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Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing,

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Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, policymakers, and performers, to

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Speaker 1: hear their stories. What inspire their creations, what decisions change

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Speaker 1: their careers, what relationships influence their work. Dietary fructos is

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Speaker 1: completely irrelevant to life. People say, oh, you need sugar

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Speaker 1: to live garbage. I would advize drugs across the board.

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Speaker 1: We couldn't possibly do worse than we're doing now. My

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Speaker 1: guests today didn't set out to become outspoken critics of

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Speaker 1: powerful institutions. As experts in their fields. They found themselves

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Speaker 1: confronting two issues that have an impact on our everyday

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Speaker 1: lives and our futures, obesity and the criminal justice system,

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Speaker 1: and they haven't been afraid to speak their minds. You'd

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Speaker 1: have the government dispensing cocaine and heroin, I would sell

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Speaker 1: it in the liquor stores. Martin Horned was head of

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Speaker 1: both the New York City Department of Corrections and Probation.

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Speaker 1: New York City processes nearly one hundred thousand inmates every year,

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Speaker 1: more than many state systems. But first, before we talk

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Speaker 1: about prisons, we consider another problem that has been getting

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Speaker 1: worse over the last decade. One of every three American

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Speaker 1: adults is obese. The epidemic is arguably the most important

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Speaker 1: health issue of our time. Children today may have a

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Speaker 1: shorter life expectancy than their parents, in large part due

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Speaker 1: to obesity, which has been linked to diabetes, heart disease,

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Speaker 1: and even cancer. My guest today, doctor Robert Lustig, makes

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Speaker 1: a strong case that our addiction to sugar is at

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Speaker 1: the root of the obesity epidemic. Americans consume an average

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Speaker 1: of one thirty pounds of sugar a year. Two years ago,

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Speaker 1: this issue became a personal one when my doctor told

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Speaker 1: me I was pre diabetic. So when I read about

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Speaker 1: Dr Lusting and his popular anti sugar lecture streaming online,

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Speaker 1: I paid attention. So why do I at the Coca

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Speaker 1: Cola conspiracy? And next I gave up sugar? What else

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Speaker 1: is in coke? We'll get to the sugar in a minute.

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Speaker 1: What else salt? Milligrams of sodium per can. It's like

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Speaker 1: drinking a pizza. So what happens if you take on

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Speaker 1: sodium and lose free water? You get thirstier? Right? So

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Speaker 1: why is there so much sugar and coke to hide

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Speaker 1: the salt except. Dr Lusting is a pediatric endochronologist and

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Speaker 1: you see San Francisco back in the nineties. He became

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Speaker 1: interested in diet and obesity while working at St. Jude

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Speaker 1: Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. Now a bit of biochemistry

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Speaker 1: to explain some of Lustig's research. Leptin is a protein

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Speaker 1: that works like a thermostat for your body's energy levels.

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Speaker 1: If leptin levels are low, your brain senses starvation and

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Speaker 1: you feel hungry. If levels are high, you feel full.

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Speaker 1: Lusting asserts there was an epidemic of people who have

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Speaker 1: developed leptin resistance, people whose brains can't register when they

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Speaker 1: are full. Lustig has studied leptin and its effect on

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Speaker 1: pediatric patients. In the nineteen nineties, he was treating children

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Speaker 1: recovering from brain tumor surgery. I had a stable of

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Speaker 1: kids who were enormously obese. And the thing was, they

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Speaker 1: were an obese before the tumor, but they started gaining

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Speaker 1: weight at thirty to forty pounds a year after per

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Speaker 1: two year, per year, with no cessation, NonStop, and they

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Speaker 1: were constantly hungry and worse yet, they were the world's

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Speaker 1: biggest couch potatoes. They lost interest in every single thing

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Speaker 1: around them. They would sit in the couch, eat doritos,

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Speaker 1: and sleep. This was their life. And the parents would

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Speaker 1: come to me and say, this is double jeopardy. My

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Speaker 1: child has survived the tumor only to succumb to a

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Speaker 1: complication of the treatment. Why did they become couch potatoes?

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Speaker 1: What was the link there? Because when your brain sees lepton,

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Speaker 1: you want to burn energy. You want to exercise, you

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Speaker 1: want to be physically active, you want to concentrate, you

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Speaker 1: want to go do things. Leptin signals the body to exercise.

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Speaker 1: Leptin signals the body that you have enough energy on

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Speaker 1: board to exercise. When your brain can't see it, your

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Speaker 1: brain thinks you're starting. My job was to figure out

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Speaker 1: a way to take care of these kids, so my

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Speaker 1: research and obosity started back. We said, okay, these kids brains,

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Speaker 1: that area of the brain is dead. I can't bring

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Speaker 1: it back. I'm not a neurosurgeon. I can't transplant the hypothalamus.

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Speaker 1: What can I do? So I, after doing some research,

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Speaker 1: realized we could work down stream of the brain. The

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Speaker 1: brain was signaling the pancrease to make extra insulin. Insulin

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Speaker 1: makes you store energy. So these kids are known to

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Speaker 1: have enormously high insulin levels. So I said, all right,

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Speaker 1: let's give these kids a medicine that will block the

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Speaker 1: release of insulin. We did a study and Lo and Behold,

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Speaker 1: patients started losing weight, but more importantly, they started exercising.

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Speaker 1: One kid started competitive swimming, two kids started lifting weights

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Speaker 1: at home. One kid became the manager of his high

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Speaker 1: school basketball team, running around collecting all the basketballs. I mean,

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Speaker 1: you know, parents were calling me up within a week saying,

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Speaker 1: I've got my kid back. Right. We were interfering with

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Speaker 1: insulin release, and these kids changed their behavior, and that

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Speaker 1: was the first key to what I think is the

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Speaker 1: entire enchilada in terms of the obesity epidemic. And then

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Speaker 1: what happened for you wanted to do next? So then

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Speaker 1: we said, maybe there are adults out there who have

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Speaker 1: the same problem, they just don't have a brain tumor.

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Speaker 1: Let's look for it. So we did a whole study,

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Speaker 1: pilot study with forty four obese adults, and we gave

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Speaker 1: him the same drug to do the same thing, and

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Speaker 1: Lo and Behold, eight out of the forty four, not

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Speaker 1: all of them by any means, but it out of

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Speaker 1: four lost a lot of weight. A pound a week

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Speaker 1: over twenty four weeks without doing anything. And what was

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Speaker 1: even more amazing was their fat intake didn't change, their

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Speaker 1: protein intake didn't change. Their carbohydrate intake dropped on a dime.

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Speaker 1: They went from nine hundred calories at day to calories

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Speaker 1: a day and carbohydrate they stopped snacking between meals and

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Speaker 1: most important bugles. You know, absolutely, and these kids needed

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Speaker 1: to get their insulin down, and the medicine did it.

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Speaker 1: And these adults needed to get their insulin down, and

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Speaker 1: the medicine did it for them too. And most importantly,

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Speaker 1: when we got there insulinde down, guess what they started exercising.

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Speaker 1: So this all of a sudden became very clear. What's

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Speaker 1: going on for these kids with the brain tumors. They

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Speaker 1: couldn't see their lepton. Their insolence were sky high because

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Speaker 1: their brain was starving. And because their brain was starving,

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Speaker 1: they would eat everything on of the sun and it

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Speaker 1: still wouldn't be enough because they could never see their leapton.

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Speaker 1: And what we realized was this is adult ob city too.

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Speaker 1: They can't see their LEPTONI that's where sugar came in.

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Speaker 1: So sugar was a culporate that also triggered other it

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Speaker 1: enabled other bad eating exactly. And we've learned that the

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Speaker 1: higher insulin goes, the hungrier you get, hunger you are.

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Speaker 1: So the sugar is an appetite stimulant in a sense,

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Speaker 1: whatever you want to call you can call it that. Absolutely.

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Speaker 1: We know that because David Ludwig, my opposite number at

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Speaker 1: Boston Children's, he prepped a bunch of kids with a soda,

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Speaker 1: a can of soda, a hundred fifty calories, and then

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Speaker 1: he let him loose at the fast food restaurant. So

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Speaker 1: the question is did they eat more? Did they eat less?

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Speaker 1: Do you think more? Ate more? Their insulind was high,

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Speaker 1: and also there's high insulin makes you hungry, that's right,

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Speaker 1: High insulam makes you hungry. And also there's a hormone

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Speaker 1: in your stomach that signals hunger called grellin, And when

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Speaker 1: grellan's high, you're hungry, and sugar doesn't knock it down.

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Speaker 1: When I gave up sugar, it was amazing. It was

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Speaker 1: like pushing a toboggan along a track to eventually get

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Speaker 1: down the slope. The first couple of weeks, the first

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Speaker 1: couple of months, that part in early May through June

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Speaker 1: By the time we get to July and August, we're

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Speaker 1: going downhill and the weights just coming off. I cut

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Speaker 1: out carbs, and I gave up pasta because that was

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Speaker 1: the mega dose of carbohydrate, right. I mean, I would eat,

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Speaker 1: you know, the fish tank sized bowl of pasta, and

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Speaker 1: it's easy to do. A lot of people think that

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Speaker 1: the Italian diet is the Mediterranean diet. Not at all.

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Speaker 1: There is no pasta in the Mediterranean diet. We started

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Speaker 1: the pasta craze because of all the immigrant Italians who

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Speaker 1: couldn't afford to eat meat and vegetables here. That's what

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Speaker 1: they fell back on, and it actually got exported from

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Speaker 1: here back to Italy sam as Chop Suey did to China.

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Speaker 1: You know, these are all American inventions. The Italian diet

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Speaker 1: is not the de deterranean diet, never was, never will be.

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Speaker 1: But I would say to people, I cut back on bread.

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Speaker 1: They say, okay, great. Then I'd say to them I

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Speaker 1: gave up pasta. They'd say, whoa that. I'd say, I

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Speaker 1: gave up sugar, and they go and they're insane, exactly right.

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Speaker 1: It was as if I said to them, let's go

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Speaker 1: learn to play the classical piano. Now let's begin. Now,

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Speaker 1: how did sugar become They were consuming a hundred and

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Speaker 1: thirty pounds of sugar per person per year. Was it

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Speaker 1: always that way? No? No, this is very What do

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Speaker 1: you think change that? Money and marketing and you know,

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Speaker 1: the food industry. So there are a couple of sort

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Speaker 1: of milestones in this story. The first is the nascent

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Speaker 1: candy and soft drink and sugar industry in America, which

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Speaker 1: dates back to the early nineteen hundreds, but that didn't

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Speaker 1: really get things started because sugar was still kind of expensive,

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Speaker 1: and sugar had been expensive all throughout history. In nifty nine,

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Speaker 1: we lost our sugar fix because Castro took over Cuba

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Speaker 1: and that actually started the Florida sugar industry because the

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Speaker 1: sugar had come from Cuba prior to that's a lot

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Speaker 1: of it. So that started the American sugar industry really

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Speaker 1: in top notch gear. Then high fuctose cornsyrup, camel high

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Speaker 1: fuctose corn syrup shows up and all of a sudden,

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Speaker 1: it's in everything. Why, well, it actually took It is sweeter,

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Speaker 1: but most important, it's cheaper. But do you find that also,

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Speaker 1: this is what's happening over the last I don't know

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Speaker 1: how many years. I mean, I'm not somebody who knows

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Speaker 1: the history of this, but certainly in my lifetime, which

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Speaker 1: is the goal is to make everything sweeter. The point

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Speaker 1: is that this is actually evolutionary. This isn't our DNA,

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Speaker 1: because there is no food stuff anywhere in the world

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Speaker 1: that is both sweet and acutely poisonous. So it was

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Speaker 1: a signal to us. It was a signal to us

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Speaker 1: that it was safe to eat, even Jamaican hockey fruit,

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Speaker 1: which has a substance in nicolled hypoglycin, which causes Jamaican

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Speaker 1: vomiting sickness and can kill you. It's only in the

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Speaker 1: immature fruit. As soon as the fruit falls from the

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Speaker 1: tree to the ground. Jamaican's no, it's a ky to

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Speaker 1: eat because it's now ripe and the toxin is gone.

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Speaker 1: We are programmed to like sweet, and what has happened

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Speaker 1: is the food industry figured it out and they hijacked

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Speaker 1: our taste buds for their own purposes. When you think

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Speaker 1: about this epidemic, and it is an epidemic because it's

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Speaker 1: a pandemic, I don't say this with any smugness or satisfaction.

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Speaker 1: I say this with a lot of sadness because I

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Speaker 1: had always been thin, and for somebody who didn't eat

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Speaker 1: meat and didn't eat I thought I thought I was

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Speaker 1: doing the right thing health wise. I'm a vegetarian, I'm

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Speaker 1: a pesketarian, if you will, And I'm beginning to really

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Speaker 1: really blow up here. You know, Listen, we've got vegan

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Speaker 1: type two's who are massively obese. And just because you're vegan,

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Speaker 1: doesn't that from what do you think they getting from soda? Vegan?

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Speaker 1: Especially South Asians Indians, they can't carry as much subcutaneous fat.

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Speaker 1: And once you basically fill your subcutains your love handle

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Speaker 1: fat stores, it starts building up in your liver and

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Speaker 1: when that happens, it's all downhill after that. But other

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Speaker 1: people have worked towards this prior to you. You're not

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Speaker 1: the first person sugar is bad. Look, this has been

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Speaker 1: going on since the seventies, this discussion. The chief anti

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Speaker 1: sugar campaigner was a guy by the name of John Yudkin,

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Speaker 1: and he was a British physiologist, nutritionist, and he wrote

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Speaker 1: a book back in seventy two called Pure White and Deadly.

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Speaker 1: You read this book, it's just astounding. Everything came to

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Speaker 1: pass on the other side, we had this guy, ansel

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Speaker 1: Keys and he had done a sabbatical at the University

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Speaker 1: of Cambridge in nifty two and he saw what, you know,

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Speaker 1: the Brits were eating, and it was pretty horrible, and

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Speaker 1: he came to the conclusion that saturated fat had to

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Speaker 1: be the cause of heart disease. We didn't know at

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Speaker 1: that point what happened to sugar in the liver. We

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Speaker 1: didn't know that it got turned into fat. What we

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Speaker 1: knew was that saturated fat correlated with LDL levels in

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Speaker 1: l d L correlated with cardiovascular disease. So the thought was,

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Speaker 1: let's get rid of the saturated fat and cardiovascular disease

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Speaker 1: will disappear. The whole country went low fat back in

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Speaker 1: Here's the problem. When you go low fat, the food

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Speaker 1: tastes like cardboard. And the food industry knew it. What

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Speaker 1: were they gonna do? How are they gonna sell food?

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Speaker 1: And now we had high fructose corn syrup too, When

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Speaker 1: does that get introduced into the food market the early seventies,

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Speaker 1: seventy three, seventy five, actually I don't know. American corporations

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Speaker 1: in the second worst hurricane in American history, Hurricane Allen,

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Speaker 1: it wiped out the entire Caribbean sugar crop, and the

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Speaker 1: food industry, especially the beverage industry, ran scared. They said,

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Speaker 1: where are we going to get the sugar for all

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Speaker 1: the soft drinks? And that's when reliable market exactly, And

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Speaker 1: they started introducing it, and they started upping the dose,

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Speaker 1: and the transformation was complete. Is the process of getting

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Speaker 1: table sugar from cane sugar more labor intensive and more

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Speaker 1: expensive than the high fructose corncerp process by a lot.

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Speaker 1: High fructose corn syrup comes from corn, and the corn

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Speaker 1: market and the corn supply in this country is far

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Speaker 1: more plentiful and far more reliable than the cane sugar.

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Speaker 1: Correct of all of the corn grown in America today

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Speaker 1: ends up as high fructose corn syrup. So we have

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Speaker 1: boatloads of it, and it's cheap. And because it's cheap,

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Speaker 1: it started finding its way into things that never had

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Speaker 1: sugar before, like hamburger buns, hamburger meat, barbecue, sauce, catchup, salad, dressing,

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Speaker 1: I mean pretty much everything you can imagine in the store. Indeed,

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Speaker 1: Barry Popkin at the University of North Carolina has just

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Speaker 1: done a study that shows that eight of the food

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Speaker 1: items there are six thousand food items in America them

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Speaker 1: are laced with sugar. Add a sugar. Do you think

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Speaker 1: that they understood back then that sweetening the bond was

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Speaker 1: just about taste. They knew that when they put it in,

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Speaker 1: we bought more that they knew when this was in there,

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Speaker 1: people ate more of it. Palatability equals sales. It did then,

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Speaker 1: it does now, and we love sugar, and that's why

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Speaker 1: the entire food supply of America is now sweeter than

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Speaker 1: you can imagine. Here's the problem. There's an area of

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Speaker 1: your brain called the reward center. Everybody's heard of it

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Speaker 1: because you know drug addiction. You know that cocaine, morphine, heroin, nicotine,

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Speaker 1: They all work in the same place. And the neurotransmitter

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Speaker 1: that signals pleasures called dopamine. You probably heard of it.

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Speaker 1: Of course, when you get a dopamine rush, you get pleasure,

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Speaker 1: and sugar does it the same way as all of

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Speaker 1: those drugs of abuse. The problem is, when you get

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Speaker 1: that pleasure, you downregulate the little proteins that catch the dopamine,

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Speaker 1: called dopamine receptors, and the more you downregulate them, the

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Speaker 1: more dopamine you need to get the same effect, and

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Speaker 1: that's called tolerance. And then when you take the stuff away,

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Speaker 1: then there's no dopamine to interact with these few proteins left,

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Speaker 1: and that's called withdrawal. Tolerance and withdrawal that's called addiction.

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Speaker 1: So we know how that works for all of these

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Speaker 1: other drugs of abuse. Turns out sugar does the same thing.

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Speaker 1: It's the same as cocaine. The difference is that for

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Speaker 1: cocaine you gotta go find it, whereas for sugar we

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Speaker 1: have what we call system saturation. It's everywhere, you can't

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Speaker 1: escape it. Coming up more with Dr Robert Lustig, who

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Speaker 1: says that cutting out sugar is not the single most

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Speaker 1: important thing you can do for your quality of life.

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Speaker 1: You're going to want to sit down for this, or

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Speaker 1: actually you won't want to sit The single best thing

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Speaker 1: you can do for yourself quality of life wise exercise,

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Speaker 1: by far and away. Nothing else comes close. I'm Alec

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Speaker 1: Baldwin and here's the thing. Take a listen to our

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Speaker 1: archive more unexpected conversations with artists, policymakers and performers like

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Speaker 1: the amazing Dick Kevin. Amazing. We all are saying amazing

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Speaker 1: all the time. Now, I got five amazings and watching

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Speaker 1: morning television amazing guests we have. It's an amazing script.

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Speaker 1: It's just amazing. I was amazed. But your career amazesn't

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Speaker 1: there Go to Here's the Thing, Dot Org. I'm Alec

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Speaker 1: Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. America's obesity

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Speaker 1: epidemic is complicated by issues of education, poverty, and personal freedom.

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Speaker 1: In July two thousand thirteen, an appeals court struck down

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Speaker 1: in New York City ban on the sale of supersized

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Speaker 1: sugary drinks. Mayor Bloomberg was disappointed, but maybe not so prized.

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Speaker 1: Two years earlier, as my guest Dr Robert Lustig recalls,

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Speaker 1: the mayor had tried to change things on the federal level.

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg petition the U. S d A to take soft

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Speaker 1: drinks off food stamps, and the U. S d A

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Speaker 1: rebuffed it. Why do you think they did? Why do

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Speaker 1: you think that other than the straight up political influence

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Speaker 1: of the soda indus, isn't that enough? How does the U.

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Speaker 1: S d A do that? No one's saying that the

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Speaker 1: people who are on food stamps you can't have soda.

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Speaker 1: I doesn't want the government to pay for it. The

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Speaker 1: U s d a's job is to sell food. That

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Speaker 1: means sell whoever is going to buy it. So it's

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Speaker 1: about commerce, it's about absolutely and who controls the U

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Speaker 1: s d A. The U s d A is basically

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Speaker 1: the governmental arm of the food industry and the job

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Speaker 1: of the us D. You don't have a lot of

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Speaker 1: faith in the us D not a whole lot. Now,

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Speaker 1: the job of the U s d A is to

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Speaker 1: protect the food supply, and that includes protecting from people

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Speaker 1: like me in terms of threats to public health. Would

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Speaker 1: you equate other products and other substances that are commonly

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Speaker 1: used as being equally threatening as sugar, Maybe not, not

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Speaker 1: not equally, maybe not as much. But I think there's

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Speaker 1: a caffeine epidemic in this country. There is a caffeine epidemic.

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Speaker 1: I believe there is, and and it's being stoked by

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Speaker 1: all the coffee companies. But it's a less concern to

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Speaker 1: you than sugar, oh way, because there's no toxic downside

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Speaker 1: with sugar. Type two diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, gastric bypasses a

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Speaker 1: hundred and forty seven billion dollars a year down a

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Speaker 1: rat hole for taking care of chronic diseases which don't

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Speaker 1: need to be We wouldn't need healthcare reform if we

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Speaker 1: had obesity reform, and we can't have OBEs reform until

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Speaker 1: we have some sort of sugar policy. You you mentioned

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Speaker 1: pretty regularly the food industry, this, the food industry that.

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Speaker 1: And you know, most Americans I think who are smart,

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Speaker 1: realize that we have more than enough food to feed

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Speaker 1: three quote unquote square meals a day to everybody in

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Speaker 1: this country and those that aren't getting it. It's because

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Speaker 1: of the distribution of food in our society. However, we

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Speaker 1: have to cut a lot of corners to get there.

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Speaker 1: In the way we produce beef, and the way we

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Speaker 1: produce livestock, and the way we produce pesticides, fungicides, herbicides,

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Speaker 1: all of this stuff, we need a new food model.

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Speaker 1: We need a new food growing model. By we're gonna

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Speaker 1: need four California Central Valleys in order to feed our population.

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Speaker 1: We won't even have one because of the runoff in

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Speaker 1: the sierra that changes in soil erosion. So you know what,

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Speaker 1: the obesity epidemic might even take care of itself because

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Speaker 1: we'll have a famine because we are misusing our food system.

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Speaker 1: And until we fix it, we will continue to be sick.

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Speaker 1: We will continue to die of things like diabetes and

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Speaker 1: heart disease. Medicare will be broke by because there won't

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Speaker 1: be any money to pay for it. You won't be

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Speaker 1: able to see a doctor because they will be too

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Speaker 1: busy taking care of all the other fat people in

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Speaker 1: the emergency room we're having their heart attacks, and there

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Speaker 1: won't be enough food. Anyway, as I'm listening to you,

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Speaker 1: I'm getting really depressed and I want to go have

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Speaker 1: ice cream. Now you're really bumber me. I want to know.

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Speaker 1: I'm enjoy bar really badly. The bottom line is, there's

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Speaker 1: a lot of reason to be positive. And I'll tell

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Speaker 1: you why. Give me an example. People are getting it.

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Speaker 1: People are starting to recognize that there's an obesity epidemic,

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Speaker 1: not just obesity, noncommunical disease epidemic, diabetes, yeah, exactly. Breast

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Speaker 1: cancer in particular is famous for having insulin receptors and

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Speaker 1: growing in response to insulin. Prostate insulin receptors. Yes, they do.

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Speaker 1: So there's a lot of reason to be concerned, and

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of reason to keep your insulin down.

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Speaker 1: Number one, it doesn't fuel any tumors. Number two, it

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Speaker 1: lets your left and work. Number three, it doesn't increase

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Speaker 1: the smooth muscle of your coronary arteries so that you

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Speaker 1: might end up getting a heart attack. There's a whole

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Speaker 1: bunch of reasons to keep your insulin down and the

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Speaker 1: thing that makes your insulin go up most sure. You

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Speaker 1: know people, a lot of people are terrified when they

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Speaker 1: it down in the restaurant. A lot of people that

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Speaker 1: are trying to stay fit and trying to stay healthy.

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Speaker 1: They can go through periods. So I've been through this

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Speaker 1: myself where I have like a mild panic attack when

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Speaker 1: I sit down at the restaurant because I say to myself,

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Speaker 1: there's an enemy lurking in everything. Here. There's a mercury

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Speaker 1: and the fish, and there's hormones in the chicken. I

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Speaker 1: don't eat beef and poultry, and there's too much sodium here,

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Speaker 1: there's too much fat here I don't need. It's true.

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Speaker 1: The single best thing you can do for yourself quality

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Speaker 1: of life wise, exercise by far and away. Nothing else

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Speaker 1: comes close. The next thing that's most important is when

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Speaker 1: you're eating, make sure you have some fiber. When people

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Speaker 1: want to go eat fiber that you recommend they eat.

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Speaker 1: Now where do they go? Very simple? Brown food, brown

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Speaker 1: and green. Okay, if it's brown and green, it's got fiber,

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Speaker 1: because fiber is brown. Wheat comes out of the ground.

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Speaker 1: What color is it. It's brown, You send it to

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Speaker 1: the mill, you make bread out of it. Now, what

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Speaker 1: color is it? It's white? Where'd the brown go? Got

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Speaker 1: milled off? God made carbohydrate with inherent fiber. So we

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Speaker 1: have brown rice, whole grains, beans, we have nuts. They're

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Speaker 1: all just great. But as soon as you remove the fiber,

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Speaker 1: which is called processing, now you've got a problem because

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Speaker 1: now when you eat it, the sugar gets absorbed so

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Speaker 1: fast that your liver gets overloaded, your mitochondria basically get sick,

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Speaker 1: and now you've got insulin resistance, and now you've got

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Speaker 1: all the diseases going downstream from People need to have

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Speaker 1: an elevated level of consciousness and discipline about eating pasta,

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Speaker 1: rice and potatoes as well at the moment they do.

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Speaker 1: I'm hoping that the food industry will pick up on

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Speaker 1: this and do the right thing. But well, the right

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Speaker 1: thing would be to actually sell real food so that

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Speaker 1: we can eat real not processed. If you we can

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Speaker 1: do it, now, you know, years ago we couldn't because

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Speaker 1: we didn't have the distribution system to be able to

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Speaker 1: do it. We have it now, we could do it.

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Speaker 1: We have the technological capability to serve and eat real food.

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Speaker 1: But the food industry is making any hand over fist.

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Speaker 1: If you could pick one or two things that you

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Speaker 1: would change in public policy, if it was like getting

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Speaker 1: the soda machines out of schools, it would be like

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Speaker 1: no food stamps for soda. What would be a change

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Speaker 1: in public policy? You'd make one thing? What is it?

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Speaker 1: The FDA currently has fructose, the sweet part of sugar,

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Speaker 1: on what it's called the grass list g R as

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Speaker 1: generally regarded as safe, also has transfats on it at

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Speaker 1: the moment as well. It needs to be reevaluated. It

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Speaker 1: needs to be revised. The last time this was looked at,

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Speaker 1: and this was before the hints corn syrup blood, this

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Speaker 1: was before the excess sugar order of a century ago exactly,

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Speaker 1: and they have no plans on doing so. If I

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Speaker 1: could do one thing in this entire thing, it would

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Speaker 1: be that what would be one more um? I would

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Speaker 1: think very strongly about limiting access of sugar beverages to

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Speaker 1: infants and children like zero there no reason for it.

426
00:25:01,320 --> 00:25:04,640
Speaker 1: There's not one biochemical reaction in your body, not one

427
00:25:05,000 --> 00:25:09,520
Speaker 1: that requires dietary fructos, not one that requires sugar. Dietary

428
00:25:09,560 --> 00:25:13,080
Speaker 1: fructos is completely irrelevant to life. People say, oh, you

429
00:25:13,119 --> 00:25:21,800
Speaker 1: need sugar to live garbage. Dr Robert Lustig's book about

430
00:25:21,800 --> 00:25:25,520
Speaker 1: the dangers of sugar is called Fat Chance, Beating the

431
00:25:25,520 --> 00:25:30,919
Speaker 1: Odds against Sugar, processed food, obesity, and disease. Knowing what

432
00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:35,240
Speaker 1: you know? What are things you don't eat? What's your

433
00:25:35,280 --> 00:25:38,440
Speaker 1: diet become since you've been doing this work. I carry

434
00:25:38,480 --> 00:25:40,359
Speaker 1: a few extra pounds and I'm not happy about it.

435
00:25:41,040 --> 00:25:43,600
Speaker 1: I don't eat sugar. You don't know. I have dessert

436
00:25:43,640 --> 00:25:45,879
Speaker 1: twice a year when I'm in New York, I have

437
00:25:45,880 --> 00:25:48,280
Speaker 1: a piece of Juniors cheesecake, and when I'm in New

438
00:25:48,359 --> 00:25:51,480
Speaker 1: Orleans that have bread, pudding, whiskey sauce. Those are my

439
00:25:51,600 --> 00:25:56,720
Speaker 1: too uh deserved twice a year. Well, other than that, no,

440
00:25:56,840 --> 00:25:59,080
Speaker 1: I really don't. What are you eating that you think

441
00:25:59,080 --> 00:26:01,480
Speaker 1: you should be eating? Well, I have a half a

442
00:26:01,520 --> 00:26:03,600
Speaker 1: bagel in the morning with cheese. That's sort of my

443
00:26:03,680 --> 00:26:06,080
Speaker 1: standard breakfast, and my wife gets on me for that

444
00:26:06,920 --> 00:26:11,680
Speaker 1: for lunch. Unfortunately, because I'm running between you know, patients,

445
00:26:11,720 --> 00:26:14,520
Speaker 1: it often ends up being something very processed, and it's

446
00:26:14,520 --> 00:26:18,160
Speaker 1: a real problem for dinner though it's a very standard dinner,

447
00:26:18,320 --> 00:26:20,359
Speaker 1: and I don't snack between meals, and I still can't

448
00:26:20,359 --> 00:26:23,600
Speaker 1: lose it. So I understand. I'm there. I'm part of

449
00:26:23,600 --> 00:26:33,960
Speaker 1: the Sere Lupton. Probably not. Dessert is a luxury many

450
00:26:34,000 --> 00:26:37,040
Speaker 1: of us take for granted, but many people in America

451
00:26:37,160 --> 00:26:40,200
Speaker 1: go decades without the privilege of selecting what to eat,

452
00:26:40,359 --> 00:26:43,199
Speaker 1: or for that matter, what to wear, when to shower,

453
00:26:43,680 --> 00:26:48,720
Speaker 1: or any other meaningful life decision. I went to Rahway

454
00:26:48,840 --> 00:26:52,479
Speaker 1: Prison in New Jersey now called East Jersey State Prison

455
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:55,480
Speaker 1: to do research for a film. Over the course of

456
00:26:55,520 --> 00:27:00,560
Speaker 1: two weeks, I interviewed several inmates. I met armed robbers, rapists, dealers,

457
00:27:00,560 --> 00:27:04,720
Speaker 1: and murderers, and I'll never forget my experiences there. As

458
00:27:04,760 --> 00:27:08,919
Speaker 1: my next guest, Martin Horn will tell you, prisons are memorable.

459
00:27:09,440 --> 00:27:11,840
Speaker 1: The first prison he set foot in was sing Sing

460
00:27:12,080 --> 00:27:14,800
Speaker 1: in upstate New York. That's the Kensian, right, I mean,

461
00:27:14,840 --> 00:27:18,840
Speaker 1: it's uh. It was built in eighteen nineteen or thereabouts.

462
00:27:19,080 --> 00:27:23,040
Speaker 1: The prisoners hewed the stone off the palisades. The walls

463
00:27:23,080 --> 00:27:27,440
Speaker 1: of the original cell blocks still stand For over forty years,

464
00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:30,720
Speaker 1: martin Horn's career has focused on prisons and the men

465
00:27:30,760 --> 00:27:34,359
Speaker 1: and women who live there. He's held every imaginable job

466
00:27:34,400 --> 00:27:38,080
Speaker 1: in corrections, from debating the fairness of states sentencing guidelines

467
00:27:38,480 --> 00:27:42,120
Speaker 1: to fixing leaky water pipes in aging facilities. In two

468
00:27:42,160 --> 00:27:45,840
Speaker 1: thousand two, Mayor Bloomberg appointed Horn Commissioner of the New

469
00:27:45,920 --> 00:27:49,000
Speaker 1: York City Department of Probation. A year later, in an

470
00:27:49,080 --> 00:27:54,240
Speaker 1: unprecedented move, Bloomberg gave Horn an additional job, Commissioner of Corrections.

471
00:27:54,600 --> 00:27:58,120
Speaker 1: Horn held both positions until he left in two thousand nine.

472
00:27:58,840 --> 00:28:01,720
Speaker 1: Leaving public office has allowed martin Horn to be more

473
00:28:01,800 --> 00:28:05,560
Speaker 1: vocal about his opinions on prisons, sentencing, and how to

474
00:28:05,640 --> 00:28:08,400
Speaker 1: deal with our nation's drug problem. I would legalize drugs

475
00:28:08,440 --> 00:28:12,719
Speaker 1: across the board. You would really legalize all of them.

476
00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:18,479
Speaker 1: You would legalize old Yes, that's a pretty well stunned well.

477
00:28:18,480 --> 00:28:21,040
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say that while I

478
00:28:21,080 --> 00:28:23,359
Speaker 1: worked for a governor or a mayor who was an

479
00:28:23,359 --> 00:28:25,800
Speaker 1: elected offense. Why wouldn't you say that then? As opposed

480
00:28:25,840 --> 00:28:28,640
Speaker 1: to know because I had a mortgage debay. Martin Horne's

481
00:28:28,720 --> 00:28:32,199
Speaker 1: career in corrections started right out of college in nineteen

482
00:28:32,320 --> 00:28:34,760
Speaker 1: sixte My first job was as a New York State

483
00:28:34,760 --> 00:28:36,560
Speaker 1: parole officer. And how did you what was it that

484
00:28:36,640 --> 00:28:42,320
Speaker 1: led you down that path? Um? I graduated college, I

485
00:28:42,400 --> 00:28:45,600
Speaker 1: was twenty one years old. I needed a job, and

486
00:28:46,280 --> 00:28:48,640
Speaker 1: I took a civil service test. New York State at

487
00:28:48,640 --> 00:28:50,720
Speaker 1: that time had a test called the Professional Careers Test,

488
00:28:50,760 --> 00:28:53,880
Speaker 1: and it was sort of a generalist examination, and if

489
00:28:53,920 --> 00:28:56,560
Speaker 1: you passed it, it qualified you for a variety of positions.

490
00:28:57,480 --> 00:29:01,520
Speaker 1: I grew up in Brooklyn, uh in Flappish, my father

491
00:29:01,640 --> 00:29:04,400
Speaker 1: from fourth All right, well you took this as what

492
00:29:04,480 --> 00:29:06,400
Speaker 1: did you want to be a police officer? Was that first?

493
00:29:06,600 --> 00:29:09,200
Speaker 1: I wanted a job the family and civil service and

494
00:29:09,320 --> 00:29:12,040
Speaker 1: police and not at all, I said. When I took

495
00:29:12,040 --> 00:29:14,640
Speaker 1: the job, I didn't know there was such a thing

496
00:29:14,680 --> 00:29:16,880
Speaker 1: as a parole officer. I had never thought of it.

497
00:29:17,120 --> 00:29:19,280
Speaker 1: The first thing they did was they assigned me to

498
00:29:19,680 --> 00:29:21,720
Speaker 1: a unit they had then which they no longer have,

499
00:29:21,760 --> 00:29:24,600
Speaker 1: called the employment unit. We would get a paperwork on

500
00:29:25,000 --> 00:29:27,120
Speaker 1: individuals who were coming home from New York State prisons

501
00:29:27,120 --> 00:29:30,040
Speaker 1: who needed jobs, and we literally pounded the pavement in

502
00:29:30,080 --> 00:29:32,000
Speaker 1: New York City, walked all over. Each had sort of

503
00:29:32,000 --> 00:29:34,960
Speaker 1: a neighborhood. I had Long Island City, and each day

504
00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:38,800
Speaker 1: I got five or ten guys names and their backgrounds

505
00:29:38,840 --> 00:29:40,920
Speaker 1: on little five by eight cards, and I'd have to

506
00:29:40,920 --> 00:29:43,400
Speaker 1: go out and find them jobs. What was people's attitudes

507
00:29:43,440 --> 00:29:45,880
Speaker 1: toward employing those people back the Well, they actually we

508
00:29:45,920 --> 00:29:48,280
Speaker 1: had a very sophisticated system. We knew employers who had

509
00:29:48,280 --> 00:29:51,480
Speaker 1: previously hired employees and they were disposed, and they were disposed,

510
00:29:51,520 --> 00:29:53,120
Speaker 1: and many of them said, look, I hired a guy

511
00:29:53,360 --> 00:29:55,360
Speaker 1: from Clinton and he was the best guy to trusted

512
00:29:56,760 --> 00:29:58,760
Speaker 1: up with. That was that was. So we did that

513
00:29:58,800 --> 00:30:01,360
Speaker 1: for about six weeks. Then they actually sent me to

514
00:30:01,400 --> 00:30:04,840
Speaker 1: sing sing for I think two months, where I had

515
00:30:04,880 --> 00:30:07,840
Speaker 1: to meet with inmates who were becoming eligible for release

516
00:30:07,880 --> 00:30:10,440
Speaker 1: on parole and helped them to prepare for their appearance

517
00:30:10,480 --> 00:30:12,960
Speaker 1: before the Board of Parole. So you were interacting and

518
00:30:13,080 --> 00:30:15,840
Speaker 1: during this time with yes, but I wasn't responsibly supervising.

519
00:30:15,840 --> 00:30:17,840
Speaker 1: I was. I was interacted with families. I was learning

520
00:30:17,880 --> 00:30:19,880
Speaker 1: how to do investigations. So the guy that took this

521
00:30:19,960 --> 00:30:22,160
Speaker 1: test in nineteen sixty nine, who didn't have an eye

522
00:30:22,200 --> 00:30:24,400
Speaker 1: toward this kind of work, When you were interacting with

523
00:30:24,440 --> 00:30:27,640
Speaker 1: these people, what did you take from it. It was fascinating.

524
00:30:27,880 --> 00:30:31,040
Speaker 1: Where else do you see the varieties of human behavior.

525
00:30:31,560 --> 00:30:35,600
Speaker 1: I had grown up in a middle class home in Brooklyn,

526
00:30:36,000 --> 00:30:39,240
Speaker 1: on the edge of Brownsville. I was familiar with Brown's

527
00:30:39,280 --> 00:30:45,320
Speaker 1: villainies New York. There were adjacent neighborhoods. Yes, not as

528
00:30:45,320 --> 00:30:49,080
Speaker 1: tough as now, not as desperate as now, but Oceanville, Brownsville,

529
00:30:49,440 --> 00:30:54,080
Speaker 1: Ocean While I was as a and and the desperation

530
00:30:54,120 --> 00:30:57,000
Speaker 1: of the families, and more importantly to me, the dignity

531
00:30:57,040 --> 00:30:58,880
Speaker 1: of the families that we're making it. I used to

532
00:30:58,920 --> 00:31:02,120
Speaker 1: come home and say, what's remarkable is not how much

533
00:31:02,120 --> 00:31:03,840
Speaker 1: crime there is, but how little crime there is when

534
00:31:03,880 --> 00:31:06,680
Speaker 1: you see how people are living right and so to

535
00:31:06,720 --> 00:31:10,440
Speaker 1: this day, when between poverty and crime, and said, listen,

536
00:31:10,440 --> 00:31:12,560
Speaker 1: there are more people who grow up and live in

537
00:31:12,560 --> 00:31:15,800
Speaker 1: poverty who don't commit crimes. Yeah. And you know, before

538
00:31:15,800 --> 00:31:18,040
Speaker 1: I turned around, it just turned into a career and

539
00:31:18,080 --> 00:31:19,800
Speaker 1: I enjoyed it and I did well at it. Did

540
00:31:19,800 --> 00:31:22,600
Speaker 1: your attitude and this is a very broad question, but

541
00:31:22,800 --> 00:31:28,640
Speaker 1: did your overall attitude toward paroled inmates evolve over the

542
00:31:28,760 --> 00:31:31,080
Speaker 1: years where you were more at eye level with them

543
00:31:31,120 --> 00:31:33,520
Speaker 1: and hands on with them, and that it changed you

544
00:31:33,600 --> 00:31:35,480
Speaker 1: became more of an administrator, and you became head of

545
00:31:35,480 --> 00:31:39,840
Speaker 1: the department. I really think that my attitude towards imprisoned

546
00:31:39,840 --> 00:31:44,280
Speaker 1: and formally imprisoned people was formed during those early years

547
00:31:44,320 --> 00:31:46,840
Speaker 1: as a parole officer. How would it was one of

548
00:31:47,440 --> 00:31:50,880
Speaker 1: recognizing that every one of them was just a normal,

549
00:31:51,200 --> 00:31:55,560
Speaker 1: ordinary guy. They were all guys back then who had

550
00:31:55,600 --> 00:32:00,600
Speaker 1: made bad judgments. I made very few, really very few

551
00:32:00,640 --> 00:32:04,600
Speaker 1: who would downright evil and mean. They were pushed loves.

552
00:32:04,640 --> 00:32:06,120
Speaker 1: I said to one guy at one time, this was

553
00:32:06,160 --> 00:32:08,040
Speaker 1: a guy this is when you could smoke on the

554
00:32:08,120 --> 00:32:10,480
Speaker 1: on the subway. He had a cigarette lighter that was

555
00:32:10,480 --> 00:32:12,520
Speaker 1: in the shape of a derringer. He took it out

556
00:32:12,960 --> 00:32:15,560
Speaker 1: and a cop was looking at him, and he held

557
00:32:15,560 --> 00:32:17,360
Speaker 1: his arm out and aimed it at the cop. And

558
00:32:17,400 --> 00:32:19,840
Speaker 1: he got arrested. And I said to him, if stupidity

559
00:32:19,920 --> 00:32:22,640
Speaker 1: was a crime, you would get the death penalty. A

560
00:32:22,680 --> 00:32:26,320
Speaker 1: lot of them were addicted to drugs, and I met

561
00:32:26,360 --> 00:32:29,360
Speaker 1: their families and they were just folks. And you know, there,

562
00:32:29,360 --> 00:32:31,080
Speaker 1: but for the grace of God could go anyone of them.

563
00:32:31,640 --> 00:32:33,960
Speaker 1: I agree with you. I often think to myself, my God,

564
00:32:33,960 --> 00:32:37,360
Speaker 1: how many moments in my life could something have gone wrong?

565
00:32:38,080 --> 00:32:40,400
Speaker 1: Or I could be in a docket, and I could

566
00:32:40,400 --> 00:32:42,200
Speaker 1: be in a courtroom, and I could be facing prison

567
00:32:42,240 --> 00:32:45,160
Speaker 1: time and probably had the benefit of far better circumstances

568
00:32:45,160 --> 00:32:47,360
Speaker 1: than most of these guys, Right they didn't, You know?

569
00:32:47,400 --> 00:32:50,040
Speaker 1: They had difficulty frighten John, when you see people who

570
00:32:50,080 --> 00:32:52,600
Speaker 1: do have the benefit of the circumstances and still commit

571
00:32:52,640 --> 00:32:56,600
Speaker 1: crimes more harshly, Yeah, I always think to myself, we've

572
00:32:56,600 --> 00:32:59,160
Speaker 1: got it wrong. We need to be having longer sentences

573
00:32:59,160 --> 00:33:02,200
Speaker 1: for white collar and then we do forrect I've always felt,

574
00:33:02,320 --> 00:33:05,120
Speaker 1: and I said this even in my last years as

575
00:33:05,120 --> 00:33:07,000
Speaker 1: the head of a large corrections agency. This is what

576
00:33:07,040 --> 00:33:09,120
Speaker 1: I said to my staff. I said, this is our

577
00:33:09,160 --> 00:33:13,160
Speaker 1: standard of care. It is that every person in our

578
00:33:13,240 --> 00:33:16,560
Speaker 1: custody is to be treated as we would want our

579
00:33:16,600 --> 00:33:20,400
Speaker 1: own child treated if they were in that circumstance. You

580
00:33:20,520 --> 00:33:24,760
Speaker 1: felt that, I absolutely felt because for most people, you know,

581
00:33:24,840 --> 00:33:28,640
Speaker 1: you think about prison and imprisonment in our society, you know,

582
00:33:28,720 --> 00:33:32,200
Speaker 1: prison is divided into a dual function. There's to protect

583
00:33:32,360 --> 00:33:36,080
Speaker 1: the public and to take away these predatory people and

584
00:33:36,120 --> 00:33:38,640
Speaker 1: put them away, and then the rehabilitative aspect of it.

585
00:33:38,920 --> 00:33:41,800
Speaker 1: And most people have accept that dichotomy. I don't tell me, well,

586
00:33:41,840 --> 00:33:45,000
Speaker 1: I don't buy rehabilitation by that way. You mean, I

587
00:33:45,000 --> 00:33:47,200
Speaker 1: don't think that prisons do a very good job. I

588
00:33:47,200 --> 00:33:51,680
Speaker 1: think it is a valid social purpose two punish people

589
00:33:52,680 --> 00:33:55,360
Speaker 1: to reinforce our social norms. That's why we punish people.

590
00:33:55,760 --> 00:33:59,240
Speaker 1: It is a valid social purpose to punish people, to

591
00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:02,880
Speaker 1: extract vengeance in the name of society on behalf of

592
00:34:02,880 --> 00:34:07,520
Speaker 1: aggrieved victims. It's a valid social purpose to incapacitate people

593
00:34:07,560 --> 00:34:10,440
Speaker 1: who endanger us. You see, that's the more important to me.

594
00:34:10,760 --> 00:34:13,399
Speaker 1: And the prison system does those three things pretty well.

595
00:34:13,800 --> 00:34:16,480
Speaker 1: There was a sociologist, Hans Motok, who once said, you

596
00:34:16,480 --> 00:34:19,239
Speaker 1: can't train an aviator in a submarine. You can't train

597
00:34:19,280 --> 00:34:21,440
Speaker 1: a man to live in the community in prison. And

598
00:34:21,440 --> 00:34:24,719
Speaker 1: if a person needs rehabilitation and they're not dangerous, the

599
00:34:24,760 --> 00:34:28,120
Speaker 1: best place to rehabilitate, whatever the hell that means, is

600
00:34:28,160 --> 00:34:29,759
Speaker 1: in the community where they're gonna have to live. And

601
00:34:29,880 --> 00:34:31,920
Speaker 1: let me ask you that someone said something to me

602
00:34:31,960 --> 00:34:33,960
Speaker 1: on this visit to Rahway, and this is probably the

603
00:34:34,000 --> 00:34:36,719
Speaker 1: most significant thing someone said to me. And I said,

604
00:34:36,760 --> 00:34:39,400
Speaker 1: the problem with this system is the sentencing relative to

605
00:34:39,400 --> 00:34:42,719
Speaker 1: the classification of the crime, relative to the record of

606
00:34:42,719 --> 00:34:45,960
Speaker 1: the individual inmate because they said, some guys come in here,

607
00:34:46,520 --> 00:34:49,120
Speaker 1: and the following thing takes place. They come in here

608
00:34:49,600 --> 00:34:53,200
Speaker 1: and they're sorry, and then three months go by and

609
00:34:53,239 --> 00:34:57,279
Speaker 1: they're really really sorry, and six months go by and

610
00:34:57,320 --> 00:35:00,839
Speaker 1: they're really, really really sorry and are ready to get out,

611
00:35:00,880 --> 00:35:02,920
Speaker 1: and they're sorry, and then you keep them in there

612
00:35:02,920 --> 00:35:05,280
Speaker 1: another couple of months and they're not sorry. Now they're angry.

613
00:35:05,320 --> 00:35:09,120
Speaker 1: Flip and now they're angry, and now they've switched sides.

614
00:35:10,120 --> 00:35:12,200
Speaker 1: And I'm wondering what your opinion is. My opinion is

615
00:35:12,239 --> 00:35:15,879
Speaker 1: New York, Well, the United States generally incarcerates people longer

616
00:35:15,920 --> 00:35:18,880
Speaker 1: than any other country. I think we have over lengthy prisons,

617
00:35:18,920 --> 00:35:24,000
Speaker 1: absolutely absolutely. I mean if for victims crimes, and even

618
00:35:24,040 --> 00:35:27,960
Speaker 1: for crimes with victims. Ever since m Richard Nixon and

619
00:35:28,000 --> 00:35:30,719
Speaker 1: the War on Crime, which was really just a way

620
00:35:30,760 --> 00:35:33,120
Speaker 1: to capture the Southern vote because he really meant a

621
00:35:33,120 --> 00:35:36,279
Speaker 1: war on black people, ever since Willie Horton, which was

622
00:35:36,360 --> 00:35:39,680
Speaker 1: just an extension of that same thing, no politician has

623
00:35:39,719 --> 00:35:44,000
Speaker 1: been willing to reduce criminal sentences. And I think this

624
00:35:44,040 --> 00:35:47,319
Speaker 1: has been the politics and the media have driven it

625
00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:49,960
Speaker 1: in this country to a terrible extent. So you were

626
00:35:50,000 --> 00:35:52,080
Speaker 1: a parole officer for how many years? I was a

627
00:35:52,080 --> 00:35:57,839
Speaker 1: parole officer for about seven years, and then what happened? Uh? Then? Actually, well,

628
00:35:57,840 --> 00:36:01,720
Speaker 1: I got a graduate degree and I moved to upstate

629
00:36:01,760 --> 00:36:03,839
Speaker 1: New York to teach in the State University of New York.

630
00:36:03,840 --> 00:36:06,680
Speaker 1: I got a teaching appointment as an assistant professor, but

631
00:36:06,800 --> 00:36:10,240
Speaker 1: that didn't last long. Martin Horn left to become Director

632
00:36:10,480 --> 00:36:13,600
Speaker 1: of work Release Programs for New York State. This was

633
00:36:14,239 --> 00:36:18,319
Speaker 1: seven and New York was investing in halfway houses. The

634
00:36:18,400 --> 00:36:22,160
Speaker 1: idea is simple, reduce an inmates time and maximum security

635
00:36:22,200 --> 00:36:24,719
Speaker 1: to get that person a job. This saves a lot

636
00:36:24,760 --> 00:36:29,600
Speaker 1: of money and reduces recidivism, but is obviously no easy task. Look,

637
00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:33,520
Speaker 1: this business of corrections and and releasing people from prison

638
00:36:33,840 --> 00:36:37,799
Speaker 1: is essentially nothing more than a risk management exercise. Right,

639
00:36:38,040 --> 00:36:39,880
Speaker 1: We can never eliminate risk. The only way to have

640
00:36:39,960 --> 00:36:42,000
Speaker 1: no risk is to never let anybody out of their cell.

641
00:36:42,520 --> 00:36:47,520
Speaker 1: If you have six thousand guys in halfway houses, some

642
00:36:47,600 --> 00:36:50,160
Speaker 1: of them are going to screw up. The story about

643
00:36:50,239 --> 00:36:52,360
Speaker 1: New York that that we should feel good about is

644
00:36:52,400 --> 00:36:57,600
Speaker 1: that where in five New York State had seventy thou

645
00:36:57,880 --> 00:37:01,120
Speaker 1: people in prison. And mind you, when I started in

646
00:37:02,040 --> 00:37:05,760
Speaker 1: there were ten thousand people in prison, so were seventy

647
00:37:05,760 --> 00:37:08,880
Speaker 1: thousand today it's down to fifty the reform of the

648
00:37:08,960 --> 00:37:11,840
Speaker 1: Rockefellow drug laws. So it's there's no question in my

649
00:37:11,840 --> 00:37:14,480
Speaker 1: mind the number of people that are in prison is

650
00:37:14,520 --> 00:37:19,560
Speaker 1: a function of policy decisions made by elected officials. Who

651
00:37:19,600 --> 00:37:21,879
Speaker 1: do you think was ultimately responsible for bringing down those

652
00:37:21,960 --> 00:37:25,160
Speaker 1: laws because a lot of people that was just insane. Well, look,

653
00:37:25,200 --> 00:37:27,400
Speaker 1: I mean I think that there was an advocacy organization

654
00:37:27,440 --> 00:37:30,560
Speaker 1: dropped the rock in New York. I think that then

655
00:37:30,600 --> 00:37:34,040
Speaker 1: Governor Patterson deserves credit. I'm not sure any other governor

656
00:37:34,560 --> 00:37:37,680
Speaker 1: would have accepted that. And then also I think you

657
00:37:37,760 --> 00:37:42,080
Speaker 1: cannot ignore the cost issue. The cost of imprisonment in

658
00:37:42,120 --> 00:37:45,800
Speaker 1: New York State today even is still two billion dollars

659
00:37:45,880 --> 00:37:49,200
Speaker 1: a year in UM. Just about every state of the country,

660
00:37:49,239 --> 00:37:52,040
Speaker 1: over the last twenty years, the cost of imprisonment has

661
00:37:52,080 --> 00:37:55,480
Speaker 1: been the fastest growing item in state budgets. In California,

662
00:37:55,520 --> 00:38:00,399
Speaker 1: which for years UH was so proud of it's public

663
00:38:00,520 --> 00:38:04,479
Speaker 1: university system, reached the point where it was spending more

664
00:38:04,640 --> 00:38:06,680
Speaker 1: on its state prisons, which now hold a hundred and

665
00:38:06,760 --> 00:38:10,600
Speaker 1: sixty people, than it was on its state universities. So

666
00:38:10,640 --> 00:38:12,440
Speaker 1: I think that it was a perfect storm. All the

667
00:38:12,480 --> 00:38:17,040
Speaker 1: factors came together. The fiscal conservatives were driven by the

668
00:38:17,080 --> 00:38:21,560
Speaker 1: price issues, and concern is that it's driven by cost

669
00:38:21,640 --> 00:38:25,560
Speaker 1: and that it does not reflect a genuine rethinking of

670
00:38:25,600 --> 00:38:32,840
Speaker 1: our approach to crime and imprisonment. When I was a

671
00:38:32,840 --> 00:38:36,160
Speaker 1: parole officer, we had an expression trail um, nail him

672
00:38:36,160 --> 00:38:38,719
Speaker 1: and jael um, and the idea was that it was

673
00:38:38,800 --> 00:38:41,319
Speaker 1: up to the parole to do all the work and

674
00:38:41,480 --> 00:38:43,359
Speaker 1: if he screwed up, we would catch him and lock

675
00:38:43,440 --> 00:38:45,200
Speaker 1: him up. And we had this belief that if we

676
00:38:45,239 --> 00:38:47,479
Speaker 1: locked him up before he committed a more serious crime,

677
00:38:47,480 --> 00:38:52,400
Speaker 1: we were performing a public service. Martin Horne's years of

678
00:38:52,440 --> 00:38:56,440
Speaker 1: hands on experience changed his opinions. He grew to believe

679
00:38:56,480 --> 00:38:59,280
Speaker 1: that the prison system wasn't doing enough for ex inmates.

680
00:38:59,719 --> 00:39:02,919
Speaker 1: For Horn, there are three elements to successful re entry

681
00:39:03,080 --> 00:39:06,520
Speaker 1: from prison. Ex Offenders need help finding a job, a

682
00:39:06,560 --> 00:39:11,480
Speaker 1: place to live, and staying sober. Coming up, Horn on

683
00:39:11,600 --> 00:39:14,520
Speaker 1: his decision to leave public service. To this day, I'm

684
00:39:14,520 --> 00:39:17,359
Speaker 1: not entirely sure what happened. I will tell you this

685
00:39:17,520 --> 00:39:20,520
Speaker 1: is something you think can happen anywhere, absolutely and it

686
00:39:20,680 --> 00:39:23,160
Speaker 1: is I will say, what caused me to decide to

687
00:39:23,239 --> 00:39:25,600
Speaker 1: retire because I felt that I could not trust my

688
00:39:25,640 --> 00:39:30,480
Speaker 1: workforce any longer. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening

689
00:39:30,520 --> 00:39:40,359
Speaker 1: to Here's the thing. This is Alec Baldwin, and you're

690
00:39:40,400 --> 00:39:44,000
Speaker 1: listening to Here's the Thing. In October two thousand eight,

691
00:39:44,040 --> 00:39:47,320
Speaker 1: and eighteen year old boy was killed at Rikers Island,

692
00:39:47,400 --> 00:39:51,880
Speaker 1: New York City's largest jail, by fellow inmates. The Village

693
00:39:51,960 --> 00:39:54,760
Speaker 1: Voice had been reporting for the past year about violence

694
00:39:54,760 --> 00:39:57,879
Speaker 1: among prisoners at Riker's guards were said to be looking

695
00:39:57,920 --> 00:40:01,360
Speaker 1: the other way. In two thousand twelve, the Voice obtained

696
00:40:01,400 --> 00:40:05,280
Speaker 1: and published graphic pictures of knife wounds and other injuries

697
00:40:05,320 --> 00:40:09,239
Speaker 1: from inside the jail walls. The largest jail system in

698
00:40:09,280 --> 00:40:12,000
Speaker 1: the country had a fight club that was condoned and

699
00:40:12,040 --> 00:40:16,000
Speaker 1: even promoted by jail officials. The program, as it was called,

700
00:40:16,280 --> 00:40:20,160
Speaker 1: delivered the most challenging moments of Martin Horne's career. The

701
00:40:20,239 --> 00:40:23,520
Speaker 1: story is that a young man by the Christopher Robinson

702
00:40:24,719 --> 00:40:29,160
Speaker 1: was put into a particular housing unit, in the adolescent

703
00:40:29,160 --> 00:40:31,520
Speaker 1: housing unit, and he had been transferred there because in

704
00:40:31,920 --> 00:40:34,439
Speaker 1: the unit that he had been in previously, he had

705
00:40:34,520 --> 00:40:40,040
Speaker 1: actually been extorting from a weaker inmate, and he was

706
00:40:40,080 --> 00:40:43,279
Speaker 1: caught so his classification was increased and he was put

707
00:40:43,320 --> 00:40:45,879
Speaker 1: into this higher classification unit, so you know, the sort

708
00:40:45,880 --> 00:40:48,439
Speaker 1: of pecking ortist. So now he gets there and these

709
00:40:48,480 --> 00:40:50,399
Speaker 1: guys who had been there for a while, who were

710
00:40:50,440 --> 00:40:53,120
Speaker 1: this clique, they step up to him and they said,

711
00:40:53,680 --> 00:40:55,520
Speaker 1: we're going to extort from you, and he says to

712
00:40:55,560 --> 00:40:58,279
Speaker 1: them on the extorter here, you don't extort from me.

713
00:40:58,719 --> 00:41:02,839
Speaker 1: So they tune them up, they beat them up. Come

714
00:41:02,880 --> 00:41:05,279
Speaker 1: to find out that they had been extorting from other

715
00:41:05,360 --> 00:41:07,799
Speaker 1: inmates and that this has been going on for some

716
00:41:07,880 --> 00:41:13,520
Speaker 1: time with the prior knowledge and arguably the connivance of

717
00:41:13,560 --> 00:41:16,480
Speaker 1: the officers, and basically the officers had made a devil's

718
00:41:16,480 --> 00:41:19,080
Speaker 1: bargain with the image, look, you don't beat us up,

719
00:41:19,080 --> 00:41:22,360
Speaker 1: you don't attack us, and we'll let you run the

720
00:41:22,400 --> 00:41:26,040
Speaker 1: show exactly, which, by the way, you know, most officers,

721
00:41:26,400 --> 00:41:31,080
Speaker 1: perhaps all officers, are scared out of their minds. The

722
00:41:31,200 --> 00:41:34,719
Speaker 1: job that we ask corrections officers to do are terrifying.

723
00:41:36,120 --> 00:41:45,560
Speaker 1: We asked them to supervise fifty often angry, sometimes mentally

724
00:41:45,560 --> 00:41:50,120
Speaker 1: ill young men in during the worst period of their life,

725
00:41:50,200 --> 00:41:53,320
Speaker 1: during the worst period of their lives, who are craving

726
00:41:53,719 --> 00:41:58,680
Speaker 1: some addictive substance in an open dormitory, and they're in

727
00:41:58,760 --> 00:42:04,200
Speaker 1: that dormitory by themselves. So how does this one individual

728
00:42:05,239 --> 00:42:08,759
Speaker 1: assert himself. He does not carry a weapon, he does

729
00:42:08,800 --> 00:42:11,880
Speaker 1: not carry a baton. There may be another officer in

730
00:42:11,880 --> 00:42:17,840
Speaker 1: a controlled room some ten twt away who can sound

731
00:42:17,880 --> 00:42:19,919
Speaker 1: the alarm and ask for help, but by the time

732
00:42:19,960 --> 00:42:22,200
Speaker 1: help arrives, he can be beaten to a bloody pulp.

733
00:42:22,520 --> 00:42:25,720
Speaker 1: So it's two in the morning, you're making a rounds

734
00:42:25,800 --> 00:42:32,640
Speaker 1: walking around this dormitory of fifty year old guys. In

735
00:42:32,680 --> 00:42:36,200
Speaker 1: the back corner, you stumble across two of them smoking weed.

736
00:42:37,000 --> 00:42:39,239
Speaker 1: You have a decision to make. You can turn your

737
00:42:39,239 --> 00:42:41,920
Speaker 1: back and walk the other way. You can try and

738
00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:45,040
Speaker 1: bust them and run the risk that their friends will

739
00:42:45,360 --> 00:42:48,680
Speaker 1: pounce on you and pummel you. So which happens, which

740
00:42:48,840 --> 00:42:52,840
Speaker 1: certainly happens, how frequently more frequently than we'd like it to.

741
00:42:52,920 --> 00:42:55,120
Speaker 1: And that's another reason that I left, because I feel

742
00:42:55,120 --> 00:42:57,600
Speaker 1: the prisons are understaffed. I think it's is wrong to

743
00:42:57,680 --> 00:43:00,839
Speaker 1: ask one man. And by the way, today more than

744
00:43:00,840 --> 00:43:03,120
Speaker 1: fifty of the correction officers in the city of New

745
00:43:03,160 --> 00:43:06,439
Speaker 1: York are women. So when you say that the two

746
00:43:06,440 --> 00:43:09,480
Speaker 1: guys smoke weed, the corrections officer comes, he sees you

747
00:43:09,560 --> 00:43:11,880
Speaker 1: got a decision to make, and someone's gonna pummel you.

748
00:43:11,920 --> 00:43:14,719
Speaker 1: Do you have a system in place where you know

749
00:43:15,200 --> 00:43:19,160
Speaker 1: who's more disposed towards violent behavior inside the facility when

750
00:43:19,200 --> 00:43:22,520
Speaker 1: they come in, and why can't you separate them before

751
00:43:22,840 --> 00:43:26,000
Speaker 1: in an anticipatory way. Well, we have what assystem we

752
00:43:26,040 --> 00:43:29,000
Speaker 1: refer to a classification, and you basically separate the most

753
00:43:29,000 --> 00:43:31,359
Speaker 1: serious inmates and put them in maximum security. But at

754
00:43:31,360 --> 00:43:33,040
Speaker 1: the end of the day, somebody has to supervise those

755
00:43:33,040 --> 00:43:36,040
Speaker 1: maximum security inmates. What reforms do you think could be

756
00:43:36,040 --> 00:43:40,000
Speaker 1: made in supervising maximum security inmates? Generally? I don't like

757
00:43:40,080 --> 00:43:42,160
Speaker 1: to open dormitories. I think every inmate should have his

758
00:43:42,200 --> 00:43:44,480
Speaker 1: own cell. Cells do not have to be oppressive, They

759
00:43:44,480 --> 00:43:46,960
Speaker 1: do not have to be depressing. They can be bright

760
00:43:47,080 --> 00:43:50,160
Speaker 1: and airy, they don't have to be oppressive. Everybody in

761
00:43:50,239 --> 00:43:51,920
Speaker 1: their own room. Everybody should have their own room. I don't,

762
00:43:52,000 --> 00:43:54,440
Speaker 1: you don't selling, I don't, and I don't. Well, well,

763
00:43:54,960 --> 00:43:56,839
Speaker 1: I think that I don't think that's cruel and unusual people.

764
00:43:57,680 --> 00:43:59,560
Speaker 1: I think, well, I don't like to use those terms

765
00:43:59,600 --> 00:44:01,600
Speaker 1: cruel and usual. And in fact, the Supreme Court has

766
00:44:01,640 --> 00:44:04,399
Speaker 1: said that there is no one man, one sell rule

767
00:44:04,440 --> 00:44:07,919
Speaker 1: living in the constitution. But I think that we all

768
00:44:07,960 --> 00:44:10,800
Speaker 1: have privacy needs to your knowledge, and I would trust

769
00:44:10,800 --> 00:44:13,439
Speaker 1: your opinion. Do the inmates do they want their own sell?

770
00:44:13,520 --> 00:44:16,239
Speaker 1: They do? They prefer it. Some like company, some like

771
00:44:16,360 --> 00:44:19,600
Speaker 1: company for the wrong reasons, But most people, I think

772
00:44:19,640 --> 00:44:22,960
Speaker 1: want their privacy. This is your safety zone, right, Nobody

773
00:44:22,960 --> 00:44:24,880
Speaker 1: can get you if you want to come out. You know,

774
00:44:24,920 --> 00:44:27,319
Speaker 1: different people go to prisons and and they're terrified to

775
00:44:27,360 --> 00:44:29,720
Speaker 1: be out in the prison yard with all these other inmates.

776
00:44:29,960 --> 00:44:32,399
Speaker 1: Is there a constant pulsing sense of fear for people

777
00:44:32,440 --> 00:44:34,839
Speaker 1: who were in the prison yard not in a well

778
00:44:34,920 --> 00:44:37,719
Speaker 1: run prison. Look, it's the job of the officers to

779
00:44:37,800 --> 00:44:39,560
Speaker 1: keep the inmates safe. And if we don't keep the

780
00:44:39,600 --> 00:44:41,680
Speaker 1: inmates safe, they'll find ways to keep themselves safe. How

781
00:44:41,719 --> 00:44:44,280
Speaker 1: will they do that. They'll do that by joining gangs.

782
00:44:44,280 --> 00:44:47,799
Speaker 1: And they'll do that by creating in New York State

783
00:44:47,840 --> 00:44:50,000
Speaker 1: now a lot of gangs. I can't come it on

784
00:44:50,080 --> 00:44:52,799
Speaker 1: New York State prisons. I know that it's certainly a

785
00:44:52,800 --> 00:44:54,640
Speaker 1: problem in New York City and in the city, and

786
00:44:54,680 --> 00:44:56,239
Speaker 1: they do these gangs. I guess, like, if I got

787
00:44:56,239 --> 00:44:59,319
Speaker 1: into prison tomorrow, is it just expect that I'm going

788
00:44:59,360 --> 00:45:01,000
Speaker 1: to join a gang my own potential. You see, this

789
00:45:01,040 --> 00:45:03,359
Speaker 1: gets to the program. You're the new guy. You come

790
00:45:03,400 --> 00:45:07,120
Speaker 1: into this open dormitory of fifty inmates and there's a

791
00:45:07,160 --> 00:45:10,040
Speaker 1: group of maybe ten or fifteen of them. Perhaps they

792
00:45:10,080 --> 00:45:12,600
Speaker 1: know themselves from the street, perhaps they self identify as

793
00:45:12,640 --> 00:45:17,080
Speaker 1: bloods or crips or Latin Kings or whatever. Not too

794
00:45:17,080 --> 00:45:20,000
Speaker 1: many of those in New York. But if you're in California, sure,

795
00:45:20,280 --> 00:45:22,640
Speaker 1: and they step to you and they say, here's the deal.

796
00:45:22,960 --> 00:45:25,520
Speaker 1: Are you with us? And if if you're stupid enough

797
00:45:25,520 --> 00:45:28,520
Speaker 1: to walk into a dormitory where there are twenty inmates

798
00:45:28,520 --> 00:45:31,360
Speaker 1: who call themselves bloods and you say, hell, I'm a crip,

799
00:45:32,239 --> 00:45:34,360
Speaker 1: Well they're gonna do the same thing they duty on

800
00:45:34,400 --> 00:45:38,480
Speaker 1: the street. Get off our turf. Prison and jail is

801
00:45:38,520 --> 00:45:42,279
Speaker 1: this artificial scarcity that we create, right, So there's by

802
00:45:42,360 --> 00:45:45,200
Speaker 1: and large, little food, there's no drugs, there's no girls,

803
00:45:45,280 --> 00:45:49,239
Speaker 1: there's no sex. You know, there's no money, and it's

804
00:45:49,239 --> 00:45:52,600
Speaker 1: a black market. And so, as with any place else,

805
00:45:52,920 --> 00:45:55,640
Speaker 1: a group of inmates emerges and they say, we control it,

806
00:45:55,719 --> 00:45:57,840
Speaker 1: the simplest thing. And this is what was happening, certainly

807
00:45:57,840 --> 00:46:01,719
Speaker 1: in the adolescent jail where that program occurred, there were

808
00:46:01,719 --> 00:46:04,399
Speaker 1: never enough chairs for all the inmates, and a group

809
00:46:04,440 --> 00:46:08,400
Speaker 1: of inmates would say, on Saturday mornings, when this program

810
00:46:08,480 --> 00:46:10,480
Speaker 1: is on, or when this sporting event is on, there's

811
00:46:10,480 --> 00:46:12,839
Speaker 1: one TV said it is for the black guys and

812
00:46:12,880 --> 00:46:17,040
Speaker 1: you Spanish guys. You stay in yourselves, because that's our time. Now,

813
00:46:17,080 --> 00:46:19,440
Speaker 1: an officer has a choice to make. First of all,

814
00:46:19,440 --> 00:46:21,799
Speaker 1: he should see it going on, and if he sees

815
00:46:21,840 --> 00:46:25,040
Speaker 1: it going on, he should take that away. Were there

816
00:46:25,080 --> 00:46:28,960
Speaker 1: any prosecutions of any of the officers to officers actually

817
00:46:28,960 --> 00:46:32,800
Speaker 1: were convicted of gang assault, and five or seven of

818
00:46:32,840 --> 00:46:35,319
Speaker 1: the inmates ultimately were convicted. I don't know what the

819
00:46:35,400 --> 00:46:37,920
Speaker 1: charge was, but it might have been manslaughter. I mean,

820
00:46:37,920 --> 00:46:40,759
Speaker 1: I don't think they intended to kill Christopher Robinson. The

821
00:46:40,840 --> 00:46:44,040
Speaker 1: troubling thing was that there have been stories for some time. Uh,

822
00:46:44,120 --> 00:46:46,040
Speaker 1: and this is what the voice documented, that this had

823
00:46:46,080 --> 00:46:48,759
Speaker 1: been going on. There were bread crumbs, and that if

824
00:46:48,760 --> 00:46:50,920
Speaker 1: we had done a better job of following those bread crumbs,

825
00:46:51,520 --> 00:46:54,080
Speaker 1: we perhaps would have seen it earlier and prevented it

826
00:46:54,280 --> 00:46:55,960
Speaker 1: to people. You know, I'd like to get back to

827
00:46:55,960 --> 00:46:57,480
Speaker 1: another point. You make, you know, you make the point

828
00:46:57,480 --> 00:47:01,160
Speaker 1: of it how we deal with white collar criminals or

829
00:47:01,200 --> 00:47:04,600
Speaker 1: with everybody uses the made off example. You know Martha Stewart,

830
00:47:05,040 --> 00:47:08,440
Speaker 1: you've met her many times. I'm sure she's a lovely person.

831
00:47:08,680 --> 00:47:13,560
Speaker 1: So we know that some years ago she um lied

832
00:47:13,600 --> 00:47:18,520
Speaker 1: to a federal officer investigating supposed inside her stock manipulation.

833
00:47:18,600 --> 00:47:21,400
Speaker 1: She was not convicted of stock manipulation. She was convicted

834
00:47:21,400 --> 00:47:24,440
Speaker 1: of line to a federal officer, and she got what

835
00:47:24,680 --> 00:47:28,960
Speaker 1: four months in a federal prisoner Alderson. So today, but

836
00:47:29,120 --> 00:47:32,600
Speaker 1: for her current troubles with Macy's and Pennies, she's better

837
00:47:32,640 --> 00:47:35,360
Speaker 1: off than she was when she went to prison. What

838
00:47:35,480 --> 00:47:37,440
Speaker 1: did society game by them? Let me suggest to you,

839
00:47:37,480 --> 00:47:42,000
Speaker 1: what if instead we had erected a ten foot high

840
00:47:42,040 --> 00:47:45,080
Speaker 1: platform in Times Square and we had climate control that

841
00:47:45,120 --> 00:47:47,880
Speaker 1: we enclosed the plexiglass, we heated it, we air conditioned it,

842
00:47:48,080 --> 00:47:50,640
Speaker 1: and we put a stool, you know, like a bar

843
00:47:50,719 --> 00:47:54,480
Speaker 1: stool in it and stocks. Well I wouldn't put her

844
00:47:54,480 --> 00:47:57,960
Speaker 1: in stocks, but I every day want to be here

845
00:47:58,000 --> 00:47:59,719
Speaker 1: at nine o'clock in the morning, and you were to

846
00:47:59,719 --> 00:48:02,640
Speaker 1: remain here until five in the afternoon. You know, we'll

847
00:48:02,640 --> 00:48:05,000
Speaker 1: protect you from the elements, and you'll sit here with

848
00:48:05,040 --> 00:48:07,160
Speaker 1: a sign around your neck that says I'm a liar.

849
00:48:08,680 --> 00:48:11,440
Speaker 1: You can bathe, but you can't get all dressed up.

850
00:48:11,480 --> 00:48:14,080
Speaker 1: You can't wear jewelry, you can't wear makeup. You know,

851
00:48:14,120 --> 00:48:15,920
Speaker 1: you can attend to all your personality that sort of thing.

852
00:48:15,920 --> 00:48:18,640
Speaker 1: We're not looking to harm you, but you can't do

853
00:48:18,680 --> 00:48:21,720
Speaker 1: all that stuff. And after you've sat in Times Square

854
00:48:21,840 --> 00:48:25,040
Speaker 1: for some period of time where the world could see

855
00:48:25,040 --> 00:48:28,040
Speaker 1: that you are a liar, you are to perform community

856
00:48:28,040 --> 00:48:30,600
Speaker 1: service for a year where you're to go out to

857
00:48:31,000 --> 00:48:35,279
Speaker 1: East New York and teach young women about nutrition, about

858
00:48:35,320 --> 00:48:37,480
Speaker 1: dressing for success, about all of the things that you

859
00:48:37,520 --> 00:48:41,640
Speaker 1: do so well. And in addition, you have to pay

860
00:48:41,680 --> 00:48:47,280
Speaker 1: back trouble or quadruple what you made on this financial fraud.

861
00:48:47,560 --> 00:48:49,640
Speaker 1: And that's it. But we're not going to imprison you.

862
00:48:51,640 --> 00:48:55,040
Speaker 1: Would we have had as great a deterrent effect? Would

863
00:48:55,120 --> 00:49:00,080
Speaker 1: we have punished her? Would we have convinced turn not

864
00:49:00,200 --> 00:49:03,800
Speaker 1: to try to do it again? Would we have deterred others?

865
00:49:04,640 --> 00:49:07,040
Speaker 1: I would argue yes, And yet we don't do those things.

866
00:49:07,040 --> 00:49:10,000
Speaker 1: We don't use shape in our society. But but I

867
00:49:10,040 --> 00:49:14,120
Speaker 1: agree with you in terms of what you're suggesting. Whoever,

868
00:49:14,200 --> 00:49:17,359
Speaker 1: we do have that now we have the internet. As

869
00:49:17,400 --> 00:49:21,040
Speaker 1: my friend one said, the internet represents the death of forgetting.

870
00:49:21,840 --> 00:49:24,839
Speaker 1: Martha Stewart is forever going to be referred to as

871
00:49:25,719 --> 00:49:28,719
Speaker 1: you know, formerly incarcerated, blah blah blah, that that's going

872
00:49:28,760 --> 00:49:30,600
Speaker 1: to stay with the rest of her life. But was

873
00:49:30,640 --> 00:49:35,200
Speaker 1: she punished? My point is simply this, as a society,

874
00:49:35,600 --> 00:49:42,040
Speaker 1: our primary response to crime is prison. It's the only tool.

875
00:49:42,280 --> 00:49:45,360
Speaker 1: I don't understand. You know the aphorism that if the

876
00:49:45,400 --> 00:49:48,160
Speaker 1: only tool on your belt is a hammer, everything looks

877
00:49:48,160 --> 00:49:50,880
Speaker 1: like an app Well, that's that's true with respect to

878
00:49:50,880 --> 00:49:55,200
Speaker 1: our approach to imprisonment. If you had um three things

879
00:49:55,640 --> 00:50:01,520
Speaker 1: that you were going to change about the federal, state, city,

880
00:50:01,880 --> 00:50:06,200
Speaker 1: what would you change about the way we deal with convicted. Well,

881
00:50:06,239 --> 00:50:08,080
Speaker 1: so that's that. That excludes the city. Let's talk about

882
00:50:08,080 --> 00:50:11,680
Speaker 1: federal and federal. The first thing I do is I

883
00:50:11,840 --> 00:50:14,520
Speaker 1: legalized drugs. Right when you say that, though, I mean

884
00:50:14,719 --> 00:50:17,719
Speaker 1: obviously there are people who inside that argument talk about

885
00:50:17,719 --> 00:50:19,960
Speaker 1: cocaine and heroin. You don't care you'd legalize. I would

886
00:50:20,000 --> 00:50:23,080
Speaker 1: legalized drugs. We couldn't possibly do worse than we're doing now, right,

887
00:50:23,600 --> 00:50:25,720
Speaker 1: But what would you do to take it even further?

888
00:50:25,920 --> 00:50:27,279
Speaker 1: I mean, you've been involved with the system for a

889
00:50:27,320 --> 00:50:29,840
Speaker 1: long one time, you'd have the government dispensing cocaine and heroin.

890
00:50:30,040 --> 00:50:33,239
Speaker 1: I would sell it in the liquor stores, right, and

891
00:50:33,280 --> 00:50:35,080
Speaker 1: I would tax the hell out of it. You just

892
00:50:35,160 --> 00:50:37,040
Speaker 1: license it and sell it. I mean, I agree with you.

893
00:50:37,760 --> 00:50:39,240
Speaker 1: And then I would take all the money we're spending

894
00:50:39,239 --> 00:50:40,800
Speaker 1: and all the money we're going to make, and I

895
00:50:40,840 --> 00:50:43,879
Speaker 1: would reinvest it in prevention. You know, I grew up

896
00:50:45,000 --> 00:50:48,640
Speaker 1: never using a seatbelt, and to this day I'll drive

897
00:50:48,680 --> 00:50:52,160
Speaker 1: around without a seatbelt. My kids who are now prison

898
00:50:52,239 --> 00:50:55,080
Speaker 1: for that. You know. I suppose my son when he

899
00:50:55,120 --> 00:50:56,600
Speaker 1: was two years old, if I started to back the

900
00:50:56,640 --> 00:51:00,520
Speaker 1: car out before he was buckled in, would have a tantrum. Right,

901
00:51:01,520 --> 00:51:05,440
Speaker 1: pure kids are smoking today. We can prevent, we can

902
00:51:05,560 --> 00:51:08,799
Speaker 1: provide treatment, and there will be and there will be

903
00:51:08,840 --> 00:51:14,160
Speaker 1: money to spare. So I would legalize drugs. I would

904
00:51:14,320 --> 00:51:18,840
Speaker 1: reduce the length of time that people who do commit crimes,

905
00:51:19,160 --> 00:51:24,120
Speaker 1: violent crimes, well, for all crimes, but for those people

906
00:51:25,239 --> 00:51:29,520
Speaker 1: who scare us the most. John Mohammad, remember the Washington sniper. Right,

907
00:51:30,000 --> 00:51:33,480
Speaker 1: you have to incapacitate him forever, right, Jeffrey Dahmer, Right,

908
00:51:33,560 --> 00:51:38,080
Speaker 1: you have to inca mentally mentally ill, that's a whole

909
00:51:38,120 --> 00:51:42,880
Speaker 1: different story. That's that's item four. The great shame of

910
00:51:42,920 --> 00:51:46,960
Speaker 1: our society today is that the people in prison have

911
00:51:47,040 --> 00:51:50,760
Speaker 1: a mental illness. More people receive acute mental health care

912
00:51:51,280 --> 00:51:54,000
Speaker 1: in the jails in this country than they do in

913
00:51:54,040 --> 00:51:56,880
Speaker 1: the mental hospitals. Mentally ill people don't belong in jail,

914
00:51:56,920 --> 00:52:00,439
Speaker 1: and it is a scandal in our mentalists out of crime.

915
00:52:00,520 --> 00:52:03,040
Speaker 1: You're not allowed to give violent inmates in any kind

916
00:52:03,040 --> 00:52:05,759
Speaker 1: of a system drugs. You're not allowed to well if

917
00:52:05,800 --> 00:52:08,680
Speaker 1: if if they're being treated for mental illness, people mentally

918
00:52:08,840 --> 00:52:12,080
Speaker 1: just for being, you're not even drug them to quiet

919
00:52:12,120 --> 00:52:14,440
Speaker 1: them down. You can't know without a court order. I

920
00:52:14,440 --> 00:52:16,439
Speaker 1: mean you can if there's a court order. Number three,

921
00:52:16,760 --> 00:52:19,000
Speaker 1: um Number three is I would change the way we

922
00:52:19,000 --> 00:52:22,120
Speaker 1: release people from prison. I would actually do away with

923
00:52:22,200 --> 00:52:25,960
Speaker 1: the parole boards and discretionary parole. I would make every

924
00:52:25,960 --> 00:52:28,560
Speaker 1: sense a determinate sense. I would say you're gonna be

925
00:52:28,640 --> 00:52:30,759
Speaker 1: under the control of the state for a period of time.

926
00:52:30,840 --> 00:52:33,560
Speaker 1: Let's just say, for arguments, take five years. For the

927
00:52:33,560 --> 00:52:36,120
Speaker 1: first three of those years, you're gonna go to prison,

928
00:52:36,160 --> 00:52:38,040
Speaker 1: and we'll leave it up to the corrections people to

929
00:52:38,120 --> 00:52:40,320
Speaker 1: decide back someimum medium minimum. But at the end of

930
00:52:40,360 --> 00:52:42,960
Speaker 1: three years, you're coming back to the community. And when

931
00:52:42,960 --> 00:52:44,719
Speaker 1: you come back to the community, you're gonna live in

932
00:52:44,719 --> 00:52:47,239
Speaker 1: a halfway house. And while you're in the halfway house,

933
00:52:47,239 --> 00:52:49,880
Speaker 1: we are going to help you connect with a relapse

934
00:52:49,920 --> 00:52:52,320
Speaker 1: prevention program to prevent your relapse to drug abuse. And

935
00:52:52,360 --> 00:52:54,680
Speaker 1: we're gonna help you to get involved in an a

936
00:52:54,680 --> 00:52:56,520
Speaker 1: A program. And we're gonna help you find a job.

937
00:52:57,160 --> 00:52:58,680
Speaker 1: And you're not gonna have to pay us any money.

938
00:52:58,680 --> 00:53:01,160
Speaker 1: You're gonna save the money you earn on your job,

939
00:53:01,520 --> 00:53:03,319
Speaker 1: and we're gonna help you find a place to live.

940
00:53:03,360 --> 00:53:05,800
Speaker 1: And when you've saved enough money to pay a month's

941
00:53:05,840 --> 00:53:09,400
Speaker 1: rent in a month's deposit and maybe another month, you

942
00:53:09,440 --> 00:53:11,080
Speaker 1: can go home and live on your own and we're

943
00:53:11,120 --> 00:53:14,400
Speaker 1: done with you. So I would I would have fixed sentences,

944
00:53:14,600 --> 00:53:18,239
Speaker 1: and that way what happens now is Johnny Jones goes

945
00:53:18,280 --> 00:53:22,960
Speaker 1: to prison for uh five to fifteen years, those at

946
00:53:23,000 --> 00:53:26,239
Speaker 1: five or is at fifteen, and parlber PAROLESO five. The

947
00:53:26,320 --> 00:53:28,759
Speaker 1: victim says, my god, I thought he was going away

948
00:53:28,800 --> 00:53:31,960
Speaker 1: for fifteen years. Or he goes in front of the

949
00:53:31,960 --> 00:53:34,719
Speaker 1: parole board and they say, Johnny, we're gonna hold you

950
00:53:34,719 --> 00:53:36,920
Speaker 1: for five more years. When I pleaded guilty and my

951
00:53:37,000 --> 00:53:39,239
Speaker 1: lawyer told me that if I did everything right and

952
00:53:39,280 --> 00:53:41,239
Speaker 1: kept my nose clean, I'd be out in five And

953
00:53:41,280 --> 00:53:43,000
Speaker 1: the probert says, well, we were in the room when

954
00:53:43,000 --> 00:53:46,239
Speaker 1: that deal got made. The whole system currently is deceptive,

955
00:53:46,520 --> 00:53:50,200
Speaker 1: undermines respect for the rule of law, and it doesn't

956
00:53:50,200 --> 00:53:53,920
Speaker 1: allow us to release individuals from prison in a planful way.

957
00:53:54,040 --> 00:53:55,959
Speaker 1: So I would those are the three things I would change.

958
00:53:56,120 --> 00:53:58,320
Speaker 1: Are you glad you're done? Are you glad you're walking

959
00:53:58,360 --> 00:54:00,719
Speaker 1: away from that? It was? It was, It was a

960
00:54:00,760 --> 00:54:04,960
Speaker 1: fascinating career. I am absolutely glad I'm done. You are um?

961
00:54:05,160 --> 00:54:07,879
Speaker 1: Was its spiritually deadening in other ways as well? I mean,

962
00:54:07,880 --> 00:54:10,880
Speaker 1: because I I can't think of anything more horrific than

963
00:54:10,920 --> 00:54:12,640
Speaker 1: when I was in prison. At some level, there is

964
00:54:12,719 --> 00:54:14,640
Speaker 1: no place also a grown man could have as much fun.

965
00:54:15,480 --> 00:54:17,319
Speaker 1: When I was the warden of Hudson Prison, I used

966
00:54:17,360 --> 00:54:19,800
Speaker 1: to say to people that it was a cross between

967
00:54:20,080 --> 00:54:22,840
Speaker 1: being the headmaster of a somewhat down on its hills

968
00:54:22,880 --> 00:54:25,799
Speaker 1: boys school and the King of England, because you were

969
00:54:25,800 --> 00:54:28,600
Speaker 1: in charge and you had to deal with everything from

970
00:54:28,680 --> 00:54:32,520
Speaker 1: the pipes in this hundred year old facility breaking, to

971
00:54:32,680 --> 00:54:35,319
Speaker 1: making sure that there was adequate food and that the

972
00:54:35,320 --> 00:54:38,000
Speaker 1: food was well prepared, to making sure that there were

973
00:54:38,000 --> 00:54:41,520
Speaker 1: no contagious diseases, that tuberculosis didn't spread, that measles didn't spread,

974
00:54:41,680 --> 00:54:44,080
Speaker 1: that people got psychiatric care. You had to deal with

975
00:54:44,200 --> 00:54:46,320
Speaker 1: labor relations, you had to deal with ethical issues, you

976
00:54:46,360 --> 00:54:49,000
Speaker 1: had to deal with legal issue with a lord governor.

977
00:54:49,320 --> 00:54:52,280
Speaker 1: And it was fascinating and in that respect, I couldn't

978
00:54:52,280 --> 00:54:58,440
Speaker 1: have had a better career today. Martin Horne is a

979
00:54:58,480 --> 00:55:02,960
Speaker 1: Distinguished Lecturer in Directions at John j College and serves

980
00:55:03,000 --> 00:55:06,759
Speaker 1: as the Executive director of the Permanent Sentencing Commission, which

981
00:55:06,760 --> 00:55:11,719
Speaker 1: works to clarify, simplify, and create New York States sentencing guidelines.

982
00:55:13,760 --> 00:55:17,400
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. You can hear more in depth conversations

983
00:55:17,600 --> 00:55:21,920
Speaker 1: in our archive, from artists to policymakers to performers like

984
00:55:22,040 --> 00:55:25,319
Speaker 1: David Letterman on his early days in television. We've got

985
00:55:25,320 --> 00:55:28,840
Speaker 1: a bunch of complaints. He's either not wearing underpants or

986
00:55:28,920 --> 00:55:31,760
Speaker 1: he needs to wear underpants. That's how I distinguished myself.

987
00:55:31,920 --> 00:55:33,319
Speaker 1: Do you want to clear that up now? Were you

988
00:55:33,360 --> 00:55:37,160
Speaker 1: wearing underpants? I was wed, it was Indianapolis, and we're

989
00:55:37,239 --> 00:55:40,640
Speaker 1: not talked to pout without American go to Here's the

990
00:55:40,719 --> 00:55:50,200
Speaker 1: Thing dot org. Here's the Thing is produced by Emily

991
00:55:50,280 --> 00:55:54,959
Speaker 1: Botine and Kathy Russo with Chris Bannon, Jim Briggs, Wendy Door,

992
00:55:55,360 --> 00:55:59,960
Speaker 1: Ed Herbsman, Melanie Hoops, Monica Hopkins, Trey k, Sharon Machine,

993
00:56:00,400 --> 00:56:05,279
Speaker 1: and Lou Okowski. Thanks to Larry Josephson and the Radio Foundation.

994
00:56:06,560 --> 00:56:09,239
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.

995
00:56:23,480 --> 00:56:23,520
Speaker 1: M