the public sees a need for more prisons because crime is the number one concern to me willingness to move too many inmates in not enough space. and in their crime another. one hundred already have adam with the start of the world it never was a. combination exploding in america with all of this going to. prison population or just want to. die. that 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 with prison or in jail.

through the most important thing. 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 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 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 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. 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. it's been the way. this was you guys know the numbers so can we be with. the. next chapter. 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 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 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 the local and state level and then in the one nine hundred seventy distorts changes so that by now the rate of incarceration issue why just over seven hundred and three of course are issue for african-americans is over four thousand four hundred dollars and so you have to wonder how does what changed why did this half century of stability get ended with this dramatic increase 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 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 goal it will be six hundred million dollars this year more money will be needed in the field and virtually everybody saw 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 below 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 that was very scary 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 nephew was was too much drugs my niece was doing drugs my sisters were 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 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 a kind of withdrew from a lot of things i didn't talk as much of a 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 here and there with the. in the hallway and i used to be a hopeful 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 or something and at that we started talking we got to know each other you know at the walk at home many times in and out over our house. you know my home. was a 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 i kind of 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 trip narcotics and they started watching me and follow me around the stuff like that and i remember the first time. that they raided my house i wasn't there but my mother was there and i was so i think i just turned seventeen and 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 those. still in high school and we missed the part. when i got out i remember the detective telling me

that as soon as i turn eighteen they're going to come back and get me and if i don't straighten out my life that first spears will 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. 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 bring powerful new laws on day two of a new campaign against drug 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 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 life and how far i had fallen she said to me you know jason would 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 find your darkest hour and only there when you realize who you truly are and i heard her but i really didn't hear her. and i left her house that

they skip and then 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 your 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 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 try i told my laura that you know we just had to try to get all the charges pushed together get me one senses because too much time and over the street not my life i remember pacifically the judge sits in just telling me. element to tom losing. and he said tracy you was convicted in one nine hundred eighty nine 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 charge for you. so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy. let it be an arms race is on offense very dramatic development only closely i'm going to resist

i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical time to sit down and talk. what holds us to. put themselves on the line they get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president. or some want to. have to go right to be precise this is what before three of them or can't be good. interested in the waters and how. this should. the direction too would judge to sentence can be done in two ways you can say judge . here's a crime in 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 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 reagan was five years needed three minimum five grams of crack cocaine grams like this we go. again years minimum is fifty grand of crack cocaine just like the weight of a kid or these are tiny quantities 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 thousand. now it's well over two hundred pounds this is a growth that no one could have imagined mass incarceration in the u.s. is really unique in human history there's 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 winter for. numbers i mean i find it a bit disturbing that we are prisoners from china and they have a billion people and 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 story here

a line and the police found it and they came after me i ended up literally holding the bag. i knew nothing about the criminal justice system you know here i was this middle class. career never even a parking ticket and it was quite a surprise when we went to cork. i had that kind of time marijuana. and i was charged with possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute money going to conspiracy to murder i received a total of fifty five year prison sentence the judge suspended all but six i was fortunate. to make first rule 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 quit 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 what did the message mean to your family to know their family was there 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 either of you seen. this show so lives are going to grow believe fishier is that you don't feel. doesn't your fault just very good nothing shows phone anyone else in the family love does it show me filter you to the polls just build me. up

growth a lot of this town these last three or four years going to the last. go. swan say the. very first. they said is 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 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 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 wouldn't wish on anybody. but you locked up for twenty three hours i think you can do is. my words my 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 you know what i realize who are actually was and what i kept hearing that because saying i am at my door now i am at my lowest. and. i think right there. i have reached my last point to. you only on the way for me to go from here. another crime another criminal in a country that already have fed up with both rio is right politician for the solution is simple crackdown the reason the criminal justice system isn't working is that we're not sending enough people to jail and keeping there long enough that

people are saying general way that they will to lock these rascals up and 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 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 effective 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 who is born in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight and she was very very shy but by the task that in high school people can a sad event or play basketball made good grades high school that we went to a seventh or twelfth grade i was kind of the loan. tagalong sister amy and my brother were friends and i mean my sister we're friends just kind of watch sure she was. always really friendly and 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 me ralston moved to dallas my gosh no you know mom what's was she 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. moved to a different city. saying. that he wouldn't leave her i just kept saying you know let's be friends let's be friends he wanted it to be more so he told me that he was going to europe and then i never heard anything for a while 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 write to me an attorney 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 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 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. my lawyer explained to me exactly what it is that my prosecutor want and they want 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 it she said i don't know they speak on i'm not going to do this and this prosecutor said you your former it down to paraphrase a man to cooperate or will ruin your lives.

my seven years doing drugs my nephew's was still in drugs my sister just with doing drugs it was like an epidemic of drug abuse america's public enemy number one in the united states is drug abuse he started going after the users in the prison population sewer we started treating sick people people who are addicted to these drugs like criminals while i was on the hill i increasingly became convinced that the war on drugs was a mistake there are countless numbers of people who are in prison for inconceivable sentences for minor minor offenders in the drug trade it's a lot watching your children grow up and miss you in wave and say by daddy as you're walking out of the business it's just it doesn't get easier. you know

world of big part of the lot and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that midstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door. and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now for washing clothes for watches. the hawks. the wrong car oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh when we think about it and they couldn't go it is no way right. now. not oh. by. the grace.

oh boy. our breaking news this hour tension builds in lots of america where venice will a self-proclaimed interim president. calls for a military officer rising while the government say's it's currently putting don i believe it. also coming up a u.s. army veteran turned alleged isel sympathizer is arrested in california for plotting attacks against christians and jews officials believe he was seeking revenge for the new zealand mosque shooting. a russian student who attempted to join islamic state talks to our t.v. about her term meant to stun the hopes for rehabilitation but she's released from prison after serving half person it's.