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Money being spent wisely? joining me now, naacp president ben jealous and national action network president al sharpton. gentlemen, good morning. >> good morning. >> good morning. >> ben, i'm going to show our viewers some of the kindings of your report but the big takeaway i saw is that overincarceration disproportionately affects minority communities and actually destabilizes communities creating a kind of vicious downward cycle. so, if that's true, then what's the solution? >> well, a few thing one with he have got to start treating people fairly. black people in this country, 15% of the cr...

Rockefeller drug laws, most dems are a real problem on this issue, as far as the governors are concerned, we go to the republicans and they look at the bottom line, you're absolutely right, this costs too much, it doesn't work, something works better. you know what, i'm not afraid of being perceived as soft on crime, so i will do it. >> how do you deal with the flip side of the debate? the numbers are clear, disproportionate number of black men in prisons become old black men in prisons. the flip side of the argument is, if you're riding around doing the last half in the south bronx or clevela...

Ginz for selling the drugs. both substances were highly addicted and -- but one was cheap. african-americans made up 80% of those put in jail for crack offenses despite being 30% of crack users. added to that the insane punishment and you have a disparity at the punishment of black and white offenders. president obama sought to eliminate that discrepancy despite opposition from the usual suspects. >> reducing the penalties from crack cocaine could expose our neighborhoods to the same violence that caused congress to act in the first place. >> yesterday the president prevailed. and the relative...

Both substances were highly addictive. both were equally harmful. both were cocaine. but crack was cheap and cocaine was not. crack was primarily afflicting urban neighborhoods and cocaine was viewed as the party drug of well-off whites. african-americans made up 80% of those put in jill for crack offenses. despite being only 30% of crack users. add to that the insane difference in punishment, and you had a yawning discrepancy in how the legal system punished white and blk offenders. when you took office, president obama sought to eliminate that 100-1 discrepancy despite opposition from the us...