Original subtitles

When we think of prisons,

if we bother to think of them at all that is,

there is a tendency to see them as institutions

completely divorced from human society.

[reporter 2] The Justice department

said today the inmate population

of federal and state prisons in this country

is at an all time high.

[reporter 3] The public sees a need

for more prisons

because crime is the number one concern

of the people in this State.

[reporter 4] Too many inmates

and not enough space.

[female reporter] Another crime,

another criminal.

In a country already fed up with both.

[male reporter] People stocked up like corn wood

on our prisons.

[female reporter 2] There's a population explosion

in America--

Overcrowding in this country's jails and prisons.

Populations are exploding.

Every number of people are now being held behind bars.

[mixing reporters' voices]

[dramatic music intensifies]

[dramatic music decrescendo]

[reporter] 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.

[jail cell door closing]

[Carolyn LeCroy] The most important thing...

is to talk from your heart.

If you have more than one child,

give 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 poem...

we've had people pray, we've had people sing.

One guy showed his little boy how a shoot at basketball.

Be creative.

These are gifts to your children.

And your families.

Ok, any questions?

[Carolyn LeCroy] The families are punished

right along with...

the offender.

People don't think so.

But the collateral consequences of somebody's incarceration

affects not just that whole family,

but it affects the whole community.

It affects you as an individual,

whether you know it or not.

And whether you know that person or not,

that's incarcerated,

you're paying for him.

You should care.

I have 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.

When a parent looks in that camera.

They're looking at their child.

And if they can look at them and say,

"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 the first step.

in recovery of any kind.

Any kind. It's to take the responsibility for it.

"But even when I'm far away,

this love I have will stay,

and wrap myself around you every minute of the day."

I just want you guys to know that

I'm gonna do the best I can to stay out of this place.

And continue striving forward with my life.

I miss you guys all a lot.

I'm glad this is the last Christmas

I'm gonna have to spend away from you all.

I just want you guys to know that I miss you all.

I can't wait to be with you all.

That's it. I love you all. Take care.

I love you all.

Bye. Bye.

Nice job.

[Eric Sterling] Modern prisons are an invention of Quakers.

Quakers had this idea

that if you gave people an opportunity

to silently reflect, to become penitent,

leading to the term penitentiary

that they would reflect upon their misconduct

and be reformed.

[Richard Wener] The first practical use of it

was really in the US, in Philadelphia.

It tried to provide positive change

and change someone's behavior.

But it was partly as a movement to get away

from corporal and capital punishment,

to come up with something better.

The problem in the thing that people forgot

was going into a monastery voluntarily

and isolating yourself in order to pray and think

is very different than being pushed into a cell...

by the State.

One of the things that seem to be true

in the history of prison's systems

is that the philosophy's changed but the buildings remain.

So you have these massive buildings

that are these major expenditures

and very often just used as essentially a human warehouses.

You would occasionally get people

that would different kinds of experiments in education

in therapeutics in some way,

in inmate self-government,

but usually they were fairly quick overwhelmed

by the crowding in the system.

Or because they were politically unpopular.

[Eric Sterling] From 1920 until 1970

this whole half century of American history,

the rate of incarceration was roughly level

that about a hundred ten per hundred thousand.

And this is a broad span at our history,

this is near the roaring twenties

and prohibition.

The depression and all the social change there.

World War II.

The post-war economic boom,

the fifties, the explosion of suburbia,

the sixties and all the social turbulence

during this whole period

the rate of incarceration is roughly level in the US.

at about 110 per 100,000.

And this reflects,

you know, the policies of police departments

and prosecutors and judges

operating all over the country.

Local and state level.

And then, in 1970, this all changes.

So that, by now,

the rate of incarceration nationwide

is over 700 per 100,000.

The rate of incarceration for African-Americans

is over 4,000 per 100,000.

And so you have to wonder, what changed,

why did this half century of stability

get up-ended with this dramatic increase incarceration

in the US.

America's public enemy number one, in the US,

is drug abuse.

[Tim Lynch] Once the Federal government

decided that we were gonna have War on Drugs

they were able to then...

take a lot of money from the Federal budget

and then send it out to states and localities.

I realize the need for money

and to deal with this problem.

I am glad that in this administration

we've increased the amount of money

for handling the problem of dangerous drugs.

Seven fold, it will be 600 million dollars this year,

More money will be needed in the future.

Virtually everybody thought,

the drug war was the number one issue

and so you had politicians in both parties

and district attorneys and elected chairs

everybody wanted to get in to drug cases.

And get aggressive about it.

First time recommending

legislation making the penalty

for all illegal trafficking in hard drugs,

a life sentence in prison.

Issued before the U.S. Supreme Court today,

mandatory life sentences

for possession of large quantity of drugs.

That is the law in Michigan.

[reporter 2] California's governor

Pete Wilson's signed that state's new

three strikes and you're out law.

It requires a sentence of life prison

without parole, for at least 25 years

for anyone convicted of a third violent felony.

[Tim Lynch] Most of American policing

is done at the State and Local level.

So although the Federal government may have expanded,

you may have seen bigger budgets for the DEA and the FBI

and their drug investigations.

The bigger impact was to sending a Federal dollars

down to state local police departments

where they get to hire more officers,

hire more prosecutors

and once you do that hiring

then they start arresting more.

And more and more people start coming into the system

and you've got to expand the prison capacity.

New laws to punish them,

new agents to arrest them,

new prosecutors to convict them

and new prisons to hold them.

[Tracey Syphax] We moved to Trenton

when I was very young.

When we moved here, we moved to Miller Homes.

We use to always run up and down the hallways.

Of course, it was the project.

So, sometimes we would sneak up on the roof.

Which was the top floor, the twelfth floor.

And, you know, look out.

And of course, that was very scary as a young child.

But, you know, when you're living in a projects

there's only so much stuff that you can get into.

My brother was tragically killed when he was ran over by a truck.

Now I remember specifically

going to the corner where it happened

and seeing all the blood

'cause they left all the blood still on the street

That traumatic experience of losing my only brother

in that truck accident

and I know it had done somethin' to me.

But, you know, drugs were my escape.

That time was hard all the way around.

because my son was doing drugs,

my nephews were doing drugs, my nieces were doing drugs,

my sisters were doing drugs.

It was like an epidemic...

of drug abuse.

And I cannot explain it.

I cannot explain my feelings

because at that time I didn't know how I felt.

You know, I was sad

because I felt like they were ruining their lives.

But there was nothing I could do about it

to change their lifestyle.

So, that was it.

[Eric Sterling] Most historians look at

the origin of the War on Drugs

as something of President Nixon with his speeches

and his creation of the DEA

and other agencies in the 1970's.

But the War on Drugs as we understand it

with enormous case loads,

and then filled up prison population

is really a feature of the 1980's

under president Reagan.

Drugs are menacing our society.

They are threatening our values

and undercutting our institutions.

They're killing our children.

[Eric Sterling] Under Reagan, there was a tremendous increase

in Federal spending for antidrug activity,

Cabinet level efforts

and congress creating very powerful new laws.

All of what we understand of the War on Drugs today

is really a creation of the 1980's.

[male reporter] On day 2 of his new campaign against drugs

the president backed up his tough talk with action.

We're getting tough on drugs and we mean business.

[Neil Franklin] It's almost like overnight

we had this great idea

"Hey, why don't we go after the users?"

And that's what we did,

we started going after the users

and the prison population soared.

So obviously there are far more users

than there are major operations.

We started treating sick people.

People who were addicted to these drugs, like criminals.

[Tracey Syphax] After my brother passed away,

I kind of withdrew from a lot of things,

I didn't talk as much, I was very quiet.

Probably as early as my teenage years.

Twelve, thirteen years old...

you know, I started sneaking and drinking

a little bit here and there.

I started smoking marihuana at a very young age.

I started selling drugs and...

you know, and he came right along with it.

You know.

Family... you tend to trust family.

once I started selling loose joints

I graduated to selling nickel bags

and then I graduated to selling half ounces and ounces.

So, it was a slowly progression

of me wanting more money, me wanting to do more.

That I progressed from the legal side

of shining shoes and cleaning windows

to the illegal side of selling loose joints and nickel bags.

When I first saw him, it was in the hallway.

And I used to be a hall patrol 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 I'd block his way.

So he would have to say "Excuse me" or something.

And after that, we started talking.

[Tracey Sterling] We got to know each other...

I walked her home many times

and hanging out over at her house...

you know, my home...

wasn't a really a home compared to her house.

Margaret grew up with her parents,

both her parent's home.

In a nice decent house.

Great mother, great father.

Something that I didn't have,

and I started just being around her a lot.

And being around her family.

And next thing we knew, I was pretty much...

once we started going together

I was pretty much, living at her house

at the age of 14-15 years old.

I was pretty much staying there

because my mum was on drugs, you know.

As long as she knew I was there,

she didn't really have a problem with it.

I kind of started living and staying with Margaret

at a very young age.

By the time I was 16-17,

I was fully engulfed in a drug game

and Fitney was only so big,

Fitney is only 7.5 square miles

so a lot of rumors started to spread

along to the Trenton detective.

Back then they had two detectives

that worked high school.

And they kind of got to know me very well.

I guess they relayed that information to Trenton Narcotics

They started watching me and following me around

and stuff like that.

I remember the first time that they raided at my house

I wasn't there but my other was there.

And I think I just had turned 17.

And they locked her up

and I got a phone call saying that,

your mother was locked up

and they wanted you to turn yourself in.

So eventually, turned myself in at 17

they let my mother go and I...

the first time I ever went to jail

I went to the youth house.

Because I wasn't 18, I was still a juvenile.

We were still in high school

and we missed the prom

and he missed graduation.

And I got out,

I remember the detective telling me that

as soon as I turn 18

the day's gonna come back and get me.

And if I didn't straighten up my life,

that first experience would be nothing

compared to my other experiences in jail

because then I will be over 18,

and I will be gone to an adult facility.

[male reporter] The reason depths of athletes Len Bias

and Don Rogers

that made drug abuse a political issue.

[Eric Sterling] Len Bias gone to high school here, in Washington,

went to the University of Maryland,

which is right here inside the beltway.

And Bias was their star.

[male reporter] The world champion Celtics

used their first round draft choice

to pick Bias to play for them after his graduation.

This morning Len Bias was dead.

A cardiorespiratory arrest.

No one knows why yet.

There are reports that traces of cocaine

were found in Bias' system.

[Eric Sterling] The Speaker of the House is from Boston,

Tip O'Neill,

and people are stunned all over the country.

How did this happened?

Here we are inside the DC beltway.

Congress just went crazy.

And emotionally starting wrapping things up

and creating tough, long crime policies

related to drugs.

[male reporter] Last week, House democrats said

they would come up with a legislative package.

And they criticized the president

for failing to fund any drug efforts.

Unfortunately, there has been a...

failure to recognize

the vital urgency of this problem.

[male reporter] But at the White House

they got to this issue first.

No, there's no parties going on here.

I mean... Five years ago.

I've been doing this for five years, Chris.

The president has talked up a good argument

in declaring war,

but he certainly hasn't put together much of an arsenal.

Politicians in both parties

say people are so concerned about drugs right now,

that no one in Washington

can afford to be seen as ignoring the problem.

[Eric Sterling] In July, 1986 when the democratic leadership

figured out that this was a big issue

and they wanted to make it

the central issue of the election,

they only had four weeks until the August recess

which is when people are gonna go off and campaign.

So that's a very short period of time

and they're asking committees

that had nothing to do with drugs,

small business,

Merch marine and fisheries,

post office and civil service

You know, everybody is supposed to kick in,

every House Chairmen who's a democrat,

is going to contribute to this big stew of legislation

that's gonna be brought to the floor

right after the Labor Day.

So this is an incredibly short period of time

to write very complicated laws.

No hearings, no research,

no prison impact analysis, racial impact analysis, nothing.

It was done as way too much

legislation is done in this country very thoughtlessly.

[Eric Sterling] And if you're moving very, very fast,

and you don't have time to get the considered impact,

from people that gonna have to live with and carry out this law

you're gonna make mistakes.

We made mistakes.

[Tracey Syphax] My birthday was September the 12th.

In 1980, I turned 18.

They came back and locked me up

and caught me with drugs September 16.

So they kept their promise they made to me

and fulfilled that promise.

So once again at the age of 18,

I was back in jail, facing...

numerous drug charges this time.

Because of my juvenile record,

it was evident that I was gonna do some time, this time.

[Margaret Syphax] And when he came home,

he got a job,

he was on the right track,

and then he just started back...

doing drugs, selling drugs,

and at that time we separated.

[Tracey Syphax] Even though I remember my first bin,

and I know the pain, that I put my girlfriend

and my family through and everything,

my father, and stuff like that...

by 1998, it had become a complete distant...

memory for me.

And sometimes, drugs have a way of masking your memory.

I knew jail was bad, I never wanted to go back again.

But when you're hooked on drugs,

you just don't think about it.

You just don't want the money,

You want everything else that come along with it.

Because when you're at that level in the streets,

you could lose your life.

And sometimes drugs help you forget that,

that part is still out there.

I could just focus on the money.

So I can get high.

And I can float away.

I remember talking to my grandmother

and having that conversation with her,

about my life and how far I had fallen.

She said to me...

"You know, Tracey, I'm gonna always pray for you.

And I'm gonna pray that you change your life around."

One of the things that she said that stuck with me was that

God is gonna find you at your darker hour.

And only then will you realize who you truly are.

And I heard her but I didn't really hear her.

And I left her house, that Thanksgiving dinner

and went right back out into the streets.

I remember, going to New York,

and 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 getting out and switching drivers.

I got round to the passenger side

and he took the driver's seat.

And not knowing that there was a cop car right behind us,

so once again,

I didn't want to court, I wasn't going to trial,

I told my lawyer that,

we just had to try to get all the charges pushed together,

give me one sentence, let me go do my time,

and hopefully straighten up my life.

I remember specifically, the judge,

the citizen judge, telling me that...

now I'm a two time loser.

And he said, "Tracey you got convicted in 1980,

and now you convicted again in 1988."

He said, "Come back before me for the third time

and the third time is gonna be a charm for you."

[Eric Sterling] The direction to a 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

Here we're in this range from...

probation to some terms 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 is a sentence

where no matter how minor the role of the offender,

no matter how insignificant of violation of this crime it is

a minimum term must me imposed.

[Jdg. Robert Holmes Bell] So I have all this

and then we get into personal data of the family.

You'll see as you read this,

this gets really right down the nitty-gritty.

"Removed from the home at six years old

and placed in foster care.

Attempted suicide several times during childhood

starting at age seven."

And where this individual was placed

in the course of the juvenile activity,

what their physical condition is,

what their mental and emotional health is

In this case we have some diagnosis

of all kinds of problem

This takes quite a while

for a presentence officer to put this together

but I certainly have

a pretty good idea of what I'm dealing with

substance abuse, lots of that in this particular case

Methamphetamines.

Education, that's a little bit short.

Employment... you know...

here, there and everywhere but not much,

financial condition, as usually, real skimpy.

And then, this is their five year minimum,

maximum forty years,

guideline range: 168 to 210.

That's the initial guideline range.

And what the sentencing options are,

they're all prisons, what they charge to keep them.

Which never means anything to us.

And then, Mr. Hinkus signed his name

on this thirty page presentence report.

So I have this whole thing to look at.

I finished this,

there's not much more I didn't know about this individual

More than I ever wanted to know.

[Julie Stewart] Mandatory minimum sentences

are not knew.

They're being on the books in this country for 200 years.

And there are about a 190 of them or something

And if you look at them they read like the crime du jour

So you can see what the public was concerned about

And then Congress took that concern

and translated into law, into like sentencing legislation.

So piracy on the high seas in like 1790's

got your life without parole

robbing banks and crossing state lines in 1934

was, you know, ten years in prison

sky-jacking in the seventies was ten or twenty years in prison

And so you could see what was... what the headlines were.

The headlines were translated into a mandatory sentence.

And so in the eighties when drugs became a big deal

and lots of concern about drugs,

it was in the top three of public concern.

Congress was reacted by creating new mandatory minimum sentences

for drug crimes.

[Eric Sterling] I started work for

the House Judiciary Committee in November 1979.

I had just turn 30. Very young lawyer.

Not quite four years of experience practicing law

to work rewriting the entire Federal criminal code

for Fr. Drinan, the Chairman of

the Criminal Justice Sub Committee.

A few months later Drinan announces

he's not running for the election

and that is out of Congress within fourteen months.

And I was traded, in the beginning of 1981,

to the House Crime Sub Committee,

to Congressman Hughes, the new incoming chairman.

Where my responsibilities were writing Federal law

dealing with drugs, gun control, money laundering,

organized crime, pornography, and a host of other issues.

In the 1950's, the practice of giving mandatory sentences

as a deterrent, became fairly widespread

by the nineteen seventies

the consensus was they weren't fair

it didn't work,

and there was no reduction in drug crime.

So a great many of the mandatory terms were dropped.

Well, now they're back.

[Eric Sterling] When I was asked: "Eric,

give us a mandatory minimum proposal

in this week in August, as this has been put together?

I said, "OK, let's see what the Justice Department

is defining as the highest level traffickers

and we will give them this mandatory sentence.

These were hundreds of thousands of doses of drugs

a month for at least six months.

So when I bring this back to the Sub Committee in our markup

Congressman Ron Mazzoli from Louisville, Kentucky,

looks at this and says: "Well, wait a minute!

We don't have drug-dealers that big in Louisville,

we're not gonna use this statute in Louisville.

Now, no one said, turned to Ron and said:

"Ron, nobody goes to Louisville to do dope dealing,

it ain't Miami. It's not Houston!

You should be glad you're not gonna need this in Louisville."

But instead, it was: "Oh, yeah, Ron's right, yeah.

These high-level traffickers, they're too high level.

Eric, bring us something else."

It's all based on one factor: your sense.

What was the 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 sentence when the crime carries

a mandatory minimum.

[Eric Sterling] What Congress sent to president Reagan

was five year mandatory minimum 5 grams of crack cocaine.

A gram is like a sweet milk packet.

Ten years, minimum, is 50 grams of crack cocaine.

That's like the weight of a candy bar.

These are tiny quantities.

It goes back to the analogy of a traffic ticket

with a hundred dollar cost.

Up or down, good attitude, bad attitude.

It doesn't make any difference. It's hundred dollars.

And it's the same kind of theory

that's supplied over into these mandatory minimums

in the serious crimes.

We don't care what your attitude is,

we don't care how much education you had,

we don't care the ameliorating circumstances.

It's, where you did it. So therefore.

And lot of us... Human nature doesn't work quite that way.

And that's why we say: "Wait a minute, wait a minute.

This is not why we're here for.

We're here as judges. Trained, dedicated

to look at the whole picture and come to a just result.

The things that mandatory minimum sentences do

is that they completely remove the judge

from the sentencing equation.

And so, a person who has never laid eyes on you,

some legislator in Washington sitting on Capitol Hill

is determining your sentence by saying,

"Well, if the person has 50 grams of methamphetamine

it's a five years sentence.

So, it's like, "really"? I mean,

who do you want to determine your sentence,

someone you've never seen, who's never seen you,

or the judges in the Courtroom

and has the most information they can about your case?

I think the, fair enough, flexibility is

your liberal judges are gonna give a lower sentence

and your hard-nosed judges are gonna give a high sentence

so therefore we're gonna have variances.

And I say, "variances come with people.

Certain variances come with people."

Certain communities are different

than other communities.

There are some communities more liberal than others.

And they have more liberal judges.

Let them get what their community wants.

It's... We're all frail human beings,

trying to be the best we can.

And one can sometimes look at the sentence and might say

"Why in the world did he would do that?

Well, they weren't here,

they didn't see what I had to look at."

Maybe my eyes were looking at it differently than others.

But I have a colleague that has a reputation for being

a little more liberal than I.

But when I compare that colleague's sentence to mine,

roughly,

no, that person is not liberal.

If I'm conservative

and they're liberal, that doesn't work

when you compare the actual sentences.

because the actual sentences in this particular case

that person's is sometimes heavier than mine.

But all depends on the facts of the case.

That we approach it with.

And that's where it should be.

Because sentencing should be individualized.

[Eric Sterling] When president Reagan signed

the mandatory minimums in 1986,

the Federal prison population was 36,000.

Now it's well over 200,000.

This is a growth that no one could have imagined.

[Marc Mauer] Mass incarceration in the US

is really unique in human history.

There's no democratic nation that's ever tried to have

such a massive social experiment as we've done in incarceration.

We have more prisoners than any other country in the world ever

by rate and numbers.

I've find it a bit disturbing

that we have more prisoners than China.

And they have a billion more people than we do,

I don't think it gives people enough pause

when they hear that we have 25% of the world's prison population

and only 5% of the world's population.

In other words, we are way over incarcerating

compared to any other country in the world.

[Richard Van Wickler] Here's the thing I think

the public really doesn't understand

about jailing in the US,

is that it's not just detention anymore.

That's what it used to be. Just about detention.

But now, in addition to your detention,

we are now the largest mental health facility

in your community.

Wherever you live, if you go to the jail,

there are mental health facilities.

Because there's no place in the community

that will take care of the certain kinds of population

who have a mental illness and violate the law.

In addition to that, we're a hospital in the community.

We have to meet all the hyper regulations

for being a hospital in order to provide inmate medical care.

In addition to that, according to the Federal government

we have to be... a school

for people who are under the age of 21

who are learning disabled, we have to provide

an equivalent high school education

a GED with not suffice.

So, a team has to come in, do an assessment

and provide equivalent educations.

So we're not just about detention,

we're a hospital, a mental health facility,

and we're a school.

And we have to do all of those things in one package.

With all of the unique different types of characteristics

and individuals that are in here.

It's a very comprehensive mission today,

to be in corrections.

I think, originally, the purpose of prison

is to put people that are dangerous,

that are a threat to the society

in a place that keeps them away from us,

for some period of time.

Either 'til they've redeemed themselves,

or been deemed on fixable.

But we are so far beyond that original model.

We really do seem to think we can solve our social ills

by simply incarcerating people.

[Carolyn LeCroy] I had allowed...

somebody to use a storage unit of mine

and the police found it.

And they came after me.

I ended up literally holding the bag,

and in nothing, about, the Criminal Justice system...

you know, here I was, this middle-class mom,

career, never even a parking ticket

and it was quite a surprise when we went to Court,

and I got that kind of time for marihuana.

I was charged with... possession of marihuana,

with the intent to distribute and I got a conspiracy charge.

I received a total of 55 five year prison sentence.

The judge suspended all but six.

I was fortunate enough...

to make first parole

and I actually served in prison 14 months

and I came home.

Use the cards that we put in with the messages

and ask the family to respond.

So we've gotten really good responses.

And this one was...

three members of the family viewed it...

and we asked what were the ages of the children whose are

and she put just one age, she put six,

She says, it's extremely meaningful

for the daughter of the mother whose incarcerated.

She loved it.

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 how their family was OK.

That their mom or dad are OK.

[prisoner] There's so much I want to say to you, guys.

I know it's been three years since haven't seen me.

I miss you all so much.

And I greatly appreciate everything you've done for me.

Nothing is your fault.

Just very good. Nothing is yall's fault.

And anyone else in the family that I've done

that y'all make feel that you're at a fault

it's been me.

I've grown up a lot this time

in these last three or four years.

I've grown up a lot.

Just want to say that... I love you.

Bye.

Merry Christmas.

[Tracey Syphax] They sentence me to...

one year administration segregation.

And administration segregation

is twenty three hour lock-up.

You locked up for twenty three hours each day.

You come for a half hour shower and half hour break.

I've never been a violent person.

At that time I was treated

like one of the most violent persons in the world.

I remember going into that cell

and I believe there was maybe a five by eight cell

and once that door closed

I knew I was gonna be there for the next year.

This is an experience that,

either is gonna make you, or break you

Either you're gonna come out a better person

or you gonna come out a worsen person

than you were before you went in.

Being in a hole is an experience that I wouldn't wish to anybody.

When you're locked up for 23 hours,

the only thing you can do is think.

The words of my grandmother's

just kept playing over and over again in my mind.

And those words was that God was gonna find me

in my darkest hour.

And only then, that I realized who I truly was.

And when I kept hearing that,

I kept saying: "I am at my darkest hour.

I'm at my lowest point."

And I think right then,

I realized that I've reached my lowest point I life.

And that the only way for me to go from here was up.

[female reporter] Another crime, another criminal

in a country already fed up with both.

Politicians say the solution is simple: crackdown.

The reason the Criminal Justice system

isn't working is that we're not sending enough people in jail,

and keeping there longer enough.

The people are saying, in a very general way

that they want to lock these rascals up

and keep them there for a long time.

During the 1980's, there was a major shift

in the Congress and in State Legislators

about how long sentences should be.

The public was alarmed

by increasing rates of crimes from the 1970's and early 80's.

They wanted longer sentences, the wanted cracking down.

And, that's what happened across the board

for all kinds of crimes

not only the mandatory minimum drug sentences.

Congress in 1984 established a US sentencing Commission

made up of seven members,

four had to be federal judges,

no more than one from one party, a very bipartisan effort.

And those members were given the instructions

to create a sentencing guideline systems

for all crimes not just drugs.

Any federal crime

and it would give the judges a starting point

and then they would go up and down on a grid

depending on the culpability of the defendant

and a few other factors.

At the same time,

Congress decides to jump in with a mandatory minimums of 1986.

So before the before the sentencing guidelines

have really been shaped

we now have long mandatory sentences

for low level drug offenses.

So the Sentencing Commission now has to build guidelines

on top of the mandatory minimums.

So that a consequence was that...

drug trafficking that might not have been so serious,

let's say trafficking in ten kilos of crack cocaine

now got you a life sentence, under the sentencing guideline.

The effect of all those sentencing 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,

a way for judges and Juries

and shift it over 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 the discretion was eliminated from the system,

it just put the prosecutors in charge.

Prosecutors can negotiate with you behind closed doors

It's not open to the public, it's not reviewable,

there's no appeal available in the way

you're negotiated with

And they can basically say to you:

"If you plead guilty, or if you cooperate,

and you give us other names,

we'll cut you a deal

and we'll only charge you with one of these charges

instead of these three.

And you'll get five years instead of 15."

So all of that goes on behind closed doors.

And they say to you: "If you don't cooperate with us,

if you don't agree, we're gonna file a motion

because you have a prior from ten years back.

We're gonna file a motion, column 8.51.

And if you go to trial and lose,

your five years sentence is gonna double to ten.

Or your ten year sentence is gonna be double to twenty.

Or we can even, if you got two priors,

it will put you in prison for life.

But all the decision

about how they charge these... What charges they bring

knowing what the sentence will be,

that's all done behind closed doors.

It's absolutely not open to the public.

It's not opened to review by a court even.

And so the power of the prosecutors is huge

in determining sentences today,

and I don't think prosecutors are, per se, bad people

but I think power is seductive and they have a lot of power

and they like it and they get to,

not just rack up a victory, a win,

but they can also say:

"And he's going to prison for twenty five years."

[Nancy Ralston] Amy was born in 1960 and she was very shy.

But by the time she got in high school

people confided in her.

She played basketball, she made good grades.

[Ginger Fenter] High school that we went to

was 7th to 12th grade.

I was kinda the little tag-along sister.

Amy and my brothers were friends

and Amy and my sisters were friends.

But I just kind of watched her she was...

always really friendly, always really nice.

[Nancy Ralston] This is a small town

and everybody knows everybody.

If she got in trouble we'd know about it pretty soon.

[Amy Povah] I had what I considered

an idyllic childhood.

A some point when I'm in college

I meet a 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

and go out and take some modeling photos.

We went to, like, several locations

and he instilled at me that I really had to pursue

a modelling career consider it.

My mother said: "Did you know Amy Ralston moved to Dallas?"

And I was like: "Oh my Gosh, no!

Mom, what's she thinking? What's she gonna do?"

"So well, I think she's going to model."

[Amy Povah] I created a little portfolio

before I moved to Dallas

that I could show to the modelling agencies.

I was on a double date.

I wasn't really interested in the guy I had been set up with.

And Sandy, approached me

and asked me if I'd like to go out

and I rejected his offer

and he looked so deflated so I said,

"If you can remember my phone number, you can call me.

Sure enough he called a week or so later, we went on a date.

He was well read, well-traveled, well educated,

graduated at Stanford Law School.

I had gone to Princeton Theology School.

So 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 at that point it seemed like a dream come true.

There were red flags before we got married.

There were frankly red flags all along the way.

Sandy has what I consider to be a dual personality,

and this other character would emerge whenever he drank.

I 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 leave all my friends behind

and completely move to a different city.

Amy finally left Sandy but he wouldn't leave her.

I just kept saying: "Let's be friends."

He wanted to be more.

So he told me that he was going to Europe.

And then I didn't heard anything for a while.

The word got back to me that he'd been arrested.

I hadn't been in Dallas over a year.

So the only thing I knew to do

was to book a flight and go to Dallas

and see if I could go through the house

listening to the answering machines

and try to piece this thing together

and eventually you think you're gonna find out more information.

And while I was in the Dallas house, the phone rang

and it was Sandy's German legal council

who had been assigned to the case in Germany

And, at that time, he gave me very thin details

but said that Sandy had been arrested

for manufacturing ecstasy and he wanted me

to retain 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 in Dallas

and I took that money and I retained an attorney

to go over and meet with Sandy in Germany.

Seven months after Sandy's been arrested,

and I pull into the garage my car is rushed

by law enforcement people who were screaming

and they have a gun out

and they're pointing it out at my face.

I'm being told: "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 tell us what you know.

And I wasn't going to say anything

because I'm literally seeing these people destroying my home.

So this isn't someone I really confide in.

So, 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 try to implicate other people.

People she didn't even know!

And she refused to do it.

She said I don't know these people.

I'm not gonna do this.

And this prosecutor said: "You either cooperate"

- and I'm paraphrasing now -

"You either cooperate or we'll ruin your life."

I was in Los Angeles, and it was March 1991,

and I go over and I look out the window

and there they are.

So, I was arrested that day.

Her father and I wanted her to play bargain.

But... I understand...

Amy is not gonna implicate somebody.

And like a criminal, out of all of them,

she didn't even know.

Just to save her own skin, that's not my daughter.

So she wouldn't do this.

And as a result, they ruined her.

[Amy Povah] I could not plead guilty to everything

that they accused me of.

So, I plead not guilty

and ultimately I was convicted for conspiracy

and I received a 24 year sentence.

There a way in which you have to see the conspiracy law

is a very important tool of law enforcement.

If the crime is selling drugs,

and some man in Miami sells 20 kilos of cocaine

to an undercover agent...

you want to ask:

"Who is the seller working for?"

"Where does the money go?"

If the money goes back to a drug lord in Colombia

who's gonna keep the proceeds

he's in the conspiracy even though he actually wasn't there

when the sell took place.

He's a conspirator.

And so part of the goal of the conspiracy law

is to make sure that the most senior level

of those in the criminal organization

are justly punished.

The problem is when you flip it around

and the lowest level people in the criminal organization

get punished just like they're the kingpin

And that's the big problem in that the way

in which the conspiracy laws are being applied.

[Amy Povah] I ended up in federal prison

in Dublin, California,

I realized that I would need to spend a lot of time

in the law library.

And I needed to familiarized myself with my case

and everything that had gone wrong.

If you further the conspiracy one step,

you're guilty for everything in the conspiracy,

no matter when you entered the conspiracy.

It could have been on the last day.

So, because I had collected some money,

I technically was guilty of conspiracy.

And I was held responsible

for everything that everybody else had done.

And my sentence, my 24 years sentence

was established based on the sum total

of all the ecstasy that Sandy has manufactured.

That's where my years came from.

My years didn't come from things that I did.

It came from three point something million

tablets of ecstasy

that he had manufactured, put my on the chart

at this level just twenty four years.

That's how a judge sentences you, based on a chart.

You end up being the subject the way the sentencing law

is applied to conspiracy.

You end up being subject to being punished,

for all the conduct that everybody in the conspiracy

has been involved in.

So, the idea of proportional punishment

can be lost,

if this triggers a mandatory sentence.

One of the most controversial things about

the way the Federal Criminal Justice system works, now

is something called the trial penalty.

And so it's just become standard practice that

prosecutor will go to a defendant and say:

"You've been charged with a crime and you either gonna

plead guilty and cooperate or we're going to crush you."

And so, the defendant is confronted with

a favorable offer

for a plea agreement if he pleads guilty

and potentially decades in prison

if you exercise this constitution

of right to go to trial

Because he's not gonna get any credit

for accepting responsibilities if he goes to trial.

Prosecutors have a lot of discretion

to add charges to people.

You know this is false under the category

like throwing the bucket on somebody.

Sometimes they have that discretion

and they do not want people

exercising their right to a jury trial

so they will threaten people

and the Courts have upheld this tactic.

It's not like they're doing something under the table.

But if people insist on the right to a jury trial,

they faced the prospect of the judge

imposing a mandatory minimum sentence

or the prosecutors adding charges

and that's the type of pressure that they face

and why so many do plead guilty.

[Amy Povah] To add insult to injury,

while I'm incarcerated for 24 years,

he comes back to the US and goes before the same judge

that sentenced me to 24 years

and he got three years of probation

because he cooperated and snitched down everybody.

The person who comes in early, and cooperates

usually ends up with a lower sentence

than the person in the conspiracy

who walks up two days before the trial,

and tenders a plea, that sentence will be different.

Even though they may be situated the same,

it just plain different.

And those are the yings and the yangs

of the sentencing process

that the Court has not a whole lot of control over,

and the US attorneys and the prosecutors' attorneys

have control over

but it does result in a different sentence.

When you are facing a mandatory minimum drug sentence...

there's only one way out.

You must offer substantial assistance to the government

in a prosecution of someone else.

That means you've got to work for the government.

Means you've got to set up someone else,

you need to give information to the government

that leads to the prosecution of others.

When you're facing something like 20 or 30 years,

you have people that are...

do things they never thought they would do,

which is, turning their friends, testifying against friends.

Sometimes they will even make up false information

to testify falsely against people

just in order to get themselves out

from under the terrible legal situation that they're in.

The pressure to provide information is huge

and coercive... and un-American.

But that's the way mandatory minimums are set up.

My mother calls me and says, "I need to tell you something."

And I'm thinking, "the worst."

She says: "Well, Amy is featured in Glamour Magazine.

She's been in prison for a number of years.

[Amy Povah] And why that was such a catalyst

was suddenly we had something tangible to hand to people.

The community find out and my brother got involved

and of course my father and Senator Bumpers

and Senator Pryor.

Everyone started actually looking into the case

and saying, "Well, what could've possibly

happened here? This just doesn't seem right."

[Amy Povah] My story and case, started gaining momentum

and we got, I think, up to 15 politicians

who wrote letters supporting my clemency.

When I read it,

I was sympathetic to her,

because I thought,

that her husband was the primary driver of the offense.

She clearly had a subordinate role in the offense.

And she was caught up in the web of these conspiracy laws

that are extremely broad ranging

and you don't have to do very much

to get yourself stuck in a case like that.

I went to my case manager's office

and walked in the door and she said,

she was in a frenzy and she said,

"Where are you going to release to?"

And I was like, "what do you mean?"

And she said, "Where are you gonna live

when you get out of prison?"

And I said, "well, I guess with my parents for a while."

and she said, "Because I got to set you up on probation."

And I said, "why?"

And she said, "you're going home."

And...

I couldn't process it, I was like...

and so...

My reaction was... I think I was sitting down

so I stood up and I sat down

and then I stood up and I sat down

and I said, "why do you mean?"

And she said, "You've gotten executive clemency."

President Clinton has ordered you out

and you have to be out today by five o'clock.

[Sam Morison] The president had granted her petition

and she was home that afternoon, that evening.

They let her out that day.

[Amy Povah] It was really great

because we always got bad news in there.

Nobody ever got good news.

And...

It was really nice to have all the women walk me

across the compound.

And there was that moment on the compound of victory

but it was really hard too, because you had to leave...

you have to leave so many people behind.

We can confidently say today that we are finally beginning

to win the war against crime.

Now it's the time to show drug users that...

we mean to reach our goal of a drug-free generation

in the United States.

You will be put a way and put a way for good.

Three strikes and you are out.

[Richard Van Wickler] The primary mission of...

the drug war, as stated by the Nixon administration

is to create a drug-free society.

That's what is all about.

That's why we spend the billions of dollars

and incarcerate millions of people

is to create a drug-free society.

And we've been at this now, good and hard

for forty years, trillions of dollars into it.

No one didn't strike really.

And when a reasonable person says, "How much closer are we

to creating a drug-free society?"

You begin to realize that perhaps we've been giving

a mission here that is impossible to achieve.

[Neil Franklin] As we release these drug laws,

we went out and arrested anyone we could find,

who either using drugs or selling drugs.

And you try to personally remove yourself from that.

"No, this is just our job, this is what we do."

And we had no idea of how we're affecting society.

You don't think about that.

[Richard van Wickler] It lines up perfectly

with alcohol prohibition.

When you're looking at alcohol prohibition,

the richest man in the country was Al Capone.

He controlled it.

If you try to get in his market, he would kill you.

There all sub-kinds of... you know, sub-factions.

They're trying to manufacture in their bathtubs and stills.

It was unsanitary.

You didn't know what it was cut with.

Sometimes it had anti-freeze.

People would drink this and go blind.

People would drink it and get cirrhosis.

Kids would die in the crossfire.

It's sound all too familiar

'cos it's exactly what's happening on the street

today in the United States when it comes to

gang violence and the drug war.

The DEA has said that the majority of gang violence

in the United States

is over illegal drug market place disputes.

Fighting for that territory.

We saw violence crimes go through their roof as these...

criminal gangster organizations fought one another.

So we're seeing that type of phenomenon today

in our major metropolitan areas like Los Angeles,

the Crips against the Bloods and of course,

their horrendous violence that we're seeing in Mexico

and in places like South America,

as these very rich, powerful cartels fight one another.

[Neil Franklin] Me as a police officer for many years.

I policed and really thought nothing

about the effects of my work.

But when I retired

from the Maryland State Police in 1999

and started working for the Baltimore Police Department

as a Commander training.

That very year, I had a good friend of mine,

Ed Toatley, who was working undercover

for the Maryland State Police.

He was working on a safe streets campaign

with the FBI, on a task force.

He was assassinated by a drug dealer.

Where he was buying cocaine from.

That made me stop and think for a while,

it drew me right to the violence of this business.

[Peter Moskos] A lot of people blame drugs

and not prohibition.

When this is really the problem,

the violence around drugs

when it's destroying cities and communities

is much more prohibition than is the actual drug.

One of the problems that we have with drug prohibition

is that is so lucrative of a business.

You can make so much money in such a little time.

And the difference between

arresting someone for dealing drugs

and arresting someone for committing rapes or burglaries,

when you arrest a rapist,

or someone committing burglaries,

you know what, the rape stops.

The burglaries stop.

When you arrest someone for dealing drugs,

dealing drugs doesn't stop on that corner.

You just created a job opportunity

for someone else to come in.

And unfortunately, when a job is filled,

there's usually some fighting going on,

some shooting and people get hurt.

Drug enforcement is...

relatively, an easier kind of crime to prosecute

because the government gets to control

the commission of the crime.

You pick your target,

you trick them when to show up...

if you're the government, you actually maybe...

provide drugs to the case.

Ordinary kinds of crime,

you've got to investigate what happened, who did it.

You've got to gather evidence.

Long-- sometimes after it happened.

So the...

The challenge to investigating robbery, murder, burglary...

those take lots of resources.

And there's much lower return... you just...

you can do lots and lots of investigations

and never find the target.

We evaluate you as a police officer

many times on a number of arrests that you make.

So the more arrests that you make,

the better your evaluation is

and quicker you're gonna get promoted.

Also, if you have to make an arrest,

you can work more overtime.

Work more overtime, you get more money.

It's very easy to make large numbers of arrest

in poor and black communities because the drug dealing

occurs on that street corners out in the open.

And it's very easy for anyone to go in,

any police officer going in just scoops up

a large number of people on any given day.

We need to change the incentives for our police officers.

[Eric Sterling] The other pieces of it is

with drug cases, there's asset forfeiture.

You can get all the property that's associated

with the drug trafficking offense

the cars, the real estate, the airplanes,

and that money goes into your agencies budget.

So you get a very powerful economic incentive

to do this kind of work,

especially when times are hard.

The emphasis of our Criminal Justice system

should be on violent offences.

These is where most people are concerned about.

They want murderers apprehended,

they want murderers and rapes solved,

and they want these people

taken out of the community and locked away in prison

so our communities can be safe.

I think a significant problem in policing

is the limited resources that we have.

And if you look at the data, in the late 1960's,

before the drug war,

We were solving 9 out of 10 murders in this country.

We made arrest 9 out of 10 murders in this country.

Today that number is 6 out of 10.

And those numbers are similar for other violent crimes

such as rapes, and robberies.

And we know it's directly related to us being misdirected

within a law enforcement community

and focusing on drug crimes.

I mean we have better technology,

we have computers, we have DNA...

We should be solving more murderers.

We should be better at that.

Another significant peace here is that

the relationship between police and community

has been broken, severely broken.

And that's because we're going to these communities

looking for drugs every day.

Seventy percent of what we do everyday

illegally searching people, searching their cars,

racial profile.

And because of this conflict

we don't get the information we need

from the community to solve crimes.

Any police officer, any chief who knows his business

will tell you that we cannot be effective

in preventing and solving crime

without the cooperation of the community.

We've lost it,

completely.

So I was a colonel in the War on drugs,

during the 1980's, when I worked for the US Congress

writing this drug laws.

Overseeing the drug enforcement administration

going to their secret intelligence center

going to their laboratories,

watching what they were doing.

And at a certain time, you begin to say

is this strategy capable of working?

Are we going to stop the drug traffickers?

Well, it's many years later and the answer is

clearly we have not.

You look at Mexico

and the drugs traffickers are running amok.

You look at the headlines

and we are having heroin overdose epidemic,

it's worse than it's ever been.

What we've been doing is not working.

And I would suggest, it can't work.

It can't work for a very important economic reason,

which is, that the harder you squeeze the drug traffickers

and try to create a scarcity

the more valuable you make the drugs.

And the more valuable you make the drugs,

the more people who will come in to make those profits

if the price of anything goes up

more people are gonna go into it.

So the very economics of what you're trying to accomplish

guarantees more people are gonna sell drugs.

It's illogical.

It's fundamentally illogical.

It's irrational

to think the drug enforcement can stop the supply of drugs,

because it doesn't make any economic sense.

I don't know what the criminal justice

world would be like without the War on drugs.

My only experience of it

has been during the War on Drugs.

I mean, I started FAAM in 1991,

the War on Drugs were really heated up in the 80's,

kept rolling through the 90's.

You know, it sort of started tapering off in the 2000's.

But it still alive and well.

It was like a pounding thunder of anti-drug hysteria in 1986.

We must do something, anything.

And that meant grasping at straws

and not looking ahead at what the cost

was going to be or what might be effective.

While I was on the hill I increasingly became convinced

that the War on Drugs was a mistake,

it was... counterproductive.

And I wanted to put my energy into ending it.

And so in January 1989

I started the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation

and that has been the opportunity for me

for the last 25 years to...

mobilize different kinds of strategies

to end drug prohibition.

A lot of it has been through other organizations I helped

start...

families against mandatory minimums in my office.

I'm still very active with

Students for Sensible Drug Policy

and with Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

And so a lot of my work is, advocacy, strategizing...

you know, what are the ways to change drug policy

and before Criminal Justice System.

There are countless numbers of people who are...

in prison for unconceivably long sentences,

for being minor offenders in the drug trade.

These are just a handful of files from families

against mandatory minimums.

Where these people... You know...

James Belt, life sentence.

Daniel Clarke, 35 years.

Timothy Tyler, life sentence.

Sharanda Jones, life sentence.

This is not an aberration, this is...

the life blood, the is the typical case.

This is the typical pattern.

You know, Clarence Aaron who has numerous cases.

I mean, these are all excessively long cases.

These are... Do you see Colombian drug lords here?

Do you see Mexican, you know... Chapo Guzmán?

Do you see the Mexican lords here?

No.

I was so glad to start to work my way out of the prison.

So going to the Clinton house

was a halfway house.

You were half way home, but you were still in prison.

So I got the Clinton house.

I already had some experience in doing roofing.

I had a roofing background.

I called my old boss up.

He was in a halfway house at the time,

and I think someone, I don't know what company

had him doing roofing.

And his mother came to me and asked me,

would I buy him a pair of shoes

that he needed to do his roofing.

And he just blossomed.

He just blossomed from there.

When I came out of prison, and he had a job,

and he says, "Hey, cub, you came by man, nice to see you home",

and I said, "Yeah, you know..."

All the time in my mind, I was thinking,

"maybe I can get me some money."

You know, 'cos I heard he got a job,

I could get me some money, and I could get up and running

But me...

with that old stinking thinking,

we're trying to get him to come in

'cos I can't trust nobody.

He said, "Man, I'm not living like that no more."

And I really didn't believe that.

Because I couldn't see myself disconnecting myself from it.

So I couldn't believe it for nobody else.

But he showed me.

He didn't tell me.

He showed me.

He stayed loyal and cut it out for real.

And that's what I admire most about him,

because he was in a bad place like I was.

I was so happy to be at work and to be there,

and have the ability to work again,

that I never missed a day.

I was always there.

I was always there an hour early before anybody else get there.

So, in essence, I was hungry.

I was hungry to work, I was hungry to... be free.

And I had the ability to change my life around so...

all those things,

made me a good employee.

And I think he'd seen that in me and...

he allowed me to work my way up from labor to mechanic...

to form into supervisor

within a number of a matter of a couple of years.

And then, that's when he just made his mind up and said

that he was gonna go from... going to business for itself.

And that's how it all started.

I just really felt that I had what it took

to be entrepreneur and to be successful.

So I quit my job,

and I fully-fledged into business

and I believe my first year in business.

I made about thirty something thousand dollars

in my first year.

I remember investing back into the business

and buying tools and buying ladders

So I'm growing the business,

and I think my second year

I probably did about eighty something thousand.

The third year I did about a hundred something thousand,

so slowly but surely progressing.

So now, I'm up to a half a million dollars a year.

And the next thing I know,

I'm up to several hundred thousand dollars a year.

Then you're already,

two thousand nineteen ninety nine,

and early 2000,

I finally went over the million dollar mark.

And I said, "Wow... you know...

I never thought that I would own a million-dollar business."

[Lois James] A person has to have a dream.

You know, they have the one to do better,

for themselves,

you can bring a person out of prison.

And they can have nothing

and they can make something of themselves

if that's what they want.

But if you have a low self-esteem,

you don't think good about yourself.

So when you come out,

you're not gonna think good,

so you're not gonna get better.

So when you start thinking that I'm better than this,

then that's when you can overcome...

the obstacles in your way

at the time that's blocking you from a dream.

But you have to have that dream,

you have to want better for yourself.

And that's hard for people that are coming out of prison.

[Tracey Syphax] Not having the ability

to number one, get a job,

not having the ability to redeem yourself...

I think that's where recidivism rate goes to the roof

because you have people that are coming home from jail

that are looking for opportunities.

And I know they're looking for opportunities

'cos my office is located on Martin Luther King boulevard.

A lot of them come to my office.

I hear them so many times, guys tell me,

"Trace, I just need an opportunity.

"Trace, I just need a job,

Trace, I don't want to go back to what I used to do.

Tracey, if you just gave me a chance,

I'll prove to you that I got a value and..."

And that hurts.

You know when you look at...

a lot of these guys.

I know for a fact that a lot of guys

are good people.

Everybody that goes to prison is not a bad person.

So when you look at the folks that I know,

I wanna change their life,

they're just looking for an opportunity

to change their life but never get it,

it's hard not to go back

to when you know you can make a dollar.

And I've seen that happened so many times,

you know, I've seen guys that said, "Tracey, I tried,

I couldn't get a job,

so here I am back out in the streets.

Here I am back to doing what I've always done."

[Gregory Marshall] When you lived a certain way

for so long and came, as far as he did,

he came a long way.

That needs to be put out there.

Because a lot of people don't know how to break

the change from the street thing.

That thing get ahold to you,

that thing will hold you until you die.

[Tracey Syphax] To be on that boulevard...

for me it's to be, that beacon of hope of...

no matter where you come from, no matter what you've done,

you can come out of that

because that same boulevard I sold drugs on

And directly cross the street from where my office is,

I used to sit in a bar called "The Night Life"

that I've sold drugs out of that bar

for a number of years inside and out.

So they have my business on Martin Luther King Boulevard,

and to show people that,

Yes, I was there once, drug dealer,

that ran up and down the streets,

and I sold drugs and did all that stuff there.

I'm now a changed person,

I'm now somebody that they can expire to, also.

Executive clemency was a bitter-sweet victory

to be honest with you

because it didn't take me very long after I got out

and the excitement, the exhilaration were off

that I realized that...

I may be free

but so many of my friends and other people aren't.

And as long as they're not then I'm not really.

So I started the CAN-DO Foundation

which is clemency for all non-violent drug offenders

to try to continue to help some of the women I left behind.

I did time with Danielle, Barbara, Mary Richardson...

they've all done well over 20 years.

These are all guys who were serving life.

These are for pot, these for LSD,

I have... I just got back from Washington DC.

I was there for a fundraiser about the whole clemency project

that's happening.

And, in fact, I took...

all these guys to the front, in front of the White House,

And anyway, there's several of them

that I stood up in front of the White House

advocating for their clemency.

When I started practicing Law, almost forty years ago,

there were about half a million people in prison.

And today there are 2.3 million people in prison.

The rate of incarceration,

the number of people in prison per hundred thousands

is going up from about a 130, 140 to over 700

per hundred thousand.

It's an enormous increase in the number of people

we're locking up in our society.

In a course of my professional career.

[Tym Lynch] Billions of dollars have been poured into...

the prison expansion.

Not only of the Federal prison capacity

but billions have been sent to state and local governments

to extend their prison capacity.

And during the 1990's

we were building on average a prison a week.

And as soon as these prisons were built,

it's important to emphasize that there were immediately

filled up with prisoners.

And even today, many of our prison facilities

are operating beyond their design capacity.

If you compare the US with other industrialized nations,

Canada, Western Europe,

we lock up our citizens at 5 to 10 times the rate

of those other nations.

It's not that we have 5 or 10 times the rate of crime,

of those other nations, but we have consciously chosen

to have a much more puny of an approach

to crime than other cooperate able nations have.

And that's the result that we see in mass incarceration.

America's supposed to be the land of the free

and when you discover how many people

that are being locked up in our prisons,

it should make people set up and take notice.

I often get asked:

"How did you feel... how do you feel now...

that you have written federal laws

that are probably the most unjust federal laws

that have ever been written.

You know...

15,000 people go to prison every year

getting this mandatory sentences.

So this is 20 years, this is... you know...

300,000 people who've gotten this mandatory sentences

that I played a role in writing.

Um... It's horrifying.

If I'd been a better attorney, maybe I could've...

if I had been craftier, maybe...

if I'd taken... they might not have been as bad.

I'm grateful that I've had the opportunity now since 1989

to try to end these laws.

Fortunately,

many former prisoners, many prisoners who write to me

are grateful for the work that I'm doing...

and I take a great deal of solace

and I'm in a position where I can sort of help

try to end these mandatories.

[Carolyn LeCroy] What keeps me going...

are the children.

And the love that the parent has for their child.

And the love that the child has for their parent.

The children love is pretty unconditional.

Pretty unconditional and...

they don't stop loving you.

Just because...

you're behind bars.

[Brett Gelico] My name is Brett Gelico,

I went to 637 06.

My first encounter with the prison systems

started pretty young.

Life style with drugs, you know, I started early.

The thing with me was, I got out in February,

I think it was in 2012.

Within three months I got out, I paid my court funds

I paid my restitution, paid...

child support, I paid everything.

I was at zero.

I started my own business.

I got a vehicle, I had a tags, licenses and everything.

And in October that year, I decided to smoke some weed.

And I thought the worst case scenario,

if I go to probation officers

is that I have to go to a program

were I'd be urine tested regularly.

I'd go to NA and AA meetings.

Well the reality of the fact is a dirty urine is a violation

and the probation officer I had was new

and she was a stick up for the law.

She violated me there on the spot.

I wept like a little child,

I couldn't believe I had, I mean, all this work.

I'm like, "I have all this to show you, look at all this.

I've done it."

She's like, "you've done a lot. But you're still using drugs

and it's against the law."

I got a sentenced to four years for a dirty urine analysis

It's a lot watching your children grow up

and miss you and wave and say: "Bye, daddy"

as you're walking out of a visit.

It's just, it doesn't get easy. You know what I'm saying.

And then you get older,

you think you'll become more accustomed than this

but it never, under any circumstances,

gets easier.

Hey guys,

how are you doing?

First off, uh, Zean:

I wanna say thank you

for spending as much time as you do at the house

watching everybody while Mom is at work.

I know you miss out on play time.

I know you miss out on a lot of things.

So I just want to start off by saying thank you.

I'm proud of you.

For wrestling.

I'm glad you're sticking with it.

I know you're getting so worn but just like I said

try to stick with it.

And you know, buddy, you're the man of the house,

do the best you can, take out the trash,

try to stick to manners

I love you. And I'm so very proud of you

and your haircut looks wonderful.

I'm glad.

You're growing up so fast.

From 7 to 13, you've really grown up.

And I'm sorry I'm not there to guide you

as much as I like.

But...

you're turning up very good and I'm very proud of you.

I really am.

Now, I wanna know, Serine, my baby.

I love you and I miss you very much.

Recently, you just got a Honor Roll

I'm so very proud of you.

I know you worked hard.

Mom was telling me how you were doing.

And you've just grown up so fast.

And knuckle head, my little knuckle head Brody,

all right... I want you to know that I love you

and I miss you very much

I have a book here, where it says, "When I miss you."

There's a bunch of books that I went through

and this is the one I thought would be more appropriate

so anytime you think of me, you're missing me,

there's a guinea pig

that's gonna do the same thing as Mom when she's goes to work.

I love you and I miss you all.

And I hope to see you soon.

Daddy loves you.

Bye.

It was a little harder than I thought.

[Julie Stewart] Because of the fact that so many of us

have lived for 30 years in this box of mandatory sentences

and federal sentencing guidelines

and you know, the drug war,

we have to start breaking out of that box

and thinking about a world without...

the outside of those confines.

If you're interested in reducing the injustice

and reducing mass incarceration,

you have to go to the root of the problem,

which is too many laws on the books.

And what is the primary problem there

is for us prioritizing which laws ought to go first.

The top of my list is the drug laws

because I think we are in another situation

that's very similar to the days of alcohol prohibition,

where the government has just declared

millions and millions of people to be criminals.

And that's what they've done with this drug laws.

So... We have to move away from the drug war

the same way in which we moved away

from alcohol prohibition.

They'll be some problems when that's done,

but that's far and away the primary problem

that needs to be addressed.

The danger of looking

at one outrageous case after another

can blind you to the broader perspective,

that there are so many of these cases

that these are actually the typical pattern,

this is the system,

it is broadly unjust,

and that it is...

so wasteful,

it is so counterproductive,

it's so inefficient,

one has to be outraged.

Why does it continue?

Why are we unable to stop

promptly, more efficiently a policy

that's been going on since 1986?

Of locking up so many low-level offenders

and treating them as major kingpins.

That's a very deeply disturbing indictment,

that we're willing to waste so much treasure

and inflict so much harm

and cause so much injustice

in a society where our credo is about liberty

and justice for all.

[music fades]

[slow taciturn tune]