The. Ok and you are in the stream the home edition this is my living room i am going to be broadcasting from my living room for goodness knows how long and that is because the team in the stream is not just talking about social distancing we are practicing safe distancing but it doesnt mean that we cannot be connected in get how indeed that we do that through our shows and discussions to fuel a new t. V. You can actually have a conversation with i guess you can talk to them you can push back if you want to and of course were always on twitter at a. J. St its at the conversation today is about the coronavirus and prison its not prisons just in the u. S. But prisons of the other an amazing lineup of guests and they will introduce themselves in libya to everybody he was. Thanks for having me am im in libya right now policy director for Penal Reform International where an International Organization and we work to ensure fairness of criminal Justice Systems into aviad only cull tell everybody. How good to be with you my name is nicole s. Im a staff writer at the Marshall Project and we are a nonprofit newsroom based in new york city at covers the criminal Justice System in the United States and at length. I mean you sound i mean. Yes hi my names on noncon cofounder and executive director of the store justice we are a justice advocacy organization. At the end that there was a tweet that i was watching on your twitter feed really jumped out at me because i was thinking as were talking about this subject cowrote a virus and prisons this is what i was thinking this is at once tweet here when i tell people that gatherings of hundreds and hundreds of people are still happening right now literally all across the u. S. People get outraged but as soon as i tell them these gatherings are happening inside of a prisons and jails or of a sudden it becomes ok i just want to address they straight off that the people watching you think its got nothing to do with me at 9 what would you say to those people well 1st of all i think we have to understand how what happens inside our prison system affects us out here if i could give a quick number a very small number which is actually a very large number here in california we have over 120000 people incarcerated in our prison system there are 67000 staff that come in and out of these facilities every 8 hours right because prisons never shut down prisons are open 24 hours a day 7 days a week thanksgiving Christmas New Year and what that really means is that 67000 staff are going in and out of these facilities every 8 hours back into our communities and so when people dont care about whats happening inside when people dont hear that these social gatherings are happening inside prison facilities i would like everyone to think about how that implicates you and how that affects you. Nico youve been doing some reporting that treaty connects with families and you understand how families are going through this period of time and theres a lot of fia can even if its some pool of housecats some families i think that enough once you happen to be in prison. Sure yeah i mean families are kind of panicking right now id say the biggest thing to consider is that visitation is shut down across the country so in state and federal prisons youre no longer able to go in and see your loved one and so that means that people lost a really critical window into their loved ones well being so i heard from one woman named yes and yet guzman whose mother is incarcerated in california and she you know up until corona virus hit was receiving Cancer Treatment and so her mom esther in the virus is spreading in the state or her sort of her daughter in law was really you know trying to figure out wheres my mom is she still being transferred out is she ok is she sick is the prison under lockdown she just didnt have and there was no direct way or a to get in contact with her mother and oftentimes you know family members say that prison officials simply just do not call them back just dont return their calls so theyre really working you know operating in the dark here. I see nothing to cant you know whats going on what do you think. I mean i think what nicole is talking in that sadly you know were saying the world and the other thing by the shutting down visitation rights i mean while in some cases it can be legitimate to prevent coronavirus hissing prisons which would be disastrous. And in many countries people coming to prisons bring a scene to license and im talking about food and medicines and you know colleagues were telling me the other day in kenya women prisoners dont have access to senate traipse at the moment because they say usually provided by charities and family members. You know that theres some pretty serious issues county now something bands of the switch from saying pretty much the world being the main kind of prevention or sent. I want to dip into heechee because our audience and each of them want to ask you some questions guess so this is back bagnet zana i think that we should consider letting nonviolent offenders with less than 6 months jail time. Who want to take that festival i know that i didnt do that yet go ahead ill jump right into that i think to make those distinctions of only letting non violent people out and i think what society is thinking when they say that there is that society will not be harmed because people are not physically violent. When we say nonviolent what the truth is and its a sad truth that the highest you say the risen right is actually that is actually people who are convicted of those crimes sadly and its not so much the responsibility of the responsibility of those individuals. I really believe not believe but its factual that the responsibility lies or falls on the state and the government because the number one reason why people come back to prison once they get out is housing and employment people dont have a place to stay people dont have a place to. Work and so thats the sad part about the high recidivism rate of people who are nonbinding self actually factually at least you know here in california the previous governor who was governor for 8 years jerry brown under his governorship over 5000. 00 people that were once serving life sentences had been released and the recidivism rate has been less than my check was less than one percent so what that really says is factually the people that we can safely and let out are the people who have been in prison a long time are the people who have once served life sentences and and the the disparity between buying a nonviolent is actually not a safe one to say for us in society. I would guess that a. Commercial project would publish a piece on years ago that looked at the kinds of crimes that were listed by that and what we found is that in some states there were many crimes where no violence actually occurred there was no no human victim rate things like burglary depending on whether or not you have a firearm in your possession it could change the sort of definition of Violent Crime so in some senses that notion is a cost i got to me and 1st straight and were making this distinction between crimes that when the law isnt so clear and then the other sort of consideration is that when we think about what it means that people have you know gone to prison and served their time in many cases people have become transformed over the course of their incarceration rate and so someone who committed a crime a Violent Crime potentially at 15 and who are served you know certain years 40 years maybe in a completely different place by the end of their sentence and so what do we say to these people as well and i think a lot of advocates on the ground are sort of pushing to say we are going to stop every minute conversation in this way look more broadly and i really think about you know individual people and what theyve been able to accomplish during their time when we just sit around and once you know something yes are in the can i add something before you add something and then were going to be reading our feet 68 is on you tube right now 68. 00 says we are letting prisoners who only got 2 months to go free in the u. K. Admire it. Yes i think ill jump on that in a 2nd if i could just build a little eat those for myself so at the age of 18 i was sentenced to 25 years of life in prison 25 years to life which meant that i had 25 years before appearing before a parole board which is not a guaranteed ticket home or spending the rest of my life in prison was this an essentially i was sentenced to death to adult natural cause by Natural Causes or whatever reason howard was my life but i served 16 years all together until the same judge that sentenced me to 25 years to life 16 years later re sentenced me to 3 years after a lot changed and thats how ive been out ive been out or little bit over a year now and so when we talk about violent nonviolent we really need to look at how again like like its already been mentioned here many times were we talking about what type of people are we talking about we talk my teenagers who are now adults we know we age people age out of crime but so often facts i would like people to look at sex and here in United States you know for me when when i want to look at facts ill listen to dr fauci when i want entertainment ill listen to donald trump when i want to laugh or look for a comedy show so those are my when we talk about facts i will i make sure that im making sound decisions based on true numbers true facts and investigation. So doug can i just say its you know its just a squeeze he said and then you can go to dr felt he said the head doctor leading the coronavirus. Strategy for the United States and hes a very prominent person who we see often on television. Yeah im going to bring him back to coronavirus and the question around releases which were saying releases from the king of. Thousands tens of thousands of people being released and iran and i think the main question is what are the consequences of those releases do not happen and if we retain the crazy levels of overcrowding in occupancy rates of 500 seems that we see in the philippines you know prisons that ive been in Subsaharan Africa and particularly in south asia youre talking about 10120 people sleeping in one row so if cases pop up in these facilities the consequences are just mind blowing and. You have staff going home each night you have people cycling in and out of prison so its also not just about those 120. 00 people in that in that dont train but actually people in the community and i think theyre talking about a facing an unprecedented time and so in need to be and races and to follow. A living im so glad you say that because youre echoing or even even channeling what people are saying on you it was meant for instance says prisons in africa overpopulated theres almost no preventative measures thats in terms of Health Measures to stop because of 19 disease in prisons and then sabrina is talking about ethiopia theyve released prisoners. For example pretty. Trial low risk. To reduce the prison over population this is unprecedented what is the levels of. That you are seeing that. Officials are now saying ok you need to be out of prison. Yet i think you know. Where all and sort of lockdown has a definitely a different experience of lockdown. Days and new times new measures and very quickly authorities can make decisions and you know i didnt. Really vulnerable also particularly concerned about older people in prison because of really long seem to answers and like sentences there are more and more older people and prison and you just cannot respect social distancing roles and you might not even have access to water to wash your hands a lot and kind of face masks and so on so you know really says really is the 1st thing reducing prison populations and not just releases but also stopping in new admissions so at france germany countries like that we have been really well and happy to say they have suspended new prison seem to answers and you know we have to remember that it is actually 3000000 people on any given day in prison not convey that you know waiting for trial sometimes the months if not years so thats also another group could easily qualify or you know be released safely. Because theres something the caught my eye from the Marshall Project website they have a special corona virus section about kind of virus in and the criminal Justice System in the United States and it was a sinister photographs they show prison beds and the only 3 feet apart you see bathrooms on them just like bathrooms not bathrooms as we may know it if we were outside of the. Prison facility can you talk to us about the lack of ability to do social distancing in an area that is incredibly as a crowd what if you heard it in the family shelter at the absolutely and as well as im hearing directly from some guys inside one person i spoke to was recently released from Rikers Island you know at an epicenter here in new york city a jail where you know several people have tested positive now you saying you know where and dorm with about 50 men and you know officials are saying sleep had to tell what our beds are 2 to 3 feet apart you know what difference does that really make and many folks have no masks and some cases theyre running out of so you know dont have consistent access to water to wash their hands i believe that could go to that you mentioned came out of california which you know historically has had incredible overcrowding issues where there are just literally more people than there are beds and more people are going there are space to house them and so you can see that you know spending than necessary 6 feet and i think im sort of seeing new cases where that might even need to be a greater distance apart just simply isnt possible and hearing reports from guys who say that theyre being crowded into small hallways as they make way to go to lunch to go to the mess hall theres a chance to do social distancing where you know theyre sort of staggering yard times are staggering phone times but theres just so many ways in which youre going to come into contact with people not to mention all the people who are sleeping in dorm like conditions where that sort of you know well let me describe these big open rooms with many many beds its impossible how do you social distance and that kind of set you know can i jump in there and i jump in there and say one thing if i could mention terminology so in prison so so this is the weve been in there my 60 years incarceration i was socially distance on by law and so physically distancing in prison is impossible because of all the everything that you explain so during my course aeration i get a small example i lived. In a building just a building with 900 people right there are 5 tiers inside my office in this facility where i was housed at i lived there for my previous 4 years of my parser since 1900 people when you are able to call your family there are 12 phone booths so literally 900 people are sharing 12 phones 900 people are sharing about 13 showerheads that are public that means they dont theyre not shower cells theyre shower heads where the drain constantly gets clogged constantly and the shower heads are about maybe a foot apart there are times where not times every time you shower when you soak yourself or the person to the right or the the useless themselves up it gets on you and peoples dirt is falling off on the ground getting on your feet and so the conditions are centenary and or the architecturally architecturally prisons are built with units is built with punishment in mind and so another example i get real quickly the tier that i lived on i shared one tier with 100 people and dr fauci is getting on t. V. The World Health Organization are saying say 6 you know part but this tier architecturally its 3 feet wide how do 100 people that are housed there and over a dozen staff that have to work on these tiers provide 6 distance on a 3 foot tier it is literally physically impossible adam and i really want you to tell our audience a story about its not a story as your life here way there was a house out right there was a house out by a facility the u. S. Staying in and you describe this is my experience the sickness calling teens and the prisons how can a system that outbreak was legionnaires disease just briefly explain thats the probably the nearest we can understand as to what it might not be like to have a disease like causing 19 going around presence. You know i will preface by saying that coven 1000 as we all know is something none of us have ever experienced the closest thing youre absolutely right was for me and my experience was that one of them was the legionnaires outbreak that occurred so one day i was playing basketball in the yard of it was a regular day in a prison facility on the yard and all this and they said your recall which means everybody immediately returned back to your housing unit and into your cells usually when that happens we know something dangerous or wrong has has occurred then we find out they say you are we are on quarantine and thats another thing my prison is very information is distributed very very tightly and very secretly and so we just didnt know what was going on but what we found out was because of this whatever took place all the water in our prison facility was shut down which meant in my seat inside my cell by the way my cell was 4 feet wide and one theat long. And i was sharing it with another individual and in this cell the water was completely shut down which meant i couldnt drink water which meant i couldnt wash my hands i just got them playing basketball mind you so whatever this outbreak was i just wanted to offer me and i couldnt physically i mean i just couldnt also the toilet was shut down because the water was connected to the toilet so people could not use the restroom and we found out that whatever this outbreak was was probably coming from the water we were stuck in our cells for for a few days they did bring water later we were ushered downstairs and then we were ushered downstairs there was no concept of physical distancing there was no concept of any any other stuff these type of. Preventive measures that were taking place in the prison facility sad and i could. Play it well most of the last 5 minutes to show a sick pay scheme what youre saying is just keeping clean washing your hands staying away from other people the things may tell what to do right now because a 25 is not possible in prison lets talk about where we go from here and we on the strings by the 2 little bit early at 80 on a few 1000 he is an associate professor. Of criminal law hes based in the netherlands he talks about how important is that we address this problem with prisons were they happen to be around the world a potential disaster that could be happening and also we need to test and we really need to have a couple of policy so that we understand much better what we ship be doing the impact of a prison epidemic on the general population is very hard to estimate. If the disease keeps spreading among prisoners and its not tackled rapidly enough jails and prisons might become reservoirs of infection because people coming up prisons will take the virus with them and fact of community yes so this is why w. It shows the man the whole governments to take action and their way forward for them is to do mass testing balls prisoners and prison staff he also mentioned a libya the w. H. O. Saying this is what we should be doing in the World Health Organization they have already published a list of recommendations as have you a Prison Reform international for our wrap up here what do prisons need to be doing. Yes. Reducing the populations as soon as possible and really they need to support. Prevention measures like busy with authorities and children providing man asks and even just the alcohol based Hand Sanitizer and cleaning products so that common areas can be claimed as much as possible and that i think you know apart from the Immediate Communications you know it should be thought out as far as possible by w. H. O. We really need to look at who were putting in prison and we need to you know we need some radical change because more people are in prison today than ever before were talking our lives a 1000000 people and within that there are a lot of vulnerable populations people have poor health often when they arrive in prison and theres just a complete lack of health care in mice places you know next week where publishing a new report going to prison trains and we look at the. Room and you know when you hit a crisis like this that were facing today its just the consequences of just extremely grave and you know at the crisis is coronavirus but really weve been talking about. Prisons for years now and this is just really pushed to the brink nicole theres a story that you wrote for the Marshall Project they dont k. Families of the incarcerated feed the west is coronavirus sprites is a picture and she said and it was the help we matter to handwritten s. O. S. Sign outside of chicagos Cook County Jail nicole from the familys perspective what do they want right now in this disclosure pandemic i think the most important thing is just bring me here. They want people to understand that incarcerated folks are someones life when theyre so my son and daughter has been great and they matter that they deserve to be treated with dignity and with respect to not be put in a position where their lives are at risk rate the very least the system can do to keep them alive to keep them safe and im not taking measures you know the families want people to know that youre putting your gambling on their lives and that really its its terrifying for them and its not and there again dont have any access or any ability to really provide any comfort or insight or and much needed supplies like libya mentioned. And many fewer leaving ality and sniff assault well with that so its be just the thing that would be yes the quick takeaway would be we have to think about people over politics right now whats in it for us all of us we understand our interconnectedness right now with with the pandemic and so what i will say that this is what you meant to marry an issue and because this is a humanitarian issue is going to require the best qualities of human beings right now to be called that 90 and those characteristics and qualities are things like empathy an ability to forgive and 2nd chances and we need to break that out of was as individuals and put people over politics. Livia the cold thank you so much clean guess in a very for. The stream home edition from my living room he made it look even better than he does know late thank you and say you audience we do appreciate the stream home edition will be running at the usual times when you expect to see us always on line as well at 8 am street banks of his state. A policy imposed decades ago. That you would select to be goods and boards changing demographics across asia with far reaching consequences for creating. Socially disadvantaged young men so you have the system where people. Everyone will begin being given money money to agree to searles ation our money to get other people to be the sterilisation aljazeera examines the politics of population control one of the really special things about working for aljazeera is that even as a camera woman i get to have so much input in contribution to a story i feel we cover this region better than anyone else would get which is you know its very challenging given in the particular because you have a lot of people that are deployed on political issues. With the people who believe to tell the real story so ill just mend it used to deliver indepth journalism we dont feel inferior to the audience across the globe. A dramatic change in chinas economic fortunes as its revealed hundreds more died in the original epicenter of the corona virus outbreak. In the u. S. President s prescription for getting the worlds biggest economy up and running but more doubts on whether its realistic. And again im a start the attack and this is al jazeera live from doha with all the latest updates on the coronavirus pandemic including with infection rates