Good evening and welcome to st. Thomas moore university church. Our program tonight will be a presentation and discussion of a new book entitled a country called prison. This is being recorded by cspan for later broadcast on booktv, so we ask that you take this moment to silence your cell phones. When we get to the questions and comments portion of the program, please wait for the microphone so that you may be heard and recorded. Following the presentation, there will be book sales and signing in the atrium of our chapel, and a wine and cheese reception will also follow. Our authors tonight are dr. John carl, and dr. Mary looman. Dr. Contractor is assistant professor at the university of oklahoma, where he teaches a variety of courses, including criminology, and criminal justice. His social Work Experience includes the prison context, and a variety of medical settings. He is the author of, think, sociology, think social problems, and, a short introduction to the u. S. Census. Dr. Looman is a psychologist and works with the Oklahoma Department of corrections at the reception center, and is an adjunct professor at the university of oklahoma, where she teaches courses with a masters in criminal justice program. She has worked in the field of corrections for over 25 years. In both juvenile and adult settings, as well as with atrisk families in the Mental Health settingment to you to our authors and i turn the program over to them. Thank you, father jim, and thank you to the community for allowing mary and i to be here tonight to talk about something that is near and dear to our hearts, our new book that we just published, a country called prison. One thing i think most americans are aware of but maybe not aware of to the great extent to which it actually exists, is the reality that the prison system in the United States is one of the largest in the world, and we have spent an inordinate empty of our tax dollars trying to deal with the problem what to do with people who do stuff we dont like. One of the realities of social life is that we have always had people who do things that we wish they wouldnt. You always had the miscreant who while do things the rest of society doesnt like. An interesting question for us as a people is to wonder, is thereaten people who do things we dont like and are mad at and people who do thing wed dont like that were afraid of. One of the things we noticed in the Corrections System in the United States, in particular is we have not drawn that line very clearly between those who we are afraid of and those who we may be mad at. Now, we have always tried to deal with this throughout humorousth history, right . Banished people. Sent them to penal colonies. We have enslaved them. We have tried to kill them. We put them in stocks and lock them in the town square and made them ware a scarlet a, and yet none of this stuff has seemed to solved much in the event of eliminating the possibility of people doing what we dont want them to do. So we kind of settled on prisons. And one of the things as a christianology that criminologist, did we settle on presses because its better or because we couldnt think of anything else. One thing that is interesting to me is this massive amount of people that we have decided in this country to incarcerate. Bureau of justice statistics estimate that five off another 100, five percent of the american population, either have been or will be in prison during their lifetime. Now, just to give you a context of what that number means, with over 300 million americans thats approximately 16 Million People. When you think about 16 Million People in prison, half of them ex46 roughly, are in prison for nonviolent offenses, frequently drug offenses. So, one of the questions mary and i had when we came witch the book, is there a difference perspective with what you do with that half that essentially your mad at and dont like them being stoned on the corner, dont like them driving under the influence of addictive substance, unless its alcohol just a joke we dont want them running around in our communities versus the people that were really afraid of, the people who would molest your child or might kill you, rape you. If you look at the real violent offenses, this is a rather minority of who were choosing to incarcerate. And yet, in this country, we tend to kind of throw them all in the same pot, the same hat. If you look at data about this group, half of this group are also parents. The thing about the 16 million, half of those people that we choose to incarcerate have children, and one thing we know about incarcerating a parent is simply this. You increase the odd their child will in fact also be incarcerated if you incarcerate the parents and thats by 25 more likely. So if you increase the dramatically the odds that this is going to become a familial event, dad went to prison, my turn, soon my kid goes to prison, and the next thing you know you developed this thing that mary and i say looks a whole lot like a country. We didnt always do this. Thats really fascinating. We didnt always incarcerate at high rates in this country. For example, just in our own state, it took approximately 85 years for us to incarcerate a total of 90,000 people. But since 1980, we have incarcerated a total number of over 700,000 people in the state of oklahoma. This is a 700 increase in about a 35year period. And at one question you might want to ask yourself, are you anymore safe now than oyou were in 1980 . Has this been effective . A decision that has warmed your tax dollar heart . If you look at the incarceration in oklahoma, it mirrors the nation. You can kind of look at prison populations and you get to 1980 and, boom, up goes the number, and you have this massive mountain of people that we decided to incarcerate as a solution because theyve done things that we wish they hadnt done. Now, as you compare us to other countries around the world, were kind of unique in this. The United States comes in second in the world in its rate of incarceration. We incarcerate approximately 707 people for every 100,000 folks walking around. Just in a tone of norman, oklahoma, 120,000 people, 700 of us will be incar rated. Put that in context. Number one is a small Little Island of in middle of micronia shat incarcerate slightly higher but modern democracies, countries you go do on vacation, you see different numbers. For example, france incarcerates about 149 people out of every 100,000. Great britain incarcerates 102 people for every hundred thousand. If we look at japan, its 14 times lower than ours. So, somebody who is interested in the social world, you may ask, whats up with this . Why are we doing this . Whats the 16 million . Just give you another context, why we kind of came up with the title a country called prison. The fact of the matter are this, our prisons, 16 million, we seem to ignore their children, theyre likely to be included in that. Approximately a population twice the size of israel. Just slightly smaller than the country of the netherlandses. This is a massive number of people. And if it was a state, it would be the fourth largest state in the country. Just right below florida. Bigger than illinois. Just imagine if prison was a state, where the politicians would be going to try get the votes. Right . So this is a large number of people who significantly are some of whom we should be afraid of. Mary and i have no doubt there are people in prison who need to be there. One of the other things that is really fascinating is if i look at the federal prison system, get a drug offender rate of about 50 of the people in federal prison are drug offenders. Drug offenders. Look at state prison, i guess about 41 of the prison population for those states being roughly nonviolent offenders. Slash this in half, if we stopped incarcerating high rate of nonviolent point offenders we could cut our prison population in half, which would have substantial tax benefits. One question you might think about when i was talking about International Crime rates was, okay, we incarcerate at lower rates in Great Britain but maybe thats because they have less crime. No. Not necessarily. For example, if i look at the assault rates in brian, its higher than the rate in the United States. Of course if you have ever been to a soccer match in Great Britain, maybe you understand why. If i look at the theft rate in the uk, its higher. As it is in france. But the one thing that is fascinating about our crime rates compared to most other modern industrial democracy wes lead the world in one category of criminality we incarcerate and thats drug offenders. So just a couple of numbers. We incarcerate 560 people out of every 100,000 on a drug offense. Right . Every 100,000 we have 560. By connection, france is 176. So what are they doing were not doing . Well, talk more about that, but the book talks about this to some degree. They tend to treat drug addiction like a disease. May in fact be somebody in this room who has recovered from alcoholism, and when you did, you were told it was a disease. And you went and got treatment, and then you came out and went to meet examination we said were going to cure you from this disease and thats because it was alcohol. Had you one addicted to methamphetamine, likely would have been put in prison and tried to punish away your addiction. Mary is the sol gist but the social worker in me ive never heard you can punish away addiction. And yet thats what theyre trying to do. How did this happen . The 1980s we get to reagan and nancy reagan and the just say no campaign, and start the war on drugs before they came into office but they ramped it up and were going to stop drug addiction in americaing are right . We figured if we just increase the punishment, make them longer, harsher, we he can get this people off the street and cleanse our country of this pariah of crack cocaine of whatever you want to fill in the blank with. You also get much more harsh punishments. You get states like california that create three strikes youre out law. States like oklahoma that create truth in sentencing laws. I youre a violent offender, you have 85 . Until last spring we in this state had a third strike Marijuana Law which would lead you on thunder third offense to life on your third offense with toe life without the possibility of parole on a marijuana charge. We decreased that 20 years this last spring. So states across the nation, not just in oklahoma. Decided, not only are we going to create this war on drugs, were going to make longer prison sentences, and so part of what drives up our prison population is we just keep these people in jail for longer periods of time. Finally, at the same time that this is happening, were packing the prisons full of people so were not really increasing the budgets of prisons through systems, the number of folks theyre supposed to feed, house and take care of so all of a sudden a lot of the efforts made in the 70s and 60s and early 8s to try, to quote, rehabilitate or able stat having budget crises so we get fewer and fewer people with an opportunity to get, say, High School Diploma while theyre in prison, and then they get out of prison and we have high rates of what we call parole revocation. Get out of prison, go out in the community, and cant find a job, smoke a joint, go have a urinalysis, and the next thing you know im back in prison. Approximately half of the people that we send out of prison will probably end up back in prison within a three to five year period, and of that half of those people that go back, most of them are parole rev craigs. Refer indications. The dont commit a crime but they didnt show up for a parole meeting or didnt get in the job in time or failed to go to parenting class wed require them to do. Always these thing wes call technical violation violations in the lingo of criminal violation. So this leads to the creation of this incarceration mountain. That would be fine if we actually thought this might stop criminality. Right . What usually happen is someone commits a crime, and then we punish them, and then they go into this box. Especially youre in a medium security prison, in you might be in with serious offenders, odds are you have the possibility of being locked up with somebody you didnt choose for 23 hours a day for a period of time if something is going on in the prison and they lock you all down. And this leads to significant numbers of problems with riots and rapes and assaults that happen in prison on a fairly regular basis. And you have seen probably lockup shows, if you watch shows about what prison life is like and you see this reality that prisons have become in fact, since then 1970s, more and more violent places. The prisons of america have become more violent, not less. They have become more crowded, note less, ask our recidivism rate have continued to get worse. Im not a real smart guy but one thing i always tried tomorrow if you try something and it doesnt work, maybe you have to try something else. But instead, what we tend to do is keep trying the same thing over and over and over, and again, you know, dont want to call out the people who have been in aa in the room but they call that insanity. Right . Try the same thing over the same way and expect a different result. Keeps happening. So, we send these people out into the community, and they have been discharged in what mary and i like to call legal aliens. A legal illen is somebody who was born in this country, they speak english, theyre citizens, this they committed a felony and now theyre precluded from all kinds of other activities in the community, like frequently employment. There are many jobs that convicted felons cannot even get, like, for example in our state, if youre a convict felon, you cannot work in a nursing home, period. You cant even be the janitor. You cant cook the food for people ump cant by anywhere near senior citizens. This is really interesting. So you could be in on a marijuana charge and were not going to let you work with let alone violent offenders. We create this separate status of these people, and one of the thing wes know about this population and mary will tell you more about near a little bit this, population is almost always from disadvantaged backgrounds. The vast majority of americans who go to prison come from the lower classes, generally poor, poorly educated, and when we release them from prison, and we stigmatize them with this stamp on their head that says excon, they can never get out from under, are we surprises they reoffend . Surprised we get this cycle back . One thing i think is personally i says the toy in students and say it to you. Im not a guy who likes to pay taxes. Im a good oklahoman, dont like to pay tacks. If theyre going to take my money id really like them to use it wisely. One thing that i have come to the conclusion, after 20 years of look act this stuff and talking to people and reading about this stuff, my own personal bias, theres not a lot of good that happens in prison. May be a Necessary Evil for some but just kind of whole sail mass incarceration is an exceptionally expensive process. In this country alone we spend over 50 billion with a b dollars every year on incarcerating our citizens. This is a massive number. And when i think about kind of what that means to you and i, every time you incarcerate somebody, every time, you take them from a taxpayer and turn them into a tax user. Even if im cooking meth in the backyard and not reporting to the irs any of my income, im still going to the Grocery Store and big something and pay sales tax. Still renting an apartment where theres some property tax associated with that process. Im still contributing to the community at some level, even if its an illegal economy. But as soon as you take them off the street and lock them in a box, you turn them into a tax user. And again, im not saying we dont want to do that for some people. I hope california never lets out charles manson, right . But the reality is most people we put in prison aint charles manson. Half of them certainly arent. And the other thing that is interesting about costs here is that states and the federal government, in my opinion, never report the full cost of what it takes to incarcerate somebody. You go to department of creeks web site they tell you, costs 18,000 a year in a million security, 14,000 a year in a community facility, 24,000 in a medium, 80,000 for death row. You can look at these numbers. What do the numbers mean . Generally mean this. What does it cost for guards and bars and food. Thats a real costly incarceration. What about the lost wages of this individual that we now have taken off the street . What about the lost tax revenue of this person . What about the 25 increase in likely hood that now his children are going to become tax user. What about the reality that we have high rates of people who we incars race whose families drop into poverty and we give them food stamps and provide them with section 8 housing. All those are potential costs of incarceration, are they not . And yet, those arent reported anywhere. They get passed to some other Government Agency and department of corrections gets to report a number, and honestly im not saying the department of corrections is filled with bad people. Theyre just doing their budget. But as a taxpayer, somebody who is interested in this no matter what state youre in you she Pay Attention to reality that whatever is being reported to youve ills not the real cost. Because the true cost is the loss of income that is longterm. A loss of human potential, the loss of children. Not to mention all the other expenses that go along with this. Like now were going to provide section 8 housing in the family. In oklahoma, we lead the nation as you probably know in the incarceration rate of women. Something the University Never puts anywhere brochures. Youre more likely to go to prison if you show up in oklahoma. I thought it was fun er than heck, too. When you think about this, over 70 of those women that we incarcerate are the sole custodian of their children. What happens to their kids when we put mom in prison . The number one thing we incarcerate women in the state of oklahoma for . The number one things . Drug possession. Not distribution. Not driving down the highway with a winnebago full of crack cocaine. Possession. Who pays for that . We do. We take taxpayers and turn them into tax users. So this creates this massive mountain of people, and so mary and i kind of looked at this and said this is a mountain of folks. Turn this over to her and get an idea about what makes those folks into a country. Come on up. And how we can do some things for those folks. As john said i worked in the country called prison for 25 years or so. Ive worked in the prison communities and ive also worked with the disadvantaged people in the American Society that live in their own communities, that we refer to as a country called prison. Both inside prison and outside of prison. A lot because of what john talked about, with the collateral effects, the children that are left behind, the spouses, the grandparents left behind. And the elderly parents that need a son or daughter taking care of them. When i was working in the early years, i began to notice a pattern. Observations about people that were disadvantaged. People in prison. They seem to talk differently. They seem to interact differently with each other, and they interacted differently with me. They wore different clothes. They had different stories. They didnt talk about girl scouts and little league. They talked about finding food in the dumpster behind red lobster. And i met john a few years ago, we were teaching at the same college, and i started telling him about my observation. He said that sounds a lot like the chart characteristics of a country, and as we began to talk about it, the book began to take shape, and we realized we were on to something that is very different. In that we have a group of people, the 16 million plus, if you count the families and children, that seem to live in a country inside of america that are not part of the American Social structure and culture. In a country, john already talked about, a country is a lot of people. A lot of people. Even really small countries are larger than the university of oklahoma, which i always thought was really they also had their own territory. We have prisons, parole officers, all over the country. They have their own political system they have their own economy. Prisoners have the barter system. I would like to get some marijuana in the prison, by the way, and so i have canteen privileges and i find out the guy that has marijuana just loves hersheys chocolate bars so im in. But what i want to talk about ills the three most important aspects of a country which is the history. People in the country have a common history. They have a common language, and they have a common culture. So, what is the history of these nonviolent offenders were talking about that are so different from people who dont go to prison . Im only talking about nonviolent offenders. We know research that most nonviolent offenders are poor. That does not mean that all people who that are poor come to prison. But it does set you up for that failure rate. Some of them work. 60 of the people coming into prison have a job before theyre arrested, but they tend to make about 50 less than people who dont come to prison. This is probably connected to the fact that about 78 of the people who come to prison do not have a High School Degree or a ged. And they seem to drop out of school somewhere between ninth agreed and 11th grade. This is really because from childhood on they live and grow up in a world where they dont learn the social structures that require you to be in junior high and high school. And in junior high and high school is where we are generally socialized to the American Culture. Theres prom, football games, basketball games, clubs after school, and this is where we really kind of learn how to be american citizens, is in high school. So if you dont go to high school, thats not part of your training. The other thing that happens is a fairly significant portion of people coming to prison have had a neglect, abuse, in childhood. Neglect is just not getting food. Its not having a parent there its waking up in the middle of the night scared of a thunderstorm and no parent or guardian or adult is there. Thats neglect. They dont have a coat in wintertime. They dont have the right amount of food. Abuse is physical abuse. Its emotional abuse, being told, i wish id never had you, why cant you be like your brother . Why dont you just leave . Very terrible things to say to children. For women, the abuse is pretty serious. 57 report sexual abuse. That come to prison. About 25 had that abuse before they were 18. And about 38 had it after they were 18. So, youre a small child and something you are robbed of your innocence, sexual abuse is a robbing of your nbc, probably one of the most damaging psychologically that anybody can have, and as john was talking about, most women who come to prison are drug possessions, most of the women use drugs to numb that pain. Most of them have posttraumatic stress disorder and dont have the money to get treatment and counseling and medication so they use marijuana or meth to just new numb themselves. Another thing is 78 of the people who come to prison report substance dependence, alcohol, marijuana, meth are the three most common that me men tell me about, and they have been using usually since about 12 or 11 years of age. So their brain urge, the brain doesnt quit growing until age 20 so thats another reason a lot of them have trouble getting good jobs, is their brain has never really matured and tends to stop developing and growing when you begin to use alcohol and more are marijuana. What happens then, is you have this group of people who come into prison and thats where we can find out of the bout that. But they were that way a long time time be for they turns exterior 17 years old. A lot of people think people consciously make that decision to commit a crime, like i turn 18 and zero goody, i can now commit crimes and go to prison. I am just not met very many young people that when i asked what they want to be when they grow up they say i want to go to prison, this this is going to be so exciting. I just have not heard that in my lifetime. I i have asked a lot of kids that question. They want to be football players, ballerinas, schoolteachers, they dont talk about going to prison. As a psychologist, i wanted to know what happens, what happens from this innocent little baby and a little 5yearold who has all these dreams about becoming a fireman or teacher, or football star. Ten years later they are in prison, for about 50 or 60 years we have some pretty solid evidence that we grow up, all human beings around the world in a very planned and organized way. We have five developmental pathways, we have to learn to think, we have to learn to feel, we feel, we have to learn social skills, we have to figure out moral reasoning, these these are all developed a pathways. We all go through them to get to be adults. But, something happens that is different between people who go to prison and people who do not go to prison. That is what i want want to talk about right now. It is the heart of our book. We are trying to educate people about the fact that many of these, 50 of the people who are in there for drugs, are not in there because they are bad and scary. Theyre in there because something happened in childhood in which they got hurt really bad and they use drugs to stop the hurt. So what happens is, when we we grow up, we get the feeling right and the incan right, and the hello, how are you my name is sam right, then we have three things that adults do well if theyre healthy. That is they have functioning skills, that that means they can plan, organize, solve problems in a socially acceptable way. They can know what to do in a conflict, know what to do in the weather gets bad in oklahoma and not stand out on the porch and go into the shelter as they say, go now. So they can do all these things, they can get a job, they can figure out the groceries to get for the meals t, the other thing that happens is they have emotional reasoning skills. They know what they are feeling, why they are feeling that way, and what to do about those feelings. We also know how to read other peoples body language, we understand voice tone, and we see facial expressions. When we can say wow that person is excited i want to go hang hang out with them. Those are healthy adult function skills. The most important healthy adult function skill is how to culturally live in the American Society. We know we extend a hand when when it is hello, how are you my name is soandso. Whereas in japan, they tend to bow. We know that we have a certain space limitation in america, we tend to stand about two and half or 3 feet away from each other. In france they stand very close to each other. We know to do at weddings, we know what to do at funerals. Children going to the School System learn the skills and they are very socialized. So we know what to do. What happens though is growing up requires plans, little baby plans a little baby people art need three things. Plants need sunshine and they need water and dirt area that is exactly what children need. They need to consistency, we need from research that the first three years of life are critical to adult functioning and output. About your house, it has to have a Solid Foundation to be able to withstand storms, if the ground is shaking, just a lot of right we get here sometime. When when your house is really solid on a Solid Foundation you dont at the cracks in the wall of the doors coming out of balance. Or like the house i just got where i had to completely redo the foundation to get the front door to close. So, that is what happens with children when they have consistency. They know when mom and dad are going to commit to take care of them, they are lain in the cribs crying because her tummy hurts a mama that come in and they say hey this is a cool deal, if i cry someone will come in and take care of me. When you are three or four years old and you fall down and get a booboo because he first learned to ride your bike you know that mom or dad, our big sister will come over and hug you and put a bandaid on there and make you feel better. When youre ten years old and going to be the star baseball. And hit hit the homerun and you dont, you strike out, mom and dad are there to say good try, way way to go are good coaches there. That is what consistency is about. We we also need nurturing, we need warm and cuddly hugs that we also need someone cheering us on or someone holding a r hand when were scared. We need structure we need to know the difference between right and wrong, we we need to know whether the boundaries are. Dont play in the street or it can hurt you. We know what to do after school, we know what to do in school. It is interesting because ive been going to school forever and the difference between kindergarten and college was not real different. I had to find a copy for my thanks, i had to know where the classroom was, i had to check out the teachers and if theyre going to be nice and stuff. It is kind of the same as we go. Okay, so what happens to the people who end up in prison . They dont get those, their strategies strategies for growing up are very different. The hit a lot of gravel instead of dirt, they get a lot of chaos growing up. Research has shown children going up in disadvantaged homes that the television is on all the time, their screaming and yelling, children are not told what they do wrong they are just hit or yelled at, or go to your room. They do not learn from their mistakes. They dont know if mom and dad are going to be home, they dont know if mom is going to be sober. They go to school and they dont have a color or they dont have the latest close so kids make fun of them. They dont have anyone explaining that. Again, neglect and abuse, they come home from school and they dont know if theyre going to have dinner or not. One of the the saddest childrens i ever had early in my career that got me started on this whole, wise is happening, is i was interviewing a sixyearold during a psychological evaluation, she could tell me where the three best dumpsters were in her neighborhood for getting the best for you. The ones who had the leftovers. That was very sad, to be six. I dont think i could do that at my age, know where the good dumpsters are. So, that is the kind of reality that they grow up inches they grew up figuring out things that you and i do i do not have to think about as adults. Anything that happens, as happens, as they live in a very impromptu life. In the moment, mom and dad might get paid on friday, by sunday they have no money left for food. They live whimsically, and without structure. What happens then when you grow up like that, when you grow up learning to survive, when you learn to grow up figuring out whether data struck tonight and he is going to beat you up, when you learn where the neighbors are that will take care of you if mom and dad dont come home. You can end up in adulthood in very different ways than we do, people who dont go to prison. They learn to be devious. Most people think of that is a bad word but it is really the best way to explain the people i have met in the country called prison. They like to get what they need. I really dont like that work, ive often tried to think of an english word that would not mean line like i might lie on purpose not to get in trouble, but these these guys dont know how to tell the truth. They dont know what the truth is. They come in and daddy is sick, he is thrown up, i was sick . Oh no honey, he just to have some trouble, he had bad food. When in in fact, he is drunk and throwing up. So the families lived under and learn to live in fantasy, they learn to live that it is okay to be the way it is, it is normal to them. It is normal not taboo. It is normal not to have silverware. It is normal. It is normal not have a backpack. It is normal to have handmedowns, theres nothing wrong that i had them. And over, and over again. It is normal to go to school cold. I see children with food on and on and it is snowing. So when they come into prison and the prison officer says if their lips are moving their line. Im sad about that. It is the only way they know how to get what they need. If a prisoners mother is dying and they want to be able to say goodbye they cannot be present to do that. It is a very normal and natural thing that we need as human beings. They will come into me and make up this big story so i will feel sorry for them so i will give them the phone call. I would just assume they would say, hey my mom is dying could you give me a phone call. I would do that. That. When they tell me the big sob story i say you know, you couldve just asked. So i teach them that with at least with me, you can just ask. So i so i try to help them learn social skills. So what happens then, as we have a prison culture that is very different from america. They will come back to america. Almost everyone that is not violent, not doing, the nonviolent people come back to america in three years or less. But in the time they live in prison they are not in america. I often feel like i go to a foreign country every day. I have an id badge and when i cross through the gate it is like a passport. I cannot commune without it. If i forget it in my car i have to turn around and go get it, even it, even though they know who i am. So what happens in the prison culture, we we have a language there that is objectification. That is turning human beings into furniture. They are nonhuman, they do not have feelings, they do they do not matter. They are just furniture. We are going to shift mr. Smith to the next prison, to his receiving yard is how we call it. So every day at work and offender gets ready, wes switch them out in an orange in a form to a uniform, we give them a little plastic bag like a little shipping bag, they say okay, you are shipping now. They walk in a line down to the place where they get handcuffs and ankle tanks, these are not violent people. There may be in there for 5 ounces of marijuana but they are locked down, when they get on the bus there lockdown like they are going to murder us all. Imagine what that does to their selfesteem. They are a box shipping to the next facility. Wow. Anyway, what happens then is we tend to detach, as human beings when you work in a very difficult place, refugee camp for instance, it is, it is too much emotion, it is too overwhelming to your psychological psyche, to your spiritual psyche. So, you detach form, you shut it off. When you do that people stopping people in a syrupy furniture. The staff tend to vilify offenders regardless of the crime. You are a thief, you are murder, i dont know your name, i only know your doc number. I dont know what youre doing, i dont even know what you have down, if you have a mom or dad, what has happened to or a dad, what has happened to you. You are just a thief. You need to get in that cell, i dont care for the hundred 10 or not, i dont care i dont care if you havent have budgets time to locked out. They dont usually set that nicely. So what step people want is compliance, they want these furniture pieces to comply. To be over there in the living room, that room, that is where i want that chair. The residents, the people who live in prison also objectify the staff. They see us as targets. We are someone they can con and like to get what they need if the state has not provided for them. Again, it makes it unlike their terrible people but when you are in prison and you do not have underwear, when you do not have hygiene, when you you miss lunch, how can you get it . If you dont figure out that the sweet psychologist over there in the office will get you something, if you go tell her sob story. I see this. I try to see it in reality of what it is. In england, they drive on the left side of the road. We know that in america, most of us do that when we go to england it is a little weird, but were little weird, but were like oh yeah, this is cool. When you come to prison and you see the way people act and treat each other uco this is horrible, this is not right. Prison is a country of its own. It is not america. When im working with new offenders who come in from the first time i tell them you are in a foreign country. Thinking about this as america because it will think make you crazy. I have to think that way. I have to realize every day that i am not in america. That is taxing after a while, it it is difficult after while. The turnover rate in the staff for the department of corrections is fairly high because it wears you out after a while. You dont want to do that. Another another thing that happens in prison, in the culture is we have four subcultures, prison is the first place i have ever worked in my 30 some years of working that everybody did not have the same goals. In schools, the the teacher, the janitor, the principal, the coaches, they all know why they are there, to educate the child, to help the child get through school and get a High School Degree and be a productive citizen. If you are at a hospital, doctors, nurses, janitors, secretaries, cooks in the kitchen, they all know why they are there, kitchen, they all know why they are there, to help the patient get well. For the patient to go home and stay well and get home healthy. Everyone is working for the same thing. Not in prison. The security people are there to keep us safe, not let the offenders attack me and not escape, and therefore protect you. The admin admin strata people, the cuts, janitors, managers are there to run the business. To make sure the electricity is paid and the food is done, and make sure we have gas in the buses. The license professional people, medical doctors, dentist, Mental Health people we are there to provide health, we have a license, we have a license and code of ethics that we have to rely on. Then the residents are there, theyre there there because someone told them to be in timeout. Their only goal is to get out. They would really like to get out better than they came in but that does not always happen. So what happens is we have four groups of People Living in this country called prison that do not work at the same situation. We all celebrate the fourth of july together, we all know why that is, thanksgiving, we all know why that is. That does not happen in prison. We do different things. We work against each other many times. I have a person who needs to is it with his mother on the phone because she is dying, i for some reason and told that i cannot get him out of his cell, i prefer to call them houses but the way everyone else talks about is cells. Because it is locked out today you can let anyone out. Well his mom is dying and we dont expect her to live through the night, well, that is too bad. So i go tell the person, i have to talk through the door, everybody in the room has to hear it. The rule in prison is you do not cry. So heres a man losing his mother who he is very close to, he connected to the Human Experience of grief. I wonder what that does to him psychologically. His mom dies the next day, i get to call him out bring them to my office and tell him, im sorry your mom has died. He has not got to seca by, he has all these things left over that he wants to say. He doesnt get his hear his mom say i love you, even though you are in prison i still love you. So what happens then is i am on call tonight and it is two am in the morning, i have an officer calling me saying oh so and so is threatening to kill himself, we found a noose around his neck. I get to come into the prison and now the officer has to do extra work, i have to do extra work, a five minute phone call would have stopped that. We work against against each other a lot of the time. What we need to do to fix this . First of all, we need to help offenders when the american way. To do that we have this wonderful thing called gaming technology, it it is inexpensive it teaches you how to do building a community. Migrant kids play where you build a farm, your farming community. It is wonderful, it is wonderful, teaches longrange planning, organizational skills, budgeting, getting along with your neighbors. Instead of offenders sitting around figuring out how to get into trouble they could get be in the Library Game Room playing a Game Learning social skills. The biggest thing we could do, if if we could do anything tomorrow, it would cost nothing, is separate out the violent people from the nonviolent people. It is insane to me that we just throw everybody together. We would never do that in the School System. We would never put high schools kids and with kindergartners. We never put a cancer patient next to a lady next to a lady delivering a baby in a hospital. But in prison we throw them altogether. We put 18 yearolds with 40 yearolds. Who, at 40i am not going to want to listen to an 18yearold. They are nice, but not my room. Okay so what happens then is what if we just designated prison c18c24 go to this prison and they can get schooling, education, ged. The c35c55 and they can get schooling, education, ged. The 35 to 55 euros get over here where they have families and grandchildren and a different scenario. We know psychologically what it takes for people to grow up according to age development. That is something we really need to do. Another thing we need to do is without much money, is we can do interactive television, ou has online classrooms. I could, right now in my office tomorrow i could teach 400 offenders, 20 prison, 20 in the classroom, interactive television. They could get parenting classes. It would cost very, very. It will cost very, very little. Another thing we need to do for survival is we need to help people return to america ready to go to work. Food, clothing, shelter. Most people come back to prison within six months. Not much months. Not much but a large percentage of them come back within two or three months. They do not not have food, clothing, shelter. They cannot get a job. We already have things in lace. We need a department of corrections social Work Department where they connect people to the community. Now john is going to talk about some of the bigger things were going to do that requires legislation. One of the things that i think we came to realize as we are writing this book was from a social work background. Programs that dont work, that dont prove measurably effective usually in the social work world , close, they shut us down to come to us anymore. But in the prison system nothing succeeds like failure. If i have a high recidivism rate i just get more people back, the tax paper gives me more people so i can build bigger and have more people. One of the things i think would be interesting to consider it would be funding prisons and using private prisons, if that is what we going going to do, based on their recidivism rate. It would take very little from us to actually do this. This would actually give us an ability to help programs improve and do what we all want, which what we all want is a safer community, and we want these people, if they have been published to come back and be a part of that. So we do not have to keep food eating, housing, sheltering them. We should do that with the programs that actually work. Another very important thing is we try the best we can take get a handle on what this really cost you and i. Right now, if the attorney arrested drug offender, that cost comes out of the cost of the whole state of oklahoma tax base is of me as a Cleveland County resident, i dont really know what that cost because it is dispersed everybody throughout the state. Therefore, many of the financial incentives favor incarceration. District attorney say i have a high rate of conviction, vote for me. The prison system says fetus, fetus, fetus give us more. So that is an interesting component to think about. Actual cost. Secondly, or thirdly, i think we ought to think about automatic expungement. What the deal is true about prison is that if you are affluent, if you get a felony charge, may be a drunk charge, maybe a drunk driving charge for your fluid, you can get a lawyer to get your record expunged in the five years later you will not have to report this when you get a job. What if we consider doing that for nonviolent offenders . Finally, finally, i think we ought to really look seriously at how we treat addicted mentally ill and addicted individuals. There is not a shred of evidence to say that prison is cheaper than drug treatment. While drug treatment is not universally successful, depending on the study if you look at the Ram Corporation study or others, you others, you can send someone to drug treatment threefive times for the cost of incarceration. What we know is that is a highly, more highly effective means of which to deal with this problem. So, i want to thank you for being here tonight. We want to we want to give you an opportunity to ask you some questions about whether he have ideas about this and we would love to entertain those possibilities for you. The questions . Good evening, thank you very much for bringing these issues up. For the past six years ive been a volunteer at the doc, and a religious aspect of visiting the prisons. I want to make a statement and then i have a final question for you to answer, but i want to align some people in history prison. One thing you did not say merry, and you are absolutely right about the social condition but one of the factors that is, to most prisoners, female and male, is male, is the lack of a male figure. To have individual see what a male is supposed to be in their life. This is something that we cannot legislate. It comes from society and from heart. The other thing about legislation john, and we all know what our hearts, we the people, are the people who elect people who promised to put more people in prison. It is prison. It is up to us to say, lets have more compassion, we dont want to put these drug offenders in prison because they sold drugs 200 feet for my child schools. Everyone wants to protect their child but their child is important just as well as the person going to prison. The the question i have a simple, but it comes from my heart, would you tell the people what we call is a penitentiary was . Thank you. What was the question . I think if you look at the history of the penitentiary the longterm history of prisons, this is essentially a place we could do penance. It is a for those of you who are roman catholic, we took the center, separated from the community and put him in this place for penance. That penance. That was the original idea that crime was some kind of sin and you had to atone for yourself. Any other questions . [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] i cant quote the statistics, im very familiar with the program. I cant quote exact numbers but i do know that it is exactly true. The ministry which is to me almost like a Treatment Program that is your chill flavor to it, it helps people do exactly what we are recommending. They learn to become good selfesteem, they improve their feelings about themselves, they become more social, they also become more spiritual and i think that is a good thing. I wish we could have them everywhere. I like test it question i hope it is not too complicated. Lawmakers as we have heard tend to put more people in prison, they are elected on that basis. A complaint of those lawmakers is that they must not cut down on senses like oklahoma is talking about doing right now because we all know they will be letting out the murders, the rapist and the molesters. Is this true that many of those people, is this true or not . That is an excellent question and it is unfortunately understood misunderstood by people. When a person is assigned to the department of corrections a judge has ordered a specific amount of time they have to serve. That is kept track of by the department of corrections and people who get close to their discharge date, lets say im going to serve 18 months. When i hit that 18th month month day, just like when you graduate from the university of oklahoma, i leave the prison. So, when we are told the department of corrections, the governor says okay everybody who is doing a sentence for this day now has only do five years. We know who those people are. We know which ones theyre talking about. So we pull all of those files and we recalculate them. If someone is on murder without parole, their life without parole, they do not get released, we get released, we have them tagged as dont leave. I would say this though, too. Depending on states and the federal system in particular there is a lot of really interesting sentencing strategies that indeed made some of the sentences for nonviolent offenders longer. Then some of the violent offenders. On the federal federal system you have a mandatory minimum and they may spend 25 years in prison if they have crack cocaine on them and that could be longer than any rate the case. It is a a complex question. If legislators would look at the does the punishment fit the crime and we made some decisions based on punishment based on the efficacy of that it would be interesting. To my knowledge theres never been a study to suggest that giving someone five years for Armed Robbery is better than giving them seven. Or 10. What actually curbs their behavior . What perfect length of time is there to stop a robber from wanting to rob again. We have never figured that out and i am not sure we really try very hard. Early on, for example countries with comparable levels of development has many people incarcerated, what is it, can he can he speak to what it is about American Culture that causes us to do that and how did we go down that road . I think the short answer here is we did not always, we are not always on that road. We. We kind of got on that road in the 1970s and 1980s with the decisions that were made about drug punishment and harsher sentences. I think a lot of that was depending on your own sociological and criminological perspective you could draw the connection that it is really interesting that it happened at the same time and people start deciding to try to profit off of the incarceration of their neighbors. So if you are a social logical person, as money started happening into this corporation started looking further and all of a sudden we take people and turn them into Profit Centers for people. The other part of that is if you look at how crime has evolved in who gets criminalize, for instance if youre lowering because you have a Mental Illness you are doing a crime. What happens is, in America America we tend to emotionalize the prison system. Some kid is attacked in the schoolyard because someone is on math, so suddenly it is like, zero gosh, if you get within 20e going to go to prison. Im not saying thats bad, im just saying that like, if you know the highway and the bridges going now, you you bring in an Engineering Team and they say yet this is going to fall down and we need to fix it. But the legislation rarely asks the criminologists to come in and say, tell us right thing to do. Lastly the other thing i was thinking about an answer to your question is we have developed, many of you are not aware but are crime rates in this country continue to drop the last five seven years. Years. Yet the fear of crime continues to rise. More more people are putting alarms of their house because he watch the news and, oh my gosh the booking management come get you. Come get you. The reality is, crime continues to decline in this country. So, i think we we have kind of a culture of fear and the media, a lot of people are profiting yet if you look at the reality, most of us are more in danger of driving home tonight then we are of becoming victims of a crime. If that answers your question. I have a question for both of you, you talk about how schools and hospitals, even perhaps businesses have a common goal and unify their employees and staff to work towards a common and. How can we begin to see that happen in correction . I think we could start practicing what we preach. If it is the department of corrections we might want to start correcting. At work we call it the department of containment. That is what we are doing, were just containing, we are not fixing anybody, we are not fixing anybody, were not making anyone slight better. I think right now the mission of most prisons in the United States are to protect the community, protect the inmate, its all about safety. What happens is, if you have a goal that is to create productive citizens or create taxpayers, that would focus everybody to helping people get better not worse. For instance, you get more of whatever you count, we count field goals in football, we count running across the line, we dont count how many flags go up in the air. At the end of the game, no one really matters how many flags went up, its whether you want. So what happens is we are counting the round thing. We kept track the recidivism rate for 30 years, we have not kept track of how many dont come back. We dont keep track of common air paying taxes, we dont keep track of who got a job within a day and half. We only keep track of the failure. You mention the prophet for corrections and i think there is someone who is profiting from incarceration, would would you like to discuss that briefly perhaps. The focus of our book is not particularly on that but its certainly a welldocumented question, criminology and the study of prison in the United States. When some of the best Stock Investments in the country are involved me putting my Retirement Funds in the hands of somebodys job was to lock up my fellow man because they can do it cheaply, this becomes an interesting question. Can they do it effectively. If they can do it cheaper and we have lower recidivism rates that is one thing, but you know, i think the notion that Public Safety is the number one reason we have prison is kind of interesting. If all ali want to do is keep the public safe, then that is a pretty easy test to accomplish. I tell mice duties, you dont want your dr. P. M. The rug then lock medicaid all day and they wont. If you just take people and put them in a box all day, then that becomes a very expensive, dehumanizing decision i think. But, it is a a decision that we have made in this country. That really ushered in the private, in the 1970s, this is the result of the war on drugs and massive incarceration. One more question. Are people coming out of prison more psychologically damaged than what they came inches you see it as a trend . Its not a trend, it is it is a fact. It is called the prison trauma syndrome. It is on the internet if you want to type that inches it has been researched for about 20 years. First of all, the dehumanizing just being dehumanize, you come into prison you are immediately strip search, are immediately stripsearched, shaved head and given a number. Your name no longer exists. You live in a cell that basically i would challenge any of you to spend one weekend locked in your bathroom. With someone bringing you a meal three times a day. Then youll know what its like. Yes you like. Yes you will be traumatized in prison. Do you think the lack of public defenders and that america has an effective on the massive perspiration rate in the United States. The lack of public defenders. I certainly think it depends, there definitely more likely to take a bargain and trial, for approximately 90 of the court cases never go to trial. The poor you are the more likely you are to have a public defender. Depending on, and our state which is relatively rural state, therell be counties where you would not a and Attorney Press to serve that role. I surely would think that would play the role of someone getting an adequate defense. The reality of the situation, i think the mass majority of i think they are guilty of the crime, but the question is are they beaming cars ready for the crime we think they did. So you look at all that longterm cost without. First i would like to thank the two of you very much. For your presentation and for your book. I worked at the Christian Center from 1982 and you keep referring to the 80s. I was there. As it turned out, the system i had at that time, the numbers, today it is the same. The numbers. I have wondered all of these years why dont they use a Social Security number . We all have a Social Security number. For some reason, they have never done that. In order to track, a person may come in as a nonviolent offender but he might have a record in arizona as a violent offender. People who are under the influence, no matter what the drug is, prescription, do things because their brain is put to sleep. Back in those days i was really trying to make others aware of this, it was very difficult. Administrators make life very difficult. I did what you are doing now. Evaluations of defenders. So anyway, i thank you, i was so excited to hear about this and to hear about your book. Thank you very much, anyone else . I would like to know what to know about the legislation view on discharge. Im a nurse in lexington and we see a lot of the inmates and offenders pass away, they play for medical release and it drags on so long that they end up passing away. For a long time we have had medical discharge but the governor did just sign a new bill in may that is supposed to move that along quicker. The purpose of the bill is actually good and very humane, but bureaucracy, all of the forms have to get made, all of the committee septic done to get it happening. But if it is implemented quickly, within the next few months, i think we will start seeing people leave, and youre right because those who are terminally ill, that it costs to is way much more than it would be if they are in hospice or nursing home care. It is more humane that you can die in your loved ones arms. Im glad your brother . As we have listened to you and we learn from the statistics, and maybe had our hearts opened a little more to the reality of prison, what would be your suggestion for a first step that we can do as we walk out of this building that would move the process along, educate the right people and begin to make change . Let me go first on that. She considered think and be wise. There is a number of things that we can think about doing. The first is, i think you should get to know who your state representative is, for your federal representatives, who is your District Attorney. Theres attorney. Theres a story in the book that is a true story that when a candidate is running for District Attorney in the county in which i live, he came to my door and one of my boat and i had a conversation about what percentage of the people youre sending to prison that youre breaking about here were actually nonviolent . He kept talking about how this is the freebie for the taxpayer to get them off my street. And i said no its not. So i had a conversation with this person and is quite interesting. The perception was i should bed like yeah, as opposed to, wait a second, is this really how i should spend my tax money. The first thing you should do is question your representatives. The other thing you should consider is that we frequently have a misunderstanding of how dangerous many of these people are. There certainly many dangerous people in prison, leave them there. But this idea that they, quote they are all the same, is really problematic. Mary and i both believe in one simple thing, we both believe that people can change. I think the problem with wholesale mass incarceration is the assumption that livres cant chain their drapes. Probably most of your summer come, at a business or school, i would really encourage you to begin talking with your management, your policymakers at your business. To start mentorship programs for people returning to work. From prison. They cant just get a job. They are pretty traumatized when they leave. They need some help. More than anything, they need anything, they need a big brother or big sister. We get it for children, we know know that works. They need a job coach. They need close, they need transportation. They dont have a car when they get out of prison. They dont have money to put gas in it. They dont it. They dont have lunch money. Yet, they have to start work. So, i think businesses in america have to start a program that helps people return to work in a humane, healthy, and productive way. Yes, there will be a few failures but there are a lot of studies out there that showed most people who start to work within organization that supports them for a year or two, in terms of just mentoring and job coaching and helping them get through the first three months, are very successful. They gone to college and go on to raise their children to go to college. Last question. You are mentioning about most people can change, it is a good segue for me to bring up what i want to. Since 1993 i have directed an organization that supports and gives information to those who have committed a offense. We are the issue chapter. It frustrates me to hear so much emphasis on non violence supports, i commend the state and the governor and we are beginning to make some moves there. But when everybody with the offenses lumped into one category it is very frustrating. It is many people would do much better, i i would even say some of those very difficult Child Molesting cases also really want to change. They just cant get it. The letters i get will just break your heart. Knowing some of the therapist that i do around the country, i i know a dr. From john hopkins who has done tremendous work with this population, i hope we can start bringing in more with the realization that so many of these people committed their offense with somebody they knew or somebody they were related to. I completely agree with you. I worked at a unit in hartford for a short period of time, so i had some experience, not everybody who is convicted of an fcx crime is not the same. Some 17 yearolds who gets together with a 15yearold, that is a different person. Theres a difference between a predatory rapist and an acquaintance rapist. But we tend to do in the media, and in our society in general is that we love to categorize people, im not sure that is productive for us in the long run. I want to thank all of you for coming tonight. I am am being cut up in the back room. I want you to know there are still a few books back there, mary and i will donate whatever you by tonight to continue this lecture series. If you buy a book tonight, it will come to the church so they can bring someone else up. Period there is also wine and cheese in the back room, well be in the back willing to take your comments, criticisms, or snide remarks. Whatever is appropriate. Thank is appropriate. Thank you for your time. [applause]. , what. You are watching 48 hours of nonfiction authors and book on cspans books book tv. Television for serious readers. 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