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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, The most Shocking
Speaker 4: Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 4: journalist and author Dan Zufansky.
Speaker 5: Good evening. This is your host Dan Zuvanski for the
Speaker 5: program True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True crime
Speaker 5: History and the authors that have written about them. Sean
Speaker 5: Griffith spent over twenty three years in various Florida prisons
Speaker 5: for an armed robbery he committed in nineteen ninety two
Speaker 5: at the age of twenty one. He has just recently
Speaker 5: been conditionally released from prison. He documents an elaborate and
Speaker 5: exacting detail what is wrong with the correction system in
Speaker 5: the US and provides a host of solutions about how
Speaker 5: to improve it and save the taxpayers millions of dollars
Speaker 5: while making our streets safer at the same time. Facing
Speaker 5: the US prison problem two point three million strong is
Speaker 5: written by someone from inside the belly of the beast,
Speaker 5: who knows from years of personal experience what works and
Speaker 5: what doesn't. Ironically, most prisons today are not set up
Speaker 5: to rehabilitate prisoners, but to do the opposite, simply to
Speaker 5: warehouse ever increasing numbers of them until they're eventually released
Speaker 5: with little or no practical training to succeed on the outside.
Speaker 5: SEWN advocates that the real purpose of prison, in addition
Speaker 5: to punishment, should be to any ninety percent who will
Speaker 5: eventually be released to cope on the outside and not
Speaker 5: return to prison within the first three years. As now
Speaker 5: just under half of all released prisoners do. SEWN shows
Speaker 5: how tough on crime politicians supported by guard unions in
Speaker 5: private prison corporations have a vested interest in keeping the
Speaker 5: recipientism rate high. Instead of fostering in prison drug rehab,
Speaker 5: job training, impulse control, and close family ties, prisons continually
Speaker 5: slash these critical programs to hire more guards and build
Speaker 5: more prisons. In California, seventy percent of the prison budget
Speaker 5: goes to pay the thirty one thousand guards it employs,
Speaker 5: and only five percent of vocational programs to reduce recidivism
Speaker 5: until taxpayers grasp how counter productive this approach truly is
Speaker 5: in providing public safety. There will be no chance for
Speaker 5: meaningful prison reform. The book that was featuring this evening
Speaker 5: is Facing the US Prison Problem two point three million Strong,
Speaker 5: with my guest author Sean Griffith. Good evening, Sewan, and
Speaker 5: welcome to the program.
Speaker 6: Hei Dan, How are you fine?
Speaker 5: Thank you. We just did an introduction to your book
Speaker 5: that I kind of cobbled together between Pat O'Connor's review
Speaker 5: and your brief synopsis of your book itself. Let's get
Speaker 5: after this. Oh, thank you very much. Now let's get
Speaker 5: to obviously we know that the the reason why you
Speaker 5: wrote this book. Let's unlike the book itself, which is
Speaker 5: again a very interesting and fascinating book, because of the
Speaker 5: perspective that you have. Obviously, now give us the I
Speaker 5: apologize for this, but let's get this out of the
Speaker 5: way so we can, Hara, have a real sort of
Speaker 5: the audience is going to have a real balanced look
Speaker 5: on who you are and your credentials for writing this
Speaker 5: and based on your experiences. So first tell us a
Speaker 5: little bit about yourself, how you grew up and what
Speaker 5: led you to this incredible experience that you had at
Speaker 5: twenty one years of age. Take us a little bit
Speaker 5: back to your child and what led up to your
Speaker 5: eventual imprisonment, and if you could please be so kind
Speaker 5: to tell us what exactly that crime was and what entailed.
Speaker 6: Okay, sure thing, Daniel, problem. I would just like to
Speaker 6: say first before I even start on my childhood and
Speaker 6: some of the things that happened. And first I can
Speaker 6: tell you also, thank you very much, Dan for having
Speaker 6: me on the program. Then this is a true pleasure.
Speaker 6: I would like to say first and begin by saying
Speaker 6: that I failed in the book to mention that I
Speaker 6: had made amends with my mother my father's past now,
Speaker 6: and I did document some things from my childhood. It
Speaker 6: wasn't an easy childhood, and I'll explain a little bit
Speaker 6: here in a second. I just would like to say
Speaker 6: first and foremost that I did make amends with my mother,
Speaker 6: and as an adult, I don't blame her or blame
Speaker 6: my childhood today for some of the decisions I made
Speaker 6: as a young adult. I think they were instrumental in
Speaker 6: leading maybe me in directions that led to them, but
Speaker 6: I still the one that made the decisions. I'd like
Speaker 6: to just that first before we go on now.
Speaker 5: Certainly as a child.
Speaker 6: I came from a Catholic family, a mother and a father.
Speaker 6: They remain married. It was somewhat of a code of
Speaker 6: pendant relationship, actually an extreme code of pennant relationship where
Speaker 6: my father was. He loved my mother very much. As
Speaker 6: a husband, my father was about the best husband you
Speaker 6: could be. He was very loving to my mother and
Speaker 6: you know, did just doted on her, did everything he
Speaker 6: could to make her happy. My mother, though at the
Speaker 6: same time, my father was also very He was very stoic.
Speaker 6: He didn't talk very much to me. He didn't spend
Speaker 6: very much time talking to me or explaining things to me.
Speaker 6: And my mother took advantage on someone. I think of
Speaker 6: the fact that she still was intimidated of him. He
Speaker 6: had he had a bad drinking problem, and sometimes he
Speaker 6: would he would take that out on the kids, and
Speaker 6: sometimes I think maybe early on, my mother was concerned
Speaker 6: that he might take it out on her or the girls,
Speaker 6: which were my sisters. I had five in my family,
Speaker 6: an older older brother, older sister, and then one then
Speaker 6: I came, and then my middle sister and then my
Speaker 6: youngest sister. So there were five of us, and I
Speaker 6: think my mother tried to protect my sisters from my
Speaker 6: father when he was drinking, and as a result, she
Speaker 6: felt like the boys could take it better. So my
Speaker 6: brother and I kind of wore it early on, and
Speaker 6: then it became the thing where my mother would encourage
Speaker 6: my sisters to do things they would She would encourage
Speaker 6: him with love, basically to just say things that didn't occur.
Speaker 6: So then my dad would come home after a long
Speaker 6: day work and he would start drinking, and then my
Speaker 6: mother would be in his ear with these things as
Speaker 6: if bat him, as if she had seen them herself,
Speaker 6: when really she had just reinforced the girls to tell tales.
Speaker 6: And that resulted many times in me being taken out
Speaker 6: to the garage where that's where the punishment was meted out.
Speaker 6: And it was it was you know, it wasn't like
Speaker 6: your average getting a spanking on the butt. I mean,
Speaker 6: it was pretty much beating and it was tough. I mean,
Speaker 6: I grew up very with a very sad childhood, and
Speaker 6: I started running away at eight years old. Before I
Speaker 6: knew it, you know, things has progressed. I was put
Speaker 6: in a hospital, actually a group home at twelve, and
Speaker 6: then when I was in a group home. I was
Speaker 6: lighting a cigarette with a some alcohol from old English
Speaker 6: leather cologne that would you know, just burn the alcohol.
Speaker 6: It wouldn't burn the fronture because I didn't have a
Speaker 6: lighter with any fluid, and I had this one with
Speaker 6: a little sparker. Well, when the staff came in and he,
Speaker 6: I guess, was looking for some accolades from the supervisors,
Speaker 6: and he saw through his eyes that I was attempting
Speaker 6: to commit arson and burn the entire place down and
Speaker 6: kill everybody in it. That's what he wrote in his report,
Speaker 6: which was completely falsified. I was literally trying to light
Speaker 6: a cigarette as a team just knew I wasn't supposed to,
Speaker 6: and trying to get away with it. Now, I was
Speaker 6: already suffering some delinquent problems at a young age, I
Speaker 6: mean just from what I had been through, and he
Speaker 6: wrote that report. I got bakerected into a psychiatric hospital,
Speaker 6: and when they found out that my dad had Ford
Speaker 6: Motor Credit insurance, which lasted for two and a half years,
Speaker 6: they documented all kinds of stuff that said that I
Speaker 6: had like four or five different personality disorders and everything else,
Speaker 6: and I was mindless secured. Two and a half years later,
Speaker 6: when the insurance buying ran out. I mean literally two
Speaker 6: weeks before run out, so you know, I kind of
Speaker 6: had a sour outlook on life. After that, I hit
Speaker 6: the street. I was just turned fifteen, or about fifteen
Speaker 6: and a half. I hit the street. I went to
Speaker 6: try and live with my dad again, and that didn't work.
Speaker 6: I mean within a day or two, he was posturing
Speaker 6: the same way that he was going to be physical
Speaker 6: with me, and I just told him that wasn't gonna
Speaker 6: happen anymore. So I went to live with my grandfather
Speaker 6: my grandmother. My grandfather was a great man and I
Speaker 6: love them very much, but my grandmother was very strict.
Speaker 6: She was from the nineteen thirties and forties mentality of
Speaker 6: you know, I had just done two and a half
Speaker 6: years in the hospital. I haven't had any time with
Speaker 6: friends or anything like that, so you know, I had
Speaker 6: a curfew like seven pm on the weekends, and it
Speaker 6: was just it was too restricted for a kid that
Speaker 6: was wanting to sew as oaks.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: I was just turning sixteen and I ended up getting
Speaker 6: in trouble for joy riding in my grandfather's car, and
Speaker 6: that started me kind of hitting the street, and then
Speaker 6: you know, I just I couldn't get along with my grandmother.
Speaker 6: It was it was stifling, and I think that's where
Speaker 6: some of my my father got some of his teachings
Speaker 6: and the way that you raised kids. So one thing
Speaker 6: led to another, and I was sixteen, almost about seventeen,
Speaker 6: and I met with these people who offered me a
Speaker 6: place to live, and they were crack addicts and I
Speaker 6: didn't know it. I didn't even know what crack was
Speaker 6: at the time, and they offered me some and I
Speaker 6: tried some with them, and I became addicted. And from
Speaker 6: seventeen to the age of twenty one, it was just
Speaker 6: juvenile delinquency one thing after you know, they was just
Speaker 6: petty crimes and trying to support my habit, going in
Speaker 6: and out of juvenile PSI facilities, in and out of
Speaker 6: jails and prison three times up until I was, you know,
Speaker 6: twenty one. And when that finally I just continued to escalate.
Speaker 6: I just didn't seem to have a grip on my
Speaker 6: life and I didn't understand what direction I was going,
Speaker 6: and I was just very rebellious. I did not respect authority,
Speaker 6: did not respect adults, and I just figured that was
Speaker 6: a victim, and why not victimize others who cares? I mean,
Speaker 6: the people that loved me the most victimized me, So
Speaker 6: why not meet you victimize other people. That was kind
Speaker 6: of my attitude back then.
Speaker 5: Now, what exactly give us a say, six months or
Speaker 5: the last year before you were twenty one, when you
Speaker 5: talk about escalation, What had your drug habit escalated to,
Speaker 5: and what were the types of crimes you were resorting
Speaker 5: to just prior to this armed robbery, And then we
Speaker 5: can talk about the armed robbery itself.
Speaker 6: Well, actually I had been in prison in ninety one
Speaker 6: and had only been out since January twenty eighth of
Speaker 6: nineteen ninety two, and that had been for just grands.
Speaker 6: That stuff as juvenile, it was adjudicated as an adult.
Speaker 6: I violated probation when my brother was killed on the
Speaker 6: motorcycle because I went to the funeral and they said
Speaker 6: I wasn't and they wouldn't allow me to go, so
Speaker 6: I went ahead one anyway, I violated, So I took
Speaker 6: off and started traveling around the country. I went to Mexico,
Speaker 6: hadtiked back and forth and learned how to drive a semi.
Speaker 6: I just I went around. I mean I really wasn't
Speaker 6: committing a lot of crimes at that time, the last
Speaker 6: six months, because I've been in prison up to the
Speaker 6: four months, you know, up to that six months, and
Speaker 6: then the last two months before I committed it on robbery,
Speaker 6: I was basically living on the street aftergot out of prison,
Speaker 6: so I had moved in with myttle sister.
Speaker 5: Go ahead, Uh sorry, Well, what are the before year
Speaker 5: twenty one in this armed robbery? What are some of
Speaker 5: the kind of offenses that you were What are the
Speaker 5: offenses that you were? Oh, grandfa prison for.
Speaker 6: Grand theft auto. Let's see, grand theft of a farm,
Speaker 6: which I was actually my brothers when he was just
Speaker 6: when he went to see my father wouldn't let me
Speaker 6: have anything of his, and I actually took it upon
Speaker 6: myself to take the gun in a radio that was
Speaker 6: his when I was living in his trailer when he died.
Speaker 6: I actually got charged by my father for that grant
Speaker 6: with a grand theft auto was also my mother's because
Speaker 6: I door rode her car and wrecked it. So I
Speaker 6: got a grand theft auto and some burglaries. When I
Speaker 6: was on the drugs, I just went crazy. I mean
Speaker 6: I didn't have a conscience, at all. I broke into
Speaker 6: probably fifteen homes when I was seventeen eighteen. It stole
Speaker 6: a few cars, you know, stole stuff out of stores.
Speaker 6: It was just anything that I could get to support
Speaker 6: my habit and also actually just survived because once I
Speaker 6: got a phony record. In the economy back then that
Speaker 6: they had, it was a very bad economy, and I
Speaker 6: was very hard to get a job. I tried for
Speaker 6: two months straight leading up to the robbery, and just
Speaker 6: I couldn't get one. So that's kind of the crimes.
Speaker 6: I mean, I never had any crimes where I heard anybody.
Speaker 6: It just it wasn't in me to ever harm anybody.
Speaker 6: I'm not a child molestor or a murderer or a
Speaker 6: rapist or you know. I never even assaulted anybody. I'm
Speaker 6: not saying that to minimize what I did do, because
Speaker 6: the armed robbery was bad and I deserve to be
Speaker 6: punished for that, But I just I wanted to clarify
Speaker 6: though that I never did actually harm anyone in my life.
Speaker 5: Now, tell us about the armed robbery, and tell us
Speaker 5: about the circumstances prior to that that led to this
Speaker 5: armed robbery, because obviously this eventful day, this eventful. This
Speaker 5: event has affected you throughout your entire life, and we're
Speaker 5: talking about some of that effect right now with this
Speaker 5: book and this interview. So tell us about a little prior,
Speaker 5: a little bit prior to the event itself.
Speaker 6: Well, what had happened was I moved in with my
Speaker 6: sister and after getting out of prison on January twenty
Speaker 6: eighth to nineteen ninety two, I lived with my sister
Speaker 6: and I also got a job recent machine burner. I
Speaker 6: had tried to use one of the skills I had
Speaker 6: learned in prison, and the first thing that went wrong
Speaker 6: was I had the job. When I got the job,
Speaker 6: the man who was the owner of the business told
Speaker 6: me that a guy named greg was going I think
Speaker 6: was greg Or Glenn. He was going to be coming
Speaker 6: back from Hawaii, possibly after trying to start a rock band.
Speaker 6: And he told me, I'll give you the job. It's
Speaker 6: seven to fifty an hour. For me as a kid,
Speaker 6: that was good money. So I said, okay, I'll take you.
Speaker 6: You know who thinks the guy is going to come
Speaker 6: back from Hawaii with a rock band, and the chances
Speaker 6: of that to me were not very high. So I
Speaker 6: accepted the job. Then I moved in with my sister,
Speaker 6: who you know, I wasn't on the lease, and she
Speaker 6: had an argument with some of the other female managers
Speaker 6: at the bank. So when she was having the argument
Speaker 6: with them, they found out that an ex conn was
Speaker 6: living in the apartment with her, and they called the landlord,
Speaker 6: and the landlord called her and threatened to kick her
Speaker 6: and her kids out if I wasn't out of there immediately.
Speaker 6: So even though I was on probation, which you know,
Speaker 6: you can't move without permission.
Speaker 5: You can't change.
Speaker 6: Residence of violation. So I tried to contact my probation officer,
Speaker 6: I couldn't get in contact with them. It was a night,
Speaker 6: and I went ahead and moved out. I didn't want
Speaker 6: I didn't want my sister and the kids to get
Speaker 6: kicked on the street, so I moved out. Now I'm
Speaker 6: sleeping in the truck that I just bought with a
Speaker 6: new job that I got a down payment on it
Speaker 6: and purchased it. It was making payments and that was Jesse.
Speaker 6: That's right. Jesse came back from Hawaii. So at the
Speaker 6: same time that I just went homeless, I also went jobless.
Speaker 6: So now I'm in the truck, and actually I was
Speaker 6: not at that moment, I was not doing drugs. I
Speaker 6: mean I couldn't even afford it. But when I went
Speaker 6: homeless and I went jobless for two months, about actually
Speaker 6: a month and a half, I put in applications in
Speaker 6: nineteen ninety two, the early ninety two, in that recession,
Speaker 6: I put applications probably in sixty or seventy different places
Speaker 6: and didn't get a job at one of them. So
Speaker 6: for a month and a half, I was literally starving.
Speaker 6: I mean I didn't have any gas for my truck.
Speaker 6: I was sleeping in my truck. And from what my
Speaker 6: mother said, the Ford Motor Company, he was actually looking
Speaker 6: to repose the trouble which was my home. So I
Speaker 6: knew that I violated my probation. I was going back
Speaker 6: to prison already anyway. By losing my residence and losing
Speaker 6: my job, I just felt desperate. I didn't know what
Speaker 6: to do, and I kept looking around, looking around, trying
Speaker 6: to do odd jobs, and it just it wasn't enough,
Speaker 6: because I knew that if they found out that I
Speaker 6: didn't have a residence, I was going to go back
Speaker 6: to prison. So it's the way that I reasoned it,
Speaker 6: which was, you know, it wasn't logical, but the reason
Speaker 6: under the stress, the way I reasoned it was, if
Speaker 6: I commit a real quick lick and get some money
Speaker 6: to pay for rent and get a place, they won't
Speaker 6: know that I moved. I'll ask permission as if I
Speaker 6: hadn't moved yet, and that'll save me from going to prison.
Speaker 6: And then maybe I'll go to school or do something,
Speaker 6: you know, after I get that one lick that was
Speaker 6: that was the criminal mentality of me trying to take
Speaker 6: over and revert back to what I had known as
Speaker 6: a kid. And you know, I went and told my
Speaker 6: sister I was desperate, you know, and she didn't know.
Speaker 6: I went into her house and I got the gun
Speaker 6: that had been my dad, and I went and took
Speaker 6: it and drove all over the state of Florida in desperation.
Speaker 6: I went to Orlando, I almost got a ticket there,
Speaker 6: got pulled over. I went to a number of different
Speaker 6: small towns and cities in Florida to the point where
Speaker 6: I was almost out of gas. I spent the last
Speaker 6: change and everything I had on this desperate move, and
Speaker 6: I saw me rolled in the Sea Ring.
Speaker 5: Saw.
Speaker 6: I was familiar with Severring because that's where I had
Speaker 6: grown up as a teenager with my granddad and you know,
Speaker 6: on the street and I saw a man coming out
Speaker 6: of a bank counting cash and I just I went
Speaker 6: up to him. I pulled my truck up to his car.
Speaker 6: I didn't pull a gun. I left it where he
Speaker 6: was at. I just walked up to him and I said,
Speaker 6: I pulled my jacket open, and he saw the pistol
Speaker 6: grip in my in my pants and I know it.
Speaker 6: I didn't pull it and pointed at him and he
Speaker 6: saw it, and I told him, you know what this means,
Speaker 6: and he said yes, and I said, we'll hand it over.
Speaker 6: And he handed over the cash and I said where
Speaker 6: your keys? He said, they're in the car, and I said, okay,
Speaker 6: say where you're at. I reached in the car and
Speaker 6: got the keys out. Because I didn't want him to
Speaker 6: chase me, and we have a manslaughter charge or something.
Speaker 6: I at least had enough reason to think that through
Speaker 6: that I won't hurt anybody. So I took the keys,
Speaker 6: put him on the pocket, jumped in my truck, and
Speaker 6: that was it. It was about thirty seconds, and about
Speaker 6: thirty five minutes later I got pulled over. I took
Speaker 6: it speeding trying to get away, and he didn't know
Speaker 6: which is a bill to be on the lookout hadn't
Speaker 6: come out in that county yet, So he then forwarded
Speaker 6: the information office to the next county once he figured
Speaker 6: out who I was, and we had a high speed
Speaker 6: chase and they finally pulled me over and that was
Speaker 6: it and the rest is history, as they.
Speaker 5: Say, So, what were the circumstances in terms of your
Speaker 5: family support? What kind of means did they have in
Speaker 5: terms of being able to afford a really good lawyer?
Speaker 5: Were they savvy about anything like that? Tell us about
Speaker 5: what happened right after this.
Speaker 6: Well, you got to figure it through with my family
Speaker 6: being that I was kind of disowned when I was
Speaker 6: put in the hospital. That was kind of the end
Speaker 6: of my family. I mean, I didn't really have any
Speaker 6: relationship with him. Now my sisters, I did, My younger
Speaker 6: sisters may even my older sister I still maintained contact with.
Speaker 6: There they were just kids, I mean, so they didn't
Speaker 6: you know, there was no there was no family support
Speaker 6: when it came to the adults, there was no attorneys.
Speaker 6: I went in, I got a public descender who happened
Speaker 6: to be a prosecutor just the week before. He just
Speaker 6: switched over because the case loads, and he was basically
Speaker 6: a prosecutor serving, as you know, a fake attorney. And
Speaker 6: when I went in, I told him some things. He
Speaker 6: asked me to tell him some things, and I did,
Speaker 6: and he actually went into the court with me. And
Speaker 6: when the prosecutor offered seventeen years, he stood up and
Speaker 6: he said, this is his name's John Roman, is attorney
Speaker 6: John Roman. He stood up and he said, oh, your honor,
Speaker 6: I think the States made a mistake. We've calculated twenty
Speaker 6: two years, your honor, not seventeen. And the state, you know,
Speaker 6: with flabbergases. She druppled up her papers real quick and
Speaker 6: looked at him and said, oh, we asked. You're right,
Speaker 6: your honor, that it is twenty two years. By the way,
Speaker 6: it's twenty two years of state's offering you as a
Speaker 6: plea bargain. So I was facing life sentence or that,
Speaker 6: but I knew. I asked the attorney, why did you.
Speaker 5: Just do that?
Speaker 6: And he said I did that because I have an
Speaker 6: ethical obligation to the court to be honest. And I said, wow,
Speaker 6: you told me to write my record down, and you
Speaker 6: told me to give you all my points so that
Speaker 6: we wouldn't miss anything. So if the state had something extra,
Speaker 6: you didn't want any surprises. I said, you didn't tell
Speaker 6: me that. To tell you all that what I told you,
Speaker 6: which some of it may not even be active because
Speaker 6: it's just from a kid's memory. I don't even know
Speaker 6: some of those things I didn't get in trouble for
Speaker 6: because I worked through programs and stuff, you know, like
Speaker 6: early early on, like like the jail had a program
Speaker 6: where you trustee like you would work for you know,
Speaker 6: like extra game time, things like that, and then they
Speaker 6: would lower like the state would work with their little
Speaker 6: program and lower the charges or whatever. So this guy
Speaker 6: actually got me five more years, which is what I'm
Speaker 6: doing now, I mean basically on conditional release.
Speaker 5: So you went to a dude. I feel sorry for
Speaker 5: you because he used a duty council and he recommended
Speaker 5: more time than the other the prosecutor had actually offered.
Speaker 5: What did he tell you beforehand? That normally lawyers will
Speaker 5: tell you the likelihood of the sentage you're going to
Speaker 5: receive and when you're going to receive it. What did
Speaker 5: you want?
Speaker 1: He told me?
Speaker 3: Dan?
Speaker 6: He told me, he told me to do my own
Speaker 6: calculation that he was going to He just he was
Speaker 6: going to base it on whatever the state offered, but
Speaker 6: that I needed to do my own calculation with him
Speaker 6: so that that way there was no mistakes and no surprises.
Speaker 6: So in other words, the state did their calculations which
Speaker 6: were probably more accurate. Later on down the road, I
Speaker 6: file on it. I couldn't seem to get the course
Speaker 6: to give any relief on it, but but it could
Speaker 6: be the state was actually accurate and what it definitely
Speaker 6: was not his job to. I mean, the state offered
Speaker 6: seventeen years. So he told me that whatever the state
Speaker 6: offers maximum by guidelines, that's what you're going to get.
Speaker 5: So what he said for you to do your own
Speaker 5: calas what is the what are the guidelines? Tell us
Speaker 5: what I don't know of these the guidelines.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the guidelines, Dan are based on the points that
Speaker 6: you have in your record, if you've been in trouble before,
Speaker 6: being that they were adjudicating my juvenile All I had
Speaker 6: was a juvenile record, So what they were doing was
Speaker 6: adjudicating my juvenile record as an adult record, which they
Speaker 6: were totally incorrect and doing because I didn't have any
Speaker 6: violence where I harmed anybody in my life. They should
Speaker 6: never have done that. It's only for extreme cases. But
Speaker 6: down here in Florida, you know, every case is extreme
Speaker 6: in some counties. So you know, they gave me a
Speaker 6: based on my record, and they he made me calculate
Speaker 6: what those points were, regardless of whether they were accurate
Speaker 6: or inaccurate. He encouraged me to put anything I could
Speaker 6: think of, even extra stuff. Let's just make sure that
Speaker 6: there's no surprises. So me trying to be you know,
Speaker 6: forthright with it. I didn't want any surprises. I wanted
Speaker 6: to know. I gave him all the points and just
Speaker 6: gave it to him and let him figure it out.
Speaker 6: So he figured out twenty two years, whereas the stay
Speaker 6: you figured out seventeen.
Speaker 5: So your shell shocked. You hadn't expected anything like that, obviously,
Speaker 5: you're twenty one years old, right, And tell us about
Speaker 5: because we're going to concentrate a fair amount on Florida
Speaker 5: because of such of the great some of the great
Speaker 5: stories like Charlie crist Here was just a fantastic, really
Speaker 5: good example. It's not very dry, and it's very very interesting.
Speaker 5: This character. Tell us about the sentencing, and then maybe
Speaker 5: we can even we maybe we didn't even talk about Charlie,
Speaker 5: but at least talk about the kind of policy they
Speaker 5: had in terms of truth and sentencing. When you've got.
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Speaker 5: Twenty one years. What are the possibilities of parole and
Speaker 5: what is the likelihood of how how many years you're
Speaker 5: going to do? And in practical terms, what does that
Speaker 5: twenty years? Sure?
Speaker 6: Well, I actually did, I did what I did, Dan
Speaker 6: was I did fourteen and a half years and I
Speaker 6: was released on game time that I are now. Under
Speaker 6: the old system in nineteen ninety two, you could do
Speaker 6: sixty five percent of your time and you would be released. However,
Speaker 6: because my crime was considered a violent crime, actually because
Speaker 6: it was a title of the violent crime and there
Speaker 6: was a threat of violence in other words, armed robbery,
Speaker 6: there's you know, there's a potential for that. They gave
Speaker 6: me the max that they could based on those guidelines,
Speaker 6: and that you know, with a mandatory three years I
Speaker 6: had to do for possession of the pistol, they gave
Speaker 6: me twenty two. All these work concurrent. They gave me
Speaker 6: twenty two years for the arm robbery, twenty two years
Speaker 6: for reaching my hand into the window. They actually punished
Speaker 6: me with a punishable by life armed Burgley with a
Speaker 6: deadly weapon. In other words, like I vitalized an entire
Speaker 6: different structure or something that had nothing to do with
Speaker 6: the robbery. When it was integral to the robbery. It
Speaker 6: was actually to keep from hurting anybody. So they hit
Speaker 6: me another twenty two years for that. Give me fifteen
Speaker 6: years for possession of fire by a convicted fellon, and
Speaker 6: like I said, the three years for the firearm mandatory.
Speaker 6: So I ended up doing fourteen and a half years,
Speaker 6: being that I had the violence right like that violence
Speaker 6: in it. Though they gave me everything on conditional release afterward.
Speaker 6: So in other words, the twenty two years was a
Speaker 6: complete twenty two years that I have to serve, whether
Speaker 6: it's inside or outside. There is no parole. There's no
Speaker 6: discretionary parole in Florida. It's just a game time system.
Speaker 6: Under the system. Now it's eighty five percent. Back then
Speaker 6: it was sixty five percent. So I did fourteen and
Speaker 6: a half years on the twenty two and then got
Speaker 6: out and was violated. I was put on conditional release
Speaker 6: with a seven pm curfew and was violated because my
Speaker 6: car broke down and I was literally I was late
Speaker 6: for curfew. I called she knew she was there waiting
Speaker 6: for me. I showed her the wires, everything that had
Speaker 6: been changed. It was brand new. There was oil spray
Speaker 6: everywhere from where the oldest sent me UNI had busted,
Speaker 6: and you know, she didn't want to hear. She told
Speaker 6: me she was a victim of crime twice, that she
Speaker 6: didn't believe in game time and unless I could prove
Speaker 6: it otherwise, you know, give more proof than that. I
Speaker 6: was in report in the morning and get valid and
Speaker 6: sent back to prison. So you know, I panicked. I
Speaker 6: mean I just did fourteen and a half years, I
Speaker 6: had rehabilitated, I got a good education, but I wasn't
Speaker 6: prepared for that. I mean, it was a simple mistake.
Speaker 6: It really was not my fault, and I just couldn't
Speaker 6: I couldn't fathom the idea of going back to prison
Speaker 6: for like eight years to senish my sons. So the
Speaker 6: next morning I went instead and reported to the manager's office.
Speaker 6: Found out that he was in a hospital and a
Speaker 6: manager that had access to the electronic database so I
Speaker 6: could get a receipt forward to show that my affidavits
Speaker 6: to show that my vehicle had actually been repaired. So
Speaker 6: when I went there, he was he had cancer. He
Speaker 6: couldn't get to it, and then I was stuck because
Speaker 6: now I violet did twice because by not reporting to
Speaker 6: go get the he's any evidence and not being able
Speaker 6: to get it looked really bad because now it looked
Speaker 6: like I just I had no concern for the rules
Speaker 6: at all. So it took me like eleven twelve days.
Speaker 6: I finally got the stuff that all of the affidavits,
Speaker 6: the witness reports, the receipts showing my behavior up to
Speaker 6: that point, and I turned myself in. And when I
Speaker 6: turned myself in, I was found not guilty for the
Speaker 6: violation of the curfew which started everything to begin with,
Speaker 6: but found guilty for not reporting in the next morning
Speaker 6: and instead going getting to paperwork and turning myself in later.
Speaker 6: So I was sent back to prison for five and
Speaker 6: a half years for that curfew violation, which I was
Speaker 6: found not guilty for actually for not reporting because.
Speaker 4: Of it.
Speaker 6: Immediately right, and that sent me in for another five
Speaker 6: and a half. So that was basically twenty years that
Speaker 6: I did. And I'm still working because I had twenty
Speaker 6: two years, and I also had some game time loss,
Speaker 6: and actually I had an attempt to escape in ninety three.
Speaker 6: Right after I went in, I just I couldn't accept
Speaker 6: the fact that I was basically doing to me what
Speaker 6: was a life sentence at the time, and I got
Speaker 6: in the dumpster. Stupid move trying to get out of
Speaker 6: prison didn't work. But so I got two more years
Speaker 6: for that. So I ended up with a twenty four
Speaker 6: year sentence total, and I was done twenty and I'm
Speaker 6: finishing the remainder of it now.
Speaker 5: Now I know that you have This is a very
Speaker 5: very comprehensive but not so dry sort of expose and
Speaker 5: an examination of the US penal system in terms of
Speaker 5: what actually happens as opposed to what people may perceive.
Speaker 5: How politics is very important in this, in the media's
Speaker 5: role in perpetuating the myths as well, and how politics
Speaker 5: and unions in public and state with state institutions corrections,
Speaker 5: and you offer tangible, you know, real solutions based on
Speaker 5: your experience, your experiences. What we want to do focus here,
Speaker 5: because because really it would take about four hours to
Speaker 5: talk about your entire book, it really would, but we
Speaker 5: want to talk about your prison experience and let's have
Speaker 5: it apply to the more serious criminal, even though that's
Speaker 5: not really your focus. Because I understand and probably the
Speaker 5: audience understands very sophisticated audience as well, is that the
Speaker 5: vast majority of people in prison are not so dangerous,
Speaker 5: even though the people are realize that there's, you know,
Speaker 5: a multitude of crime, and they think crime is intensifying
Speaker 5: and as certainly it's well reported on, but really the
Speaker 5: program is true murder. So we really want to talk
Speaker 5: about because I know that doing twenty years in prison,
Speaker 5: you were at least rubbing elbows with some of the
Speaker 5: most violent people in US prisons. And what I'm interested
Speaker 5: in talking about is some of the policies and how
Speaker 5: they would apply to safety, because I think that's what
Speaker 5: people and what you've mentioned in the book and talk
Speaker 5: about in the book too, is that there's a real
Speaker 5: misconception about public safety being actually performed in these prisons
Speaker 5: and in prison system itself. So let's get into some
Speaker 5: of the issues that you have examined in your book,
Speaker 5: but let's have a little bit of that talk about
Speaker 5: the actual experience that you've seen with actual violent criminals
Speaker 5: and the failure by the state and policies and government
Speaker 5: to actually face that really the thing that really perpetuates
Speaker 5: this whole industry. It keeps it going, and politics is
Speaker 5: because people's fear. So tell us a little bit from
Speaker 5: your viewpoint, what you seen in over twenty years in prison.
Speaker 6: Okay, Dan h Well, that's that's a that's a huge question.
Speaker 6: I would say, are so okay? Okay? I would I
Speaker 6: would begin by saying that one of the problems is
Speaker 6: the sentencing schemes and states like Florida, some of the
Speaker 6: states have adjusted. States like New York, even Texas leader
Speaker 6: on in some ways has adjusted their sentencing schemes. Florida
Speaker 6: is one of the worst when it comes to holding
Speaker 6: out on these minimum mandatory drug sets. As a matter
Speaker 6: of fact, they just attempted to pass the Bill of
Speaker 6: Florida and Rick Scott Veto did by the governor. So,
Speaker 6: I mean their sentencing is so the eighty five percent
Speaker 6: situation means that everybody that goes that gets sentenced to
Speaker 6: prison does eighty five percent. When I was in prison,
Speaker 6: I saw numerous cases where guys were in there for
Speaker 6: driving while license suspendeds are revoked, I mean in doing
Speaker 6: five years not changing the address on their license, which
Speaker 6: is you know, I guess a thirty refelony in Florida
Speaker 6: and doing five more years, I mean literally five years
Speaker 6: in prison for something that probably should have been a
Speaker 6: fine or something certainly would have been in Canada and
Speaker 6: most of the Northeast States in Florida and the United
Speaker 6: States also. But anyway, so sentencing kind of begins where
Speaker 6: I focus the book to begin with in chapter one,
Speaker 6: because I think that that's the core of a lot
Speaker 6: of where it begins. And judges down in Florida are
Speaker 6: not given nearly as much discretion as they used to be.
Speaker 6: It's the prosecutors primarily the control who get sentenced and
Speaker 6: how much they get sentenced. And the judge is just
Speaker 6: kind of a person that just kind of sits there
Speaker 6: and he doesn't have very much power here. She doesn't
Speaker 6: have very much power at all anymore. And the prosecutors
Speaker 6: then offer the for instance, they might a public defender
Speaker 6: certainly can't offer a deal of cash or anything like that,
Speaker 6: or say witnesses to stand up and testify on behalf
Speaker 6: of the defendant. But the state can offer something that's
Speaker 6: worth much more, and that's somebody's freedom for them to
Speaker 6: testify against other people. So in many ways, the sentencing
Speaker 6: and the prosecution in the United States, and especially in
Speaker 6: states like Florida, the prosecutor is the one who controls
Speaker 6: everything through the legislature. We have a very conservative legislature
Speaker 6: here in Florida, and they have passed through the help
Speaker 6: of Charlie Chris. As a matter of fact, he was
Speaker 6: one of instrumental players in that sentencing. All the different
Speaker 6: sentencing schemes like ten twenty life, which means, you know,
Speaker 6: you brandish a gun, shoot a gun, or you shoot
Speaker 6: somebody with a gun. You know, it's ten twenty life.
Speaker 6: But there's many instances with that. For instance that there
Speaker 6: was a guy named Eric Wyant who he had a girlfriend.
Speaker 6: This guy and somebodies that he has kept threatening her
Speaker 6: and you know, just constantly harassing her. One day, a
Speaker 6: whole throng of people came his way at his girlfriend.
Speaker 6: He had a legal permit, folded pistol out shot it
Speaker 6: in the air, shot it to scare the people away,
Speaker 6: and he was given a life sentence. I mean for
Speaker 6: shooting a gun. You know, I guess in the direction
Speaker 6: of people or whatever, so it's sentence. The schemes like
Speaker 6: that we're driving a license suspended mandatory minimums that really
Speaker 6: do not take into consideration whether a crime is truly
Speaker 6: violent or just the threat of violence, or just the
Speaker 6: term that has a violent term attached to crime to
Speaker 6: express or to make it where the prosecutor can be
Speaker 6: more harsh. The legislature in Florida is the main reason
Speaker 6: why these sentences. Now we may wonder, well, why would
Speaker 6: the legislature unless it's just you know, I mean, those
Speaker 6: are just extreme conservatives, why would they continue to make
Speaker 6: all these minimum mandatory sentences in this And this is
Speaker 6: where I think that it is a special interest. From
Speaker 6: my experiences and all the research I did, a lot
Speaker 6: of special interests behind the scenes are actually giving the
Speaker 6: campaign finance to these politicians and our legislatures across the
Speaker 6: United States. And a lot of these special interests are
Speaker 6: you know, police Correctional Officers unions or like. For instance,
Speaker 6: you have very large unions across the country that have chapters,
Speaker 6: and those chapters are controlled by the CRESH officers unions,
Speaker 6: which in each state in general have won at least one.
Speaker 6: Ours used to be the Police Benevolence Association CRESH Officers chapter,
Speaker 6: and then now I believe in Florida, the Teamsters Union
Speaker 6: has actually taken it over with a chapter for the
Speaker 6: crush officers. Now what happens is a lot of times
Speaker 6: these people will go, they'll talk to these legislators in
Speaker 6: these small rural towns. Well, they know they can get
Speaker 6: the votes based on building more price.
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Speaker 6: And they build all these prisons in North Florida away
Speaker 6: from the families of prisoners, away from the children, and
Speaker 6: these same legislatures. Then once they've built all these prisons
Speaker 6: through these special interests that are that are filling their
Speaker 6: campaign coffers, they then have to fill them with bodies. Well,
Speaker 6: the only way they're going to fill them with bodies
Speaker 6: is if they have so many laws that are ridiculous
Speaker 6: that people are being arrested and put away either forever
Speaker 6: or you know, definitely not commensurate with what the crime is,
Speaker 6: if it's a crime at all. In some cases, like
Speaker 6: I said, with driving and stuff, it's it's not even
Speaker 6: really a crime. I mean, it's more of a you know,
Speaker 6: an ordinance violation. So between the prosecutors, the legislature giving
Speaker 6: the prosecutors carte blanche when it comes to sentencing, taking
Speaker 6: the discretion away from the judges. Which that's one of
Speaker 6: the reasons why Judge hell Stanceil the Fifth Circuit here
Speaker 6: in Florida gave my book a review on the back
Speaker 6: cover because he actually wrote some articles in the American
Speaker 6: Bar Journal about these same thing as the sentencing schemes,
Speaker 6: and you know some of the ways that this happens
Speaker 6: where the judges cannot use downward departures and there sentencing
Speaker 6: to give drug offenders any type of treatment or anything else,
Speaker 6: simply because the legislature has taken the judicial branch and
Speaker 6: made it a sub branch in these states, So the
Speaker 6: judicial branch does not have the authority when it comes
Speaker 6: to sentencing in Florida and many of the states in
Speaker 6: the United States, as it should each Like one of
Speaker 6: the other judges down here, made a statement and mister
Speaker 6: Stancil's or Judge Dancil's article and said, the judicial, the
Speaker 6: congressional and the executive branches are supposed to in this
Speaker 6: country remain neutral, or at least remain you know, where
Speaker 6: they have their own independent power in these demagogues, much
Speaker 6: through the help of the media, which tends to regurgitate
Speaker 6: a lot of the press handouts that are given by
Speaker 6: these these public interests you know, or actually the public
Speaker 6: relations firms of these corrections agencies. They continually regurgitate the
Speaker 6: press to handouts show violent crime way out of portion
Speaker 6: to what it is. And then whenever these tough on
Speaker 6: crime politicians get up there and pound you know, the
Speaker 6: pulpit with their their diet tribe against crime. Of course,
Speaker 6: I mean, the public is in a frenzia in fear
Speaker 6: of terrorism and crime, and you know, rampid drug use
Speaker 6: and prostitute I mean, everything they see on TV is
Speaker 6: a distorted view. And so I put some of the
Speaker 6: onus of of our correctional problem and two point three
Speaker 6: people two point three million people in prison in the
Speaker 6: United States. I put a lot of the onness on
Speaker 6: the media, I mean, liberal or conservative, it doesn't seem
Speaker 6: to matter. It just they pound the tough on crime
Speaker 6: perspective until we economy now with a deficit that is
Speaker 6: probably going to be insurpassed, unsurpassable if we're not careful,
Speaker 6: And a lot of a lot of the moneies that
Speaker 6: are being wasted on these corrections programs around the country
Speaker 6: and these prisons and these building them of the nineties
Speaker 6: and even in some states continuing is much related to
Speaker 6: people making their pockets fat so that they continue to
Speaker 6: increase the membership dues, prosecutors advancing their careers for political office,
Speaker 6: and you know, the politicians doing the same thing by
Speaker 6: getting their poems buttered by any of the groups they're
Speaker 6: advancing themselves financially and career wise through expanding prison systems. So,
Speaker 6: I mean, in a nutshell, that's kind of how it works,
Speaker 6: at least here in Florida and many of the other states.
Speaker 6: Of research, many of their states can give many examples
Speaker 6: of the way that that works. And then of course
Speaker 6: the prole Commission in Florida is controlled by the legislature,
Speaker 6: and although they do have some they do have some
Speaker 6: power on their own where they can't be influenced by
Speaker 6: judges of the legislature. But I mean once they're put
Speaker 6: into power there, all of them have law enforcement backgrounds.
Speaker 6: Each and every one of them have either law enforcement
Speaker 6: backgrounds or victim advocacy backgrounds. In Florida and many of
Speaker 6: the other states Georgia, Texas, a number of them that
Speaker 6: I researched. I provided this in the book in the
Speaker 6: poll chapter. Well, most of them come from being victim
Speaker 6: advocates and law enforcements. So I mean, if you look
Speaker 6: at the entire picture like that, if you look at
Speaker 6: the from prosecution, sentencing, prison building for the unions and
Speaker 6: the private prison industry, especially the unions here in Florida,
Speaker 6: because the private industry doesn't have much of a foothold here.
Speaker 6: But you know, I mean combined, if you look at
Speaker 6: all of these different things, these all of the reasons
Speaker 6: it's not an increased crime rate. Crime rates have been
Speaker 6: dropping in Florida and in the United States overall for many,
Speaker 6: many years, and it was way before the sentencing schemes
Speaker 6: were hatched in these states to build the prison problem.
Speaker 6: So you know, it's not what the public thinks it is.
Speaker 6: It's not because of increasing crime rates. It's not because
Speaker 6: of violent crime.
Speaker 5: Most of the.
Speaker 6: People in Florida that have been in and served much
Speaker 6: time in prison in Florida are not in for violent crimes.
Speaker 6: Most of them were in for you know, up until
Speaker 6: just recent most of them were up in for drug
Speaker 6: crimes and burglaries or you know, things that people really
Speaker 6: could have probably been rehabilitated if they hadn't sat in
Speaker 6: prison for ten or twenty years with very little offers
Speaker 6: in them. So, I mean, and there's some guys in prison,
Speaker 6: like I was Tony before, then, there are some guys
Speaker 6: in prison that absolutely should never ever get out. I
Speaker 6: mean I met some of them. I had them as
Speaker 6: roommates because I had an escaped charge in ninety three.
Speaker 6: I ended up sleeping with some of the worst of
Speaker 6: the worst, and I lived in the dorms with the
Speaker 6: worst of the worst, rightly or wrongly. So I could
Speaker 6: say that there's many people that just don't deserve you know,
Speaker 6: some of the violent pedophiles, rapists, and some of the
Speaker 6: just serial minded killers. I mean, they just shouldn't be released.
Speaker 6: But that's not majority, that's probably ten to fifteen percent,
Speaker 6: And the rest of them are being treated by prosecutors
Speaker 6: and everyone else the same, and they're getting they're not
Speaker 6: getting much of a consideration for the rehabilitation, how to
Speaker 6: change their lives, which then results to further victimization of
Speaker 6: citizens when they get out, and the cycle just continues
Speaker 6: to repeat itself. Very little. Also, i'd like to shortly,
Speaker 6: I'd like to be able to talk about the children
Speaker 6: and the families as well, because they are devastated by
Speaker 6: the prison system in the way that they're treated.
Speaker 5: Is there a responsibility you talk about actually even the
Speaker 5: origins of corrections to a certain degree, do you think
Speaker 5: the founding fathers really had in mind this? I mean,
Speaker 5: obviously this is an aberration of the original model, But
Speaker 5: what do you think their original idea was if you're
Speaker 5: going to deprive someone of their freedom? And you get
Speaker 5: into this very interestingly in the book about what should
Speaker 5: we do with prisoners? What should be the goal that
Speaker 5: we have for prisoners? You say ninety percent of prisoners
Speaker 5: are going to be released anyway, what is your idea
Speaker 5: for the vast majority? Not this ten fifteen percent violent criminals,
Speaker 5: and we're going to go back, We're going to talk
Speaker 5: about that again. But for the vast majority of people,
Speaker 5: what should be the goal of corrections in your mind?
Speaker 6: In my mind, the goal of correction should first and
Speaker 6: foremost be to focus strongly on the prisoner's belief system.
Speaker 6: And what I say about that is everybody has a history.
Speaker 6: A lot of times we meet people who have been
Speaker 6: in prison or who are preaching to the choir about
Speaker 6: changes that should be made, who were reforms like I
Speaker 6: am in my book, hopefully from a different perspective, but
Speaker 6: you know, and a lot of people are like, you know,
Speaker 6: we've heard this before. You know, this guy's had a
Speaker 6: bad childhood, you know. But the problem is is that
Speaker 6: each and every person in this world has a history,
Speaker 6: and every history is built is full of references that
Speaker 6: we build our life and our actions and our behaviors on.
Speaker 6: If a person has a belief structure that is based
Speaker 6: on some very very abusive circumstances where they felt trapped,
Speaker 6: they were taught to believe that they're a failure, or
Speaker 6: the environment itself constantly reinforced these things. Whether a very
Speaker 6: conservative minded person believes so or not whether they agree
Speaker 6: with it or not. The fact is that if you
Speaker 6: don't change that person's outlook on life, that criminal outlook
Speaker 6: on life, that person's going to come and victimize your grandmother,
Speaker 6: or your mother, or your sister or someone down the line,
Speaker 6: because he still has that same criminal mentality, the same
Speaker 6: criminal belief system. So the one the first goal of
Speaker 6: the correction system should be to delve deeply into the
Speaker 6: person's history, what helped them to develop the ideas and
Speaker 6: belief systems, and especially their convictions that they have, and
Speaker 6: then helped them replace those with positive ones. And that's
Speaker 6: basically psychologist. So psychology at first a very strong rehabilitative
Speaker 6: program of belief revamping and just restructuring their entire personality
Speaker 6: and belief system. And that can be done. I did
Speaker 6: it to myself with help from a mentor and with
Speaker 6: help with many books. But that should be the first step.
Speaker 6: The second step should be then to educate them, provide
Speaker 6: them a means of education. And when I say educational,
Speaker 6: I mean including the work ethics. Chapter two is called
Speaker 6: what Happened to Teaching and Promoting the work ethic Because
Speaker 6: when many of the prisoners go in and they're given
Speaker 6: two options, either they're given the slave labor option or
Speaker 6: the lazy labor option. Many they're going to go out
Speaker 6: for no pay. Ninety eight percent in Florida are going
Speaker 6: to go out for no pay and working ditches or
Speaker 6: busting rocks or cleaning kitchens or cooking food or whatever
Speaker 6: it is, and in their mind they're being exploited. So
Speaker 6: this just adds further to the anti social mentality that
Speaker 6: many of these have. So if the second will be
Speaker 6: to teach them education skills that they can truly use
Speaker 6: a drug treatment to help them get over the drugs
Speaker 6: while they're in prison, long before they ever get out,
Speaker 6: and also an education that can help them advance beyond
Speaker 6: the means that they had whenever they went in. Many
Speaker 6: of them don't even have GDS. I talked for sixteen
Speaker 6: years in there inside the prison system after I got
Speaker 6: my education, and I taught the GD to many of
Speaker 6: the guys, But those programs have recently been cut as
Speaker 6: well and many of the states because of the economy.
Speaker 6: So I would say a combination of treatments focused in
Speaker 6: psychology first, and education and the work ethic. Those three
Speaker 6: things are integral to a person having a healthy perspective
Speaker 6: of life and not being hateful and feeling entitled and
Speaker 6: feeling that, you know, that life owes them something. And
Speaker 6: until they change that mentality, the crime situation is not
Speaker 6: going to get better.
Speaker 5: How responsible our prison conditions via this exaggerated sentencing for
Speaker 5: say minor crime just sort of we'll just suffice to say,
Speaker 5: just unjust sentences and putting them elbow to elbow with
Speaker 5: hardened criminals and the threat of imminent violence in jail itself.
Speaker 5: Is there a great many of these prisoners that, because
Speaker 5: of this their circumstances in prison end up being eventually
Speaker 5: a violent criminal?
Speaker 6: Oh? Yes, absolutely, Yeah, there are many many guys go
Speaker 6: in with their over sentenced, the harsh sentencing schemes that
Speaker 6: just send them away for years and years wouldn't be
Speaker 6: what they should have had to serve. And yeah, I
Speaker 6: mean there's there's kind of the attitude of prisoners doing
Speaker 6: twenty years. I mean I literally had probably two to
Speaker 6: three or maybe four thousand roommates and had many inimate
Speaker 6: conversations late at night when doors, you know, the cell
Speaker 6: doors locked and were sealed in and you know these guys.
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Speaker 6: You know they're they're they're very bitter, and and some
Speaker 6: of them rightfully so, because they feel like society has
Speaker 6: thrown them away and that these sentences. Once they get
Speaker 6: in there, they're around these these hardened criminals h you know,
Speaker 6: I mean the influence in many cases they actually, especially
Speaker 6: young guys that go in, you know, they they're dumped
Speaker 6: in there with a bunch of old, bitter wolves that
Speaker 6: have known nothing better than how to be a con
Speaker 6: I mean, how to be a con artist and how
Speaker 6: to be a convict. And so the young guys going there,
Speaker 6: there's nothing really else. There's no other mentors, there's no
Speaker 6: other people that are really there to say, hey, look
Speaker 6: there's another way, there's a better way. Instead, they look
Speaker 6: up the guys that came from where they came. They
Speaker 6: came from the hoods, they came from from the trailer part,
Speaker 6: they came from the streets, and they listen to these
Speaker 6: guys and they're telling them, hey, listen, man, you know,
Speaker 6: there's nothing out there for you. The society couldn't get
Speaker 6: two hoots about you. You know, the public defenter's overloaded. They're
Speaker 6: going to sit into as much as they can because
Speaker 6: they want to keep your body in here. They want
Speaker 6: to keep you in and out as quickly as they can,
Speaker 6: you know, put put you right back in. And a
Speaker 6: lot of these young guys then who normally would could
Speaker 6: have been saved early on. You know that they become
Speaker 6: wolves themselves, and they learned those those things. They learned
Speaker 6: that mentality in that perspective, and it's very hard to
Speaker 6: change once they adopt it deeply as a belief. So yeah,
Speaker 6: there is I mean, there're sentencing stains and what they
Speaker 6: do in sending people away without considering how they are
Speaker 6: as human beings. In other words, could they be changed?
Speaker 6: Did they bless somebody? Did they really harm somebody in
Speaker 6: a way that they should be punished for twenty thirty
Speaker 6: forty years or is it someone that maybe instead of
Speaker 6: getting five or ten years, could do two years and
Speaker 6: maybe some label where they're paid for it, so that
Speaker 6: you could incentivize their labor and give them the option
Speaker 6: of getting education or working or going to confinement. I mean,
Speaker 6: I don't think prisoners should be coddled either if they
Speaker 6: reject the programs that are provided to them. If they were,
Speaker 6: which they're not here in Florida, I mean, there's a
Speaker 6: there's a the parents of those programs, but they're not
Speaker 6: they're not truly effective the way they're run. But if
Speaker 6: they were given those options, I think that it would
Speaker 6: change many of those guys perspective when to get out,
Speaker 6: especially if they had a support system after they were
Speaker 6: released as well. It's got to be before and after
Speaker 6: dam because it can't be one of the others. One
Speaker 6: of the other doesn't suffice. Because if if you give
Speaker 6: a guy programs and stuff like that inside and you
Speaker 6: release them with nothing and no support system, fifty bucks
Speaker 6: in a bus ticket, it's only a matter of time
Speaker 6: in an economy like we're suffering right now until most
Speaker 6: of them. And I'm not excusing their behavior, but it's
Speaker 6: just it's just logical that most of them are going
Speaker 6: to revert back to what they know.
Speaker 5: Is it really cheaper to let to deal with presoners
Speaker 5: in prison, to re educate them or educate them and
Speaker 5: reintegrate them into society. Isn't some of this stuff ideal?
Speaker 5: You're talking about education, but a lot you know, a
Speaker 5: lot of presidents are illiterate in skin right. Some of
Speaker 5: this laziness is, you know, ingrained generationally. Some of these
Speaker 5: people's uncles and fathers were in prison, and there's some
Speaker 5: really quite damaged people. How they got there is regardless,
Speaker 5: And you talk about altering someone's personality, I mean, just
Speaker 5: a little bit of idealism, isn't it.
Speaker 6: I mean, it depends on how young you get them.
Speaker 6: I mean, if you can get guys that are before
Speaker 6: the age of thirty, especially before the age of thirty
Speaker 6: three or thirty four, they generally don't have so many
Speaker 6: references that they're not willing to listen and try something new.
Speaker 6: I mean, most guys that hit rock bottom by the
Speaker 6: time they hit prison, and a lot of times they're
Speaker 6: depressed and they're dejected, and they're actually in the right
Speaker 6: frame of mind, especially at first when they're first sentence
Speaker 6: to make changes, especially if they're given an option and
Speaker 6: they think that there's an incentive. In other words, Okay,
Speaker 6: you're gonna go through this program, and this is the program,
Speaker 6: the way it's set and it has to be set
Speaker 6: up very specifically down Most of the programs that I
Speaker 6: have found our piecemeal. One aspect might one program might
Speaker 6: hit this aspect of the problem. Another program might hit
Speaker 6: this aspect. But none of them that I've seen so
Speaker 6: far have been comprehensive. There have been some that have
Speaker 6: become close, but none of them that have come comprehensive
Speaker 6: to hit all of the problems at once. Yeah, once
Speaker 6: a guy's fifty years old and he's been in prison
Speaker 6: six or seven times. I mean, yeah, the likelihood of
Speaker 6: changing it is not very, very, very high. But you know,
Speaker 6: I mean a lot of those guys, if you just
Speaker 6: gave them some type of way to sustain themselves, they
Speaker 6: probably wouldn't come back either. It's not saying that you
Speaker 6: would change a personality, but there's a good chance many
Speaker 6: of them wouldn't come back if they felt like they
Speaker 6: had a different option.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 6: And you're right, a lot of them are iller it.
Speaker 6: But when it comes to eighteen, nineteen, twenty year olds,
Speaker 6: even up to thirty, I've met many of them and
Speaker 6: actually help them rebuild. They actually help teach many of
Speaker 6: them while they're in prison, and saw them make a
Speaker 6: difference and stay out. So it can be done. It
Speaker 6: may seem idealistic, but I can tell you that the
Speaker 6: only other option is to continue building more and more prisons,
Speaker 6: and you know what, with what's happening in this country
Speaker 6: right now, that's not possible, man. So I mean, the
Speaker 6: only really real option is to try to change these people,
Speaker 6: at least a large percentage of them.
Speaker 5: How many years do you think you really needed to
Speaker 5: be in prison? If you were given the necessary programs,
Speaker 5: and how many years is do you think is when
Speaker 5: it gets to be counterproductive and destructive to a psyche
Speaker 5: and to a good question.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, from when I was in there, I
Speaker 6: think I think for an arm robbery, no injuries, no
Speaker 6: gun point anybody, I'd just say my own because that's
Speaker 6: the easiest one to deal with right now. I think
Speaker 6: if I had done seven years, where the first two
Speaker 6: years were maybe hard labor, with a small income from it,
Speaker 6: you know, a real small one, but with the ability
Speaker 6: to earn more, if I had good behavior and continue
Speaker 6: to learn the work ethic, and then you know, was
Speaker 6: given the opportunity after maybe three or four years to
Speaker 6: start at you know, higher education. If I didn't have
Speaker 6: which I had earned my g or but let's say
Speaker 6: I'd been given the opportunity for higher education and those things.
Speaker 6: I really think that seven years I would have been rehabilitated.
Speaker 6: I really do. Definitely, not twenty. I mean, it was
Speaker 6: definitely overkill after eight or nine years. I mean, as
Speaker 6: a matter of fact, after seven years, it was overkilled
Speaker 6: because at that point it's just the institutional mentality starts
Speaker 6: to set in, and that's not what society wants. I mean,
Speaker 6: they don't people that are getting out. Ninety over ninety
Speaker 6: percent of these people are going to get out in
Speaker 6: most states in the United States. Why why make them worse?
Speaker 6: I mean, why put them through something that's going to
Speaker 6: make them hate you. Society as a whole in general.
Speaker 6: Look at society and say, you know, these these these victories,
Speaker 6: what do they call the innocent biastanders. They may be
Speaker 6: innocent biastanders from society's perspective, but from the from the
Speaker 6: criminal and from the convicts perspective, because they're not innocent
Speaker 6: boastanders because they're either too lazy or so hateful that
Speaker 6: they're not concerned with what we're discussing right now. So
Speaker 6: the criminal then gets out and thinks, you know, they've
Speaker 6: victimized me when I was in there, So what's the
Speaker 6: heard if I victimize them? There's nobody innocent out here.
Speaker 6: Everybody knows they all make they vote or they ignore
Speaker 6: the vote, and either way they're they're becoming part of
Speaker 6: the problem. So, I mean, I'm not agreeing with that
Speaker 6: perspective because I believe strongly in personal responsibility in my
Speaker 6: life now, but I'm just telling you what it is.
Speaker 6: That's how it is. That's the skinny of it from
Speaker 6: the inside, whether it's right or wrong. I don't think
Speaker 6: that's even the question right now. I think the question
Speaker 6: is what can we do to reduce recidivism, what can
Speaker 6: we do to reduce victimization and citizens in the future,
Speaker 6: and what's happening right now that's not working.
Speaker 5: I know it's a little off topic, but what is
Speaker 5: your solution for violent criminals that can't be rehabilitated, rapists, pedophiles,
Speaker 5: and murderers, proven especially, you know when we talking about pedophiles,
Speaker 5: but proven predators, violent people, people who have been proven
Speaker 5: to be violent and non rehabilitated. What can the prisons
Speaker 5: do that they aren't doing now? What are their policies
Speaker 5: that increase the or decrease public safety.
Speaker 6: One of the things that they're doing is they're putting
Speaker 6: some of the prison system itself has very little incentive
Speaker 6: anymore because they because they've taken the programs away, because
Speaker 6: they don't have very little gain time. The prole chances
Speaker 6: for most people anymore is nil. And states that are
Speaker 6: conservative with these these sentening schemes and these correctional schemes,
Speaker 6: so being that there's very little incentive. What's the only
Speaker 6: thing is left for them to do is to put
Speaker 6: the most violent criminals in with elite violent criminals, because
Speaker 6: what ends up happening is they never get unity. What
Speaker 6: they do is they create a snitch system, an informant system,
Speaker 6: using the short timers to inform on the long timers. Now,
Speaker 6: this causes much violence in the prisons because then the
Speaker 6: long timers, of course, you know, the short timers wants
Speaker 6: they're trained to become informants. There's very little they can
Speaker 6: do to protect themselves. Once a guy finds out he's
Speaker 6: an informant, it just stab them to death. I mean,
Speaker 6: what's the matter, I mean, he's got life anyway. So
Speaker 6: the prison system creates more problems by putting a short
Speaker 6: time and the young guys and the people who may
Speaker 6: have otherwise been rehabilitated and putting them in with the
Speaker 6: violent criminals. That is a big problem because it's training
Speaker 6: some of the people who could have been probably fixed
Speaker 6: and helped. It's training them to turn the violence and
Speaker 6: teaching them that the only way that they can survive
Speaker 6: in prison is through violence. So that's what they do
Speaker 6: to help try to control the population. And you know,
Speaker 6: they don't.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 6: I'm not sure exactly how else I can expand it,
Speaker 6: but that's definitely one of the main problems inside.
Speaker 5: Anyway, Well, you can explain one of the provisions I
Speaker 5: thought was interesting. You know, for everybody he's heard about
Speaker 5: three strikes in you're out and then the guy stole
Speaker 5: some pizza, but those were not those were separate. Where
Speaker 5: three strikes in your out but non violent crimes wasn't
Speaker 5: the three strikes in you're out, but there were Again,
Speaker 5: I don't know if it was Charlie Crisp, but one
Speaker 5: of the people that you profiled in the book you
Speaker 5: talked about in the book, who who led for legislation
Speaker 5: that even if it was nonviolent crime, three strikes end
Speaker 5: you were gone for twenty years, explain that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's that's the prisoner. There's a couple of different
Speaker 6: there's a couple of different sentencing schemes they have in Florida.
Speaker 6: One of them is the Prisoner re Offender Release the Act,
Speaker 6: and that means that someone is released on a violent
Speaker 6: crime in the past. And let's say they hit the
Speaker 6: street and they're starving, I mean literally, and they go
Speaker 6: into a store and they steal a loaf of bread.
Speaker 6: They steal something and they're really trying to survive. They're
Speaker 6: not they're not so much the criminal and to anymore,
Speaker 6: but they're, you know, they're starving. So they go and
Speaker 6: they still love of bread. They still and they get
Speaker 6: sentences that are doubled and sometimes tripled because of the
Speaker 6: fact that they have a violent crime in their past. See,
Speaker 6: those are the kind of laws that I'm saying that
Speaker 6: that should be changed in order to reflect the exact
Speaker 6: behavior of the person instead of just these easy, cookie
Speaker 6: cutter kind of sensing schemes that really don't take society's
Speaker 6: best interests in mind. Also to expand a little bit
Speaker 6: more on the guys inside that have violent crimes. I
Speaker 6: don't think, Dan, that violent pedophiles, violent murderers, I mean
Speaker 6: premeditated murders. I do think there's a difference between manslaughter
Speaker 6: when it comes to vehicle you know, manslaughter and things
Speaker 6: like that. But I mean there's the violent guys, Dan,
Speaker 6: there are many of them that should never get out,
Speaker 6: and what I think that they the first thing they
Speaker 6: should do is separate those guys from the non violent guys.
Speaker 6: First off, it's not nice to destroy people's lives simply
Speaker 6: because it's convenient for the correction systems because they have
Speaker 6: no incentives remaining because they've gotten so tough and so
Speaker 6: strict and so you know, draconian on these things that
Speaker 6: they have no other incentive. So you know, it's okay
Speaker 6: for our convenience to control the population, We'll put the
Speaker 6: non violent with the violent. And you know a lot
Speaker 6: of guys are getting murdered as a result, but it's okay,
Speaker 6: you know, we'll just put the true murderers in with
Speaker 6: them and let them kill them, let them rape them,
Speaker 6: you know, let me stort them for money. And you know,
Speaker 6: if it ruins them and their damage when they get
Speaker 6: out of oh, well, you know, it serves our purpose.
Speaker 6: I mean, that's kind of the attitude. So what I
Speaker 6: would do is separate them first. Then I would create
Speaker 6: lifer programs, which we did have. Actually one lifer program
Speaker 6: here in Florida is just a kind of a pilot
Speaker 6: project where they were getting federal funds, like most of
Speaker 6: these realitative programs in Florida, where they're kind of abuse
Speaker 6: for the money that they get from the federal government.
Speaker 6: But in that case, separate them, make it a little
Speaker 6: more humane. Now I know this may not sit well
Speaker 6: with some of your listeners because you know, a guy
Speaker 6: who rapes and names children or anything. I mean, what
Speaker 6: does he deserve better than maybe a cold cell and
Speaker 6: some bread and water. And I agree, But at the
Speaker 6: same time, if you're going to have a country that's humane,
Speaker 6: if you're going to have countries that are on the
Speaker 6: forefront of civil rights and acting as humane people, I
Speaker 6: think that once somebody has put away, yes, they should
Speaker 6: be put away forever. Do I think that they should
Speaker 6: be mentally tortured every day or put in circumstances that
Speaker 6: amounts to that, No, I don't. I think the guys
Speaker 6: that need to remain in forever should be put in
Speaker 6: special units that are meant to house people forever and
Speaker 6: give them some type of hobbycraft, something to keep them
Speaker 6: from going insane, something that would then, you know, jobs
Speaker 6: that they get paid, they can go buy a little canteen.
Speaker 6: Maybe they could do something to help support their children
Speaker 6: when they're out there, if they have some by sentience,
Speaker 6: some child support. So in other words, more of a
Speaker 6: lifer type program for those guys. And there's ten thousand
Speaker 6: of them in Florida, but a lifer program that takes
Speaker 6: in consideration that these guys are never ever getting out,
Speaker 6: and separate them and treat them as humanly as you can,
Speaker 6: but make sure that they never get out, and separate
Speaker 6: them in sentencings, separate them in prole schemes, sure that
Speaker 6: you have the guys you can get a chance to
Speaker 6: that they then get a chance. So that's that's what
Speaker 6: I would do, I mean internally, that's what I would do.
Speaker 6: And then I would set a number of things up
Speaker 6: for the guys that are eventually going to get out
Speaker 6: so that they would actually have a really good chance.
Speaker 6: One of my things that I put in the in
Speaker 6: the re entry chapter, my chapter thirteen, the idea that
Speaker 6: rehabilitation starts way for release and it should continue after release.
Speaker 6: So a lot of these guys should have mentors already
Speaker 6: on the street lined up, whether they're psychologists or just
Speaker 6: a mentor in the community. And that's been proven in
Speaker 6: studies to have a great effect, especially on juvenile offenders
Speaker 6: and younger offenders. So start the rehabilitation like we spoke about,
Speaker 6: have a follow up, have a connection that builds at
Speaker 6: least a few months for the transition to the streets.
Speaker 6: You've got somebody out there. You're not scared. You got
Speaker 6: somebody can go talk to. You know, after a guy
Speaker 6: that's ten, fifteen, twenty years, life is so much different
Speaker 6: on the street. I mean it was for me when
Speaker 6: I got out, and you know, they need somebody there
Speaker 6: that they that they can talk to. Is gets too
Speaker 6: bad and go look, man, I'm thinking about reverting back
Speaker 6: to Crome. I don't want to. What should I do?
Speaker 6: Because right now there is nothing like that. These gots
Speaker 6: get out, there's there's nobody there for them except for
Speaker 6: a fearful you know, the fear of a probation officer
Speaker 6: that's whose job is that we can or lessen their
Speaker 6: case a little by putting them back as quickly as
Speaker 6: they can.
Speaker 5: So now you talk about recidivism and how that really
Speaker 5: just costs the tax payer, but really some of the things,
Speaker 5: how do you how do you answer critics that say, listen,
Speaker 5: there's a lot of people, especially in tough times now,
Speaker 5: that can't get an education and lost their homes, can't
Speaker 5: get a job. And you're talking about training and reintegration, counseling,
Speaker 5: maybe monitoring. It costs a lot of money to incarcerate people. Period.
Speaker 5: You do talk about how there are private people making
Speaker 5: money from labor initiatives in prisons as well. But really
Speaker 5: is this worth and this is significant the kinds of
Speaker 5: plans that in things that you outline in your book,
Speaker 5: Is it significant savings to do this thing that seems
Speaker 5: almost foreign to people now, to actually deal with the
Speaker 5: prisoner with the inevitability is they're going to get out
Speaker 5: and retrain them rather than let them just sit in prison?
Speaker 5: Is it that significant? And is it is it really
Speaker 5: that counterproductive what they're doing in prisons? Now?
Speaker 6: Yeah, if they had the if if the programs that
Speaker 6: I spell out in detail in the book, if those
Speaker 6: were implemented much let me let me say this too,
Speaker 6: And this is what I explain in uh in chapter twelve,
Speaker 6: explaining about the cost of some of these things. You know,
Speaker 6: one of the things I don't propose in the book
Speaker 6: is to increase the day. I don't increase the taxpayer spending.
Speaker 6: If anything of this reduces the taxpayer's thing, matter of fact,
Speaker 6: it significantly reduces it in the long term. Now, we
Speaker 6: can't look at in the visual Okay, what does this
Speaker 6: program cost? Okay, this costs this many dollars. If people
Speaker 6: try to put it in a little box like that,
Speaker 6: then no, you're right, it wouldn't be significant savings. Instead,
Speaker 6: they would be looking at expenditures rather than savings. However,
Speaker 6: if they're combined with agriculture and industry inside the prisons
Speaker 6: that incentivize the prisoner's work ethic teaches them to work.
Speaker 6: You know, you're talking just in Florida's there one hundred
Speaker 6: thousand bodies. Only two thousand of those are working a
Speaker 6: real job. The rest of them are, you know, working
Speaker 6: an hour a day or two hours a day, or
Speaker 6: something that's menial or nothing at all. And so if
Speaker 6: you actually take that labor force of ninety eight thousand
Speaker 6: men and women in Florida and you actually put them
Speaker 6: to work, that's the biggest workforce in Florida. I mean,
Speaker 6: that would literally be the largest individual work government you know,
Speaker 6: sponsored workforce in the state. The money that could be
Speaker 6: produced by those guys, by those prisoners, could pay for
Speaker 6: their incarceration, It could pay for many of their court
Speaker 6: costs and restitution to victims. There could be a victim
Speaker 6: fund set up. The money to children who suffer terribly
Speaker 6: as a result of prisoner's behaviors and their crimes. They
Speaker 6: could get child support, the mothers who were out there,
Speaker 6: single mothers who were out there trying to care for
Speaker 6: those children, and the grandparents who've been the child's basically
Speaker 6: been dumped in their laps. You know, they would obviously
Speaker 6: have some money to take care of these children. And
Speaker 6: so many of the benefits of these programs, they can't
Speaker 6: be calculated in one simple calculation. You have to look
Speaker 6: at all of the other benefits and welfare benefits that
Speaker 6: are provided by the state and by taxpayers as a
Speaker 6: corollary either direct or corollary result of prisons being prisoners
Speaker 6: being in prison and getting out and recidivating. So yes,
Speaker 6: I mean, when it comes down to we did the
Speaker 6: math on a number of these things, and it's well
Speaker 6: and above what the taxpayers are paying right now. It's
Speaker 6: fifty thousand dollars fifty dollars a day, I believe here
Speaker 6: and flow, but around between twenty five to fifty and
Speaker 6: actually older inmates are up because of the medical costs
Speaker 6: were up to seventy to eighty thousand per year. So
Speaker 6: if you could save let's say you could save just
Speaker 6: forty thousand by by you know, a prisoner chipping in
Speaker 6: and making a decent wage and paying for the majority
Speaker 6: of his correctional cost, or well even if it was
Speaker 6: just thirty thousand, and then keep that guy from coming back,
Speaker 6: Provide the welfare through child support rather than taxpayer welfare
Speaker 6: to the to the children. And provide himself with some
Speaker 6: type of a maybe college courses or you know, money
Speaker 6: to actually have when he's released so he doesn't feel
Speaker 6: desperate a month or two after he's released, and motiv
Speaker 6: or provide the impetus for him the committed of the crime.
Speaker 6: If all of those things are taking the consideration, there
Speaker 6: is without a doubt and there should be a push
Speaker 6: for these, for these overall are changing, you know, programs
Speaker 6: in the correction system in the United States, And I
Speaker 6: know that's not the circumstances in Canada. Dan, I understand
Speaker 6: that's completely different. Situations in Canada.
Speaker 5: Well, that was completely different. But we don't have private
Speaker 5: prisons as of yet. But we you know, we have
Speaker 5: our own problems too. Right now, I like to but
Speaker 5: you have a unique system. You have a really unique
Speaker 5: situation with incarceration's rate, the rates that you outline in
Speaker 5: your book comparatble to Russia. So we think about, oh,
Speaker 5: the big bad Ruskies and these well the big bad Americans.
Speaker 5: I guess either we're America's rife with criminals or maybe
Speaker 5: there's something to what you're saying outline, just briefly, the
Speaker 5: collusion and the members in how this whole thing really works.
Speaker 5: I mean, people would say, well, it's maybe inefficient, and
Speaker 5: maybe there was good intentions you know, gone bad, and
Speaker 5: maybe there's circumstance is and maybe there's cost cutbacks that
Speaker 5: have to be taken in consideration. So some of these
Speaker 5: things happen. Outline, the collusion, the people that are responsible
Speaker 5: in the prison industry for contributing to this, you know,
Speaker 5: basically reversal of what the system is supposed to do,
Speaker 5: and tell us why these players are doing what they're doing.
Speaker 6: Okay, well, this is one area where I actually feel
Speaker 6: a little bit of trepidation because the people who are
Speaker 6: responsible for these things are still responsible for them dan
Speaker 6: even today, and I believe it or not, there's a
Speaker 6: little bit of nervousness on my part in the book
Speaker 6: of naming them, because they're still very possible, they're very influential.
Speaker 6: It's the correction lonster unions primarily in Florida and other states,
Speaker 6: it's the private industry Corrections Corporation with America GOO. I
Speaker 6: think it's Management and Training Corporation out of Utah. There's
Speaker 6: a number of the huge prison industrial that makes up
Speaker 6: the prison industrial complex where it's private industry that is
Speaker 6: constantly like, for instance, we had Corrections Corporation of America
Speaker 6: I think it was in Colorado that funded a number
Speaker 6: of the campaigns there, and you know, later it was
Speaker 6: found that the same people who they had funded to
Speaker 6: be elected turn around and gave them contracts for a
Speaker 6: huge contracts for new prisons to be built, paid for
Speaker 6: the prisons, and then paid them you know, annual contracts
Speaker 6: to run those prisons. So I mean, I think that
Speaker 6: the connection between the correction officer unions the Police Benevolent
Speaker 6: Association used to be the one here in Florida. I'm
Speaker 6: gonna step lightly when I talk about the Teamsters union
Speaker 6: that just took over because when I was in and
Speaker 6: up to this point, I haven't seen and don't know
Speaker 6: of any you know, surreptitious activities, and I want to
Speaker 6: be very careful not to make false accusations, but I
Speaker 6: can just say that the union's up to this point
Speaker 6: in most states it's the Correctional correction Officers. I can't
Speaker 6: remember the second, the first ward it is the CCPOA
Speaker 6: in California spent hundreds of hundreds of thousands of dollars
Speaker 6: to get tougher crimes, tougher sentencing laws on crimes that
Speaker 6: really should not have been That's where that three strikes
Speaker 6: in California came from that you were talking about earlier.
Speaker 6: You know, that came from the Correctional Peace Officers Association
Speaker 6: out there. I mean, they're very, very powerful, and so
Speaker 6: those groups, the correctional officer unions, the private industry when
Speaker 6: it comes to the company, some of the companies I
Speaker 6: just named have many examples that I provided in the
Speaker 6: book showing that they pay for campaign finance and then
Speaker 6: later down the road they push they lobby for those
Speaker 6: same legislators or governors or whomever to push for certain
Speaker 6: bills to be brought forth before the House and then
Speaker 6: the Senate, and those bills many times are pasted because
Speaker 6: so many of the of our politicians are in the
Speaker 6: pockets of these groups. So you know, I mean, who
Speaker 6: is it that's actually going to be able to speak
Speaker 6: out against this? The prisoner, he's voiceless. He's in there,
Speaker 6: he has no vote, he has no voice. Nobody listens,
Speaker 6: nobody cares. Society's too busy with the economy right now
Speaker 6: and everything that's going on to worry. And then just
Speaker 6: day to day, you know, when they turn on the
Speaker 6: TV and they say another killing, another shooting, another drug operator,
Speaker 6: you know, I mean, who really cares? Nobody does, Nobody
Speaker 6: has a time to care. So what I've also proposed
Speaker 6: in chapter ten, which is called Prisoner's Families Are Not
Speaker 6: the Criminals, is a union of prisoners, family members and
Speaker 6: loved ones, and media and activists and reformers who are
Speaker 6: interested in actually creating a counter to these huge unions
Speaker 6: and other groups that actually have they accept membership dues.
Speaker 6: They're very organized. They usually have a national organization with
Speaker 6: state chapters. I mean, who's going to counter that? Who
Speaker 6: really is going to counter that? Unless someone like me
Speaker 6: gets out and tells the public what's going on, like
Speaker 6: I have in facing the US prison problem and lets
Speaker 6: them know this is the option. You can either continue
Speaker 6: ignoring it, continue believing what the media is telling you
Speaker 6: about the crime rates when they're significantly lower than they
Speaker 6: were in the seventies and you know, keep being misled
Speaker 6: and watch the deficit grow and the debt grow. So
Speaker 6: if that's what society today wants, then we should just
Speaker 6: continue on the same patterns that we're going Otherwise, if
Speaker 6: they want something different, if they want something that it
Speaker 6: works and reduces the victimization of their family members in
Speaker 6: the future, you know, on average, then let's come up
Speaker 6: with a counter And that's what I try to do
Speaker 6: in chapter ten to show we need to create the
Speaker 6: prisoner family union. That's what I've proposed, a prisoner family
Speaker 6: union of family members who are non criminals, who have
Speaker 6: just as much right to vote as any correction officer
Speaker 6: does in the prison systems, and create a union to
Speaker 6: counter the lobbying and the campaign finance the same way
Speaker 6: they do. Since it's almost impossible in America to change
Speaker 6: the campaign finance laws in a way that they will
Speaker 6: truly work to represent the people. So if that's the
Speaker 6: then it looks like the only way to counter that
Speaker 6: is to, you know, create the other three hundred pound gorilla,
Speaker 6: so that way that the laws and things are balanced
Speaker 6: by a reason perspective of what society itself wants, rather
Speaker 6: than you know, what one small but very powerful group wants.
Speaker 5: Do you think the courts, starting with the courts, possibly
Speaker 5: the police allow imagine the police, the courts, prosecutors, judges,
Speaker 5: and then corrections afterwards and then leading up to parole.
Speaker 5: Do you think that they're really shooting fish in a barrel?
Speaker 5: They're really dealing with lesser criminals because they're easier, easier
Speaker 5: to prosecute, easier to arrest, easier to intimidate, easier to catch,
Speaker 5: easier to be ratted on well at the same time
Speaker 5: and versally as a result, avoiding real criminals, serious criminals
Speaker 5: and the serious criminals are what the fearful public via
Speaker 5: the media and the politicians. This is what the people
Speaker 5: respond to accordingly, So do you really think there is
Speaker 5: this you know, ying and yang here. If you're concentrating
Speaker 5: on all these lesser people, you're satisfied with that you're
Speaker 5: closing cases, is it really you know it is the
Speaker 5: public really concerned about putting people away that really don't
Speaker 5: need to be put away. And like, as you describe
Speaker 5: in a book, working a couple hours a day where
Speaker 5: you have this huge workforce or at least could sustain
Speaker 5: or dephrase some of the cost the incredible cost of incarceration.
Speaker 5: Do you really think this is, you know, the dog
Speaker 5: chasing a stale here?
Speaker 6: Well, I think that I think the I think the
Speaker 6: system itself is overall is warped so drastically that I mean,
Speaker 6: we have talked about the people that probably shouldn't be
Speaker 6: in prison to begin with. I mean, our prison system
Speaker 6: initially was developed to protect society. It wasn't supposed to
Speaker 6: be developed and taken over by a special interest so
Speaker 6: that it can become you know, cannon fall. The bodies
Speaker 6: that are in there could become cannon fodder for more
Speaker 6: money and larger memberships to unions and things like that.
Speaker 6: I mean, just since nineteen ninety four, By nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 6: the incarceration rates were per one hundred thousand residents had
Speaker 6: already jumped two hundred percent. I mean, how does that happen?
Speaker 6: You know, did everybody all of a sudden just go
Speaker 6: to the street and start committing crime. Now, what happened
Speaker 6: was the people that are making their pockets fat. You know,
Speaker 6: they got in behind the scenes and realized that they
Speaker 6: could manipulate the system in a way that would take
Speaker 6: advantage of lesser violent criminals as well. And you know,
Speaker 6: that's how the prison boom, I mean filled up from
Speaker 6: I think it was one point seven million, you know,
Speaker 6: like in ninety five or ninety six, to two point
Speaker 6: three million by ten years later. I mean, that's you know,
Speaker 6: the increases in crime were based largely on the non violence.
Speaker 6: I'd like to mention something else too real quick then
Speaker 6: about that whenever you whenever a society put people in prison,
Speaker 6: they We've actually done the researches in the book about
Speaker 6: showing the imprisonment for people does serve some over crime
Speaker 6: rates optimally at rates between one hundred and eleven to
Speaker 6: two hundred and seven people per one hundred thousand. So
Speaker 6: Florida has a rate of about five hundred and fifty.
Speaker 6: So they went from one hundred and eleven, which scientists
Speaker 6: have proven is the rate that is the optimal rate
Speaker 6: for a society to incarcerate one hundred and eleven to
Speaker 6: two hundred and seven max. Per one hundred thousand people.
Speaker 6: Florida incarce rates five hundred and fifty per one hundred thousand.
Speaker 6: If you include the juvenile in the county in Mats
Speaker 6: it jumps to eight hundred and five. I mean, how
Speaker 6: is it that science has been thrown out the window
Speaker 6: when it comes to these kinds of things. And yet
Speaker 6: I mean, you know who, once again, who's going to
Speaker 6: speak out. Is the non violent offender in prison going
Speaker 6: to be able to speak out and anybody listened to him. No,
Speaker 6: first off, if he speaks out too much and he's
Speaker 6: in prison, he may end up with more time or
Speaker 6: has some false charges brought up against him because he's
Speaker 6: challenging a very lucrative situation for many people who have
Speaker 6: vested interest in keeping it the way that it is.
Speaker 6: So you know, I mean, lock them up, throw away
Speaker 6: the key. It doesn't matter if in many cases, if
Speaker 6: they're violent, or if a crime, for instance, a violent
Speaker 6: crime arm robbery. I always say that there's a huge
Speaker 6: difference in a guy who shoots somebody in the head,
Speaker 6: even though they live and it's still an arm marble,
Speaker 6: or shoots somebody or brandished the gun, sticks it in
Speaker 6: their mouth and threatens them and scares the living to
Speaker 6: Jesus out of them. I think there's a big difference
Speaker 6: between that and some kid who's literally scared out of
Speaker 6: his own shoes. He's doing it out of desperation, he's
Speaker 6: not wanting to hurt anybody, but he's going to receive
Speaker 6: the same time that someone who was an act like
Speaker 6: an animal, you know what I mean. So it's there
Speaker 6: is no it doesn't seem that the way that the
Speaker 6: laws are developed now in the United States, they don't
Speaker 6: discern the differences between those two types of mentalities. And
Speaker 6: you know, it goes much worse than that. When I
Speaker 6: say that, I've met hundreds of guys who were in
Speaker 6: on violations of traffic infractions and things. I mean, that's
Speaker 6: how bad it got. Now some of those things, luckily,
Speaker 6: because the economies are so bad, some of those have
Speaker 6: been reversed in some of the states, including Florida. I believe,
Speaker 6: I believe they got rid of their driving while license
Speaker 6: suspended five year sentences. But I mean there's still a
Speaker 6: lot of them that are like that. In many states,
Speaker 6: they have laws still about hitching posts and sayings that
Speaker 6: have never even The laws just keep getting made more
Speaker 6: and more laws, and very very rarely are those laws overturned.
Speaker 6: In other words, they should have a committee in these
Speaker 6: commerces to look at laws and say, okay, now we
Speaker 6: passed twenty, so let's look at what twenty we can
Speaker 6: turn over. Do you know what I mean, like that
Speaker 6: might actually stop some of this this kind of police
Speaker 6: state mentality. And I feel that the United States is
Speaker 6: moving toward and just every every year it seems, you know,
Speaker 6: I mean, the president of the United States in this
Speaker 6: country today, I mean, the constitutions pretty much a joke.
Speaker 6: The president of the United States in this country can
Speaker 6: deem a domestic group as terrorists if he doesn't agree
Speaker 6: with what they're what they're doing, deem them terrorists and
Speaker 6: arrest them, put them away without any constitutional rights, without
Speaker 6: reading them Randa rights. I mean, there's many laws that
Speaker 6: that Canadians and Americans probably don't even know. I mean,
Speaker 6: they are on the books that should definitely not be
Speaker 6: on the books to a free society at all.
Speaker 5: Well, as a result of nine to eleven have been
Speaker 5: the same situation in Canada's suspension of due process as well.
Speaker 5: We've we've been involved as well, we have you know,
Speaker 5: so we won't we won't go there, but the same
Speaker 5: sort of thing hysteria. But you can see too that
Speaker 5: we you you point out very effectively as well, that
Speaker 5: this fixation suddenly on terrorism and how we can deal
Speaker 5: with these people very harshly, and we can't get into
Speaker 5: that as well, but you say there should be some
Speaker 5: concern for prisoners living in under draconian conditions in US
Speaker 5: federal prisons too. On again, lots of times inappropriate sentences,
Speaker 5: the judges being taken away any kind of discretionary powers
Speaker 5: because of mandatory minimum sentences put in by some of
Speaker 5: the characters like Charlie Christ here where just basically a
Speaker 5: politician spent nine ten years doing everything he can for
Speaker 5: special interest groups to the detriment of the state itself,
Speaker 5: going through tough times economically, and yet there's empty beds.
Speaker 5: What I found was very very dramatic example is the
Speaker 5: five thousand unoccupied beds, the decrease in violent crime and
Speaker 5: crime rate overall, and yet this huge increase in prisons
Speaker 5: and prison expansion and expenditure. So very very interesting and
Speaker 5: good example.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I believe that was Charlie and either Charlie or
Speaker 6: Victor criss one or the other at that time that
Speaker 6: pushed the bill. The bill got brought before the House
Speaker 6: and Senate, it was passed. And then come to find
Speaker 6: out that the same the company that I can't remember
Speaker 6: the company now was either GEO or Corrections Corporation of America.
Speaker 6: One of them got this prison, got the funding from
Speaker 6: Florida taxpayers to build this prison, and a little research
Speaker 6: when I was doing the book, come to find out
Speaker 6: that there were five thousand open beds in Florida prisons
Speaker 6: already before that prison was even built, by the by
Speaker 6: the private prison industry. I mean, how to you know,
Speaker 6: has our country and our government gotten so far away
Speaker 6: from the people that the people don't even realize that
Speaker 6: kind of stuff's going on. And where was the media,
Speaker 6: I mean, where's the media on things like that to
Speaker 6: really just blast them for doing those kinds of wasting
Speaker 6: tax pay of money. I mean, I just I really
Speaker 6: don't understand why. I mean, I do, you know, for
Speaker 6: these reasons, but it's just it's disheartening, you know, to
Speaker 6: see how blind society has been by the fear of
Speaker 6: terrorism and the fear of crime and the fear of drugs,
Speaker 6: and to the point where nobody even really cares anymore.
Speaker 6: They all believe everything's fine, it's working like it should.
Speaker 6: And you know what, they don't realize that that that's
Speaker 6: it's not true. It's not even that doesn't even get
Speaker 6: close to being true.
Speaker 5: Now, why should why should people or and and how
Speaker 5: much luck of you had sort of getting this message
Speaker 5: to to to the maybe the right kind of sources
Speaker 5: of the right kind of audience or people that you
Speaker 5: think you'd like to review this plan that you do
Speaker 5: have wells the attitude basically for for for an next time,
Speaker 5: Uh talking about prison reform.
Speaker 6: Well, well, you know what, Dan, this is the first
Speaker 6: Your audience is the first audience. This is the first
Speaker 6: radio interview I've had. The book just came out October fifteenth.
Speaker 6: It's brand new out, and you know what, I haven't
Speaker 6: had a chance to mingle with some of the people
Speaker 6: that I'm hoping that I could serve as a consultant
Speaker 6: for in some of the correctional agencies, especially in some
Speaker 6: of the states that are a little more open to this.
Speaker 6: You know, that's all hopefully in the future. As it
Speaker 6: stands right now, I've gotten really good reviews from people
Speaker 6: who are reformers. Prisoner's family members have just there they
Speaker 6: felt so helpless that there was nobody out there that
Speaker 6: truly understood or was able to articulate the types of
Speaker 6: things that I'm raising in the book. So for them,
Speaker 6: it's great. For reformers like Pat O'Connor. I mean, he's
Speaker 6: a great guy, you know, the you know, great guy
Speaker 6: for Crime magazine. I mean, yeah, those guys who have
Speaker 6: been involved in this and who have seen the problems firsthand,
Speaker 6: who've been dealing with these for many years. Oh, you know,
Speaker 6: I'm getting blowing reviews. And then but when it comes
Speaker 6: to the groups and the correctional systems around the United States,
Speaker 6: you know, I don't think that a whole lot of
Speaker 6: that has gotten too much of a wind of it.
Speaker 6: Yet when they do, I'm hoping then instead of a
Speaker 6: retaliatory attitude, then instead they will read the book, if
Speaker 6: that's what they're interested in doing, and seeing what I'm
Speaker 6: talking about, and keep an open mind, and they'll understand
Speaker 6: if they do review the book, that I'm not such
Speaker 6: just a total bleeding heart liberal and trying to just
Speaker 6: you know, mask over the responsibility of people and their behaviors.
Speaker 5: I'm not.
Speaker 6: I do know that everybody has to face the music
Speaker 6: whenever they make bad decisions or lives or victimize other people.
Speaker 6: I don't think it's right anymore. It's totally against my
Speaker 6: personality and what I believe today. But at the same time,
Speaker 6: if if we're going to implement some policies that are
Speaker 6: common sense solutions. You know, what better way to do
Speaker 6: it than than to look into someone who's got a
Speaker 6: decent education, who actually cares about these things. I mean,
Speaker 6: I really care about these things. I hate to see
Speaker 6: guys inside I suffer in ways where they could be
Speaker 6: they could be rehability human beings. They could get out
Speaker 6: and actually provide society productive labor and maybe their creativity
Speaker 6: or art, whatever it is that they have to offer society.
Speaker 6: I wish that they were provided an opportunity that they could.
Speaker 6: And I also don't like to see people out here
Speaker 6: who are victimized when they don't need to be, you know,
Speaker 6: by a system that is fostering this. So I haven't
Speaker 6: gotten a whole lot of feedback from them. I'm concerned,
Speaker 6: to be honest with you, about the Correctional Officers Association
Speaker 6: here in Florida. I'm not sure how they're going to
Speaker 6: respond when they do get wind of this book, and
Speaker 6: which I'm sure they'll be getting wint of it pretty
Speaker 6: soon now. But and when they do, I hope that
Speaker 6: they don't retaliate. I really do. I hope that their
Speaker 6: attitude is hey, you know we'd like to we'd like
Speaker 6: to actually look into some of your ideas and see
Speaker 6: maybe if we could, because you know, Dan, it doesn't
Speaker 6: mean that these have to be exclusive. These ideas could
Speaker 6: be inclusive to where the correctional officer unions and the
Speaker 6: the other groups that have been influencing these things behind
Speaker 6: the scenes. I'm sure there's a way that they could
Speaker 6: be appeased and opportunities could be open for them in
Speaker 6: different ways that would not have to add to the
Speaker 6: US prison problem. But until we get a dialogue going,
Speaker 6: a real dialogue, one that does address the issues honestly,
Speaker 6: without you know, there being so much influence behind the scenes,
Speaker 6: I'm afraid to say that I don't think much is
Speaker 6: going to change, but I do. I would like to offer,
Speaker 6: this is an open offer in the United States that
Speaker 6: those solutions that I provide, especially in chapters ten, eleven, twelve,
Speaker 6: and thirteen, those chapters of the book, I believe if
Speaker 6: somebody sat down and kept an open mind, they would
Speaker 6: see the taxpayer savings, the burden on them, the victimization, recidivism,
Speaker 6: all of those things decrease. Matter of fact, I even
Speaker 6: offer guarantees that if they implement the process and the
Speaker 6: solutions that I propose in that book, if they implement
Speaker 6: them exactly how I'm saying, to implement them, that they
Speaker 6: will reduce their recided them by thirty percent, that they're
Speaker 6: reduced the cost of corrections by fifty percent, and a
Speaker 6: number of other you know, increasing child support, reducing welfare
Speaker 6: is a single mothers with prisoners children. I mean, so
Speaker 6: you know, I mean I'm not just I'm not one
Speaker 6: of these people is just saying a bunch of things
Speaker 6: and you know, not being willing to back them up
Speaker 6: or support them. I mean fiscally, I'm willing to back
Speaker 6: those up and support them and show real statistics so
Speaker 6: that that way the rest of the country might be
Speaker 6: able to move forward. If I could get one pilot
Speaker 6: state to bring it and as a consultant to do
Speaker 6: a pilot prison, just one prison and their system, and
Speaker 6: let me have those solutions that I propose and let
Speaker 6: me apply them to that population for three years. I
Speaker 6: guarantee them that the recidiism and the actual cost of
Speaker 6: those prisoners will go down significantly.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, even prison systems, because you have private
Speaker 5: prisons competing with state prison systems. Everybody's looking for savings.
Speaker 5: So I think you're you're focusing on something that's very
Speaker 5: important to everybody, and so at least they may may
Speaker 5: be able to look at this. And so I wish
Speaker 5: you the best luck with this in terms of reaching
Speaker 5: the right people. But I think you have you very
Speaker 5: very much well articulated your argument, and you do not
Speaker 5: come from a bitter place. You've really taken yourself surprisingly
Speaker 5: very much out of the story in terms of you know,
Speaker 5: woe is me, and here's my here's what happened to
Speaker 5: me in there. It's not a prison memoir by any means.
Speaker 5: And you've definitely grown up to be a very very
Speaker 5: objective journalist by virtue of your experience and from doing
Speaker 5: this book. So you've outlined in detailed and examined and
Speaker 5: and and you have prescribed some things too and just
Speaker 5: for example too, and in your book you talk about
Speaker 5: restitution and you talk about the ways that you really
Speaker 5: can benefit society with some of the initiatives that you have,
Speaker 5: and really that should be the goal as well. So
Speaker 5: I commend you for a very viable plan and where
Speaker 5: you're very you can see this as your life's work,
Speaker 5: and you put an incredible amount of effort and focus
Speaker 5: in being able to write this book. So I applaud
Speaker 5: you on it's very interesting, very interesting book.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know what, it's not about me. It's not
Speaker 6: about it's not about accolades for me getting out, rehabilitating,
Speaker 6: writing a book and you know, being a writer and publisher.
Speaker 6: It's I don't you know, I really don't need that. Well,
Speaker 6: I'm confident in the rebilitation. Like I need people to
Speaker 6: look at this and say, do we want to stop
Speaker 6: the the just empty hole of money pulling in for
Speaker 6: these ridiculous corrections for policies and sentencing policies and political
Speaker 6: policies that aren't have little, very little spotlight from media.
Speaker 6: Are we interested in changing these things to truly reduce
Speaker 6: victimization rescidiism as a debt or are we going to
Speaker 6: continue on the same course and so we end up
Speaker 6: like the Titanic, because that's literally the way that's the
Speaker 6: direction of this country's going.
Speaker 5: So I hope its absolutely absolutely And you know, I
Speaker 5: really do think that you know, this is is just
Speaker 5: not well, you know, he's turned a bad experience into
Speaker 5: a really good one and he's writing a book now
Speaker 5: and he's got some skills, no this is a this
Speaker 5: is a cause, this is a cause you. I'm not
Speaker 5: going to say this is why you were put in prison,
Speaker 5: but these are the events that happened in your life
Speaker 5: that have shaped you to be able to create this
Speaker 5: important document and this important perspective. And you will reach
Speaker 5: the right people with this if you, you know, just
Speaker 5: continue to do it, because I mean, there are people
Speaker 5: that need to see this perspective because you're you're also
Speaker 5: taking other people's information and as well incorporating and you
Speaker 5: didn't just come up with this grand plan yourself. So
Speaker 5: this is something this is something that should spark a
Speaker 5: serious debate because really, obviously corrections is not working, the
Speaker 5: judicial system is not working. People do not have the
Speaker 5: trust that they did do before. And this book gives
Speaker 5: people ammunition to to be able to get into that
Speaker 5: debate and to be able to weigh in and be
Speaker 5: able to make some statements because there's a lot of
Speaker 5: stuff that I think you go, yeah, that's right, yeah,
Speaker 5: and you make the essential connections, especially with the media
Speaker 5: and politics and with all you know, the machinations behind
Speaker 5: the scenes, just by virtue of that's the way people
Speaker 5: are looking for jobs and looking for security and things happen,
Speaker 5: but there also is this the public is the big loser,
Speaker 5: and the public is the big payer of the tabs,
Speaker 5: voting victims and including everybody that's on the peripheral of
Speaker 5: this so.
Speaker 6: Especially and I think Special Focus Dan also should be paid.
Speaker 6: And I know we're around the time, but to the
Speaker 6: families and the children. And that's why I would like
Speaker 6: to plug. The Prisoner Family Union is Prisoner Family Union
Speaker 6: dot org. I don't I mean, I've been doing all
Speaker 6: this by myself. I could use any help web developers,
Speaker 6: anybody interested, that is, prisoner's family members, people who would
Speaker 6: like to see the system change, anybody interested in becoming
Speaker 6: a reformer or an activist. You can go to Prisoner
Speaker 6: Family Union dot org or speak Out Publishing dot com
Speaker 6: and contact me. Let me know what kind of you know,
Speaker 6: even if you would just like to help out with
Speaker 6: typing or maybe helping us further develop the websites that
Speaker 6: we can set up some stuff or make donations so
Speaker 6: that we can set up the corporation and actually create
Speaker 6: a lobbying agency that could counter We have in the
Speaker 6: book itself, Facing us Prison Problem. We have the ten
Speaker 6: top objectives of the Prisoner Family Union in chapter ten.
Speaker 6: So the whole thing is spelled out in chapter ten
Speaker 6: about creating something that's different, that can pre code to
Speaker 6: the politicians, provide a different perspective, one that's based on
Speaker 6: common sense solutions, and start changing these things. I mean,
Speaker 6: we're not going to change them unless we have a
Speaker 6: force that is as powerful as the forces that control
Speaker 6: that now. So I would invite anybody who's interested in
Speaker 6: these topics, anybody who thinks that some of the things
Speaker 6: I've suggested makes sense if they have questions about how
Speaker 6: to involve industry and agriculture within the prison system and
Speaker 6: a fair way to private business, and also in a
Speaker 6: way that doesn't exploit prisoners and provides child support, restitution
Speaker 6: and things we just discussed, you know, get in contact
Speaker 6: with me. I need help. I can't do this by myself.
Speaker 6: I've written a book, I've basically shot the first shot.
Speaker 5: Across the bow.
Speaker 6: I need some help, you know, I can't do this
Speaker 6: by myself.
Speaker 5: So well, that's great, Seoan. I want to thank you
Speaker 5: very much for this interview, and we've been listening to
Speaker 5: show on Griffith and his book Facing the US Prison
Speaker 5: Problem two point three million strong. Thank you very much Sean,
Speaker 5: and the best of luck and keep in touch and
Speaker 5: we'll be looked for all the developments that should be
Speaker 5: coming from this great book. Thank you very much, Sean,
Speaker 5: and have a good evening you too, Dan.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much for the opportunity to good night.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much tonight