i'm an incarcerated guy. incarceration was not the same as rehabilitation for me. it just wasn't the same. but i have been over 500 jails and prisons in 23 years. i speak nine languages now. they're all english, but i speak fortune 500. i speak corporate, i speak kid. i have a 5-year-old. he is safe all day in the home that i have created, not the one i grew up in. my wife is an afflicted convicted lady. she actually did more jail time than i did she has seniority at home. [laughter] >> normal people don't laugh right there at all. don't the wives only have seniority? yes, especially in the penal system. but that was a double-edged sword there, i hope you got it. some of your pot smokers or ex-pot smokers, the jokes won't kick in for a long time. marijuana retards the ha ha muscle. three months from now somebody will go they're all different dads. sorry, your honor, i apologize, i wasn't laughing at you. [laughter] >> the concept here of humor as a basis for approaching a topic that is awkward to discuss has never been a mystery to us. the art of that is sometimes

i do not believe that incarceration has taken us where we need to be. i believe the war on drugs has been a failure. when we institutionalize people over extended periods of time, we take low-level offenders in the early stages and harden them and we send them to the university of crime. by the time they get out of prison, they become a bigger social problem. where i come from, whether it is the [unintelligible] i am on the side of saying we need to reform our system and reduce the number of people we send to jail or prison. we need to reserve that space for people that are truly dangerous and have no way of fixing themselves. we have to realize there will be some people that will go to prison because the rest of us need to have some people in prison in order for us to be safe but that is a small minority. there are many other solutions out there whether it is someone who has engaged in drugs or has a drug addiction. or engaging in some other low- level crime. every move away from a cursory those people in the early stages and deal with different forms

and if you look at other jurisdictions throughout the state, you'll find heavy incarceration rates and not used. in fact the prosecutor is not using those programs. we're very fortunate in our district attorney. he is very visionary, and i just commend him for his stepping out there and taking this position which i support, also, in terms of we have got to focus on treatment rather than say, well, there's this program or that program when in fact the state hasn't funded it. so it's placed that burden on the local counties. >> tal, can you respond to marty's point and wendy's? >> i can say just based on my experience in dealing with individuals who have drug problems, most of the time i don't think that the threat of a quote, unquote, felony conviction is going to necessarily prevent them from using. i think what would make more sense is to provide them with more services and to be more individualized in terms of treatment and how we address specific individuals. i also would note that when you are facing a misdemeanor charge, you're facing up to a year in county jail. now, sometimes yo

we rank first in the world in the per capita incarceration of our fellow citizens. the russians are fading fast in second or third place together with the belarus people. the rates of the incarceration are five, six, seven, eight times than most in other societies, europe and elsewhere, though their rates of nonviolent crime and drug use are not that much different than ours. so if another country were to lock up its own people at the rate that we do, and if our rates of incarceration were more normative to the rest of the world, we would regard with that other country was doing as a massive violation of human rights. that's the way we would look at it. now, the other point here is what we're doing is not even consistent with american history. i mean, we had 500,000 people behind bars in 1980 and now we have 2.3 million, 2.4 million people behind bars and almost have 5,000 people behind bars just for a drug violation. there are as many people behind bars for a drug violation than we had for everything in 1980. it's not consistent with global standards and not consis

program on a theft program. >> incarceration is incarceration is incarceration.nd people need to follow the rules. absolutely no alcohol. no drugs. >> seems like every time i'm trying to do the right thing to do better, it's -- a rock just falls right in front of me and i can't go no further. it's like i'm stuck right there. >> lohden is moved to a fresh arrest dorm. a special housing unit for women newly booked into the jail. she will remain until a judge decides whether to return her to home incarceration or make her serve the rest of her sentence in jail. but lohden seems determined to make an impression. >> that's my bunk. >> yeah, it's mine now. you snooze, you lose. there ain't no bunk assignments in [ bleep ] jail. get that [ bleep ] right. >> hey, come back out here. >> do they own bunks around here? >> come back outside. >> i'm good. >> come on, come on. >> excuse me? excuse me? excuse me. >> i said i'm sick, and i've got to be on the bottom bunk. >> okay, that's fine. but i didn't think the jail, nobody owns no bunks around here. >> we thought she was c

and one of the features of this new system, mass incarceration, is that it's concentrated among thoseh low levels of education, exactly those same people that would be likely -- would likely be unemployed in the formal economy, and so that's an important feature, but what my research does is sort of unpacks this idea of the unemployment rate really is a measure of labor surplus, and what i'm interested in as a sociologist is what fraction of the population is working and so if we look at that number things are even more bleak than unemployment rate numbers suggest, and my research finds that among young black dropouts, 37% are incarcerated on any given day. >> right. becky, we're running really short on time. i wanted to get an observation here before we have to go, and that's, you know, we talk about this invisibility. i think part of it is people who can speak to the experience of being incarcerated are disenen from -- disinen from chised politically. you look at it and to change that rule, who in politics, who in congress will vote -- >> no one. >> you're giving your opponent a gre

i think that you still have the majority of those individuals who were incarcerated with state prison for possession either had strike priors, serious offenses, or they had pled down from a sales case. >> tal, let me ask you to respond to perhaps marty's point. you're a deputy public offender in san francisco and you've handled dozens of drug case, drug possession cases, you've been -- a lot of people caught their attention when you were quoted in the press saying the way we handle drug enforcement here in california is in effect a war on crumbs instead of the often used phrase on drugs. how do you respond to his remarks? >> well, i think the first thing that we have to recognize is that the majority of people who are caught up in the criminal justice system and who are prosecuted for this type of offense for possession offenses and to some degree possession for sale offenses, the vast majority are indigent people and the vast majority of those indigent people are people of color. so what you have are two systems in place. you have a system where privileged white middle class people b

when we incarcerate somebody, we have to do something for them. i was incarcerated for 28 years. when they come out, they are worse than when they were in prison. the thing we need to do, be in touch with the individuals we work with. during the time they are going to sentencing. we need to provide something while they are incarcerated. you just wait for the time to go by. there is no criteria. what you need to do, but you need your high-school diploma. when your time is up, you go. ewing got to do anything. there is nothing you have to do. -- you ain't got to do anything. there is nothing you have to do. they get involved with other gang members and they get worse. the thing we have to do, and if we want it to work, i believe everybody is redeemable. i really believe that. [applause] it's not so, i would not be here. you know? i know i am making an impact on society. i know that. the thing we have to, as the community, -- come as as a community. that is the problem. when i am ready to go to juvenile hall, i have problems getting a pass. and i go there all the time. just to be ab

but serbia incarcerates a much smaller portion of its citizens. one out of nearly every 700 versus one out of every 130 in the united states. >> at the moment, a total of 1,200 inmates are being held here which is 2 1/2 times more than the prison's actual capacity. >> while some parts of cz have been modernized, much of the prison shows signs of age of one especially haunting section is completely abandoned behind locked doors. the execution chamber. >> we went down probably three, four stories underground to an area best described kind of like a scene out of "aliens." >> they literally have puddles of the water on the ground and they have boards that are slightly elevated. and you kind of do a balancing act to cross these boards down this old corridor. and then you just come upon an open room with a wall. >> translator: we are currently in a room where executions used to be carried out. prisoners on death row stood by the wall. the firing squad stood here. >> translator: it had a squad of ten executioners. some of whom had loaded weapons while ot

you know how much it costs a day to incarcerate somebody? >> i'm paying you to lock me up. i didn't ask -- >> you ain't paying me. you're paying tax dollars. >> you just said i'm taking money from y'all. >> you're taking from metro government. i work for metro government. >> so i got to pay the government for them to lock me up? >> yeah, 'cause the government has to pay for your housing. it has to pay for these bills. >> no, i'm not going to bull county. >> you got to pay $25 a day to be incarcerated. >> that's bull[bleep] though is what i'm saying. you're charging me to be locked up. i didn't ask to be locked up. >> we're not charging you. >> i didn't say, "come lock me up." >> taxpayers voted that, all right? >> i didn't say, "come lock me up. here comes some money. here. i want to be in jail." i get bills on the street to pay. [bleep] i don't like paying the government to lock me up. >> step back in. >> [ clears throat ] >> he got kind of mad, but, you know, he's got to deal with the consequences. like lieutenant collins told him, put money on the books illegally. you kn