Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On From Jailer To Jai

He served as the National Security advisor to King Abdullah of jordan and was appointed by president bush to be the interim interior minister of the Iraq Coalition provisional authority. And, of course youve subsequently nominated by president bush in 2004 to head the department of homeland security. Mr. Kerik has also served time in federal prison. After withdrawing his nomination federal government initiated an investigation against mr. Which culminated in pleading guilty to a charge is including criminal conspiracy, tax fraud and lying under oath. He was sentenced to four years in prison and served most of that time. He has now written an account of his triumphs, his challenges and his ordeals. It is from jailer to jailed, copies of which are available in the lobby and he would be happy to sign him at the conclusion of this event. Mr. Kerik will make brief opening remarks and he and i will engage in a moderated dialogue with each other and after that well have time permitting questions from august. Without please join me in welcoming Bernard Kerik. [applause] good morning. First of want to thank john and the Heritage Foundation for the invitation to be here and speak to you and speak about the book. As john mentioned ive been a cop, ive been a correctional officer, ive been a federal drug agent. I was the warden of a county jail in new jersey and in procedures oversaw rikers ivan which at the time was one of the most violent jail systems in the nation. In a sixyear period i took it from one of the most violent mismanaged jail and prison systems in our country to International Model for efficiency, accountability and safety. Would average 150 stabbings and slashings per month. On the month i became Police Commissioner in the year 2000 we had one. A 93 reduction of violence and or efficiencies in every area of management within the system. In the year 2000 i became Police Commissioner. That it was smooth sailing. Violence is down, crime is down everything was going fine until 8 46 a. M. September 11. It was the most trying time for the nypd, one of the darkest days in our countries history but for me as bad as it was i got to witness the best and the worst in humanity, the worst being the man that flew those planes into the towers into shanksville and into the pentagon the best in watching the rescue mission which i consider one of the greatest and most substantial rescue missions in the history of our country. Carried out by the men and women of the new York City Police Department Fire department and the Port Authority police. From that point on my career in Public Service was sort of straight uphill, until i was nominated by the president. And i have to tell you i thought i knew our criminal Justice System. I thought i knew it better than just about anyone, until i was actually a target of federal prosecutors and i was found i found myself in a federal prison. And i came to realize quickly that our criminal Justice System, in my opinion, is flawed and failed in many ways. So i will sum it up with a couple things that are most important to me. I think the simpson guidelines mandatory minimums that we live by in the federal system today have to be repealed, revamped or abolish sentencing guidelines. They would have the ability to judge. I think we are putting way too many people with Mental Illness and addiction in prison. They need treatment. They dont need prison. I think we are taking young men first time nonviolent offenders and this is one of the things that struck me the most when i went into prison. I put a lot of people in prison, bad people that did bad things come and i believe in law and order and i know different today than i was 20 years ago. And i put people in prison that wanted to kill me determined worked with them people i seized tons of cocaine from millions in drug proceeds. Then i went to prison and i met young black men, 18 19 your old. To sugar packs in a dunkin donut shop, 10 years. To 15 years in prison. Because they were attacked on to some third party, fourth party conspiracy. I met commercial fishermen who caught too many fish or the wrong size fish. I met a guy who sold a wales to on ebay. Young man that enhanced their income to buy their first home, federal prison. Thousands upon thousands of people are in federal prison for these offenses. The one thing ive realized and ive come to realize and i think that the general public, i know i am absolutely confident that the general public doesnt know is that we are creating a permanent underclass of american citizen in this country a second class, by the millions. Because once you become a convicted felon you are a second class citizen until the day you die. That conviction never goes away. Your debt to society is never paid ever. We are supposed to incarcerate and rehabilitate. We are supposed to punish and make people better, pay for their crimes, pay for their mistakes, get them back into society a better person. I promise you thats not happening. If we didnt have the advocacy groups around this country that we do today like the Heritage Foundation, and others thousands of others, i cant even tell you how bad society would be. In many cases especially in these lowlevel first time nonviolent offender drug cases society has failed these young men and women. Their families have failed them. Their communities have failed them. We stick them in prison for 10 years 15 years and we failed then again. We shouldnt have an option for failure once we take over, and we failed them completely. They are supposed to programs to benefit them. And i can assure you where i was we had adult continuing education programs, but as i stand here, and these are real examples, knitting crocheting chess checkers. They are not going to do anything to reducing recidivism. We take people that are convicted of real estate fraud, we engage them in a prison to teach our real estate class two other convicted felons. Theres two problems i have with it. One, you are letting someone teach this very topic for which they were convicted a bit of hypocrisy. Worse than that is that once they teach these people, they are supposed to be teaching them something that helps them for when they get on the outside your you can teach them to be a master realtor. Uses civil and Constitutional Rights that are never given back to you are never made whole again as an american citizen. No matter what you do, and ill give you a first hand example. I was with a young man come he was 20, 21, the United States army sniper. He had a pair of night vision goggles, his own personal. He sold them on ebay. He was convicted in a conspiracy because the person who sold them to didnt have the appropriate permit to sell them abroad or the kid was 21. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison, 30 months because he did something he didnt even know was wrong. That being said if that kid list the 120 and hes a complete angel on the outside once he gets out of prison, he still could have the collateral consequence of that conviction laying over his head and killed a day they put him in the ground. Its wrong. We were founded by the constitution, by a governing body by our Founding Fathers who said the punishment is supposed to fit the crime. Today in the American Government the punishments do not fit the crime and that has to change. Thank you. Why did you stay at the podium . Ill just keep my voice up and ask you a question. So you went from being one of the nations top cop to being a federal inmate. Its quite a fall and this is obviously a very very difficult book for you to write. The pain is felt and is evident on every certain page. Why did you write this book . You know a lot of people when i wrote the book especially critics, they come out his writing the book to make money in his writing the book to make up for losses. I have to tell you, and i heard this line once and couldnt agree more, for the losses ive had over the last eight to 10 years as a result of the investigation and my conviction that book would have to sell more copies than the bible for me to make up for it. This isnt about money. This is basically about an education. What i said earlier that im confident that the American Public doesnt know the things that ive learned, i said that for a reason. I know they dont know and im positive many of the legislators, the actual people who write our laws, they dont know either. And i know that because i didnt know. I didnt know. I went through some of the biggies were positioned in this country, the biggest Law Enforcement agencies in this nation. I did not know many other things that ive learned since. And if i did not im sure the American Public doesnt know so thats what the book is about. I think the book is in educating tool for the American Public, and i think it creates i want it to create debate that has to be credit to change the laws. If every american citizen in this country read the book, they would have to come away with one primary question. And i would be go to your legislator and ask them how is it that we in this country are 5 of the worlds population the United States as a whole is 5 of the worlds population, yet we hold 25 of the worlds prisoners. How is that possible . How do we have more prisoners than there something wrong and they think the book will open up eyes to create a that debate. In your book you quote a fellow prisoner it is like dying with your eyes open. Please describe a little bit what you mean by that. If, if i heard that statement prior to incarceration i wouldnt have had a clue what that meant. I wouldve had no idea. But i had been there for months or dedicate the time maybe a few months already when this kid made the statement. We were having a conversation one afternoon. He had enormous problems. His wife had been diagnosed with cancer. He was there on a first time low level drug charge. He tried to get a compassionate release. He couldnt get her to try to get to the hospital where his wife was. He couldnt get it. He had no one else to take care of these kids. It was a mess. And he was basically standing there and he said to me he said this is like dying with your eyes open. And get knotted up in my stomach like nothing before because i knew exactly what he meant. When you go to prison i dont care who it is and less you are an institutionalized animal when you go to prison thats what happens. You die with your eyes open. You are placed in a stagnant position and to watch everything go on around you and your family your personal life your professional life everything. Everything goes on without you in it. And no matter how bad it can be and i had some really bad incidents happen to my family while i was inside. One, my brotherinlaw went to the hospital for a routine surgery, a very routine surgery putto do so they can end up in a day. He never left the hospital. He died. He was 50. He had three sons that were 13 years old, triplets. And there was anything i could do for him his family his wife. And it was horrible. A few months later my son who was a Police Officer in newark, new jersey his partner was shot and killed during a robbery. I have had the unfortunate, ive been in the unfortunate position to bury more cops than anyone in this country as a police chief or a commissioner, but i couldnt be there for my son when his partner died. I know what the kid meant when he said its like dying with your eyes open, and thats what its about. You mentioned your family and in the book you talk something about the ordeal but this took on your family, your wife your son your daughters. Can you describe a little more about sort of how they coped and the difficult they had . And also how they are doing now. When you go to prison as i said your life stands still, yours does theres dont. And theres the reverse. Everything they do it doesnt have you in it. So your Children School events, report cards, sporting events. You name it the good the bad the ugly it all goes on without you in it. Theres a distance thats created between your kid, your children, your spouse. And none of it is good. None of it is good. I left my two daughters were seven and 10. I came back they were 10 and 13. They were adults almost adults in my eyes when i came back. They were completely different. You come back to the same home they left. Its a very different house, if a different home. You come back to the same style as he left very different relationship. Tears nothing good about that distance. Not to mention that the financial problems that occur, lack of income. I can tell you and i am and was one of the fortunate ones that i know. I cannot tell you how many men were taken out of the workforce and ill give you one pretty easy example. The commercial fisherman who caught too many fish there were a few where i was but this is one of the problems i have with the system. Instead of dealing with that guy through a regulatory body, which it should have been, what we did is we turned them into a convicted felon. He lost his boat the six people on the boat lost their job. His wife worked for the company. She was left alone. He went to prison. That he gets out of prison 18 months later, he has nowhere to go. The boat is gone the company is gone. He cant get a license to the only thing hes done since he was 17 was a fish. He was 55. Whats he going to do for the rest of his life . I dont know. But what i can tell you is there are thousands of cases like that disrupting the economy, disrupting families, destroying families putting people in public assistance and who pays for that . You do the american taxpayer. Its your loss and its costing us billions if not trillions of dollars over the reported cost of incarceration. You mention how it affected your relationship with her close friend, former boss and partner rudy giuliani. I was wondering, you would other friends uninsured where these have been impacted on the relationship it i was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that . Mayor giuliani and i were i worked for him for eight years, into the Police Department to you dont have two years prior to that. Once i retire from the nypd we had a company together a consulting group. We were very close. He was my boss my partner. Is also the godfather to my two youngest daughters. When the investigation started the federal investigations there was distance we created between us mutually. And it was understood. I didnt want him involved in my case, and he didnt want you know the focus and the attention that was coming down on me on him, special at the time he was running for president. He announced that he is going to run for president. I understood that. What happened later was in the aftermath of my conviction, and then sent to prison i never heard from him again, nor did my kids. And i get. Look if he didnt want to speak to me or he wanted to continue that distance to thats fine, but i dont think theres anybody in the American Government that doesnt understand the pain that comes to a family when someone is incarcerated in u. S. Attorney for former u. S. Attorney. I would hope he was there for my children and the my absence, and he wasnt and that was painful. But its behind me. And circumstance like that you find out who your friends are. You are still under probation for another year as i recall. What are some of the current restrictions that you face what wouldve the additional restrictions are going to face in the future . The primary restrictions travel restrictions. Constant oversight by the department of probation. Look, they have an enormous job. They have a difficult job to do the department of probation. In overseeing people that were in the system. My problem i have with the system is about i think the rest of the and evaluation process where people that are a real threat of getting back involved in crime yet to stay on top of them. But then theres people a whole bunch of people, thousands of people that wind up on supervised release. They are not a threat to recidivism. They are not a threat to society. Theyre not a threat of violence, and the probation officers could be better served by focusing on people that really problematic. So thats where i find you know, by differences of opinion on who we supervised and for how long but i will tell you regardless of my own circumstance, companies dont want to hire people us on probation because you dont want probation officers showing up at your. You to watch a professional officer showing up at your company. You dont want to oversight. You dont want the government looking at you in any way. So the supervisor Lease Program the Probation Program first in your book you quote an old cliche that conservatives as a liberal who was mugged and a liberal is a conservative whos been indicted. But then you said the following for you being a former officer in coppola people behind bars i found this passage rather eyeopening to use that quote our courts are over punishing decent people who make mistakes and the presence have no rewards or incentives for Good Behavior. In this alone our criminal justice and prison system contradict their own mission statement. For 30 years i believe this is the most honest and fair in some ways i still do. But after experiencing firsthand from the other side its flaws failures and injustices, id say its not only wrong but dangerous for every american and the future of this country. There is no greater threat to a free and democratic nation in a government that fails to protect its citizens freedoms and liberty as aggressively as it pursues justice. What did you mean by this . Like i said, i thought i knew the system. I thought we punished that people who do bad things. But i did realize is that we also take people that violated our regulatory rule or a civil issue or an administrative issue, and we prosecute them criminally. I didnt understand that. I never witnessed it. I didnt know it existed really, until i was actually on the inside and got to talk to people. I heard case after case after case and read can forget the