by the way bankrupt pres are bothered by government at all that is or is about them save us see 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 state. too many inmates in not enough space. in their crime another. one hundred already have and i'm with the start of what. was a. combination of an american with all of this going to prison population or just want to. die in prison are going to die.

a shocking new number was released today and it 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. as to talk from your heart if you have more than one child given 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 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 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 if 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. this little. readiness of everybody that. i was going to go to. i'm going to do the best they can to stay out of this booth. for. good this. been away from. this once you got to know the numbers so can we be with. the. next chapter. from one thousand nine hundred eighty 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 per 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'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 disorder changes so that by now the rate of incarceration issue white is over seven hundred and three of course are issue for

african-americans is over four thousand four hundred and so you have to wonder how does what she why did this half century of stability get up ended with this dramatic increase of 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 war on drugs they were able to then take a lot of money from the federal budget and send it out to states of health i really . 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 drivers seven it will be six hundred million dollars this year more money will be needed in the field 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 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 mellow 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 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 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'd at that time i didn't know how i felt you know i was sad because i felt like they were shunned in their lives but there was nothing i could 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 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. family you tend to trust family when i first saw him and then with a. in the hallway and i used to be a hall before monitor and i was station right in front of his locker so when i knew that he was coming to his locker i would put my he is that unlike black youth weight. 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 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 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 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 it but a kindness started you know living 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 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 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 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. eighteen i was always. still in high school and we missed the part. when i got out i remember the detective telling me that as soon as i turned eighteen and it was 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 into 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. 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 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

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 that one 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 scaled down and i went right back out into the streets. i remember going to new york on the cob 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 round 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

trial i told my laura that you know we just have 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 joe's telling me. element to tom loser. and he said tracy hughes convicted in one nine hundred eighty you know 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 chore you. must on no more consider and the mustn't be against india encouraging animosity among to its national interest any one of its neighbors as a good skateboarder this is way above is not is very different then where. then india right now if they go on this trajectory unfortunately even not being able to

be responsibly is in this region this meeting has suffered for far too long because of this ongoing conflict between these two giants in the region. after the previous stage of my career was over everyone wondered what i was going to do next the different clubs on one hand it is logical to sort of go from fields where everything is familiar on the other i wanted a new challenge and a fresh perspective and i'm used to suppressing. or not if you think. i'm going to talk about football not three or else you can think i was going to go . by the way what is that that's like here. the direction to would 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 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 issue or 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. 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 congress 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 grams like this 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 sentence 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 dollars and 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'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 people and we do i don't think it gives people an i was 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 story here a mine and police found it and they came after me i ended up literally holding the bag. i knew nothing about the criminal justice system here i was this middle class. career never even a parking ticket and it was quite a surprise when we went to court 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 the first parole 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 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 extremely meaningful for the daughter of a mother who is incarcerated she loved it. we all did. and this one said what did the message mean to your family to know their family was ok and it's a huge part of these children who want to know that their families i mean their mom or dad's ok. there's. been three years to see. miss jones looms. very leverage here is that you don't feel. doesn't your fault

just very good love the show phone the one else in the family love done show me feel you to fold has been me. in 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 just me to 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 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 say oh i believe that maybe if i buy

a cell. i was dead or close i knew i was going to be there for the next year is this an experience that it is going to make your break you know you're 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 and i know i wouldn't wish on anybody. but you locked up for twenty three hours i think you can do is one of the words i want to 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 you know what they're what i realize who are actually was and what i kept hearing that because sand i am at my door now i am at my lowest point. and. i think right there i realized i had reached my lowest point to life and that the only on the way for me to go from here. i'm not. crime another criminal in

a country that already 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 in jail and keeping there long enough that people are saying general way that they will to lock these rascals up and keep him there for a long gone through 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 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 one thousand nine hundred sixty eight and she was very very shy about attach that in high school people can sad it in or she played basketball she made good grades high school that we went to a seven hundred twelve grade i was kind of the little tagalong sister. my brother were friends and i mean my sister her friends just kind of watch sure she was. always really friendly always showing nice this is a small town. everybody knows everybody should get 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. what she's thinking what's she going to do and 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. move to a different city. sandy. but he wouldn't leave her i just kept saying you know let's be friends let's be friends he wanted to. to be more so

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 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 the attorney. seven months after sandy has been arrested and i pull into the garage of my car is 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 says it's somebody that i really want to confide in so i add 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 employ a people people she didn't even know. and. she would she refused to

do it she said i don't roll on i'm not going to do this and this prosecutor said you. ruin your lack. of a all. you

all this is all the groups. you should see to. put themselves on the line to get accepted or rejected. so when you want to express. i want. to go right to be

close but she was before three of the more people. interested always at the water's edge. there should. president trump reverses an abomination of a rule which required officials to disclose the number of civilian deaths from drone strikes. washington councils the us visas of seventy seven officials links to the venezuelan president and the latest round of sanctions against caracas. desperate families in war torn yemen all marrying off children as young just their weight and exchange for food that's according to a new report by the charity oxfam this is the one leaving the family i mean they can very. bring some diary just template parameters of

all the latest on these stories head to our website. coming.