sessions the third is hard at work rolling back president obama's push for criminal justice reform to borrow a phrase from the president himself the trumpet ministration is making the president complex great again meanwhile all over the world countries as different as thailand and norway are forging ahead with new and more productive ways of

dealing with the age old question of what to do with people who break the law for more on that i'm joined by dr dr singer professor at the john jay college of criminal justice at the city university of new york and author of the new book incarceration nations a journey to justice in prisons around the world dr dr singer welcome to the program. thank you for having me so in your book you travel all over the world researching different prison systems what did you discover and what surprised you. well i visited nine countries prison systems and of course my approach is very much grounded in the work i do in the u.s. i teach in prisons and run education programs in prisons and i think the tremendous failure that i witnessed firsthand in doing the work for my book was seeing that the american system has been replicated around the world that essentially we have built this system of incarceration as a response to crime which is neither

a humane nor economically feasible nor moral and we have foisted that upon the world and so it has been a copycatting world in terms of prison as an approach to crime so whether we're talking about uganda rwanda thailand our policy is our war on drugs and our prison system the policies of our prison system have been replicated around the world beginning in the nineteenth century and continuing to this day with practices like the supermax the solitary confinement private prisons and prison privatization the bail industry all of these things are american inventions that have been foisted on the world remarkable bill basically favors the rich and disfavors the poor are many of the other things you just mentioned are tools used that word loosely that were used by slave owners to keep slaves in line much of our criminal justice system at

least from the reading i've done over the years seems to have originated in slavery in the desire of particularly southern white people to. have absolute control over their slave populations to what extent is that actually a clear a clear definition of where our criminal justice system came from or the ferment out of which it evolved and how much. how much of where we're at and what we're exporting to the world which is rather distressing you know. it's rooted in those places. absolutely it's a very accurate description of how our prison system came to be essentially after slavery there were things known as the black codes which criminalized essentially breathing if you were a person of color in this country so those who were slaves were deliberately criminalized using things like laws against loitering and so on and then they were mass incarcerated in order to produce the labor force and we continued to do this

in the twentieth century with blacks and latinos again in an effort to take people out of the labor force on the street and make money for various industries that impact the prison system so it's not a radical conspiracy theory it's fact it's history and i witnessed this around the world one way or another this same system criminalizing a group that has been deemed other whether that's blacks and what's called colored people in south africa blacks in brazil the hill people of thailand poor people criminalizing poverty again using laws that are very much akin to the black code in the u.s. in terms of loitering and other low level offenses petty offenses and then mass incarcerating in order to produce a labor force so of course we see the relationship between incarceration and capitalism incarceration and money making and also incarceration as a system of racial control and or

a system of class control that is exploited again and again around the world and it is once again it's an enormously tragic and terrifying thing to see this same pattern played out globally with over ten million people incarcerated three million of them held in jails which means they're in pretrial detention they have not been convicted of anything i think. two or three or thereabouts of the thirteenth amendment was. formally and legally finally ending slavery but it hasn't. loophole in which you can still be a slave in the united states if you've been convicted of a crime. a mind saying that bluntly like that is that an exaggeration and b. . how is that influencing our criminal justice system and how have other countries . adopted in a way is the prior to adopting our criminal justice system they never would have considered such a thing. it once again it's not made if it's not exaggeration the thirteenth

amendment eliminates slavery except in punishment for a crime that's the language so slavery is still legal in this country in the form of mass incarceration in the form of prisons and this is very much the case in other countries as well now there are countries i've visited that actually have far more progressive constitutions than ours including south africa one of the most progressive thoughtful constitutions in the world where in fact there's a lot of language of restorative justice a lot of language of diversion out of the criminal justice system as opposed to support for mass incarceration so that's one of the countries that's quite promising at least in the language restored of justice which is an approach that focuses on the person who was harmed and healing and making amends for that harm rather than focusing on punishment and then fullness is actually quite present in the language of many countries justice systems much more than here in the u.s.

there is a movement afoot i should say to change the thirteenth amendment to have that language altered and frankly there is a movement afoot to rethink our the whole of our constitution and its relevance in this contemporary moment given that it was written in a very particular time and space by a group of entirely white men you know good point although. apropos of that the thing that concerns me is that much of the movement has been driven by a bunch of white male petro billionaire. as who would concern any other country the really stands out in your book is norway can you talk about that how do the norwegians do. so the norwegians for one create a mechanism for preventing crime in the first place a very low crime rate and that mechanism is what might be considered radical in this country and that's really good social services they provide incredible social services support for the citizens there's very little inequality and of course of

course inequality is correlated with high crime rates hence our high crime rates in this country so for one they create a mechanism that prevents people from going to prison in the first place when people do go they remain connected to their communities they receive the same social services that they did on the outside they are still part of the community while they are locked up many people over thirty percent of people who go to prison in norway will go to what's known as open prisons where where the wall is poorest and individuals can come and go work jobs on the outside remain connected to family receive education on the outside so when they come back into the community they're well poised to reintegrate and then lastly the corrections officers in norway go through a training that is utterly unlike our training in this country which consists of a very brief training all together but training primarily in military tactics in

norway the staff academy which i visited trains individuals in philosophy last social work psychology in essence to be guides to people in prison and genuinely engage in the process of what we call corrections we talk about corrections department of corrections and not a department of punishment and yet what we do again and again is punish and not correct and so while there is no utopia none of the countries that i've visited is perfect there was. a lot to learn and i think in all of them there's a lot that's right and a lot that's wrong in some of them but norway really really approach is a correct approach to corrections and i should also say that while as i mentioned america has been this model to the world and through colonialism and globalization has foisted its system of mass incarceration around the world i was pleased to know that now norway is getting a lot of requests from other countries who are interested in taking

a look at its system as a potential model that's that's really good news i may be off on my dates and maybe even the name but because it's been about twenty years since i read this but my recollection is that in the writings of. chronicle or columbus's voyages back to spain back to the king and queen of spain he wrote he was the people the people of. hispaniola. had no prisons and no jails and you know in apparently that's a common characteristic of indigenous societies all over the world no prisons and jails. talk about prison absolution is there any way to get out of the thing that we're in we have about a minute left here yeah it's a very interesting point we forget that prisons are relatively recent invention about a couple hundred years old and that there are all kinds of methods for creating

community safety that do not rely on prison i mentioned one of them restored of justice i witnessed it at play in south africa in rwanda after the genocide where individuals confronted each other and worked out avenues for reparations and repair and peacemaking there are all kinds of methods that we can think of that create safer communities and that work better than prisons prisons have a very bad success rate or recidivism rates are extremely high we're not creating safer communities through prisons. certainly there are other methods that precede prisons and especially restorative justice matter so do you see is there a movement for implementation in the united states of god so we're seeing restorative justice grow as a movement common justice is one here in new york where i'm based there are others around the around the country that are replicating and taking over sort of justice approach to crime to policing and to cases where people are harmed in communities

so i think it's very promising i think the abolitionist movement and i consider myself a member of that movement is growing in the u.s. and also internationally that's remarkable dr baf dr singer thanks so much for the great work you're doing and coming on tonight and sharing it with us thank you for having coming up is corporate media a threat to our democracy. internets big picture. there's a real irony that only. responsible people and there are always well that's what it's always. hold still so well if you feel you have all meanwhile there's an issue that's been trying to use the social media. story as it's gone or

a real. i think the average viewer just after watching the problems segments understands that we're telling stories that are critics can't turn on you know why because their advertisers won't let. you know order to. create change you have to be honest you have to tell the truth party's able to do that every story is built on going after the back story to what's really happening out there to the american what's happening when a corporation makes a pharmaceutical chills people when a company in the environmental business ends up polluting a river that causes cancer and other illnesses they put all the health risk all the dangers out to the american public those are stories that we tell every week and

you know what they're working. to. get them so. they did except reject it. so when you want to express. some want to be rich. to do it for us that's what the three of them can't be good. i'm interested in the. question. hey terrorist attack just occur in a major american city and donald trump hasn't said a word is that because the terrorists targeted muslims and in trump's world muslims

don't count as much as white christians that's as tonight's big picture. would be for the rights panel are shelby emmott attorney and national advisory council with project twenty one and valerie urban senior adviser to the working families party thank you both for being with us tonight it's great to have you both here so on saturday morning someone it's still unclear who threw a bomb into the largest mosque in minnesota this person then drove away in a. up truck is the bomb exploded no one was hurt but as minnesota governor mark dayton pointed out there's no question about what this incident was a terrorist attack it's a crime so what he said meeting if this were rules were reversed. it would be wholly terrorist attack and that's what it is this an act of terrorism. is attack occurred at five am saturday morning it's now just past seven pm on monday and the president has said nothing zip he has however found the time to blast c.n.n.

on twitter this outrageous silence is this outrageous silence because the potential victims of this attack are muslims. valerie i would have this problem i mean the saddest part of this whole story is how it's becoming more and more normalized this kind of violence these folks were first morning prayer it just reminded me of what happened in south carolina a couple of years ago when people were you know in church praying and they get murdered. and there was such a reaction to the south carolina massacre that it's just makes you wonder where is the president and what is the message that signals to the rest of the country shall be your thoughts i would agree as much as i actually been happy to see him more quiet on this one day he should have spoken up i think we can all agree particularly living in this country one of the fundamental rights that we have is

our first amendment and our ability to to worship and to do that without fear so this is a great opportunity for a president to be presidential and to give a statement even if he doesn't want to comment on the particulars because i think all of us can agree when you start jumping to conclusions about something whether what it is that can harm the law enforcement side of things but to address the nation and to speak about how important it is for all of us to be able to worship and do so in peace and find an opportunity to come together so as much as i hate to say i like what he's quiet i wish he would come out and say something this is not the first time that there have been attacks directed at muslims that have been done by muslims against christians would have brought down the wrath of god on fox news and in the world of donald trump. taking it out of the partisan frame and putting it into a cultural frame what we do want to hear how do we how do we how do we reconcile. the hysteria that we have where christians are killed or attacked or whatever and

the boy was a kid we seem to have when muslims are killed and of course that's metta for all his bunch of different classes races you know it's like. how do we break through this yet for me it seems a little bit more modeled than just christian vs muslims this is about brown and black folks in this country who are being targeted for horrendous crime it is very disheartening that the president didn't say anything but this is not about religion as far as i'm concerned it's about it's about what were the country is going and it's going into a deeper and deeper hole and there is nobody that speaking nationally about where we go next and it's really scary and i wish they would agree i don't think this is just a muslim christian thing i think it was a woman of color if i were to end up in the same nobody in the news media ever

reacts but a white woman goes missing in every news outlet is on fire for a year every day straight when someone goes missing so this is much more i think of a american problem that's happening throughout and this is just the new wave of who to ignore and who we put attention on but this should start with the local officials the community come out and be together regardless of what the people in washington are doing or not doing southerners you know come out their representatives need to come out and said that trump isn't but we also shouldn't be having to look at our president for us to be good people as americans and i come together for that community you know just do you know where as you were saying that or came to my mind was jon. benet whatever name you know john but i'm sitting here and you know talk going to where it was late fifteen twenty years ago you know little missing word girl. and in fact there were there was an epidemic of murders of black women here and you see what we go over there literally don't want us. so so. do we can we shame the media and

shame the power centers into attendant abuse i mean i were is it a matter of people you know muslims people of. color demanding attention to i think that there is such silence just in the last couple of years around these kinds of attacks and murders while you were talking i was just reminded of a police officer who happens to be somalian in minnesota. who we don't know the story about what happened to this white woman who was shot and killed but they immediately you know grab the story and he you know he gets targeted when how many african-american and other people we've seen killed by police violence and then lead off there is a narrative there is a undercurrent. here in this country right now and the frightening thing is the level of silence around there when that happened i went on the radio and i said

this will be the first police officer held to account for killing an armed civilian because he's black and she's white and i think it's also a social media thing i think one of the issues that bothers me the most out of all this is whenever there's a tragedy in this country everyone feels like they're doing the moral thing because they've taken to twitter and they've changed their flag to something else or their profile picture to something and they step back and they say now look i've done something now you have it so you go out and do something and that that's all of us looking at me you know what have i done i have not spoken about this story yet that's one of the reasons i was really glad that you were talking about it because we all a lot of this is like you said it's still you were driven and so if we keep watching those that works that aren't reporting on things then we're going to get out what we're giving them and that comes back to us as we the people at the end of the day though pay more attention to it if we force them to. to do the first public comment speaking to the media the first public comment period for sinclair media's proposed

three point nine billion dollars merger with tribune media came to a close if the f.c.c. allows this deal to go through the far right leaning sinclair which at this point is a virtual. trump propaganda outlet would see its reach spread to approximately seventy two percent of all u.s. households for context this deal was announced just months after the f.c.c. changed its rules to make it easier for television media companies to consolidate used to be that they couldn't know no company could reach more than thirty nine percent of americans it almost seems like that move was payback to sinclair for being so consistently pro trump on the campaign trail is corporate media and a federal to democracy. not that i'm a big well. i don't i'm not sure what the first of all i think this is bigger than sinclair himself but what trump and his cronies are doing is they're moving us further into an autocratic government that is control he wants to control the

message and clearly this is very interesting clearly he wants to create his own fake news and normal law he's doing he's doing something he was yellow he's already has paid for it but i'm talking about with this with this with this simpler thing claire situation you know when all these television stations are going to be like spewing the trump propaganda in millions and millions of more homes they're moving closer and closer to sort of like. controlling not just the media but the entire message this is a much larger thing that even fox nasty so let me slightly recalibrate my question rather than just say corporate media. aggregated media you know monopolistic media you know. i have you know when i when i started in media first my first job in radio was in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight and it was in lansing michigan

there were seven radio stations in town every single one was owned by a separate little group of most of your family owned no billionaires no fat cat. no big corporations the local t.v. station to be driving on was owned by a local family they named after their son jim when he was born i mean you know i don't think any of those stations in lansing michigan are locally owned anymore his i'm really part of the biggest issues are imo huge fan of competition so they should let the market work i think very rarely in this country have we actually tried that i think a lot of people like jumping on the concept of free markets but we've never really tried it and i think that would be a great thing to do but again the people still have more power than we give ourselves credit for if i'm not one that wants to hear a bunch of trumped propaganda i'm not a big fan of fox news i also got very sick of let's promote hillary every three seconds on m s n b c so i did a crazy thing i turned it off i think a lot of my friends of my generation we don't even watch the networks we are

streaming things or watching netflix you're on you're literally picking our car what you want to watch and you're seeing that now with the emergence of more bloggers and more people in your scene journalists the news anchors all get upset that they don't have that control anymore because the individuals through the internet everything else are gaining their own resources and using their own message to connect with people i think this is both sides of the government upset that their private losing the control over the people before they had what three major networks and two major newspapers and that i don't think what even half of the american people have any respect for most of the major networks or the newspapers except for for trump's reporters because if you look at where they get their information on where the far right gets their information it's the radio controlled airwaves far right you know as recently as fourteen years robot or radio or right wing talk radio and if you're driving anywhere outside of washington d.c. or any major metropolitan city you turn on the radio and that's what you're going

to hell you're going to literally start in boston and drive to san francisco and never stop here in rush limbaugh or that we're there but he's got a great control the market. and has been in the business for thirty years now so i would say to those on the other side that are competing with him well now what's the problem if well the problem in iowa but i'll tell you pretty bad either you know it's sad at lunch with the vice president of one of these large radio groups about six years ago and said i will put my show on and said we will put liberals on the air more recently i sat with the president of another large radio group that owns about half the radio stations in this country and he said the same thing in front of a u.s. sun i mean it's just you know our business decisions they're saying you know why would i put somebody in there and want to raise my taxes really it's interesting because it's group speak to like i travel a lot far out regions and people don't even know that there's another side to consider you know it's either right or wrong good or evil it's another thing the social media has made that worse right everyone if you're on the right you list in

a one year low if you listen to the other it's pretty pretty remarkable shall be valerie thank you both for being with us. and that's the way it is tonight and don't forget democracy is not a spectator sport get out there get active take your and. just. as you're watching. the mission of news with you is to go to the people tell their side of the story our stories are well sourced we don't hide anything from the public and i don't

think the mainstream media in this country can say that the rich. are to america has a different perspective. so that we're not hearing one echo chamber that mainstream media is constantly spewing. we're not beholden to any corporate sponsors no one tells us what to cover how long the coverage or how to say it that's the beauty of our tea america. we hear both sides we hear from both sides and we question more that surely not letting anything get in your way and bring it home to the american people. you are watching our team america special report. because by that. basically everything that you think you know about civil society has broken down. there's always going to be somebody else one step ahead of the game. we should not

be. normalized. we don't believe people that think like this on our blog. this is an incredibly situation. general jeff sessions known differend as mr magoo years ago raised. over the past even if friends call him that over the past month he has set out on a quest to reinvigorate a war on the american people he has asked congress for permission to prosecute medical cannabis suppliers who are abiding by their state's laws he has also reauthorize.