if you've written a porn we've had people prey we've had people saying one guy showed his little boy how to shoot a basket be creative. these are gifts to your children. the families of punished right along with. they have found people don't think so but the collateral consequences of somebodies incarceration effects not just that 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. pay informed. 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 then a parent in that camera. and if they can look at them 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 them for we. read a civil room every minute. i want to go. i'm going to do the best they can to stay out of this belief. job for. mr gold. i'm glad this because it was all the way. this was you guys know the numbers so you know we do it's job.

from one thousand twenty to one thousand nine hundred seventy this whole half century of american history the rate of incarceration was roughly level or about one hundred ten four 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 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 out of one hundred ten for hundred times and this reflects you know the policies of police departments and prosecutors and judges operating all over the country in the local and state level and then in the one nine hundred seventy changes so that by now the rate of incarceration issue why just over

seven hundred and. african-americans there's over four thousand four hundred. and so you have to wonder how does she why did this half century of stability get. this dramatic increase incarceration in. america's public enemy number one in the united states is drug abuse once the federal government decided that we're going to have the war on drugs they were able to then take a lot of money from the federal budget and send it out states. i realize the need. to deal with this problem. ministration we have increased the amount of money for handling the problem. it will be six hundred million dollars this year more money

will be needed 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 everybody wanted to get in to drug cases and get aggressive about new laws to punish the 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 but we moved here we moved you know to malone's we used to always well up and down the hallways of course it was the projects so some time 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 a 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 let all the blood still in the

street a 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 state that time was hard all the way or because my son was doing drugs my nephews was too much 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 straining their lives but there was not the not to do about it to change their lifestyle. that was it. after my brother passed away a 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 it was in the hallway and i used to be a hopeful monitor and out with station 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 that we started talking we got to know each other you know at the home many times in and out over our house. you know my home. was a really

a home compared to her house margaret grew up with her parents before the parents all the nice decent house 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 a lot and next thing you know you know i was pretty much you know once we started going to get i was pretty much as they were in our house and they were two years old i was pretty much stay in there because my mom was on drugs she. knew i was there she really didn't have a problem with it but a kindness started you know live in this day with morgan at a very young age. by the time i was sixteen seventeen i was fully engulfed in the drug game and it is only was so big it was 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 that one 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 or stuff like that and i remember the first time that they that they raided my house i wasn't there but my mother was there and i was i think i just turned seventeen and um 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 yourself in. so i ventured i turned myself in a seventeen a let my mother go and i first time you ever going to joe i went to you found. because i was an eighteen i was only supposed to do when we were still in high school and we missed the prom. 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 and give me and if i don't straighten out my life that first spears will be nothing compared to why other experiences in jail because then i would be over eighteen and i would be going to a dull facility. most historians look at the origin of the war on 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 on drugs as we understand it with food 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 brain powerful new laws on day two of a 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 after the users in a prison populations who are. obviously are far more users than her operations

major operations and. we started treating sick people people who were did drugs might remember talking to my grandmother and having a conversation with her about my wife and how far i had fallen she said to me you know jason will always pray for you and i'm going to pray that you change your life around. what are they said she said that stuck with me. you know god is going to find dark is our only there when you realize who you truly your 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 street. i remember going to new york on the cob 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 the car. and i remember my. i stopped at a light and get now switching drivers i got around to the passenger side and she

took the driver's seat 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 trial i told my laura that you know we just had to try to get all the charges pushed together give me one sense is that because too much time and hopefully straight up my life i remember pacifically the judge said st joe's telling me then element to tom losing. and he said tracy you was convicted in one nine hundred eighty nine 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 contents of our mind ees changed there are fees out of the level of the physiology that is at the level of the brain the brain as a form of plasticity can rewire itself and not just the brain but also the rest of

the body responsible. i had a great education a good job and a family that loved me. i never had to worry about how i would eat somewhere i would speak. i'm facing christmas alone out on the streets of london. well you know not to be a tough call on. the lorry like you don't know. you know just not in the still give up food for the homeless. because you don't really feel like a human being in that. and then. the guy just came over to me saw me in gave no change oh this bloke.

yes does he. she doesn't it would depend. on up all what i mean. if. i can make. you know the yellow superman from him he can see as you know he's the face. that you're in a couple of years. on with him off in the bay one with

a number on the north and the woman he pulls up in the phone while in the most it was a defense. and . 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 role 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 of 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 congress reacted by creating new mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes which congress sent to president when he was five years me to the minimum five grams of crack cocaine grams likes we. can years minimum is fifty grand of crack cocaine that's like the weight of a kid or these are tiny kuan 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 the. no one could have imagined mass incarceration in the us is really

unique in human history there's no democratic nation that's ever tried to have such a mess social experiment as we've done that incarceration and we've got more prisoners than any other country in the world and over. numbers i mean i find it a bit disturbing that we have more prisoners from china and they have a billion more people than we do i don't think it gives people enough 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 area. and 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 court. 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 enough. to make the first parole and i actually served in prison fourteen months on the moon. 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 fem up three members of the family viewed it . and we ask what were the ages of the children who saw it she put just want to put six. she says an extremely meaningful for the daughter of the mother who was

incarcerated she loved it. we all did. and this one said our what in the message you mean to your family to know their family was ok and it's a huge park these children want to know that their families have had their mom or dad say ok wait this is the sole shoulders they need to go no it's been three years and so you have you seen. miss jones looms going to agree leverage here is that you don't freak. doesn't your fault just very good nothing shows phone anyone else in the family the done show me filter you to fold has been me. up growth a lot of just on these last three or four years going to law. school and say the. very first.

they said just me to 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 break i know a bit of olive person. at that time i was treated like one of the worst phone persons in the world i remember going into this 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 is just an experience that it is going to make your break you you've got to come out a better person are you going to come out of worship person than you were before you went to. being in a hole is mirrors that i wouldn't wish on anybody. were you locked up for twenty three hours do you think you can do it. my words my grandmother just play it over

and over again. and those words with the guy i was going to buy me my dog and. you know what i realize who are which really was what i kept hearing because saying and i am at. my lowest. and. i think right there i realized i had reached my lowest point in life. only on the way for me to go from here. i know that crime and other criminal. already have fed up with both freedom 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 want to lock these rascals up and keep them there for a long time during the one nine hundred eighty s. there was a major shift in the congress and in state legislatures have thout 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 effective all the 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 eliminate 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 . amy was born in nineteen sixteen and she was very very shy but by

the task that in high school people kind of sad it in or she played basketball she made good grades high school that we went to was seventh through twelfth grade and i was kind of the little tagalong sister. me and my brother were friends and i mean my sister were friends just kind of watch sure she was. always really friendly always showing nice this is a small town and everybody knows everybody but she got in trouble we'd know about it period. i had what i consider an idyllic childhood. and some point when i'm in college i mean guy that works for southwest times record the newspaper there in 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 get you know i mean ralston moved to

dallas my gosh no you know mom wants us but she 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 brad 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. 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 why i consider to be a dual personality you know. and that this other character would emerge whenever he

drank 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. move to a different city. who asked sandy. but 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 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 sandy 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. all you have to do is just tell i asked 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 have it wasn't very long after that that my lawyer explained to me exactly what it is that my prosecutor wanted they want to her to wear a wire. and try to m.k. other people people she didn't even know. 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 you you're. paraphrasing. here cooperate or rule ruin your life. or people feed the economy because they buy scratch tickets scratch off lottery tickets they you know when i was living in the ghetto in new york you know the red apple grocery store uptown had the highest prices in town right and

a liquor stores are open ended by you know more expensive in the ghetto and that's how you build an economy it's almost built on the backs of the poor americans built on the slave market america was built on prison labor they get on with what they think the good jobs of america the ne'er do wells it's all very slushy and swell that's over we got to go back to basics. so you. must use those. people most of. what i mean.

thank. you. so. much for your. money. you move. through few thought.

when you look at the lee. headlines here with the imminent departure of u.s. defense secretary james. water is making a comeback after a full page in its name warning. the u.s. congress has criticized the cooperation between the associated press and china's agency saying beijing exploited it for propaganda. and seeks a second meeting with kim jong un a u.s. judge orders pyongyang to pay. it off to being released from north korean custody.