as 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 porn 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. and a parent in that camera. and that they can look at them and say you know 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 before we. are ready to serve everybody. is going to go. on to do the best they can to stay out of this belief. for. goodness. it's been the way.

this was you guys in good numbers can we be with. the. next chapter. from one thousand twenty two one thousand nine hundred seventy this whole half century of american history the rate of incarceration was roughly level or about one hundred ten per one hundred thousand. and this is a broad span of our history this is because 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 two all the social turbulence through this whole period the rate of incarceration is roughly level in

the united states at about one hundred ten from 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 seventy three requests are issue for african-americans is over four thousand three hundred dollars and so you have to wonder how does what 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'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 to states helped by real.

the need for money to deal with this problem i am glad that in this administration we have increased the amount of money for handling the problem of dangerous drugs seven it will be six hundred million dollars this year more money will be needed to do it and 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 them new prosecutors to convict them and new prisons to hold them. we move the train when i was very young we moved here we moved you know to malone's we used to always roll up and down the hallways of course it was the projects so sometime 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 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 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 different in their lives but there was not the not to

do about it to change their lifestyle. that 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. 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 here and there with the. in the hallway and i used to be a hopeful monitor and out with a scene 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 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 walk in our home many times in and out over our house. you know my home. wasn't really a home compared to our house margaret grew up with her parents before the parents all the nice decent house great mother great father home 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 it's pretty much you know once we started going to get i was pretty was there in our house and in fourteen 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 living this day with morgan and 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 the high school and they kind of got to know me very well and i guess they relayed that information to the trip 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 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 visually i turned myself in a seventeen i let my mother go and i first time you ever going to joe i went to you found because i was. i was always those. still in high school and we missed the part. when i got out i remember the detective telling me that you know as soon as i turn eighteen there's going to come back. 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 to a 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 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 those obviously are far more users than are operations major operations in. we started treating sick people people who were addicted to these drugs one member a member 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 tracy i want to always pray for you and i'm going to pray that you change your life around. and one of the things that she said that stuck with me was dead you know god is going to find 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 skipped dinner and i want to 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 the car. and i remember being stopped at a light and get now switching drivers i got around to the passenger side and she took to 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 just telling me that now i'm a two time 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 time is going to be a charm for you. 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 sleep. i'm facing christmas alone out on the streets of london. well you know not to be a tough. the lorry load. you know to snort it still give out food for the homeless. as you don't really feel like you know. and then. the guy just came over to me saw me in. his book.

the country's gone into a nihilistic fever. thank you. and get out to traveling across america to find what makes america the charlatans the genius of this is the quintessential american hero this is it we found the point around which element is gone something we always are on the current system. called culture. where starting last with is going to headed east into the swamp we're going into the belly of the beast i think i want to leave now doesn't get him oregon town and this may be completely different and a mystery. welcome to the crystal ball edition of crosstalk what can we expect in the new year we have a great lineup of guests telling us what they think.

the direction too would joy 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. we are in this range from probation to some term of years imprisonment 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 into let sensing legislation so piracy on the high seas in like seven hundred ninety s. 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 us 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 bush was five years needed three 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 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. i don't care it's a mandatory minimum when president reagan signed the mandatory minimums in ninety six the federal prison population was thirty six thousand. now it's well over two hundred thousand this is a growth that no one could have imagined mass incarceration in the us is really unique in human history there is no democratic nation that's ever tried to have such a mass social experiment as we've done in incarceration and we've got more prisoners than any other country in the world and over by rate and 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 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 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 and i got a 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. is the cards that we've put in with the messages. and i asked the families to respond so we've gotten some really good responses and this one was three fam up three members of the family viewed it . and we ask what were the ages of the children who saw it should put just want to put sex. she says an extremely meaningful for the daughter of the mother who was incarcerated she loved that. we all did. and this one said what did the message mean to your family to know their family was ok that's a huge part these children want to know that their families i mean their mom or dad

so ok what is the sole shoulders they do you know it's been three years since each of you seen. mr jones looms going to agree 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 fail or the done show me phil are you going to fold has been the. role of a lot of this town is west through four years going to. go. swan say the. very first. they said is me to go one year administrative segregation and administrative segregation is twenty three hour long going to the you locked up twenty three hours each day you come out for half hour shower and a half hour. i know a bit of all

a person. at that time i was treated like one of them were thrown 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 breaking. you going 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 wouldn't wish on anybody. where you locked up for twenty three hours i think you can do it. my words my grandmother just kept playing over and over again in my mind and those words was the guy i was going to fire me at my door because i. know it there what i realize who are actually was what i kept hearing because saying i am at. my lowest point. and. i think right there i realized i had reached my lowest point in life and that the

only on the way for me to go from here. another crime another criminal kind of thing that already fed up with the real is right politician for to solution a 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 in a very general way that they want to lock these rascals up and keep of there for a long shot 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 deter. aman 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 it was only nineteen sixteen and she was very very shy but by the task that in high school people can decide 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. 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 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 and 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. 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 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 that 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 spend 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 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 is rushed by law. enforcement people are screaming and have been going 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 mine this isn't somebody that i really want to confide in and 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 that i'm not going to do this and this prosecutor said you need. paraphrasing you know. cooperate or will ruin your life. that comes you call russia no one has ever known one has ever heard about that country never even heard about mosco.

kill . kill. kill kill kill. kill. kill. kill. kill you. that is your last us does. it with the

people most of. all what i mean. i make. the. locals to give me something he can use he has enough to fight. once you're in the form of the media. and people many people for them it's been my will.

which biggest stories from international justice small experiment the democratic party group explain the way alleged interference in the alabama state election and investigation has been launched over the group that fake russian social media books would lead to discredit a republican accountable for the big stories plus they. will fury in front of us protesters again out on the streets for a seventh consecutive weekend in running battles with police on. the information the freedom of information that helps expose the high level corruption of wrongdoing in the u.s. comes under pressure authorities when the right now.