today that deserves our undivided attention one out of every one hundred americans is now behind bars locked up in prison or in jail. the most important thing. is to talk from your heart if you have more than one child give a like an overall message but then do an individual one to each child throw them a kiss talk to them about what you do daily the rest should be just you if you've written a poor we've had people pray we've had people saying one guy showed his little boy how to shoot a basket the creative. these are gifts to your children. the families are punished right along with. they have found people don't think so but the collateral consequences of somebodies incarceration effects 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 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. then this isn't your fault you did nothing wrong it means a lot and for many of these men and women it's the first time they've really taken responsibility which is huge and that's a first step in recovery of any kind anytime is to take responsibility for.

but even with. this little. episode everybody. is going to go. on to do the best they can to stay out of this booth. for. good this. been away from. this once you got to know the numbers can we be with. the. last 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 four 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 this all changes so that by now the rate of incarceration issue why just over seven hundred and three requests 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 in

incarceration in spades of america's public enemy number one in the united states is drug abuse once the federal government decided that we were going to have war on drugs they were able to then take a lot of money 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 drugs seven goal it will be six hundred million dollars this year more money will be needed in the future virtually everybody's on 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 malone's we used to always well up and down the hallways of course it was the projects so some time 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 skate 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 a kind of withdrew from a lot of things i didn't talk as much i was very quiet on probably as early as my teenage years. 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.

our own. 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 stationed right in front of his locker so when i knew that he was coming to his locker i would put my hands up and like black youth wait. so he would have to say excuse me or 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. was a really a home compared to her house margaret grew up with her parents before the parents or the nice decent house great mother great father. something that i didn't have and i started you know just being around her a lot and being around family a lot and next thing you know you know i was pretty much you know once we started

going to get i was pretty was never in our house and 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 liveness day with morgan at a very young age. by the time i was sixteen seventeen i was fully engulfed in the drug game in britain 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 on i guess they relayed that information to the trade narcotics and they started watching me and follow me around the 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 you know your mother was locked up and they want you to turn yourself in. so i visually i turned myself in a seventeen

a let my mother go and i first time you ever going to joe i went to you found because i was. eighteen i was always those. still in high school and we missed the prom. when i got out i remember the detective telling me that you know 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 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 reward drugs as we understand it with food 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 sounds like overnight we had discrete idea what we go after the users. and that's what we did we started going after the users in a prison populations who are. obviously a far more user center operations major operations and. we started treating sick people people who were addicted to drugs might remember 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 jason would always pray for you and i'm going to pray that you change your life around. here one of the things that she said to stuck with me was that you know god is going to far in your darkest hour and only there when you realize who you truly your and i heard her but i really didn't hear her. and i left her house that they skip and then i went right back out into the streets. i remember going to new york on the cob when coming back from new york coming down route one coming through union county we had drugs in the car and we had a gun in a car. and i remember being stopped at a light and get now switching drivers i got around to the passenger side and she took 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 not my life

but i remember pacifically the judge sits in just telling me. element to tom loser . and he said tracy you could bring to the one nine hundred eighty you know you can begin again in one nine hundred eighty eight he said come back before me for the third time in a third time is going to be a chore for you. financial while i don't buy a i prized amish teacher's. face almost as if i may as well. some of my ex from the future. was kaiser. any head of state to be leader photo doesn't. get their shot at the looks funny that we often see the swelling in wrinkles to sue mr he was drinking in that suit so where he will use it even though we know mostly focused on the political aspects

that are. discussed object side of no interest to us because they're still praying sister therefore we tried to do something for that to play joe they're still. planning. on there were a. total. or not he didn't. owe your. post gets to move for you. 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 in prison and the other way is to say judge you must impose some minimum number of years or months of imprisonment and go up 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 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 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 when he 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 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 girls 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. we have more prisoners than any other country in the. numbers i mean i find it a bit disturbing that we have more prisoners from china and they have a billion more people in need i don't think it gives people enough when they hear that we have twenty five percent of the world's prison population and only five percent of the world's population in other words we are way over incarcerating compared to any other country in the world.

had allowed. somebody is a storage area. and 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 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 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 extremely meaningful for the daughter of a mother who is incarcerated she loved it. we all did. and. what did the message mean. your family to know their family was ok it's a huge park 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 that in three years or so you have you seen. this show so lives are very leverage here is that you don't feel. doesn't your fault just very good love the show phone you want to listen to family

love done show me for go to you to fold has been me. up growth a lot of this town these last three or four years going to law. school to say the. very first. they said there's 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 the worst phone persons in the world i remember going into that say oh 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

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 you know i wouldn't wish on anybody. but 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 farm in my darkest hour you know and there what i realize who are actually was and what i kept hearing that because. and i am at. my lowest. and. i think right there. i have reached my lowest point in life that you only know the way for me to go from here. another crime another criminal hundred already fed up with both freedom 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 of there for a long time during the one nine hundred eighty s. there was a major shift in the congress and in state legislatures 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 was was not just to increase the sentences that people were exposed to so that 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 eliminate 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 it was born in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight and she was very very shy about attach that in high school people confided in her she played basketball she made good grades high school that we went to was. i went through twelfth grade and i was kind of the little tagalong sister. me and my brother were friends and i mean my sister we're friends just kind of watch sure she was. always really friendly only showing nice this is a small town and everybody knows everybody but she got in trouble we'd know about it period. i had what i consider an idyllic childhood and some point when i'm in

college i mean guy that works for southwest times record the newspaper there and 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'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 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 had to leave all my friends behind and completely. moved to a different city i am a 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 the word got back to me that he'd been arrested. i hadn't been in dallas in over a year so of the only thing i knew to do it 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 he had been arrested for manufacturing ecstasy and that he wanted to return to turning 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 as rushed by law enforcement people who are screaming and have a gun out and they're pointing at my face i'm being told you know you're in hot water we know that your husband was arrested we know you know we know you visited him in germany and they said we know you have information and all you have to do is just tell us what you know and i wasn't going to say anything because i'm literally watching these people destroying my mom this isn't somebody that i really want to confide in. so i have it wasn't very long after that that my lawyer explained to me exactly what it is that my prosecutor 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 phrasing you know you here cooperate or will ruin your lot. with hopes and. you put themselves on the line to get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be present and. some want to it's. actually going to be for us to see what will befall three of them or can people get. interested always in the waters of. this should. they can come and blow our brains out at any given time if we can't really do with the thing actually america is the only country in the world where you can kill

people outside of war and legally get away with. all the fire crawls stillbirth all the trouble here's the point it's hollow ploy to k.k.k. exists because america wants it to exist the of 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 of the scroll. position folks go through a period of sort of total war but some go it's just bush bloody. murder would be yeah well the money would be needed it was my go to the. losing is its appeal is up on the good of the team you know that all you want the solicitor going

to bring on the enemy at the state is a cheap labor silly was that mean that you'll no ball. end up well it was pretty good way to lose a. little bit of what you still do which could be oh i would only be done long ago but i come. near to you with. your money you know did you storm the lead you so my looked up from mood subversion are doing the clue a trick of preferred some are good. odds . yet. i'm.

working its way up toward like i got one point zero. zero. may day celebrations are drowned out across europe instead marred by mass rallies milans and the ransoms. the train general testifies to the senate democrats accuse him of misleading the public on the media report. and we founder julian assange just sentenced to fifteen weeks in prison in the u.k. for skipping the female back in two thousand and twelve when he claimed asylum door and empathy. for the latest on the store.