by the way bankrupt pres are bothered by government at all that is or is about those they perceive them as destitution is completely divorced from human so. the justice department said today the inmate population of federal and state prisons in this country is at an all time high. the public sees a need for more prisons because crime is the number one concern of the people in this thing. too many inmates in not enough space. in their crime another. country and already have and i'm with the start of a. combination explosion in america when my daughter. says i'm going towards want to. die. right or is it our time to i'm.

a shocking new number was released today that deserves our undivided attention one out of every one hundred americans is now behind bars walked up to 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 are

punished right along with. they have found people don't think so but the collateral consequences of somebodies incarceration affects 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. 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. in that camera. and they can look at them and say. that 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. misguided goal. i'm glad to have been away from. this once you got to know the numbers can we be with. the. next chapter. from one thousand nine hundred to one thousand nine hundred

seventy this whole half century of american history the rate of incarceration was roughly level 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 one nine hundred seventy this all changes so that by now the rate of incarceration issue why just over seven hundred. requests are issue for african-americans is over four thousand

four hundred dollars and so you have to wonder how does she why did this half century of stability get ended with this dramatic increase in incarceration in spades america's public enemy number one in the united states is drug abuse once the federal government decided that we were going to have war on drugs they were able to then take a lot of money. the federal budget then send it out to states alex i realize the need for money to deal with this problem i am glad to be understood 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 of both parties and you know district attorneys

and elected sheriff 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 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 x. and i know it had done something to me you know drugs from our scale that time was

hard all the way or 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. when 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 on 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 then within 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 in like black with weight . 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. was a really a home compared to her house margaret grew up with her parents before the parents all 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 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 were another 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 the but i kind of started you know liveness there were more than a very young age. by the time i was sixteen seventeen hour. it's fully engulfed in a drug game and if 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 detective back then they had to take that one dice 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 near and i was i think i just

turned seventeen. and they locked her up and i got a phone call saying and 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 to joe i went to you found because i was an eighteen i was always the juvenile we were 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 give 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 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 reward drugs as we understand it with. enormous 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. three powerful new laws on day two of his new campaign against drugs the president backed up as 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 a far more user center operations major operations and. we started treating sick people people who were addicted to drugs when

a member talked to my grandmother and having a conversation with her about my wife and how far i had fallen she said to me you know trace it will always pray for you and i'm going to pray that you change your life around. so one of the things that she said to stuck with me was that you know god is going to far in your darkest hour and 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 streets. i remember going to new york to cobb then coming back from new york coming down route one coming through union 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 because there was a time and hopefully straight not my life but i remember pacifically the judge sits in joe's telling me. element to tom loser. and he said tracy hughes convicted in one thousand nine hundred you can begin again in one thousand nine hundred eighty he said come back before me for the third time in the third term is going to be a chore for you. financial wild i'll buy a i prized homage teachers. face the friday as a. some of my ex missions are. what politicians do something. they put themselves on the line and they get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president. or somehow want to press.

you to go right to the press this is like the full story in the morning can't be good. i'm interested always in the was in the house. first sip. i had a great education a good job and a family that loved me. i never had to worry about how i would eat some where i would sleep. i'm facing christmas alone out on the streets of london. on. the oriel a grown up. you know just annoyed it will still give out 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 and gave me this book.

the direction to a judge to sentence can be done in two ways you can say a 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 for. 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 issue or so you can see what the public was concerned about and then congress took that concern and translated it into law until it sensing 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 his 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 growing. 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 in incarceration and we've got more

prisoners than any other country in the window for. numbers i mean i find it a bit disturbing that we have more prisoners from china and they have a billion more people and 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 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 i went to cork and 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 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 should quit just want to get sick. she says an extremely meaningful for the daughter of a mother who was incarcerated she loved. we all did. and this one said our what in the message you mean to your family to know their

family was ok that's a huge part these children want to know that their families have had their mom or dad so ok. this is the sole shoulders there to go no it's been three years to see of you seen. miss jones looms very leverage here is that you've done three. dozen sure folks just very good enough to join the phone do you want to listen to family love done show me for go do you to fold has been me. growth a lot of this town these last three or four years going to law. school and say the. very first. they said is me to one year administrative segregation and ministry of 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. it was dead or close i knew i was going to be here for the next year is this 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. being in a hole is mirrors and you know i wouldn't wish on anybody. were you locked up for twenty three hours i think you can do is bogus. 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. you know what i realize who are ritually was what i kept hearing because they and i

am at. my lowest. and. they were right there i realized i had reached my lowest point in life. the only on the way for me to go from here. i know that crime and other criminal kind of thing that i already have set up with bro real 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 of 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 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 . amy was born in nineteen sixteen and she was very very shy but by the task that in high school people can sat 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 we're 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 she says 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 and 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 lived to dallas my gosh no you know mom what's was 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 with 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 i consider to be a dual personality. 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 and they sadly sandy. 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 the 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 spend details but said that he had been

arrested for manufacturing ecstasy and that he wanted to reach me turning for him there 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 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 destroy 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 wanted her to wear a wire. and try to m.k. other people people she didn't even know and. she would she refused to do it she said i don't know they speak on i'm not going to do this and this prosecutor said you know you're down paraphrasing you here cooperate or will ruin your lives. join me every thursday on the excitement and i'll be speaking to get us to the world of politics sports business i'm sure i'll see you there.

well so you will be in luck that is your last year's does do you know that was what gave us it would the people most of congress or not all what i mean. to make it was. really a local superman from a week in which he has you know he lives by if. he was you know it was the home of the media. i'm with you more with the baby when within them what i'm most most in the woman he was a few minutes but my will. we will start to feel. just

. like a neat little. body shows unique footage from the russian defense ministry first full public test run all the new hypersonic strategic missile pull out on god.