Transcriber:
There are few things we know
about mass incarceration in our country.
We know, for example,
that we're the world's leading jailer.
With five percent
of the world's population,
we incarcerate 20 percent
of its prisoners.
And we know that we punish
our poor, our own.
Half of the [imprisoned] --
in fact, well over half --
live below the poverty line.
This is nothing to say
about the egregious racial disparities
in how we administer justice
and how we choose to punish.
Black Americans are five times more likely
to be incarcerated than white Americans.
And they do lengthier sentences,
even for the same crimes.
This is punishment in the United States.
But what is punishment for?
When does punishment end?
Why do we punish in this way?
In the 1970s,
we said that punishment
was for the purpose of rehabilitation.
But on the heels
of the civil rights movement
and a predictable,
because it was cyclical, crime wave,
we decided that rehabilitation
no longer worked.
In fact, our policymakers said
that nothing worked for people like them.
That is to say, the people
that we lock away
in our American jails and prisons,
the kinds of people that we put in a cage.
We made a political decision
in that moment
that what we would do
is we would sentence people
to longer terms in prison
and that we would make sure
that the punishments were more harsh.
But my research shows
that punishment doesn't end
when the sentence ends.
I'm a sociologist.
I began this work as a volunteer chaplain
at the Cook County Jail in Chicago,
and it was there that I was confronted
with the realities of mass incarceration.
It was there that I was greeted
by a sea of faces that look like mine,
from neighborhoods that look like mine
because I was born poor
and Black after 1972.
This is the year that mass
incarceration began in earnest.
And I was confronted by the reality
that the people I spent time with
were not just my neighbors,
they were certainly
more than just criminals.
These are people who had families,
who loved people
and who were loved by people.
These were people
who contributed to their homes
and to their sense of community.
So I had to know what happened
when they went home.
I had to know what brought them
there in the first place.
So I began to study mass incarceration.
I spent two decades following people
that we've learned to be afraid of.
A man I call Jimmy Caldwell
was one of those people.
He spent two decades on and off
in Michigan jails and prisons.
He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder
but didn't get access to medical care
or the medication that he needed.
I met him on the day of his release.
He was handed a sheet of paper.
This is known as
the conditions of release,
and they list things that you may not do.
You may not cross state lines;
you may not own a weapon;
you may not drink even if you’re of age;
you may not use substances,
including marijuana,
even in states where it’s legal;
you may not associate
with so-called known offenders.
This is an impossibility
in a city like Detroit,
where crime and incarceration, by the way,
is concentrated in so few neighborhoods.
It’s also an impossibility in cities
like Chicago or LA or New York,
or any of the major places
where people live.
I wanted to know
how he met these restrictions.
But more than the things
that he couldn't do,
he was given a new set
of responsibilities.
You must report to a probation
officer once a week at least.
You must submit to
and pay for a urinalysis.
You must attend Narcotics Anonymous.
You must do this multiple times each week.
You must also go to a workforce
development program.
You must get a job.
You must do all of this
before 3pm each day,
because that’s your curfew.
And you must wear an ankle bracelet
so we can monitor your movement.
Violation of any of these rules
can cost you your freedom.
How did Jimmy make these appointments?
He was effectively homeless.
He had no money for transportation.
How did he reconnect with his family,
the people whom he loved
and who loved him?
So I decided to follow Jimmy,
as I followed people like him
for so many years before.
We met at the Rosa Parks
Transit Center in Detroit,
this is a bus depot near midtown.
This was one of the coldest
days of the year.
It was February of 2015,
and Jimmy was unprepared.
He didn't have a coat.
He wore a Detroit Tigers baseball jacket.
And he didn't have a winter hat,
not a full one, he had a thin
worn skullcap that he wore.
This is one of those days
where your teeth chatter.
It's one of those days
where you can see your breath.
And here's Jimmy.
No scarf, no gloves.
And here's where we have to go
to a workforce development center
that's at least a half-hour walk
from where the last bus
could drop him off.
So here we are, walking to the center.
It's very cold.
And during this walk,
Jimmy does his best
to make me feel comfortable.
He tells me no fewer than five times,
"Man, I appreciate spending time
with a brother like you."
This is what he says.
He says, "I'm glad
to be doing something positive."
This is what he tells me.
And he begins to compliment me
until I feel uncomfortable.
I think he’s trying
to butter me up for something;
I think he's prepared me for the ask,
I'm not very comfortable with compliments.
This isn't my thing.
But when I got to the center with Jimmy,
I understood in a much deeper way
why he went through those motions.
The entire building was closed.
There was a loose leaf sheet of paper
taped to the front window
that had the address
to hopefully open centers
that he might be able to go to.
There was no phone number on that paper,
so we couldn’t call ahead
to make sure it was open,
and it didn't matter if there
was a phone number.
Jimmy's phone had run out
of minutes long before,
he couldn't have called if he wanted to.
I wish I could tell you
that I gave Jimmy a ride to that center
because I'm a good guy
and I thought he was a good guy
in a bad situation.
I wish I could say that;
I think I'd earn points
on humanitarian grounds.
But the truth of the matter is I gave
Jimmy a ride because I was cold.
I didn't feel like walking nine miles.
I didn't feel like getting on the bus.
So we hopped in my car
and we made our way.
Miles through the Detroit traffic.
But it didn't matter.
When we got to the new center,
the one that was nine miles away,
a center that was ironically close
to the place where Jimmy slept at night --
By the way, he was doing off-the-books
demolition work for his old dope dealer;
the dope dealer started buying
and selling real estate;
in exchange for Jimmy’s work,
he allowed him to sleep there.
We get to this place
that's so close to his home,
but that he was made to travel so far away
because he was ordered
to go to somewhere else.
And by the time we get there,
the training classes were full.
There was no space for Jimmy.
They tell him to come back the next week
in case another person on probation
failed to show up.
We grab brochures on the way out the door,
and we headed to Coney Island,
this is a Detroit diner chain,
so that Jimmy and I could debrief
about the day's activities.
Jimmy thanked me profusely
for the seven-dollar lunch
that I bought him,
for the bus card
that I gave him in exchange
for the interview that took place,
and for being there for him.
For being there.
What did I do?
Jimmy's life moved
from one rejection to another.
The prison refused him psychiatric care.
The social service agency
shuttered its doors.
Without me, he wouldn't have made it
to his appointment.
And with me, it just didn't matter,
he was turned away anyway.
He wouldn't even have a place to stay
without his dope dealer.
And homelessness, by the way,
is a violation of parole.
All of this would have to be explained
to his probation officer,
who may not believe him.
And this is a fantastic story.
Jimmy lived at the mercy
and the kindness of others.
He needed them for food, for clothing,
for shelter, for transportation,
to maintain his freedom, his very freedom.
This is all a matter of public policy.
Jimmy, like 19.6 million
Americans in our country,
20 million people,
a population that's ten times
the size of the jail and prison census,
those people live with felony records.
They live in an alternate legal reality.
What I write about
as a "supervised society."
In the supervised society, 44,000 laws,
policies and administrative sanctions
dictate where they may go,
with whom they might live
and how they spend their time.
If you've got a criminal record,
even if that record
was from a lifetime ago,
even if you've changed your ways
in ways that only your family
might hope that you would,
it's nearly impossible to get work.
19,000 labor market
restrictions ensure that.
It's nearly impossible to rent
an apartment without help.
Over a thousand housing
regulations ensure that.
Four thousand regulations
on civic engagement,
1,000 regulations on family
and domestic rights,
almost ensuring that if you've got
a criminal record
that you can't live with the people
that you want to live with most.
How did we get here?
How did we get to this supervised society?
The roots run deep,
at least as deep as our country.
But the legal infrastructure
for a supervised society
began in the 1980s.
It starts in housing policy.
Congress passed legislation
that made it so
that landlords would reject
applicants with criminal records,
and people in public housing
had the power to evict tenants
who allow people with criminal records
who even so much as visited their home.
Overnight, grandmothers were being evicted
for the crime of letting
their loved ones sleep on a couch.
This is the supervised society.
This is the world that we've made.
I caught up with Jimmy a few months later.
I wanted to know how he was doing.
But mostly, I want to know
about his relationship with his mother.
His mother was a fantastic woman.
I talked to her on the phone
a couple of times,
and I knew she adored Jimmy.
This made sense
because Jimmy was her baby.
He was the youngest of her five children
and the only boy in that house.
She certainly would have helped Jimmy
if he turned to her,
and she did often.
But Jimmy told me that her landlord
started asking questions.
He saw Jimmy making his way
around the building
and he didn't want any trouble.
Thousands of families
have been evicted from their homes
for the crime of letting a loved one
sleep on the couch.
Thousands more live
under the threat of eviction
for simply allowing someone
with a criminal record
to stay there for a few days.
Jimmy certainly needed his mother.
She certainly would have
responded to his need.
But he told me, "I don't come
around like that no more.
I don't want to put her in that position."
Jimmy avoided his mother,
the one person
who would have helped him,
because she wanted to help.
He avoided her to protect her.
Americans say, "We believe
in rehabilitation," it's what we say.
How do we explain Jimmy's life?
We say we believe in a second chance,
but how do we explain this perpetual
punishment that lasts a lifetime?
This is the fact of mass incarceration,
and it is indeed a fact.
I know this, I know it from my flesh.
My brother was incarcerated
while I did the research
I'm telling you about today.
And I could tell you stories
about the trouble that he had
when he tried to find a job
or get an apartment.
I could tell you how hard it was for him
to find his place in the world,
but I'd rather tell you a different story.
I'd rather tell you a story about a man
who helped us find our way out.
Ronald Simpson Bay
was handed a 50-year sentence
for a crime he didn't commit.
He's a remarkable man.
He fought that case for 27 years,
one of the few jailhouse lawyers
who managed to get himself out.
He helped many people while he was inside,
he's helped even more today,
now that he's home.
He's one of the nation's leading advocates
for criminal justice reform.
But it wasn't always good
for Ronald, obviously.
About 10 years into his sentence,
Ronald's only son,
a boy who holds his name,
was murdered by a 14-year-old boy.
I don't know what I would have done.
I can only tell you what Ronald did.
Ronald went to the judge
and to the prosecutor,
and he advocated for that boy,
that he be tried as a juvenile
instead of as an adult.
This boy who took so much from him.
He made sure that he would have
a second chance at life.
"How did you do it, Ronald?"
"Why did you do it, Ronald,
I would have hated that child."
"What were you thinking at the time?"
Ronald said to me,
"I advocated for that boy
because it was the right thing to do.
I thought it would be
an example for others
who needed to move on with their life."
Ronald did not love
his son's murderer, how could he?
But Ronald made an ethical commitment,
and he did with those ethics required.
Ronald practices a radical
politics of hospitality.
One where we make a place in the world
for people who even cause us harm.
And he invites us
to practice these politics.
Because this politic of hospitality,
this radical commitment to belonging
will take us so far beyond
the politics of fear
that govern our lives today.
Out of fear
we've written 44,000 laws
to prevent people from harming us.
But the laws that we've written
have done the opposite.
Any criminologists worth their salt
will tell you this.
They'll tell you that unemployment,
that family separation,
that housing instability,
that all of these things
lead to more crime, not less.
They make our world
more violent, not less.
But we do it because it made us feel good,
and we did this despite what we know.
So how do we find our way out?
How do we end this permanent punishment
that we've decided to enact?
How do we get out
of the supervised society
that we've decided to legislate?
Well, first, we can get to know
people with criminal records.
The statistics are grim,
but it's in these grim statistics
that I find hope.
One in two Americans
has a formerly incarcerated loved one.
This means that most of us
can start right at home.
We can get to know the people
in our closest circles
because if we ask the question,
if we try to see,
then we'll notice that people
are closer to us than we imagined.
And we can, of course,
ask our elected officials
to do something different.
All politics are local,
and the politics of mass
incarceration are hyperlocal.
Mass incarceration was the result
of a thousand policy decisions,
so we can ask more of our judges,
our district attorneys,
more of the people that we elect
to the mayor's and governor's office.
More to our local politicians who help
govern our wards and our cities
and our towns.
We can ask them to help us
imagine a new world.
We can even ask this of our employers
and of the people in leadership
in our houses of worship.
They can help us find a new world,
or we can find new people who will.
But above all,
Ronald calls us to practice
this radical politics of hospitality.
And this is what I think
is the real measure of our ethics.
It's what did you do when things are hard.
It's easy to love the lovable.
But Ronald calls to us to practice
a politic of hospitality,
to make a world where we can imagine
a place for everyone so that all belong.
And he asked us to imagine this world,
even for people who've caused harm.
And he asked us to imagine it,
even for people who've harmed us.
And from there, I take great hope.
Thank you.
(Applause)