good evening. from los angeles, i'm tavis smiley. with the prison population at an estimated 2.4 million persons, conversation about how for-profit prisons are contributing to the excessive sentencing of so many in thismatithis nation. assess many from bryan stevenson, founder and executive director of the alabama-based equal justice initiative which is dedicated to working on behalf of the poor and wrongly incarcerated. stevenson won a supreme court ruling in mandatory life without parole sentences for 17 and under inr indeed unconstitutional. glad you are joining the conversation with bryan stevenson about america's prison population. coming up right now.

>> by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> incarceration rate is one area in which this country shouldn't be leading the world. but we are. it is at an estimated 2.4 million adults contributing to the profit of privatization of prisons putting profits over

rehabilitation. joining us tonight to talk about it, bryan stevenson. the founder and executive director of the alabama-based equal justice initiative which has won major challenges to unfair sentencing as well as for those on death row. he's a macarthur genius, harvard law. his new book will be out in october. professor at nyu. >> i'm delighted to be here. >> thank you for your work. first of all. let me judgment in and make of the most time we have with a direct and forthright we. what is wrong with for-prove prisons? everything in america these days seems to be moving in the direction of privatization. what's wrong with for-profit prisons? >> i think it is corrupt in our criminal justice system. our incentive ought to be to keep people out of jail and prison. it is not a good thing we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world. 25% of the world is incarcerated population. that's being fueled by things that has nothing to do with

crime. it has nothing to do with public safety. and i think at the top of that list is this -- economic incentive to put people in prison for money. private prisons that led had a charge. 1908 we spent $6 billion a year on prisons and that was -- now we spend $80 billion. highway and health and human services. it is largely -- it has been pushed by small -- private correctional people who are spending millions of dollars to incentivize to keep people in jailed prisons. that's very corruptive of our prison system. >> how does one incentivize crime? >> well, we have suffered from the politics here and anger and in the 1972 we had 300,000 people in jails and prisons. today we have 2.4. they didn't happen because crime increased. it happened because politicians use year about crime and anger about crime to political benefits. democrats and republicans.

so we criminalize a bunch of things that were not really crimes. we decided to make drug addiction and drug dependency a crime issue rather than a health care issue. hundreds of thousands of people jailed. we passed laws that put people that commit minor crimes, write bad checks, shoplifting in jail a long time. we realize that's not good for the country. but we are stuck. we remain stuck because it is a -- 245 lobbyists funded by private prisons working in 32 states who are spending money to fight against reforms. fight for criminalizing more stuff. that kind of incentives to keep prisons high, i think that is undermining our justice system. more than anything, it is actually block -- it has blocked health yu discourse about what we should be doing in crime and punish. >> what do you suggest that -- the -- crime has precious little to do with the dramatic

increases if i could borrow from baretta or sammy davis jr., up can't do the time if you didn't do the crime. >> that's right. but we have created a whole new category of crimes. again, drug is a perfect example. half of the increase in our prison population comes from our war on drugs. that's criminalizing civil possession of marijuana. criminalizing civil possession of low-level narcotics, prescription drugs. hundreds of thousands of people are now spending decades of -- sometimes life in prison behind these offenses. had weren't crimes 40 years ago. they are not being effectively managed by the criminal justice system. we have good models. portugal, for example, the health care model. >> we can reduce drug depende y dependency. we can't do that if we put that person in prison for 10, 20 years. put them back on the street. so my point is that all of these

things that aren't the kinds of crimes that require incapacitation are things that we should be trying to keep people out of prison. there are people that threaten public safety and there is no question that those folks have to be incapacitated. that's a small percentage of the people we have in jails and prisons in this country. i'm particularly troubled by it because when i -- we are in the even evening forcing the so-called crimes. and a very fairway. >> we target communities of color. one in three black babies born in this country is expected to go to jail. had a wasn't true in the 20th century or the 19th century or 18th century. it is true in the 21st century. that's devastating. it is disrupting hope in these communities. i hate the fact that i thought the young 13 and 14-year-olds of color they expect to be arrested and go to jail or prison. >> that's the fault of the breakdown of the communities. >> i think it is -- no one single thing. i think everybody is responsible. i think the prison complex has -- created a financial

incentive for legislators and politicians to look the other way when they see destruction in the communities resulting from mass incarceration. i think politicians have contributed to this dynamic by preaching fear and anger by embracing -- everybody wants to be tough on crime and nobody wants to be responsible or smart on crime. and then i think in communities we have been style entoo long. we have led a whole generation of young people that had their lives stolen by wrongful incarceration, unnecessary incarceration. we disrupted communities in ways it will take a generation to recover from. we are all responsible. i think we can start by focussing on the role of the private prisons played because it is complete -- theft from the public trust. i mean, you know, this is $3.2 billion a year going to the private prisons or companies, is unnecessary and not needed. we don't need that kind of spending and it is coming from our tax dollars that could be going to education. >> i suspect if those persons

that were running here's for-profit prisons were here, what they would present to you, the national viewing audience, that suggests what they are doing is safe and taxpayer money. is that not rue? >> i think so. they have a hard time doing that. the way they are making their profit -- or by creating contracts with states where they -- states are required to maintain 80, 90% capacity in their prisons. in many of the states we are paying them to -- for empty beds. states have a reduction in the state prison population we are obligated to keep paying the private prisons for beds that are bed. there is no way in the world you can justify that as saving tax dollars. more than that, they are spending millions of dollars to prevent and block reform legislation from being passed in a bunch of states. they have an incentive to make sure we don't reduce the pentalties for drug crimes. to make sure we don't reduce the penalties for shoplifting. i think that is ultimately hard

the dezpend justify. i doubt they come on and say much about it. the data don't support it. >> i would take your point to its logical concluon and arrive at this place which is -- these for-profit prisons to make money. they have to be in cahoots with law enforcement who are arresting the people that they need to lock up to make money and i think that that argument when we get -- gets tricky. >> i don't think they have to be in cahoots. they have to be in cahoots with politicians who have the ability to take a simple crime that might have been punished by a year in jail and turn it into the outrage that we now requires a mandatory sentence of 15 years in prison. here's what is happening. they don't have to do anything on the arrest side. they don't have to do anything on the prosecution side. and they are focused on the punishment side. i represented people serving life in prison without -- writing a bad check.

for stealing a $30 bicycle. we take that 20-year-old guy who stole that $30 bicycle and committed to spend $30,000 a year to keep him in prison the next 50 years. it makes no sense. if you are tough on crime, you are afraid to say i don't want on vote for that. it is that political environment that helps sustain and that's -- they are not the only ones that i think created this reality. and i think that, you know, the challenge for us is disrupting it which is why the best -- strategy is an important one. why put thing information out the is necessary. i would also say, too, it is not just the private prison. it is all the other private industries and you have private phone companies. you have got a private medical provider. you have -- private security companies that are all benefiting from having these beds filled. it is even -- hit immigration. half of the people being detained for undocksment standards are in private facilities. they are i investing in a strategy that makes it harder for us to get immigration reform.

that would bring down the number of people being detained. so i think that's why it is did a it is so corruptive and so distorting of the way our system is intended to work. >> let me put you on the spot and specifically ask -- to share a little bit to brag a little about about success you had given the strategy. have you done pretty righteous work, heavy lifting and yeoman's work. i was astounded at the success you have had in convincing certain companies to divest in these institutions. >> there is a wonderful organization called the color of change that has been out front trying to get companies to be responsible with these investments and they are a bunch of companies that have responded, dfm. dutch chemical company. withdrawn its support of private prison. capital management. legal of mutual insurance. some of them. $60 million we are divested in the last of 2013. i think it will be more pressure put on more companies to do the same thing.

i think what mass incarceration has done to this country in the lives it disrupted, people that have been condemned fairly and unfairly, is -- a crisis. it is a human rights crisis. and like what was happening in south africa in the 1980s, we have got to make private businesses and companies and corporations accountable for how they relate themselves to this crisis. you go into poor communities and minority communities and you see all of the young men of color gone and 50% of the black young black men between the ages of 18 and 30, jailed, probation, parole, it is in crisis. i think we should hold private businesses and corporations accountable to -- at least understand where their dollars are going and what those dollars are creating. >> he was asking you questions i want to ask. the question was brilliant. which is -- whether or not you think in the coming months and years we can get traction on this and -- let me just take the

question and pramt it differently. my sense is i think you may have -- sometimes politicians, sometimes the body politics does the righting thing for the wrong reason. the right thing for the wrong reason. that's my way of saying it is costing us so much money and costing society so many other ways we find ourselves forced to rethink this question. not messily for the right reasons but we arrive at the right place. >> it does make sense. i think you are absolutely right. you know. we have bankrupt many state governments behind our foolish investment in jails and prisons. in some ways the people have gotten ahead of the politicians. state of california. there was a referendum in 2012 to end the three strikes laws sending thousands of people into prison for ever. it was on the ballot. it passed and every county in the state of california by landslide and as not even close. you cooperate get the legislature to do that. in that respect, the economics

of overincarceration are now catching up to us. unsustainable what we are doing. i do think that will be a big part of this. i also think we are make something progress on the moral and social arguments as well. you know, when you begin to see the language we -- taking young children and prosecuting them as adults and we give them life without parole, we are the only country in the world that convicts children as young as 14 and 15 to die in prison for nonhomicide cases. the court said that's cruel and unusual. they said the same thing about mandatory life sentences for kids. they said the same thing about the sentences we were imposing on people with intellectual disabilities. half the people that are in prison are disabled. we use the prison system to replace the lack of mental health facilities and treatments. i think we are making progress on those arguments as well. i actually am quite hopeful that we can reduce the prison population in this country by 50% in the next decade if we are

focused. crime rate, as low as it was in 1968. a tremendous decrease in violent crime. even show people don't perceive it that way. the conditions are right for us to make progress at some right -- very progressive groups and very conservative groups that are kind of coming together, group called right on crime. many people are talking about we can't be tough on crime but smart on crime. i think that environment makes it possible to imagine a host of reforms. you have the current u.s. attorney general directing prosecutors to not charge certain kinds of drug crimes to get the prison population down. that's unprecedented. and i don't think that it is controversial. i actually think most people after being honest support that initiative. and that's what makes me hopeful but like all things, it won't happen by itself. you know, good people got to continue to do good work if we are going to actually see it. >> i couldn't agree with you more on this in that regard. i celebrate that decision. he works for a president he ran

for that office saying he thought that -- discrepancy. 100-1 discrepancy blin sign flood law. he wasn't the first foreigner do it but signed off it. clinton agrees with the discrepancy in that crime bill. obama runs years later and says it ought to be 1-1. campaigns on that. he gets in and the best they can do is put it down to 18-1. still not 1-1. discrepancy. i raise that only because that is what you suggested earlier, driving so much incarceration. if s that the best we do on that? >> i don't think so. i think it is shifting. have you people that are tea party republicans and libertarians who are as outraged by some of the sentences being imposed for drug crimes as a threat. it is hard to get anything done. and in washington, d.c. but p iad to rank three areas

we could do something, i would put it this list. i actually think those disparities can be further reduced. we have to push. the problem with people who are jailed and in prison, directly affected by it it is mostly people that are poor, marginalized and people that don't have a lot of political power. because of that it will require more of a moral commitment from everybody else to see the inequality, see the injustice, and of condemning so many people and then be willing on speak on that. >> i was making the nint every one of us has a political critique and a social critique, economic critique. what march tip also had was a moral critique. the most powerful critics he had. i hear your optimism. certainly hope. that we are winning as we make this moral argument. where do you think that moral authority, that moral voice and leadership is coming from? >> well, i think it has to come from the places it came from

before. we have a person to be more accountable. fantastic organization. but it took them a long time to actually start speaking about the policy implications of mass incarceration. the black churches, i think, have been -- in too many instances silent while the congregants were disappearing. we got called up and being angry about crime and throwing people away and bee -- many of these communities are -- often much more likely to be the victims of crime and that's confused us. but i think the church has a role to play in this. i think we immediate to hold politicians accountable. we don't insist anybody talk about mass imprisonment. that has to change. we don't insist people talk about overincarceration. part of the problem we have in the country, highest rate of incarceration in the world and we are not ashamed of it. we ought to be ashamed of -- to be putting such a high percentage of our population in jails and8 that's not the land of the free.

>> your answer about how this has to be viewed and approached. what about the white folks? who -- who many of whom for obvious reasons don't see that they have ain't or stake in this issue. >> i think it is -- i think that -- one point is that increasingly, all communities are being impacted by this. we saw a real reform on drug crimes when it started impacting middle-income families and affluent families in places where drug rates were catching up with all of he is folks. there is a growing awareness about that. i also think the economic implications obviously affect everybody. i don't think this is just about race. i really don't think that, you know, when you look at mass incarceration in this country, the disproportionately impacted in color. bad policies tend to. it is the -- has become an american problem. i think that all of us recognize that we can't survive putting people in jails and prisons at the rate we have been putting them over the last 40 years. number one. number two, i also think that,

you know, we are going to have to pay for this one way or the other. and that's what you see school -- educational associations and teachers unions and home health providers and health and human people becoming interested in spending on prisons because their budget have been compromised and disrupted and undermined by this unnecessary investment in jails and prisons. >> why do you say there is no wrong? there is no shame in our game. i ask that because you look at the data and it tells one story. yet, so many of us politicians, including continue to preach this motion of this. >> it is a great question. i think that -- the lack of political diversity on the issue is part of the problem. you are right. the 1990s were a terrible decade. plin's tenure was the worst really for the mass incarceration. he signed into law a bunch of laws in 1996 where they were horrible. i think the absence of critique, moral critique, as you pointed

out, while these really immoral things were taking place, has been part of the problem. i also think that we tolerate, you know, unreliability. wrongful convictions. all these innocent people being exonerated and we don't get to exercise about that. it is a shame. we have to create some moral outabout the realities. >> though of us that care about the issues we have yet to come to understand sometimes we have to fight with our friends. we have to fight with our friends. we may love blill clinton but h was wrong on a number of those policy decisions. great prts aren't born or made. the question is how will these issues life and death issues are on -- front burner, convictions of commitment, to even have to fight with our friends. >> >> i think that, you know, it is interesting. if you look at the life of dr. king as you have and the life of civil rights leaders they were always being pushed by their

friends and the white house and the white church and even in the black community to be quiet, to give it more time and all of that stuff. there was this kind of -- they were tactical and strategic. they didn't always do what they wanted to do. we can't do that either. there was a sense there were certain things you have to stand up for. i grew newspaper a community where we were so excluded that there was public schools weren't open and i started in a colored school. public school wasn't open to me. we understood we could not get where we were trying on go until we had that kind of integration. people taught me sometimes you have to stand even when everybody else is itting. including your friends. sometimes you have got to speak even when everybody else is quiet. that idea that you do it because you have to do it, because it is the right thing to do, even if you have to do it by yourself that was the boycott. that idea had to be internalized by us because without that push, our politicians are going to go where the power is.

they are going to go where the votes are. we have to hold them accountable by insisting. we can do better than put 2.4 million people in jails and prison. we can do better than put our children and throw them away. really horrible policies in this country. we have 10,000 kids right now in adult jails and prisons where they are being sexually assaulted and suicide risks are about -- than it would be otherwise. no one can really defends it. we have haven't -- haven't gotten our act to together to get those kids out of prison. >> i wish hi two, tree nights to talk about this. i want to close where i could have started the conversation. that is with this -- irony is not a strong enough word. for how your life begins in what happened to your grandfather and yet, you dedicated your life to do this work anyway. tell me quickly what happened to your grandfather and how you

still found a way to dedicate fighting for these precious children? >> like a lot of people, vin been insulated from the problems of violent crime. my grandfather was murdered when i was 16. i had other family members suffered violence and victimization. yet, i'm persuaded that we are all more than the worst thing we have ever done. that's been my orientation. that's what i absorb from my elders and the people around me. if someone tells me a lie they are not just a lie. if you steal something -- even if you are a thief and kill somebody you are not just a killer. there is a dignity we have to protect and fight for. even when i have suffered, i recognized that there is a fed to top the things that creates something. not just beat up the person that caused this. very short myopic view. i will put all of my entries and energies in beating up on this person that hurt me. i'm going find ways to actually reduce violence. i don't want anybody to be killed. i don't know want anybody to sufr through rape and assault and all of that stuff. that means creating a healthier community for all of us.

including the people these people. >> he imy hero. a lot of us know the work he is doing. celebrating him and love him for it. it has been good having you on this program. >> thank you. >> that's our show for tonight. thank you for watching. as always, be safe. >> for more information on today's show, visited tavis smiley at pbs.org. >> i'm tavis smiley. join me next conversation with eli broad.

>> contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.er>> rose: welcome te

program. tonight, part one, a conversation with hillary clinton, former secretary of state and the author of her new book, hard choices. >> the first question is what does europe do. i think the united states has been very clear in both its criticism of russia and putin.ñ it's support for poronshenko and a new round that the president has announced. the european have tried to figure out the best way forward. i was recently in europe, a lot of questions about whether or not russia was really the aggressor, whether or not putin was created. i have the benefit of not being in