an explosion in america with all of this one. hundred dollars more. regard 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 locked up in prison or in jail. through. 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 porn we've had people pray we've had people saying one guy showed his little boy how to shoot a basket the creative. these are gifts to your children. the families are punished right along with. they have found people don't think so but the collateral consequences of somebodies incarceration affects not just that whole family but it affects the whole community and affects you as an individual or the you know whether or not and whether you know that person or not that's incarcerated. get to inform. you should care. i have a background in film and video as a producer and i thought there's got to be something i can do so why not combine my career and my experience with the prison system and come up with something for these kids. and a parent in that camera. and that they can look at and say. 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. is to take responsibility for. but even with. this. very minute. i was going to go. 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 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 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 from hundred times and this reflects you know the policies of police departments and prosecutors and judges operating all over the country in local and state level and then in one nine hundred seventy this all

changes so that by now the rate of incarceration issue why just over seven hundred seventy three requests are issue for african-americans is over four thousand three hundred dollars and so you have to wonder how does one cheat why did this half century of stability get ended with this dramatic increase of incarceration in. 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 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 ball it will be six hundred million dollars this year more money will be

needed to do it 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 sheriffs everybody wanted to get in to drug cases and get aggressive about new laws to punish them new agents to arrest them new prosecutors to convict them and new prisons to hold them. we move the train when i was very young we moved here we moved you know to malone's we used to always roll up and down the hallways of course it was the projects so sometime we will sneak up on the roof which was the top floor twelfth floor and you know look out and of course i was very scared as a young child but you know when you live in a projects it's always so much stuff that you can get into my brother was tragically killed when he was ran over by a truck and i remember pacifically going to the corner with

a habanera and seeing all the blood because they left all the blood still in the street a traumatic experience of losing my only brother and that truck eggs and i know it had done something to me you know drugs from our state that time was hard all the way or because my son was doing drugs my nephews was too much drugs my niece was doing drugs my sisters with doing drugs it was like an epidemic. of drug abuse. and i cannot explain. i cannot explain my feelings because i had at that time i didn't know how i felt you know i was sad because i felt like they were different in their lives but there was not the not to do about it to change their lifestyle. that was it. after my brother passed away i kind of withdrew from

a lot of things i didn't talk as much i was very quiet 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. 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 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 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. was a really

a home compared to her house margaret grew up with her parents before the parents all 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 it's pretty much you know once we started going to get i was pretty was there 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 a kindness 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 a 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 and stuff like that and i remember the first time that they that they raided my house i wasn't there but my mother was there and i was i think i just turned seventeen. and they locked her up and i got a phone call saying that you know your mother was locked up and they want you to turn yourself in. so i 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. eighteen i was always those. still in high school and we missed the part. i got out i remember the detective telling me that you know soon as i turn eighteen there's 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 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 you know tracy it 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 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 to cobb then coming back from new york coming down route one coming through union county we had drugs in the car and we had a gun in the car. and i remember being stopped at

a light and get now switching drivers i got 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 try. i told my laura that you know we just had to try to get all the charges pushed together give me one set is because too much time and over the street not my life i remember pacifically the judge sits in just telling me. element to tom loser. and he said tracy you who could break the one nine hundred eighty you know you can begin again in one thousand nine hundred eight he said come back before me for the third time in the third time is going to be a chore you. have international memorial awards twenty nineteen are now open for entries all media professionals are eligible whether you are a freelance journalist work for alternative media or part of

a global news platform to participate send us your published works and video all written for much go to award dot altie dot com. then to now. any head of state to be leader photo. is a must if there are subtle looks funny that we often see the swelling i mean it will suit us that is going she was drinking in that suit so where we will use it even though we don't mostly focus on as a political aspects that are taught i don't discuss subjects side of life and don't interest to us because they're still playing sisters therefore we try to do something fun let's play a joke or salute. the need to know a. number were

a. total wrong. 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 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 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 a grams like this we. gain 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 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 dollars. 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's no democratic nation that's ever tried to have such a mess social experiment as we've done that incarceration and we've got more prisoners than any other country in the world and her. numbers i mean i find it a bit disturbing that we are prisoners from china and they have a billion more people than we do i don't think it gives people enough when they hear that we have twenty five percent of the world's prison population and only five percent of the world's population in other words we are way over incarcerating compared to any other country in the world. had allowed. somebody is a 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 court. 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 should put just want to

put six she says an extremely meaningful for the daughter of the mother who is a good. are separated she loved that. we all did. and this one said our what in the message you mean to your family to know their family was ok that's a huge part these children want to know that their families have had their mom or dad say ok. this is the sole shoulders they need to go no it's been three years either of you seen. this show salutes going to agree leave or issue here is that you don't agree. doesn't your fault just very good nothing shows phone anyone else in the family of done but show me filter you to fold has been me. the role of the law in this town these last three or four years going to law. school and 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 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. were you locked up for twenty

three hours i think you can do it. my words my grandmother just kept playing over and over again i'm on mine. in those words was the guy i was going to buy me my dog and. what i realize who are actually was what i kept hearing. and i am at. my lowest. and. i think right there i realized i had reached my lowest point in life and i knew only on the way for me to go from here. i know that crime and other criminal kind of thing that already fed up with 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 time during the one nine hundred eighty s. there was a major shift in the congress and in state legislatures have thout how long

sentences should be the public was a long term by increasing rates of crime from the one nine hundred seventy s. and early eighty's and they wanted longer sentences they wanted cracking down and that's what happened across the board for all kinds of crimes not only the mandatory minimum drug sentences effective all the 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

. only you is born in nineteen sixteen and she was very very sad. i but by the task that in high school people can decide it in or played basketball she made good grades high school that we went to was seventh through twelfth grade and i was kind of the little tagalong sister. my brother were friends and i mean my sister we're friends just kind of watch sure she was. always really friendly always showing nice this is a small town and everybody knows everybody but she got in trouble we'd know about it. i had what i consider an ideal a child. at some point when i'm in college i mean guy that works for southwest times record the newspaper there in fort smith arkansas and he asked me if i would be a subject for him to go out and take some modeling photos we went to like several locations

and he instilled in me that i really ought to pursue a modeling career consider my mother says to just you know i mean ralston lived to dallas my gosh no you know mom wants us but she thinking was she going to do it so i think she's going to model so i created a little portfolio before i went to dallas that i could show to the modeling agencies fandy it was well bred well traveled well educated graduated stanford law school i had gone to princeton theology school so it was it was very appealing to be around somebody who i was frankly very impressed with and so fascinated with. eight months later we were getting married at the dallas arboretum and all of our family and friends were there and it with 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 you know and that this other character would emerge whenever he drank. i don't literally had to do something radical. the only remedy to remove him from my life was for me to leave dallas i had to leave dallas and i'd leave all my friends behind and completely. move to a different city any sadly sandy. but he wouldn't leave her i just kept saying you know let's be friends let's be friends he wanted it to be more so he told me that he was going to europe and that i never heard anything for a while word got back to me that he'd been arrested. i hadn't been in dallas in over a year so of the only thing i knew to do was to book a flight to dallas to see if i could go through the house listen to the answering machine and try to piece this thing together and eventually think you're going to

find out more information and while i was in the dallas house the phone rang and it was sandy's german legal counsel who had been assigned to the case in germany and at that time he. gave me very spend details but said that sandy had been arrested for manufacturing ecstasy and that he wanted to retain an attorney for him there in dallas it was a pretty interesting revelation. 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 destroy my mom's 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. as your 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 aide now around paraphrasing you. to cooperate or will ruin your life. after the previous stage of my career was over everyone wondered what i was going

to do next the multiple different clubs on one hand it is logical to sit in the home field where everything is familiar on the other i wanted a new challenge and a fresh perspective and i'm used to surprising people and us old or not if you think. i'm going to talk about football not for you or else you just think i was going to do. by the way what is that that's like here. oh. come on they can come and blow our brains out at any given time we can 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 flying to k.k. . one exists because america wanted to exist the of the biggest terrorist group to ever operate in this country and they're dead to me they're worse than the people who destroyed the world trade center or the scroll why.

an empty chair greeted the house judiciary committee instead of the u.s. attorney general on the second hearing into his handling of the report into alleged russian collusion with a session of the circus the democratic member even brandishing a problem. chicken bar should have shown up today and answered questions think yesterday proves not terrified to sit before anybody still in the circus continues over here julian assange just defense team claims the fight for the whistleblowers freedom is now in full swing is it that the school's holds a first session on whether or not to extradite the wiki leaks co-founder to the u.s. . on a large antigovernment protests.