For an advanced society, the conditions  in our prisons are quite appalling.

And the worst parts to deal with  were just the sheer brutality of it.

People who have made mistakes should  be deserving of a second chance.

The impact that incarceration has on  reducing the crime rate is quite marginal.

There are many better, cost-effective ways  to reduce crime, and we haven't done them.

This prison industrial complex  is a human rights crisis.

MARIE GOTTSCHALK:  

The United States is the world's leading  warden. It has more people incarcerated in  

prison and jail, as in absolute numbers,  and as a proportion of the population,  

than any other country in the world. So it  incarcerates about 700 per 100,000 people  

in prison or jail. This is about five to 12 times  the rate of other Western countries and Japan.  

We've got about 160,000 people who are  serving life sentences in the United  

States now, and a number of them who are serving  life in prison without the possibility of parole,  

in some cases, equals the entire prison  populations of other large countries.

In my state alone of Pennsylvania, we're spending  as much just to send somebody, keep someone in  

a state prison, as to send them to college, at  some of the leading colleges or universities in  

the state for the year. There's a political issue  about the legitimacy of the political system that  

locks up so many people, and disproportionately  locks up so many people of color, and so many  

people who are poor. So often when we talk about  prisons and jails, we talk about the numbers,  

how many people are in prison, or how many  people in jail. What we overlook is that we  

have some of the most degrading, dehumanizing  prisons and jails in any developed country.

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH: For an advanced society,  the conditions in our prisons are quite appalling.  

Going to an American prison increases your chance  of getting HIV AIDS. Going to an American prison  

increases your chance of getting tuberculosis.  Going to an American prison increases your chance  

of being raped, whether you're a man or a woman,  and increases your chances of being raped either  

by prison staff or by other prisoners, and so on.  I mean, it's just appalling what goes on in our  

prisons. I think it's completely uncontroversial  that these things are appalling, you are not  

sentenced to AIDS, you are not sentenced to  rape, you are sentenced to incarceration.

DAMIEN ECHOLS: The hardest parts of being in  prison, the worst parts to deal with were just  

the sheer brutality of it. You know, there  were times when I was beaten so bad that I  

started to piss blood. You know, they're not  gonna spend a lot of time and money and energy  

taking care of someone they plan on killing, so  it's not like you're gonna see a real doctor or a  

real dentist. You know there's, at one point  I've been hit in the face so many times by  

prison guards that it had caused a lot of nerve  damage in my teeth. So I was in horrendous pain.  

Your choices are live in pain, or let him pull  your teeth out. I didn't want them to pull my  

teeth out. So I had to find techniques that  would allow me to cope with the physical pain.

SHAKA SENGHOR: When I think  about my journey through,  

in prison, I went through some very  adverse experiences. I had some significant  

obstacles to overcome, including, you  know, longterm solitary confinement,  

which they estimate is designed to drive a  person crazy after 90 days. And what I found in  

that environment is that people figure out ways to  cope and to, survive when they're forced to do so.

LIZA JESSIE PETERSON:  

The 13th amendment in the constitution,  in the United States Constitution, it says  

that slavery is illegal. So we can't have slavery  anymore, except for punishment of a crime. So  

everybody get your constitution out, look up  the 13th amendment, and you see the clause that  

says except for punishment of a crime. So if you  are committed- if you are convicted of a crime,  

then you're exempt from that 13th  amendment saying that slavery, you know,  

is abolished. So that means that you're allowed  to work as a slave. Slave labor, slave wages.

So you have people working for 10 cent an  hour, 11 cent an hour, who are, you know,  

doing agriculture, working for huge corporations.  You know, I don't want to name them because  

there's so many, but you know, a lot of the goods  and services that we take for granted. Clothing  

lines, computer parts, airplane parts, military  equipment, food that we buy, organically grown.  

These things are being manufactured in prisons,  in prison farms, in prison factories, by inmates.

SENGHOR: Prisons in America specifically, are  some of the biggest, most dysfunctional businesses  

we have in our society. When I was in prison, I  worked for 17 cents an hour. That was my starting  

rate working in the kitchen. But there's also  big corporations who invest in prison labor,  

because they can get this labor for $1.50 an  hour, and then the sad part about it is that,  

in turn, they don't even hire these men and  women when they're actually released from prison.

GOTTSCHALK: We have many people,  not only do they serve their time,  

but once they leave, it's still as if they have  an F, felon, as sort of the scarlet letter for  

the rest of their lives, because they've served  their time, but they're not allowed to vote,  

they're not allowed to get welfare benefits, they  can't get food stamps, they may not be able to get  

student loans, they may not be allowed  to live in certain places, and they may  

not be able- permitted to get licenses for  certain jobs, even jobs like hairstylist,  

which many people learn in prison. They learn how  to be barbers and then they come out, they can't  

get licensed because they have a- a criminal  conviction, and face extreme discrimination.

SENGHOR: I walked out of prison with  a lot of optimism, despite being told  

by the officers that I will  probably be back in six months.  

And when I walked out, I thought that I was  returning to a society that would be a lot more  

forgiving, and a lot more open to me getting a  second chance if I was willing to follow the rules  

of society. So, get out, look for a job,  you know, prove that I want to work,  

volunteer in my community, you know, figure out  ways to add value. And sadly and unfortunately,  

society is not really forgiving, and not really  as open to second chances as I thought they will  

be. And it's really sad in the sense that 90%  of people who are incarcerated will at some  

point return home. And we have a choice in how  we welcome men and women back to our community.

I personally believe that there's not  a human being that isn't without flaws,  

that hasn't had a bad moment. And  nobody will want to be held hostage  

to that moment for the rest of their  life. Once a person has served their time,  

that means that they should come out with a clean  slate and an opportunity to start over. And if we  

want them to have a successful transition, it  means we have to be willing to give them a true  

second chance, and not keep bringing up the past,  unless they're, you know, repeating that behavior.  

But in most cases, most people want to  just get out, move on with their life,  

find employment, find a safe place to live,  and be free to enjoy the fullness of life.

JOHNNY C TAYLOR JR: :I'm a  taxpayer, and anything that we can  

do to reduce recidivism, keep people off the rolls  as an expense, a government expense and a prison,  

and as taxpayers, is a positive. So there's that  part of me. You know, we have 7.3 million open  

jobs, and only 6 million people currently looking  for jobs, which means we have a talent shortage.  

And if we could do anything to eliminate that  talent shortage, that's 1.3 million people  

roughly. Every year, some 700,000 or so people  are released from jails and prisons in America.  

So just taking a— we can use some of that  population, that 700,000 person population  

to make a dent in that 1.3 million person  deficit. So it's just practically smart.

And then the third part of me,  which is more humanitarian-based,  

is people who have made mistakes  should be deserving of a second chance.  

It is just, I mean, because all of us have made  mistakes, some have been caught, some haven't,  

but these people have presumably paid their  debt to society. And you know, if the idea  

is I make a mistake at 25 years old, I go to  jail for five years, or prison for five years,  

and then I get out. What do I have to look forward  to, if forever, I'm going to wear the scarlet  

letter, you know, convict to see, that says I'll  never get another opportunity? Life is over there.

The Holy Grail of this would be if we  could identify people who are six months,  

a year away from release, and begin giving them  transitional skills. You know, work skills,  

life skills. Think about this. I was just meeting  with someone who's been incarcerated for 25 years,  

the cellphone as we know it didn't exist then.  So when they come out, they're gonna have to get  

adjusted to all of that the world has literally  transformed in 25 years. So in an ideal state,  

we'll begin helping them transition back into a  world that sort of they pushed the pause button  

two and a half decades ago. And we've got to catch  them up pretty quickly so that they acclimate,  

and don't recidivate. That's number one. But once  we do get them out, the most important thing we  

can do is get them back to work—housing and work.  And they're sort of inextricably intertwined,  

you know, but housing is critical. And  we've got to find places for people to  

have a permanent place. Mind you, they've had  housing for some significant period of time,  

and on the outside, absent that there's an  instability that makes them more vulnerable,  

and then you've got to pay for that  housing, which is where the job comes in.

We employers have to reach out to this population,  and let all of our biases go away. And we really  

do have to overcome our own biases. You know, we  talk about implicit bias, unconscious bias, people  

think, "Oh, that's just in the context of race and  gender." Well, the fact of the matter is we have a  

lot of biases, one of which is a bias that we have  against the formerly incarcerated. And maybe it's  

because of television, and everything that we see  in movies, and the characterizations of people who  

are in jail, but all of that comes through whether  we're conscious of it or not, when we are talking  

to someone who we know has been incarcerated. We  have some interesting research that says roughly  

80% of HR managers say, "I'm interested and would  be willing to hire the formerly incarcerated."  

Cherm's research says there's no bias at that  level. Where we get into the bias and have had it,  

and seen it historically, was customers and  other employees. Those are the biggies. You know,  

there's this NIMBY concept which says, "Yeah, I  like the idea of hiring a formerly incarcerated,  

but not to sit next to my daughter at work."  So, "Not in my backyard." That's the NIMBY  

concept. And so, we've had to work on that.  Fortunately, we have some new research that  

says employees themselves, as a result of this  narrative changing, and we're re positioning  

the formerly incarcerated, have said, "I'm  okay." Three quarters of employees have said,  

"I'm okay with you bringing people into  the workplace for nonviolent crimes."

Similarly, about three quarters of customers  have said, "For nonviolent crimes, I'm willing  

to buy from a company that openly hires the  formerly incarcerated, a product or a service."  

They're willing to do that. Those were two major  hurdles in the past. And what we're seeing is, as  

a result of us changing the narrative, these are  not bad people, they're people who made mistakes,  

and that every one of us has made them,  and is e- entitled to a second chance,  

we're changing the narrative around  hiring formerly incarcerated.

GOTTSCHALK:  

The public, and my students, this often happens,  right? The logical thing is we lock up more  

people, we should reduce the crime rate, because  there are fewer people who are out on the street  

to commit crimes. What we have found, myself  as a member of the National Academy of Sciences  

Committee on Incarceration, we studied the best  data. And in fact, the impact that incarceration  

has on reducing the crime rate is quite  marginal. And the more people you incarcerate,  

the even less of an impact it has on reducing  the crime rate, and it actually may increase  

the crime rate because people who serve time  in jail, the conditions in jail and prison may  

actually make people more criminogenic. And also,  you destabilize many communities by taking so many  

young people at the prime of their  lives out of those communities.

So one of the first things the public  has to realize is locking more people  

up doesn't necessarily increase the safety  of their communities, and it actually may  

decrease the safety of the communities, and  that a better solution is to not lock people  

up in the first place. Now, does that mean  that it's a perfect world where no one will  

go out and ever commit a heinous crime? No, that-  there's always that possibility, but we can never  

promise everybody a perfect world. If we wanted  a perfect world, we would lock everybody up.  

And we're not going to do that, but this is not  a risk that is a huge risk that we shouldn't be  

taking for many of the people, and if you talk  to many wardens or superintendents of prisons,  

you talk to them informally off the record,  they say they can go through their prison,  

and probably identify 30 or 40% of the  people who really don't need to be there.

ROBERT PERKINSON: What needs to happen  is we need to have, as a central goal,  

not just trying to make conditions of confinement  more humane or help people who are released from  

prison—there's like 750,000 people a year who get  out of prison, they're tossed out on the street  

with stigma, without money, angrier and more  alienated than they were before. They didn't  

get much treatment behind bars. So there's a lot  of emphasis on reentry right now, as well there  

should be. But in my view, there really has to be  an emphasis on reduction of this out of control,  

bloated government bureaucracy that is causing,  and it's unlike other types of government waste.

I mean, if we have a contract to build a highway  and it gets double billed, or air marshals, take  

air marshals, for example, which it seems like now  that the evidence is in has been a totally useless  

government program. They haven't committed any  crime. There's been an average of four arrests a