another country we've seen it before and we are not going to tolerate it again. that's on news half an hour i'll be back at the top of the next hour with more updates but please stay with us here on out in stossel for a documentary called incarcerating us. when we bankrupt president were bothered by government at all that is there is about them so you can see them as institutions completely divorced from your mom 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 the state. too many inmates in not enough space to. another

crime another. country and already have and i'm with the start of what. was a. combination explosion in america with all of this going to prison population or just want to. respond to. 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 jail. 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 baskets be 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 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. readiness of everybody that. i was going to go. i'm going to do the best they can to stay out of this booth. for. good this. been away from. this once you guys in good numbers can we be with.

the. next chapter. from nineteen twenty 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 the ruhr in twenties 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 man 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 ninety 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 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 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 to do it virtually everybody saw it 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 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 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 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 a. 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 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 at 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 they were in our house and they were two years old it 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 trip narcotics and they started watching me and follow me around or 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 ventured i turned myself in a seventeen i let my mother go and i first time you ever going to joe i want to be you found us because i was. i was always the juvenile still in high school and we missed the prom. badge when i got out i remember the detective telling me that you know as soon as i turn eighteen it is going to come back. 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 to a dull facility. most historians look at the origin of the war on drugs as something of president nixon with his speeches and his creation of of the d.n.a. and other agencies in the one nine hundred seventy s. but the war in drugs as we understand it with fluently 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 bre powerful new laws on day two of a new campaign against drugs the president backed up a tough talk with action for getting tough on drugs and we mean business it's

almost like overnight we had discrete idea what we go after the users. and that's what we did we started going after the users in a prison populations who are. obviously there far more users than her operations major operations and. we started treating sick people people who were addicted to drugs when i remember 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 trace there will always pray for you and i'm going to pray that you change your life around. here one of the things that she said that stuck with me. 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 the house that they give a dinner and i 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 your

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 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 citizen just telling me that element to time loser . and he said tracy you was convicted in one thousand nine hundred you know you can begin again in one thousand nine hundred eighty he said come back before me for the third time in a third time is going to be a charge you. don't

. join me every thursday on the alec simon show and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics sports business i'm showbusiness i'll see you then. international memorial awards twenty nine c. the now open for entries. the media professionals are eligible whether you are a freelance journalist work full terms of media or part of a global news platform to participate in sunday published works and video all written. go to award dot altie dot com and enter now.

for. what point. the direction to a judge to sentence can be done in two ways you can say a judge. hears 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

. 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. 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 lee 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 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 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 one 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 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 we went to court. i had that kind of time marijuana. and i was

charged with possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute my 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 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 family 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 was incarcerated she loved it. we all did. and this one what did the message mean to your family to know their family was ok

and. the huge part these children want to know that their families have had their mom or dad so ok. this is their sole shoulder so to go no it's been three years to see if you see. this show so lives are very relieved ratio here is that you don't feel. doesn't your fault just very good love the show phone anyone else in the family love done show me feel you to fold has been me. in the role of a lot of just on these last three or four years going to the last. known. swan to say the. very first. they said is me too one year administrative segregation and administrative segregation is twenty three hour long going to be locked up twenty three hours each

day you come out for half hour shower and a half hour break i know a bit of olive person. at that time i was treated like one of the worst phone persons in the world i remember going into this i believe maybe if i buy a cell. i was dead or close i knew i was going to be there for the next year is just an experience that it is going to make your break you 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 that 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 what they're what i realize who are actually was and when i kept hearing that because saying 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 of life that you only know the way for me to go from here. another crime another criminal kind of thing 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 to jail and keeping there long enough that people are saying general way that they were to lock these rascals up and keep them there for a long part 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 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 . only us born in one thousand nine hundred sixty and she was very very shy but by the task that in high school people can sadder than or she played basketball made good grades high school that we went to a seventh or twelfth grade 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 only 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 idyllic childhood. and some point when i'm in college i mean guy that works for southwest times record the newspaper there in fort smith arkansas and he asked me if i would be a subject for him to go out and take some modeling photos we went to like several locations and he instilled in me that i really ought to pursue a modeling career consider my mother says to me ralston live to dallas my gosh no you know mom what's was she thinking what 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. he. moved to a different city and they sadly 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 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 various then details but said that he had been

arrested for manufacturing ecstasy and that he wanted to retain an attorney for him there in dallas it was a pretty interesting revelation but i did there was money in the safe that was in the house in dallas and i took that money and i retained an attorney to go over and meet with him in germany. seven months after sandy has been arrested and i pull into the garage of my car 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. explain 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 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 there for a so you know you have cooperated will ruin your life. next as a financial survival does stacey let's learn the outfield let's say i'm a troika and your police. have to fight wall street fraud thank you for.

the story that's right if you looked at slavery. they could come and blow our brains out at any given time if we can really do with the thing that actually america is the only country in the world where you can kill people. war illegally get away with. all the fire crawls stillbirth all the trouble here's the point it's hollow for you to k.k.k. exists because america wants it to exist though the biggest terrorist group to ever operate in this country and they're dead to me they're worse all in the people who destroyed the world trade centers are those. wife. what.

made a celebrations all drowned out across europe instead mauled by mass rallies and violence i'm darius. the u.s. attorney general testifies in front of the senate over his handling of the report findings as democrats demond the will involved immediate resignation saying he misled the public. and wiki leaks founder julian assange is sentenced in britain and to fifty weeks in prison for skipping bad and twenty twelve spending the next seven years in london as we're doing and this is.