Question about that. Although we need to look not only at incarceration rates, we also also need to look at time served for crime which is someways a better indicator of our incarceration. In any event, this massive buildup in our imprisonment system definitely may have had a positive impact in terms of crime reduction. Just from the standpoint of of keeping people in prison from praying against innocent victims , just from that standpoint alone never mind deterrent, but just the fact that you keep protect the population by locking people up if there are thousands of thousands of people locked up and they have done very Violent Crimes and repeat them as soon as they get out, that alone has a protective and beneficial impact. Almost all of the studies that have looked at the relationship, quantitative studies between incarceration and crime have found that there is definitely a positive relationship between incarceration and the decline of crime. Now, what risk then do we face if we make the system less punitive . My answer is it depends on what we do and how we do it. If we are going to reduce the incarceration of serious offenders, people who do Violent Crime and after all well over half of the people in prison have committed a Violent Crime. Only about 15 of those in prison have done drug crimes. Roughly three force of that population have been drug traffickers. So it is a myth to say that some kid smoking a marijuana cigarette and up serving along prison sentence, that is just not true. So everything depends on how we do it. If we have reforms such as, for instance reducing the isolation of young prisoners, keeping young prisoners from being placed in isolation for fairly long periods of time, i dont see this as a risk. I think this is a beneficial thing. There is a lot of harm that could come from placing young people in isolation for long periods of time. So i do not have any problem with that sort of reform. But if we are going to establish reform that dont impose long enough sentences on people who have done serious crimes of either violence or nonviolence, for instance a very serious property crime, grand larceny is a very serious property crime, arson is a very serious property crime, those folks those folks need to be locked up to. If we are going to engage in reform that make the system much less punitive for people who really deserve the punishment, i think that would be an error and i think it would weaken the criminal Justice System and that would be a problem. There is a theory about crime, Violent Crime cycle. It was developed by a crime historian named eric who unfortunately died a few years ago. His theory was this, he said that when you have a relaxation of social control, and he did not define what this meant exactly but i take this to include the criminal Justice Systems potency, at least as part of that equation. When you have a relaxation of social control, after a leg period of years you will get an increase in crime. Especially Violent Crime. Then of course there will be a lot of pressure to reactivate social controls to control this violence. Once these controls are put into place again, this would include toughening up a hardening of the criminal Justice System, then you will get a reduction in Violent Crime. The cycle will then continue, after reduction takes place there will be pressures and we are seeing these pressures now in our own time, there will will be pressures to reduce those social controls and then you will get after a leg an increase in violence again. So we may be looking at that type of situation now where we are reducing the social controls and may be running the risk of a new increase in violence. Host incredibly important perspective for anyone who is asking how we are going to balance the needs of justice with the needs of public safety. This has been an incredible book, the rise and fall of Violent Crime in america. A mustread for anyone who wants to understand how American Crime has developed, what our history is, in some perspective on how where we are going. Thank you so much for taking the time today. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much. That was afterwards, book tvs Signature Program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed. Watch past afterwards past afterwards program online, at book tv. Org. Of next. John brecher provides a history of autism, citing stereotypes and research over the years. Sean, thank you and welcome everybody. Its a great book. I feel bad that you have my back over there. It is a very moving book and whats great about it is there is a lot of individuals against the system stuff which is so moving very real. The stories and social histories, it is really a great read, so congratulations. Spit. Think very much. There are things about the book that did fascinate me and move me. Why dont we start where you started which is how you both got interested in it. And then a little bit about your relationship, but your relationship to abc and how this became a big story for you. About 21 years ago i had a son with autism. Not long after that i figured out i needed to do something to try to help understand it better. I asked john to help me. We are team are team of journalists working together. Your you saw your kid is a story right away. No. The truth is john sought my kid is a story right away. And he said, we are doing a very intensive program, 40 hours per per week, 25 hours in the chair, we were really going to beat this. We thought it was beatable. For some people it is. It was really a day in mickeys life was pretty intense. John said but analyze with nikki and i said no. No. I said yes as long as im not tenet which you cant really do a story about her mother and son if youre not in it. So we decided instead to do a story on the treatment that he was receiving at the time. And show that it did not help all children but it did help some and so the whole idea is we got abc news, not the main abc news, but nightline because nobody really was talking about autism. People didnt know what we were talking about when we brought a tour editors. They had maybe seen rain man and had a sense they heard of it but did not have a sense that it was really going to be a story or relevant to a broad audience. That surprises me a little bit because struggling and medical stories and health is such an enormous part of american narrative. There are a lot of stories that come along and we are pitch them all the time by families who are dealing with one or another issue like that. Autism had that sort of profile and inside track that karen circular was inside and just kept pushing until they said yes. I think the book begins with this man don triplett who was the first person diagnosed with autism. Tell us a little about him and how you got to find him and develop that. Long story short, we started to do a series called echoes of autism. At some point along the way john and i decided we needed to do something that would be more everlasting and really dig into the history of autism. In doing that digging we learn through the grapevine that the first person diagnosed with autism, what we learned he was not diagnosed until 1943. It is that recent. That person was still living somewhere in the United States many years later. I looking for clues of the reports that were written about him in 1930s and 19 forties, we found out what county he was living in. There is a little town of mississippi. We knew his first name was donald but in the literature they only gave the initial of his last name which with t. So karen who is a reporter but also knows how to dial a telephone went we went that we dial telephone. She started going through the tees in this county and she hit pay dirt one day. So a number of donalds, but not many in forest, mississippi. One day called and got an answering machine. The machine picks up and says, hello, i hope youre having a happy spring. You should have a happy fall fall to and even a happy christmas. Have a wonderful 2007. I hung up the phone and i said we got it. We got it, i know its him. This is our guy. And it was. There is no doubt. So the story of donald t, the beginning part of the story he was very severely limited in his ability to communicate and his ability to relate to people. He was about who do not run to his mom and dad, he paid no attention, given a toy he would spin it not use it the way it was supposed to be used. His language was called accolade like, if you said something to him rather than answer he would repeat the question over and over. That is a rather classic sign in some people with autism. Then he go for it to the present day when we got to know donald and the story was astounding. We got down there and we found a man, after karen will tell you in a minute a little resistance we met from the community in trying to find his story, but we met a man man who at that point in his 70s was speaking, was driving a cadillac, was playing golf, was traveling around the world, he had world, he had friends and lived independently on his own. He still definitely, definitely had autism but he had grown, matured, and flourished. Spectacularly. We think that is because of him and his and we also think it was because of what happened to him and that little town. That town embraced donald. You can also say that donald came from a wealthy family. His mother owned a bank. A bank. His familys mother owned a bank. He was well respected because it was a bankers son. If you wanted to get a mortgage you did not mess with the triplett kid. Theres. Theres a little bit of truth to that. Right is not just a simply that life is more complicated than that. Donald had all the perfect elements and part of that was he had a family that was respected in the community and because they were respected, they respected donnell. Donnell. They embraced him. They embraced them so much that when we came down to do the story we are told by people, they literally literally lectured us. If we messed with donald, they would track us down and find us and get us. Nobody messed with donald in this community. People supported him. What happened as he grew up, this idea of how donald took hold and his mother used his influence to get him where he was not wanted which was the local Public School. She used her pulse to get him there. She used her poll eventually to get him a space a space in a nearby farm where he spent a few years been able to wander freely and to have structure in his life. He worked with the farmhands. Donald ended up getting into high school, by that time you really see a flourishing personality. He was always about three years behind everybody else in his class, three years older. The kids, you would expect him to be bullied and tees which has been the expansive a lot of people who had autism today in the Public Schools. We talk to people from donalds era who are in their 70s and 80s and they thought he was kind of a genius. Everywhere we went down we asked what they remembered of Donald Triplett and they said he was the smartest kid in school. He had a weird mathematical thing. He had an affinity for number. In fact theres a story of him counting all of the bricks in the entire school. True or not were not sure. Actually what is really great is the story, this is the legend of force mississippi,. One day he was asked by some kids we hear you cant really facile how many bricks on the side of the School Building . 4362, making it up. But Something Like that. He up. But Something Like that. He tosses out a number and they all believe him. They all said wow. And then they ran off and told their friends in the story still live 50 years later. Nobody actually really counted the bricks. Or asked him about it until we did a handful of years ago and we said so tell us the bricks story. He told us that he had not counted them that day. He just wanted them to like him. And it worked. They really admired him. There is a fantastic story about Donald Triplett and the way the community embraced him and the way in which his potential was realized in an amazing fashion. Im assuming you began there but the thing thats better to me most stunning about the book and that is a very beautiful story, is that history of the way mothers and towns were taught to think about children who we think of todays having autism. It wasnt always there but even when it was, talk about this because this notion that somehow it is your fault if your are apparent or that it is, you institutionalize any move on. The history found you did not know before you started. Was an interesting thing when we set out to find the history, it had not been written in many cases. We ended up piecing together fragments of things here and there. Interviews and scattered medical writing, old videotapes, radio recordings, maps and all sort of things to pin it together. One thing that was fairly wellestablished was this refrigerated mother theory. I dont know if youve heard this term. Until about 1970 or so, between 19431971 a mom took her child with autism to an expert and said what is going on with my child the expert said well you did this to your child by feeling total up the child. Karen has met some of these women some in their 80s and you spent hours with them and i will stop talking because its your story. The part that impressed me as it took hours because the shame was still there. Even though they do not believe it any longer. A lot of the history of autism is very dark. If you are a mother this is one of those stories that is heartbreaking. You are living this life and doing everything you can to help this child who is so different and sometimes so complicated, and sometimes so disabled. Now you are being blamed for it. One it. One of the mothers i met, her name was leah and it took her a while to even get the diagnosis. When she got the diagnosis she tried to find a place for him to get some kind of treatment. Theyre doing some treatment and a new york hospital, she was able to get her son into. The deal was the only way that you could get your son into a program or your daughter, was as long as you got there because you are the problem. You needed to be psychoanalyze, you needed to discuss what you did to cause the autism. Rita who was an educated woman and knows a lot about psychology, had read the book and she knew, this is my fault so i need to figure out what to do. One. One day she is sitting with her psychologist and she tells a story after almost three hours of talking, she had not told the story for years and years, decades. She tells the story to me and she says im sitting there and all of a sudden i realized what happened. I got it. It was me. I remember. I thought he looked like a chicken. He was jaundiced, he was yellow, his hair was standing up, and i thought in my head, thats a chicken, hes thats a chicken, hes like a little chicken. I caused his autism. She believed it because everybody else believed it. It was the tragedy of the time that it was your fault. If you are apparent and you have a child with autism, the first thing you think is what can i do to help them. Well if it is my fault maybe i can help them. So this lived on and on. The thing is it is so complex because you actually can possibly help your child, right . So this issue of it is your responsibility is a difference between responsibility and blame can be subtle. So obviously in fact if you are going to be like a mrs. Triplett or some of the other characters in your book and youd decide to devote your time to get rid of everything in your life and devote your time to helping this child reaches a her potential, it is actually a lot to ask of someone in a funny way. So in a way youre being told this is the only way to go forward. I think the whole question of parenting today and what responsibility you have is very well displayed in the book. We now live in a world, this is where the story brightens somewhat we now live in a world that has been created by things that took place in the 19 fifties, sixties, seventies, and 70s, and 80s around the country and a lot in the cities by parents who decided to stand up to this attitude. The shame that was associated with having a child manifesting autistic behaviors is so powerful that parents were told routinely to send their kids a way to institutions, to hide them. They were told to put the children away and try to move on and try to devote their activities to their normal kids. These were not bad parents. These are parents like all of us sitting here. But that is what society said to do. Doctor spock said to do that. We were were stunned to find on page 549 of the First Edition of doctor spocks book, a recommendation in the Maternity Ward if the child is manifesting some sort of evidence of develop mental disability that was physical, the child should be removed immediately from the parents control and put into an institution. It even said to have this conversation with the father because the mother is probably going to try to fight it. The reality is, many, many parents including rita did send their children to institutions, not because they cannot handle the burden but because the pressure and shame were so intense. They they were being told you are doing the right thing. And but in some cases they probably couldnt handle the child. It is true, they couldnt because some of the kids would be so difficult to manage. Not everybody is necessarily up to that. But there is a solution to that, that solution did not exist yet. Schools. Where did you send your child . The school system, legally said we do not want you here. Until the 70s . 1975 the legislation was passed in which the federal government said to the Public School systems, if you want our money you never turn away a child, you find a solution for that child. And that partly came from Political Movement led by parents. That is the whole story. The history of autism in so many ways is about parental love. It is not just about autism. Any parent, what would you do for your child . All of all of us, theres nothing we were not to for children. That is why we are where we are today. But you have not mentioned this was the guy, this is mr. Child psychology. He. He has been completely discredited today. It was a pretty painful process. There will be people in the room who will know who Bruno Bettelheim was. He was was the doctor phil and the doctor haas of his day except it was all about psychology and psychiatry. He was giving advi