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 be creative. these are gifts to your children. the families of punished right along with. the 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 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 they can look at them and say that 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. i was going to go. i'm going to do the best they can to stay out of this please. continue to shop for. good this. is what you guys know the job is you know we do it's job.

yes chad. from one thousand twenty to one thousand nine hundred seventy this whole half century of american history the rate of incarceration was roughly level about one hundred ten 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 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 local and state level and then in the one nine hundred seventy

disorder changes so that by now the rate of incarceration issue why just over seven hundred. requests are issue for african-americans is over four thousand four hundred and so you have to wonder how does 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 to states. i realized the need for money to deal with this problem i am glad that in this room illustration we have increased the amount of money a board. battling the problem of dangerous drugs seven poll it will be six hundred

million dollars this year more money will be needed in the doing virtually everybody saw in the drug war was the number one issue and so you had politicians in both parties and you know district attorneys and elected everybody wanted to get in to drug cases and get aggressive about it 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 we moved there 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 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 shunned in their lives but there was nothing 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. 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 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. wasn't 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 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 were another house and they were two years old i was pretty much stay in there because my mom was on drugs she. knew i was there she really didn't have a problem with it but a kindness started you know liveness there were more get out 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 trip narcotics and they started watching me and follow me around or stuff like that then i remember the first time. that they raided my house i wasn't there but my mother was there and i was i think i just turned seventeen and um they locked her up and i got a phone call saying that you know your mother was locked up and they want you to turn yourself in. so i visually i turned myself in a seventeen a let my mother go and i first time ever going to joan 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. 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 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 a far more user center operations major operations and. we started treating sick people people who were addicted to drugs when a member talked to my grandmother and having that conversation with her about my wife and how far i had fallen she said to me you know trace 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 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 your and i heard her but i really didn't hear her. and i left her house that they skip and then it went right back out into the streets. i remember going to new york on the cob coming back from new york coming down route one coming through union county we had drugs in the car and we had a gun in 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 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. to lower 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 sitting just telling me. now i'm a two time loser. and he said tracy you who convicted in one thousand nine hundred 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 you. need to know more. are. under water.

total our own daughter. oh. god i'm not he didn't know no wrong. oh you ought to go to a post gets a good move for your. position follow a period of sort of full schedule to flesh blood if. your mood well to the minute you did it was my go to the. losing is its appeal supple of the good of him yet that all laong solicitor going to bring on the man i'm interested in said to me. that mean that you all know paul. went up well it was pretty good way to listen to. what you say to him which could be oh i'm done with done long ago but i come. here to you

to marry your money you don't need us to storm the lead here so i'm i looked up from moods for better doing the clue trick of crafters america. back geysers financial survival guide. housing bob all. oh you mean there's a downside artificial mortgage truth don't get carried away that's cause report. after the previous stage of my career was over everyone wondered what i was going to do next the ball different clubs on one hand it is logical to sort of go from fields where everything is familiar with on the other i wanted a new challenge and the fresh perspective from time used to surprising us all to one not to be. i'm going to

talk about football not three or all three missing goals are going to go. by the way ways of the trial here. the direction to would judge to sentence can be done and to wish to 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 into let sensing 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 us 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 needed to

a 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 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 in ninety six the federal prison population was thirty six thousand. now it's well over two hundred thousand this is a growth that no one could have imagined mass incarceration in the u.s. is really unique in human history there is no democratic nation that's ever tried to have such a massive social experiment as we've done in incarceration and we've got more prisoners than any other country in the ruling over by rate and numbers i mean i

find it a bit disturbing that we have more prisoners from china and they have a billion more people and we do i don't think it gives people an eye 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 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 i went to court and i had that kind of time marijuana. and i was

charged with. possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute money going to conspiracy to murder i received a total of fifty five year prison sentence the judge suspended all but six i was fortunate enough. to make first parole and i actually served in prison fourteen months on the moon. 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 fam up three members of the family viewed it . and we ask what were the ages of the children who just want to put sex. she says an extremely meaningful for the daughter of the mother who was incarcerated she loved that. we all did. and this one said what did the message mean to your family to know their family was

ok and it's a huge part these children want to know that their families i mean their mom or dad so ok. there's just soul shall want to say to those been three years since either of you seen. mr jones looms very relieved for sure is that you've done three. dozen sure fall just very good enough to join the phone do you want to listen to friend with the joni filled you to the fold has been me. growth a lot of just gone. through four years going to. go. swimming say the. very first. they said to me to one year administrative segregation and administrative segregation this twenty three hour or longer. you locked up twenty three hours each

day you come out for half hour shower and a half hour break i know a bit of olive person. at that time i was treated like one of them was from persons in the world i remember going into this i believe maybe if i buy a cell. it 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 are going to come out a better person are you going to come out of worship person than you were before you went in. 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 i'm going to grandmother just kept playing over and over again in my mind and those words was the guy i was going to fire me in my darkest hour you know what i realize who are ritually was and when i kept hearing that because than i am at my door that i am at my lowest point. and.

i think right there i realized i had reached my lowest point in life you know the only on the way for me to go from here. another crime another criminal a country that already have fed up with both religious rights politicians focus on often a simple crackdown the reason the criminal justice system isn't working is that we're not sending enough people in jail and keeping there long enough that people are saying very 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 census 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 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 . amy was born in one thousand nine hundred sixty and she was very very shy but by the task that in high school people can sat it in or she played basketball she made good grades high school that we went to was seven hundred twelve i was kind of the

little tagalong sister i me and my brother were friends and i mean my sister were friends just kind of watch sure she was. always really friendly always showing nice this is a small town and everybody knows everybody and 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 it my mother says to to get you know any roster and 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. when i went to dallas that i could show to the modeling agencies sandy 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 when every drink i don't literally had to do something radical. the only remedy to remove him from my life was for me to leave dallas i had to leave dallas and i'd

leave all my friends behind and completely. move to a different city. sandy. but he wouldn't leave her i just kept saying you know let's be friends let's be friends he wanted 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 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 he had been

arrested for manufacturing acts to. see that he wanted to redeem 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 and dallas and i took that money and retained an attorney to go over and meet with the attorney. seven months after sandy has been arrested and i pull into the garage of my car is rushed by law enforcement people who are screaming and have a gun out and they're pointing it 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 add it wasn't very long after that that my lawyer explained to

me exactly what it is that my prosecutor wanted they wanted her to wear a wire. and tragic and a 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 either am paraphrasing you now cooperate or will ruin your life . your home 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. wore it legally get away with. all the for. still beriah all the trouble here is

very frail the point is it's hollow flame the k.k.k. exists because america wants it to exist they have the biggest terrorist group to ever operate in this country and they're dead to me they're worse all than the people who destroyed the world trade center or the scroll. during the great depression which i'm old enough to remember there was most of my family were unemployed. there wasn't it was bed you know much worse objective listen today but there was an expectation the things were going to get better. there was a real sense of hopefulness there isn't today today's america where shape by the turn principles of concentration of wealth and power. reduced democracy

attack solo down engineer elections manufacture consent and other principle holds according to no on. one set of rules for the rich opposite. that's what happens when you put her into the hands of the narrow sector of will switch will is dedicated to increasing power for chills just as you'd expect one of the most influential intellectuals of our time speaks about the modern civilization of america.

then. the israeli prime minister abbas to carry on a campaign of massive air strikes targeting hamas positions and gaza a very major flare up in cross border exchanges which are now into their second day . in the stories that shaped the week venezuelan president nicolas maduro claims he put down an attempted coup by opposition leader one why go along with his u.s. backers denies plotting a military overthrow our guest debate the issue. doesn't get him in power for good

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