i'm going towards more. regard to. a shocking new number was released today and it deserves our undivided attention one out of every one hundred americans is now behind bars locked up in the prison or in jail. the most important thing. is to talk from your heart if you have more than one child give a like an overall message but then do an individual one to each child throw them a kiss talk to them about what you do daily the rest should be just you if you've

written a poor we've had people pray we've had people saying one guy showed his little boy how to shoot a basket the creative. these are gifts to your children. the families of punished right along with. the have found people don't think so but the collateral consequences of somebodies incarceration affects not just the whole family but it affects the whole community and affects you as an individual or the you know whether or not and whether you know that person or not that's incarcerated. get to inform. you should care. i have a background in film and video as a producer and i thought there's got to be something i can do so why not combine my career and my experience with the present system and come up with something for these kids. and a parent in that camera. and that they can look at and say.

and this isn't your fault you did nothing wrong it means a lot and for many of these men and women it's the first time they've really taken responsibility which is huge and that's a first step in recovery of any kind anytime is to take responsibility for. but even with. this little. episode everybody. is going to go. on to do the best they can to stay out of this please. of mr gold. i'm glad this. been away from. this once you've got the good numbers can we be with. a.

nice chap. from one thousand twenty one thousand nine hundred seventy this whole half century of american history the rate of incarceration was roughly level at about one hundred ten per one hundred thousand. and this is a broad span of our history this is the ruling twenty's and prohibition the depression and all the social change the world war two the post-war economic boom the the the fifty's the explosion of suburbia the sixty's and all the social turbulence through this whole period the rate of incarceration is roughly level in the united states at about one hundred ten per one hundred times and this reflects you know the policies of police departments and prosecutors and judges operating all over the country in local and state level and then in the one nine hundred seventy distorts changes so that by now the rate of incarceration

issue why just over seven hundred and three requests are issue for african-americans is over four thousand four hundred dollars and so you have to wonder how does one cheat why did this half century of stability get ended with this dramatic increase in harsh reaction in spades america's public enemy number one in the united states is drug abuse once the federal government decided that we're going to have war on drugs they were able to then take a lot of money for. the federal budget then send it out to the states helped by realizing the need for money to deal with this problem i am glad that in this year ministration we have increased the amount of money for handling the problem of dangerous drugs seven fold it will be six hundred million dollars this year more

money will be needed in the future virtually everybody thought the drug war was the number one issue and so you had politicians in both parties and you know district attorneys and elected sheriffs everybody wanted to get in to drug cases and get aggressive about new laws to punish them new agents to arrest the new prosecutors to convict them and new prisons to hold them. we move the train when i was very young when we moved here we moved you know to middle homes we used to always run up and down the hallways of course it was the projects so sometimes we will sneak up on the roof which was the top floor twelfth floor and you know look out and of course i was very scared as a young child but you know when you live in the projects it's always so much stuff that you can get into my brother was tragically killed when he was ran over by a truck and i remember pacifically going to the corner with a habanera and seeing all the blood because they left all the blood still in the

street the traumatic experience of losing my only brother and that truck eggs and i know it had done something to me you know drugs from our scale that time was hard all the way because my son was doing drugs my nephews was to my drugs my niece was doing drugs my sisters with doing drugs it was like an epidemic. of drug abuse. and i cannot explain. i cannot explain my feelings because i had at that time i didn't know how i felt you know i was sad because i felt like they were. friend in their lives but there was not the not to do about it to change their lifestyle. how was it. after my brother passed away i kind of withdrew from

a lot of things i didn't talk as much i was very quiet all probably as early as my teenage years oh twelve thirteen years old you know i started sneaking a drink in a little bit here and there started smoking marijuana at a very young age i started all selling drugs in you know he came right along with. the family you tend to trust family when i first saw him and that was in the hallway and i used to be a hopeful monitor and i was stationed right in front of his locker so when i knew that he was coming to his locker i would put my hands up and like black youth wait . so he would have to say excuse me something in at that we started talking we got to know each other you know at the walk in our home many times in and out over at our house. you know my home. wasn't really

a home compared to her house margaret grew up with her parents before the parents all the nice decent house oh great mother great father. something that i didn't have and i started you know just being around her a lot and being around family law and next thing you know you know it's pretty much you know once we started going to get i was pretty was there another house and they were two years old i was pretty much the end there because my mom was on drugs she knows she knew i was there she really didn't have a problem but i kind of started you know living this day with morgan and a very young age. by the time i was sixteen seventeen hour. it's fully engulfed in a drug game and it is only was so big it is only seven point five square miles so a lot of rumors a stylus britain along to the train detectives back then they had to take to the morgue the high school and they kind of got to know me very well and i guess they relayed that information to the trade narcotics and they started watching me and

follow me around the stuff like that and then i remember the first time that they that they raided my house i wasn't there but my mother was there and i was so i think i just turned seventeen and they locked her up and i got a phone call saying that you know your mother was locked up and they want you to turn itself in. so i visually i turned myself in a seventeen a let my mother go and i first time you ever going in june i went to you found because i was an eighteen i was always the juvenile we were it still in high school and we missed the prom. badge was when i got out i remember the detective telling me that you know as soon as i turned eighteen and it was going to come back in me and if i didn't straight up my life that first spears would be none compared to other experiences in jail because then i would be over eighteen and i would be going into a dull facility. most historians look at the origin of the war in drugs as

something of president nixon with his speeches and his creation of of the d.n.a. and other agencies in the one nine hundred seventy s. but the war in drugs as we understand it with. nor enormous case loads and and in and filled up prison population is really a feature of the one nine hundred eighty s. under president reagan drugs are menacing our society they're threatening our values and undercutting our institutions they're killing our children under reagan there was a tremendous increase in federal spending for anti drug activity cabinet level efforts and congress creating. re powerful new laws on day two of his new campaign against drugs the president backed up a tough talk with action for getting tough on drugs and we mean business it's almost like overnight we had discrete idea what we go after the users. and that's what we did we started going at that he users in a prison populations who are. obviously

a far more user center operations major operations and. we started treating sick people people who were addicted to drugs might remember a member talking to my grandmother and having a conversation with her about my life and how far i had fallen she said to me you know jason what i always pray for you and i'm going to pray that you change your life around. and one of the things that she said stuck with me was that you know god is going to find your darkest hour and only there when you realize who you truly are and i heard her but i really didn't hear her. and i left her house that they skip and then it went right back out into the streets. i remember going to new york to cobb then coming back from new york coming down route one coming through your county we had drugs in the car and we had a gun in a car. and i remember being stopped at a light and get now switching drivers i got around to the passenger side and she

took the pharmacy and not knowing that it was a cop car right behind us so once again i didn't want to go to court i was going to try. i told my laura that you know we just had to try to get all the charges pushed together give me one senses let me go to my time and hopefully straight up my life i remember pacifically the judge sits in judge telling me. now i'm a two time loser. and he said tracy hughes convicted in one thousand nine hundred you can begin again in one nine hundred eighty eight he said come back before me for the third time in the third time is going to be a charge for you. when our mind when the content of our mind. changed. there are fees eco out there a shot of the level of the physiology that is of the level of the brain the brain

as a form of plasticity can rewire itself and not just the brain but also the rest a little about the response that. i had a great education a good job and a family that loved me. i never had to worry about how i would eat and where i would speak. i'm facing christmas alone out on the streets of london. on. this story like you only. believe you know just ignore it it will still give out food for the focus. because you don't really feel like a human being in it. and then. the guy just came over to me saw me and gave me this book.

the direction to a judge to sentence can be done in two ways you can say judge here's a crime and for this crime you can impose a sentence anywhere in this range from probation to some term of years in prison and the other way is to say judge you must impose some minimum number of years or months of imprisonment and go up from there so a mandatory minimum this is a sentence where no matter how minor the wold of the offender no matter how insignificant a violation of this crime it is a minimum term must be imposed mandatory minimum sentences are not new they've been on the books. in this country for two hundred years and there are about one hundred

ninety of them or something and if you look at them they read like the crimes as you are so you can see what the public was concerned about and then congress took that concern and translated it into law and to let sentencing legislation so piracy on the high seas in like seven hundred ninety s. got a life without parole robbing banks and crossing state lines in one nine hundred thirty four was you know ten years in prison skyjacking in the seventy's for as ten or twenty years in prison and so you can see the you know what was the point the headlines were the headlines were translated into a mandatory sentence and so in the eighty's when drugs became a big deal and lots of concern about drugs it was in the top three of public concern reacted by creating new mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes which congress sent to president lee was five years me to the minimum five grams of crack cocaine a grams like this we. can years minimum is fifty grand

of crack cocaine just like the weight of a kid or these are tiny quantum it's all based on one factor your sense you know how what was a drug and how much of it did you have and that determines your sentence so culpability no longer really plays a major role in a person's a person sentence when the crime carries a mandatory minimum when president reagan signed the mandatory minimums and ninety six the federal prison population was thirty six dollars. now it's well over two hundred girls this is a growth that no one could have imagined mass incarceration in the u.s. is really unique in human history there is no democratic nation that's ever tried to have such a massive social experiment as we've done in incarceration and we have more prisoners than any other country in the room whenever i read. numbers i mean i find it a bit disturbing that we are prisoners from china and they have

a billion people in need i don't think it gives people enough cause when they hear that we have twenty five percent of the world's prison population and only five percent of the world's population in other words we are way over incarcerating compared to any other country in the world. had allowed. somebody is a storage in a mine and the police found it and they came after me i ended up literally holding the bag. i knew nothing about the criminal justice system you know here i was this middle class. career never even a parking ticket and it was quite a surprise when we went to cork. i had that kind of time marijuana. and i was charged with possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute money going to conspiracy to murder i received

a total of fifty five year prison sentence the judge suspended all but six i was fortunate. to make first poor old and i actually served in prison fourteen months. is the cards that we've put in with the messages and asked the families to respond so we've gotten some really good responses and this one was. three members of the family viewed it. and we ask what were the ages of the children who saw just want to put six. she says extremely meaningful for the daughter of the mother who was incarcerated she loved it. we all did. and this one what did the message mean to your family to know their family was ok and to hear. part these children want to know that their families have had their mom or dad served. in the sole shoulder so to go knows that in three years or so you have you

seen. this show so let's not agree leverage here is that you don't freak. doesn't your fault just very good love the show phone you want to listen to family love done show me feel you to fold just been me. the role of a lot of this town these last three or four years going to the last. known. swan to say the. very first. they said is me too one year administrative segregation and administrative segregation is twenty three hour long going to be locked up twenty three hours each day you come out for half hour shower and a half hour. i know

a bit of olive person. at that time i was treated like one of them were thrown persons in the world i remember going into say oh i believe maybe if i buy a cell. i was dead or close i knew i was going to be there for the next year it's just an experience that it is going to make your break you know you've got to come out a better person are you going to come out of worship person than you were before you went in and. being in a hole is mirrors that i know i wouldn't wish on anybody. but you locked up for twenty three hours i think you can do it. my words about a grandmother just kept playing over and over again in my mind and those words was the guy i was going to farm in my darkest hour and only there what i realize who are actually was and what i kept hearing that because saying i am at my door and i am at my lowest point. and. i think right there. i have

my little. only on the way for me to go from here. another crime another criminal kind of thing that already have fed up with both reno is right politician for the solution is simple crackdown the reason the criminal justice system isn't working is that we're not sending enough people to jail and keeping there long enough that people are saying general way that they will to lock these rascals up and people there for a long shot during the one nine hundred eighty s. there was a major shift in the congress and in state legislatures of doubt how long sentences should be the public was a long term by increasing rates of crime from the one nine hundred seventy s. and early eighty's and they wanted longer sentences they wanted cracking down and that's what happened across the board for all kinds of crimes not only the mandatory minimum drug sentences the effect of all those sensing laws was not just

to increase the sentences that people were exposed to so the people were serving longer time in prison than they did before it was also to take the discretion away from the sentencing discretion away from judges and juries and shifted over to prosecutors it didn't limit it discretion it just gave prosecutors. the power to determine what your sentence was going to be by making charging decisions and even by bargaining over what the facts of your case were so it didn't mean that discretion it was eliminated from the system it just put the prosecutors in charge . every year is wrong in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight and she was very very shy about the task that in high school people can a sad event or play basketball made good grades high school that we went to a seventh or twelfth grade i was kind of the little tagalong sister. i me and my brother were friends and i mean my sister we're friends just kind of watch sure she

was. always really friendly only showing nice this is a small town and everybody knows everybody but she got in trouble we'd know about it. i had what i consider an ideal a child. at some point when i'm in college i mean guy that works for southwest times record the newspaper there and fort smith arkansas and he asked me if i would be a subject for him to go out and take some modeling photos we went to like several locations and he instilled in me that i really ought to pursue a modeling career consider my mother says to me ralston live to dallas my gosh no you know mom wants what she's thinking was she going to do it so i think she's going to model so i created a little portfolio before i went to dallas that i could show to the modeling agencies fandy it was well read well traveled well educated graduated stanford law

school i had gone to princeton theology school so it was it was very appealing to be around somebody who i was frankly very impressed with and so fascinated with and eight months later we were getting married at the dallas arboretum and all of our family and friends were there and it was at that point seemed like a dream come true. there were red flags before we got married there were there were frankly there were red flags all along the way sandy has what i consider to be a dual personality and that this other character would emerge whenever i don't literally had to do something radical. the only remedy to remove him from my life was for me to leave dallas i had to leave dallas and i'd leave all my friends behind and completely. moved to a different city amy sadly saying. that he wouldn't leave her i just

kept saying you know let's be friends let's be friends he wanted it to be more so he told me that he was going to europe and then i never heard anything for a while though word got back to me that he'd been arrested. i hadn't been in dallas in over a year so of the only thing i knew to do was to book a flight to dallas to see if i could go through the house listen to the answering machine and try to piece this thing together and eventually think you're going to find out more information and while i was in the dallas house the phone rang and it was sandy's german legal counsel who had been assigned to the case in germany and at that time he. gave me very thin details but said that he had been arrested for manufacturing ecstasy and that he wanted to retain an attorney for him there in dallas it was

a pretty interesting revelation but i did there was money in the safe that was in the house in dallas and i took that money and i retained an attorney to go over and meet with him in germany. seven months after sandy has been arrested and i pull into the garage of my car as rushed by law enforcement people who are screaming and have a gun out and they're pointing at my face i'm being told you know you're in hot water we know that your husband was arrested we know you know we know you visited him in germany and they said we know you have information and all you have to do is just tell us what you know and i wasn't going to say anything because i'm literally watching these people destroying my mom's isn't somebody that i really want to confide in so i add it wasn't very long after that that my lawyer explain. same to me exactly what it is that my prosecutor wanted they want her to wear

a wire. and try to m.k. other people people she didn't even now. and. she what she refused to do she said i don't know they speak on i'm not going to do this and this prosecutor said new year now and paraphrasing an. operator will ruin your life. you will be in. your last years does do you know that. the people most of. all what i mean.

to make it was not. the way. you know the local superman film he can see us in the future by you. if you're in the form of the media. or if you move in with the big one was in the middle most muslim even when he blows up in the film oh. they will start to feel. the greek riots occupy wall street arab spring these are the beginnings of visual asia. they protest across europe today it was all. connected it's all based on the exact same concept of bankers printing too much money creating this

wealth and income gap and it's delayed or deferred riot you know it's true that the violence was baked into the cake and now leaders like back home are getting their just desserts. with this manufactured incentive to public will. when the ruling classes protect them so. when the final merry go round. we can all middle of the room sit.

up stories. for the imminent departure of us defense secretary james my full military of most. to relaunch with him saying we are coming. for you a congress has criticised the cooperation deal between the associated press and china's news agency saying that beijing might exploited for propaganda. that seeks a second meeting with kim jong un a u.s. judge orders pyongyang to pay a billion dollars in damages to the family of a student who died after being released from north korean custody. top stories for this.