joining me to discuss the incarceration crisis are barry schect, an attorney for the innocence projectli, from black civic participation and michael court, philadelphia criminal trial lawyer and activist. thank you all for joining us. i think the most stunning number that i've ever seen is the fact that in 1970 there were only somewhere between 250,000 and 300,000 people incarcerated in the whole country. 40 years later, 2.5 million people are incarcerated. how did we get from 250,000 in 1970 to 2.5 million in 2011? how does that happen? >> very simple. two things happened within our sentencing system. the first was mandatory minimum sentences in state and federal courts. just completely took discretion away from judges and if you committed certain kinds of crimes, you were going to go to prison for long periods, period. that's it. and those were most often associated with drug laws. and the drug laws alone during that period are what accounts for the huge increase in incarcerati incarceration. >> the war on drugs began in 1984, and over that time as barry points out we've seen a skyro