Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: I went to Rahway Prison in New Jersey now called
Speaker 1: East Jersey State Prison to do research for a film.
Speaker 1: Over the course of two weeks, I interviewed several inmates
Speaker 1: who were incarcerated there. I met armed robbers, rapists, drug dealers,
Speaker 1: and murderers, and I'll never forget one minute of it.
Speaker 1: For over forty years, Martin Horn's career has focused on
Speaker 1: men like the ones I met and the prisons they
Speaker 1: live in. He's held every imaginable job in corrections, from
Speaker 1: debating the fairness of states sentencing guidelines to fixing leaky
Speaker 1: water pipes in aging facilities. In two thousand two, Mayor
Speaker 1: Bloomberg appointed Horn Commissioner of the New York City Department
Speaker 1: of Probation. A year later, in an unprecedented move, Bloomberg
Speaker 1: gave Horn an additional job, Commissioner of Corrections. Horn held
Speaker 1: both positions until he left in two thousand nine. Leaving
Speaker 1: public office has allowed Martin horn to be more vocal
Speaker 1: about his opinions on prisons, sentencing, and how to deal
Speaker 1: with our nation's drug problem. I would legalize drugs across
Speaker 1: the board. You would really legalize all of them, You
Speaker 1: would legalize old dress. Yes, that's a pretty well, well,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say that while I
Speaker 1: worked for a governor or a mayor who was an
Speaker 1: elected definition. Why wouldn't you say that then? As opposed
Speaker 1: to know because I had a mortgage debate. Martin Horne's
Speaker 1: career in corrections started right out of college. My first
Speaker 1: job was as a New York State parole officer. And
Speaker 1: how did you What was it that led you down
Speaker 1: that path? Um? I graduated college, I was twenty one
Speaker 1: years old. I needed a job, and I took a
Speaker 1: civil service test. New York State at that time had
Speaker 1: a test called the Professional Careers Test, and it was
Speaker 1: sort of a generalist examination, and if you passed it,
Speaker 1: it qualified for a variety of positions. I grew up
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn, uh in Flappish, my father from fourth All right, well,
Speaker 1: so you took this, What did you want to be
Speaker 1: a police officer? Was that the first I wanted a job?
Speaker 1: The family and civil service and police and law enforce?
Speaker 1: Not not at all, I said. When I took the job,
Speaker 1: I didn't know there was such a thing as a
Speaker 1: parole officer. I had never thought of it. And then
Speaker 1: then so you took this testament to this test and
Speaker 1: I got fairly good grade. And so I started getting
Speaker 1: job offers from the State of New York. I got
Speaker 1: an offer to become a purchasing agent for what was
Speaker 1: then called the East Hudson Highway Authority. I got an
Speaker 1: offer to be a business office person at Downstate Medical
Speaker 1: Center in Brooklyn. But then I I actually I took
Speaker 1: the job to become a paroleer. So I had I
Speaker 1: knew a guy who was doing it. He said it
Speaker 1: was a good job. They trained you, the pay was
Speaker 1: the training. Well, actually I was in a two year
Speaker 1: trainee ship. It was two years, and they it was
Speaker 1: on the job training. They started you with about six
Speaker 1: weeks of classroom training. The first thing they did was
Speaker 1: they assigned me to a unit they had then which
Speaker 1: they no longer have called the employment unit. In our job,
Speaker 1: we would get a paperwork on individuals who are coming
Speaker 1: home from New York State prisons who needed jobs. And
Speaker 1: we literally pounded the pavement in New York City, walked
Speaker 1: all over. Each had sort of a neighborhood. I had
Speaker 1: Long Island City and each day, I got five or
Speaker 1: ten guys names and their backgrounds on little five by
Speaker 1: eight cards, and I have to go out and find
Speaker 1: them jobs. Where was people's attitudes toward employing those people
Speaker 1: back then, Well, they actually we had a very sophisticated system.
Speaker 1: We knew employers who had previously hired employees and they
Speaker 1: were disposed, and they were disposed, and many of them said, look,
Speaker 1: I hired a guy from Clinton and he was the
Speaker 1: best guy I trusted up with. That was that was.
Speaker 1: So we did that for about six weeks. Then they
Speaker 1: actually sent me to Sing Sing for I think two months,
Speaker 1: where I had to meet with inmates who were becoming
Speaker 1: eligible for release on parole and helped them to prepare
Speaker 1: for their appearance before the border parole and write a
Speaker 1: report about them to the Board of Parole. Then they
Speaker 1: sent me to a unit. Back then, before a man
Speaker 1: or a woman could released from prison, they had to
Speaker 1: have an acceptable residence and a job, a real job.
Speaker 1: And so she were interacting and during this time with yes,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't supervising. I was. I was interacted with families.
Speaker 1: I was learning how to do investigations. So for the
Speaker 1: guy that took this test in nineteen sixty nine. Who
Speaker 1: didn't have an eye towards this kind of work. When
Speaker 1: you were interacting with these people, what did you take
Speaker 1: from it? It was fascinating. Where else do you see
Speaker 1: the varieties of human behavior? I was the drum. I
Speaker 1: had grown up in a middle class home in Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: on the edge of Brownsville. I was familiar with Brown's
Speaker 1: villain Ease, New York. They were adjacent neighborhoods. Yes, not
Speaker 1: as tough as now, not as desperate as now, but Oceanville, Brownsville,
Speaker 1: Ocean I was as tough, and and the desperation of
Speaker 1: the families, and more importantly to me, the dignity of
Speaker 1: the families that we're making it. I used to come
Speaker 1: home and say, what's remarkable is not how much crime
Speaker 1: there is, but how little crime there is when you
Speaker 1: see how people are living right and so to this day,
Speaker 1: when much people you try to hang between poverty and crime,
Speaker 1: I said, listen, there are more people who grow up
Speaker 1: and live in poverty who don't commit crime. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: and so it was fascinating, and then you know, before
Speaker 1: I turned around, it just turned into a career and
Speaker 1: I enjoyed it and I did, well, When did you
Speaker 1: become an actual parole officer where you are well after
Speaker 1: after the first year you went from being a parole
Speaker 1: officer trainee one to becoming a parole officer trainee to
Speaker 1: classic civil service, and then at the end of the
Speaker 1: second year you became a full parole officer and you
Speaker 1: got more cases assigned to you, and you worked fairly independent.
Speaker 1: Did your attitude, and this is a very broad question,
Speaker 1: but did your overall attitude toward paroled inmates evolve over
Speaker 1: the years where you were more at eye level with
Speaker 1: them and hands on with them, And then it changed
Speaker 1: you became more of an administrator and it became head
Speaker 1: of the department. I really think that my attitude towards
Speaker 1: imprisoned and formally imprisoned people was formed during those early
Speaker 1: years as a parole officer. It was one of his
Speaker 1: recognizing that every one of them was just a normal,
Speaker 1: ordinary guy. They were all guys back then who had
Speaker 1: made bad judgments. I met very few, really very few
Speaker 1: who were downright evil and mean. They were pushed loves.
Speaker 1: I said to one guy at one time, this was
Speaker 1: a guy. This is when you could smoke on the
Speaker 1: on the subway He had a cigarette lighter that was
Speaker 1: in the shape of a derringer. He took it out
Speaker 1: and a cop was looking at him, and he held
Speaker 1: his arm out and aimed it at the cop. And
Speaker 1: he got arrested. And I said to him, if stupidity
Speaker 1: was a crime, you would get the death penalty. A
Speaker 1: lot of them were addicted to drugs. And I met
Speaker 1: their families and they were just folks. And you know, there,
Speaker 1: but for the grace of God, could go any one
Speaker 1: of us. I agree with you. I often think to myself,
Speaker 1: my God, how many moments in my life could something
Speaker 1: have gone wrong? Or I could be in a docket
Speaker 1: and I could be in a courtroom and I could
Speaker 1: be facing prison time and probably had the benefit of
Speaker 1: far better circumstances than most of these guys, Right, they didn't,
Speaker 1: You know, they had difficulty Frighten John. When you see
Speaker 1: people who do have the benefit of these circumstances and
Speaker 1: still commit crimes, mo, Yeah, I always think to myself,
Speaker 1: we've got it wrong. We need be having longer sentences
Speaker 1: for white collar crime than we do. For I've always felt,
Speaker 1: and I said this even in my last years as
Speaker 1: the head of a large corrections agency. This is what
Speaker 1: I said to my staff. I said, this is our
Speaker 1: standard of care. It is that every person in our
Speaker 1: custody is to be treated as we would want our
Speaker 1: own child treated if they were in that circumstance. You
Speaker 1: felt that, I absolutely felt, because for most people, you know,
Speaker 1: you think about prison and imprisonment in our society, you know,
Speaker 1: prison is divided into a dual function. There's to protect
Speaker 1: the public and to take away these predatory people and
Speaker 1: put them away, and then the rehabilitative aspect of it.
Speaker 1: And most publics sept that dichotomy. I don't tell me, well,
Speaker 1: I don't buy rehabilitation by that way. You mean, I
Speaker 1: don't think that prisoners do a very good job. I
Speaker 1: think it is a valid social purpose two punish people
Speaker 1: to reinforce our social norms. That's why we punish people.
Speaker 1: It is a valid social purpose to punish people, to
Speaker 1: extract vengeance in the name of society on behalf of
Speaker 1: aggrieved victims. It's a valid social purpose to incapacitate people
Speaker 1: who endanger us. See, that's the more important to me.
Speaker 1: And the prison system does those three things pretty well.
Speaker 1: There was a sociologist, Hans Motok, who once said, you
Speaker 1: can't train an aviator in a submarine. You can't train
Speaker 1: a man to live in the community in prison. And
Speaker 1: if a person needs rehabilitation and they're not dangerous, the
Speaker 1: best place to rehabilitate, whatever the hell that means, is
Speaker 1: in the community where they're gonna have to live. Now,
Speaker 1: let me ask you that someone said something to me
Speaker 1: on this visit to Rahway, and this is probably the
Speaker 1: most significant thing someone said to me. And I said,
Speaker 1: the problem with this system is the sentencing relative to
Speaker 1: the class C stification of the crime, relative to the
Speaker 1: record of the individual inmate. Because they said, some guys
Speaker 1: come in here and the following thing takes place. They
Speaker 1: come in here and they're sorry, and then three months
Speaker 1: go by and they're really really sorry, and six months
Speaker 1: go by and they're really really really sorry, and they're
Speaker 1: ready to get out and they're sorry, and then you
Speaker 1: keep them in there another couple of months and they're
Speaker 1: not sorry. Now they're angry. Flip and now they're angry,
Speaker 1: and now they've switched sides. And I'm wondering what your
Speaker 1: opinion is. In my opinion is New York Well, the
Speaker 1: United States generally incarcerates people longer than any other country.
Speaker 1: It's just our culture and it's our system, and it's
Speaker 1: we have over lengthy prison absolutely absolutely, I mean for crimes,
Speaker 1: for victims, crimes, and even for crimes with victims. Ever
Speaker 1: since m Richard Nixon and the War on Crime, which
Speaker 1: was really just, uh, I think, a way to capture
Speaker 1: the Southern vote, because he really meant a war on
Speaker 1: black people. Ever since Willie Horton, which was just an
Speaker 1: extension of that same thing, no politician has been willing
Speaker 1: to reduce criminal sentences. You know, during his tenure, Mario
Speaker 1: Cuomo as governor of New York steadfastly opposed the death penalty,
Speaker 1: as did you carry before him, principal, and to be
Speaker 1: honored for that, but he also during his tenure built
Speaker 1: more prison beds in New York State than all the
Speaker 1: former governors of New York before him. Yeah, because because
Speaker 1: he could not oppose efforts to make sentences and penalties longer,
Speaker 1: because of his death penalty stance, he had to protect
Speaker 1: himself by want to be tough on everything else. And
Speaker 1: I think this has been the politics and the media
Speaker 1: have driven it in this country to a terrible extend.
Speaker 1: So for how many years I was a parole officer
Speaker 1: for about seven years, and then what happened? Uh then? Actually, well,
Speaker 1: I got a graduate degree, and I moved uh to
Speaker 1: upstate New York to teach in the State University of
Speaker 1: New York. I got a teaching appointment as an assistant professor.
Speaker 1: I was bored out of my mind. You went from
Speaker 1: one prison system to another. Yes, so to speak, Although
Speaker 1: an interesting story in that and the time and the
Speaker 1: time I was a pro officer, I had arrested people.
Speaker 1: I had sent people back to prison for very lengthy
Speaker 1: periods of time, guys who had committed murder, guys who
Speaker 1: had committed rape. And nobody ever laid a glove on me.
Speaker 1: It was never a problem. I'd walk up to a guy, said, look,
Speaker 1: I gotta take you back. I put the handcuffs on him,
Speaker 1: I put in the car, we take him to jail.
Speaker 1: But while I was teaching, I got embroiled in a
Speaker 1: tenure battle with a colleague who one day walked into
Speaker 1: my office and cold cocked me. So I always felt
Speaker 1: the teaching was somewhat right dangerous teachers precisely, you know,
Speaker 1: And what they fight about in academia is so stranguous
Speaker 1: because what they the issues are so petty. How soon
Speaker 1: after you got cold cocked by the dune six months
Speaker 1: I went to Albany to work for the newly appointed
Speaker 1: Commissioner of Corrections. This was seventy seven. I went there
Speaker 1: to work as the director of work release programs in
Speaker 1: New York. At that time was really building up its
Speaker 1: investment in halfway houses work release as a way of
Speaker 1: reducing the time that people spent inside upstate maximum security prisons.
Speaker 1: What work released then and what was it what is
Speaker 1: it now? Is basically the same. It's been decimated. It's
Speaker 1: been decimated. Um reaction. No, actually it saves money. It's
Speaker 1: less expensive reaction from who I think from the find crime. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: during the last years of the Cuomo administration, I think
Speaker 1: there may have been as many as six thousand inmates
Speaker 1: in New York participating in work release programs. In New York,
Speaker 1: for example, Well, they would literally they would leave the
Speaker 1: upstate prisons. They come down to a minimum security facility
Speaker 1: located in New York. There's still one on T Street,
Speaker 1: just off Central Park. And how many people that one
Speaker 1: houses about probably a hundred and fifty people. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they get assistance finding a job, and once they find
Speaker 1: a job, they're allowed to leave the premises. They leave,
Speaker 1: they go to work, they can do some personal chores,
Speaker 1: and then they have to be backed by a certain time,
Speaker 1: and then if they're doing well after a period of time,
Speaker 1: on weekends, they're allowed to go home for the weekend
Speaker 1: and come back. Under Governor Pataki, they dramatically reduced the program.
Speaker 1: I would say I'd be surprised if today there are
Speaker 1: even six d people in work release in New York.
Speaker 1: What do you attributed to Look, this business of corrections
Speaker 1: and and releasing people from prison is essentially nothing more
Speaker 1: than a risk management exercise. Right. We can never eliminate risk.
Speaker 1: The only way to have no risk is to never
Speaker 1: let anybody out of their cell. The many you let
Speaker 1: one guy out of the cell, you're incurring some risk.
Speaker 1: So how do you manage that risk? Well, if you
Speaker 1: have six thousand guys in halfway houses, some of them
Speaker 1: are going to screw up. How many New York state
Speaker 1: stilities are there today? Roughly, Gee, I don't know off hand.
Speaker 1: There are probably forty between forty and fifty several state
Speaker 1: prisons of varying sizes. Right, so yes, but I think
Speaker 1: the story about New York that that we should feel
Speaker 1: good about is that where in n five ninety six,
Speaker 1: New York State had seventy thousand people in prison. And
Speaker 1: mind you, when I started in nineteen sixty nine, there
Speaker 1: were ten thousand people in prison, so there were seventy thousand.
Speaker 1: Today it's down fifty the reform of the Rockfellow drug laws.
Speaker 1: So it's there's no question in my mind the number
Speaker 1: of people that are in prison is a function of
Speaker 1: policy decisions made by elected officials. Who do you think
Speaker 1: was ultimately responsible for bringing down those laws because a
Speaker 1: lot of people that was just insane. Well, look, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that there was an advocacy the organization dropped
Speaker 1: the rock in New York. I think that then Governor
Speaker 1: Patterson deserves credit. I'm not sure any other governor would
Speaker 1: have accepted that. And then also, I think you cannot
Speaker 1: ignore the cost issue. The cost of imprisonment in New
Speaker 1: York State today even is still two billion dollars a
Speaker 1: year in UM. Just about every state in the country,
Speaker 1: over the last twenty years, the cost of imprisonment has
Speaker 1: been the fastest growing item in state budgets. In California,
Speaker 1: which for years uh I was so proud of its
Speaker 1: public university system reached the point where it was spending
Speaker 1: more on its state prisons, which now hold a hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty thou people, than it was on its state universities.
Speaker 1: So I think that it was a perfect storm. All
Speaker 1: the factors came together. The fiscal conservatives were driven by
Speaker 1: the price issues and the country and that's happening is
Speaker 1: that it's driven by cost and that it does not
Speaker 1: reflect a genuine rethinking of our approach to crime and imprisonment.
Speaker 1: So when you leave the edge vacation job and you
Speaker 1: go work for the Department of Corrections in work release,
Speaker 1: when is the first time as an official of the
Speaker 1: state you walked into a prison in New York State? Oh,
Speaker 1: I had walked into prisons as a parole officer. And
Speaker 1: so with the first prison you walked, first person I
Speaker 1: ever walked into a singing and describe that the first
Speaker 1: time you walked into Well, it's Dickensian, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's uh. It was built in eighteen nineteen or thereabouts.
Speaker 1: The prisoners hued the stone off the palisades. The walls
Speaker 1: of the original cell blocks still stand. When I was there,
Speaker 1: New York still had a death penalty, and the guy
Speaker 1: who took me around had been there since before the war.
Speaker 1: And two things I remember about him when was he
Speaker 1: said to me, kid, he says, there's nothing new under
Speaker 1: the sun. In corrections, he says, everything we're doing today
Speaker 1: was done years ago. We just called something different. And
Speaker 1: he's right. Our approach to imprisonment hadn't changed much. It's
Speaker 1: it's very much a nineteenth century invention. And the other
Speaker 1: thing he was he took me to see the death
Speaker 1: house where Ethel and Julius Rosenberg had been executed. Horn
Speaker 1: was only five years old when the Rosenbergs were killed,
Speaker 1: but growing up in a Jewish household in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: their death nonetheless had a powerful impact. Sixteen years after
Speaker 1: first seeing the death house at sing Sing, Horn was
Speaker 1: executive director of the New York State Division of Parole,
Speaker 1: and his opinions had evolved. When I was a parole officer,
Speaker 1: we had an expression trail um, nail him and jellum,
Speaker 1: and the idea was that it was up to the
Speaker 1: paroley to do all the work, and if he screwed up,
Speaker 1: we would catch him and lock him up. And we
Speaker 1: had this belief that if we locked him up before
Speaker 1: he committed a more serious crime, we were performing a
Speaker 1: public service. I had come to the conclusion that parole
Speaker 1: and the prison system generally wasn't doing enough to ease
Speaker 1: the transition for people leaving prison. When an individual comes
Speaker 1: out of prison, everybody gets out of prison, and they
Speaker 1: have some statistical probability of succeeding or failing. And we
Speaker 1: can improve these odds a little bit if we attend
Speaker 1: to three things. One with sobriety. And I'm not a teetotler,
Speaker 1: I don't make a moral judgment, but sobriety is a
Speaker 1: primary condition. If you don't stay sober, I mean alcoholism
Speaker 1: and drugs, you will fail. You have to have a
Speaker 1: place to live. If you're living on the street, if
Speaker 1: you're living in this in the shelter, you're gonna fail. Today.
Speaker 1: Guys coming out of prison in New York City's housing market,
Speaker 1: they can't afford a place to live, right, I mean
Speaker 1: you say, oh, you get a job, Well, people coming
Speaker 1: out of Yale can't afford exactly. And the prison system
Speaker 1: has also as the rules, you can't have roommates who
Speaker 1: are ex offenders, you know, the Yale guy and the
Speaker 1: prisoner maybe should broom together. So I felt that we
Speaker 1: needed to help men leaving prison stay sober. We needed
Speaker 1: to help them find a place to live, and we
Speaker 1: needed to help them find a job. It's a three
Speaker 1: legged stool if you you know, if you can't stay sober,
Speaker 1: you won't hold a job. If you don't have a job,
Speaker 1: you can't pay the rent. And if you lose your
Speaker 1: apartment and you're living on the street, you're hanging out
Speaker 1: with guys, you're gonna get owned. So it's it's a
Speaker 1: it's a vicious cycle and one that Horn strive to change.
Speaker 1: Coming up in a minute, Martin Horn talks about serving
Speaker 1: under Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, his return to New York,
Speaker 1: and his ultimate decision to leave public service because I
Speaker 1: felt that I could not trust my workforce any longer.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to. Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: this is Alec Baldwin. There were nineteen newly elected governors
Speaker 1: across the country. A new administration often means new staff,
Speaker 1: including new corrections directors. Martin Horn took advantage of the moment,
Speaker 1: and so I started making cold call sending letters to
Speaker 1: every newly elected governor. Dear Governor elect, here's my resume.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't you like me to be your corrections director? I
Speaker 1: called a friend in Pennsylvania, actually called the president of
Speaker 1: the college I graduated from in Pennsylvania, and he said, gee,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but i'll check and you call me back.
Speaker 1: The next day he said, I spoke to the guy
Speaker 1: that lobbies for our college in Harrisburg, and he says,
Speaker 1: and here's what they said. They said, the newly elected governor,
Speaker 1: they did not expect to get elected, you know, send
Speaker 1: to me resume, here's the address of the transition office,
Speaker 1: and put a post it note on top that says,
Speaker 1: put this on the pile of corrections because they're so
Speaker 1: disorganized they've got resumes coming in through the transoms. So
Speaker 1: I did exactly that idea, Governor Elect Tom Ridge, let
Speaker 1: me introduce myself. I'd like to be your corrections director.
Speaker 1: Here's what I've done. Here's what I and I put
Speaker 1: a post it note on it that says put it
Speaker 1: on the pile for corrections. And two weeks later, his
Speaker 1: deputy chief of staff called, how long were you in
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania with Ridge? Well, I was in pennsyl manu with
Speaker 1: Ridge for seven years. I was Commissioner of Correction for
Speaker 1: six and then at the end of the sixth year,
Speaker 1: he appointed me to be Secretary of Administration, which took
Speaker 1: me out of the correction department and put me in
Speaker 1: charge of labor relations. And I t if you stayed
Speaker 1: there for seven years, did you develop a good relationship
Speaker 1: with Ridge? I think the world of Tom Ridge. I
Speaker 1: really think the world of Tom Ridge. Well, how would
Speaker 1: you to the extent you can characterize the six years
Speaker 1: you ran the system? And they were but for the
Speaker 1: fact that I was in Harrisford, Pennsylvania, they were the
Speaker 1: greatest six years of my professional career. Truth, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I had. I had the best boss you could have.
Speaker 1: He knew how to be a leader, and he knew
Speaker 1: how to back up his people, and he knew how
Speaker 1: to hold people accountable. And he was the world's best listener,
Speaker 1: better than any politician I've ever met. I think partly
Speaker 1: because he has a hearing impairment, but he listened intently
Speaker 1: and he briefed well. He had good values and good instincts.
Speaker 1: I didn't agree with him on many issues politically, but
Speaker 1: on on the core issue was I think he was
Speaker 1: he was, and he was he was just a good person.
Speaker 1: He was an approachable guy, and many of the elected
Speaker 1: officials that I've worked for aren't that way. In whatever
Speaker 1: way you can characterize this, how would you describe the
Speaker 1: system you inherited when you went in and what would
Speaker 1: you leave behind six years later? Well, I think you know.
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania is interesting. Pennsylvania's sort of the birthplace of American corrections,
Speaker 1: where the first prison, the Eastern State Penitentiary, which exists
Speaker 1: to this day is still open as a museum, was
Speaker 1: created in the early eighteen hundreds. The Pennsylvania Society for
Speaker 1: the Alleviation of the Misery of Prisoners counted among its
Speaker 1: members Benjamin Franklin. And there was a very strong Quaker
Speaker 1: influence and a very different feel. When I got to Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: The prisons overwhelmingly were very different than the New York.
Speaker 1: There was a level of civility in those prisons that
Speaker 1: I had not experienced the New York State. In the
Speaker 1: prisons in the seventies and eighties, you could walk through
Speaker 1: the prisons and you could feel the antagonism and the tension.
Speaker 1: You could cut it with a knife. I used to
Speaker 1: say that to Oh, I don't know. I think part
Speaker 1: of it the training of the tradition. Yeah, well that
Speaker 1: brings us obviously to something that we would that we
Speaker 1: didn't want to bring up, which was about this story
Speaker 1: that broke about the program at or what happened there. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't to this day. I'm not entirely sure what happened.
Speaker 1: I will tell you this is something you think can
Speaker 1: happen anywhere. Oh, absolutely, and it is I will say,
Speaker 1: what caused me to decide to retire because I felt
Speaker 1: that I could not trust my workforce any longer. In
Speaker 1: October two thousand eight, and eighteen year old boy was
Speaker 1: killed at Rikers Island by fellow inmates. The Village Voice
Speaker 1: had been reporting for the past year about violence among prisoners.
Speaker 1: At Rikers, guards were said to be looking the other way.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and twelve, the Voice obtained and published
Speaker 1: graphic pictures of knife wounds and other injuries from inside
Speaker 1: the jail walls. The largest jail system in the country
Speaker 1: had a fight club that was condoned and even promoted
Speaker 1: by jail officials. The program, as it was called, deliver
Speaker 1: the most challenging moments of Horne's career. The story is
Speaker 1: that a young man by the Christopher Robinson was put
Speaker 1: into a particular housing unit, in the adolescent housing unit,
Speaker 1: and he had been transferred there because in the unit
Speaker 1: that he had been in previously, he had actually been
Speaker 1: extorting from a weaker inmate and he was caught. So
Speaker 1: his classification was increased and he was put into this
Speaker 1: higher classification unit. So, you know, the sort of a
Speaker 1: pecking ortist. So now he gets there and these guys
Speaker 1: who had been there for a while, who was this click,
Speaker 1: They step up to him and they said, we're going
Speaker 1: to extort from you, and he says to them, on
Speaker 1: the extorer here, you don't extort from me. So they
Speaker 1: tuned them up. They beat him up. Come to find
Speaker 1: out that they had been extorting from other inmates and
Speaker 1: that this has been going on for some time with
Speaker 1: the prior knowledge and arguably the connivance of the officers,
Speaker 1: and basically the officers had made a devil's bargain with
Speaker 1: the image, look, you don't beat us up, you don't
Speaker 1: attack us, and will let you run the ship exactly, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, you know, the job that we ask
Speaker 1: corrections officers to do are terrifying. Most officers, perhaps all
Speaker 1: officers are scared out of their minds. We asked them
Speaker 1: to supervise fifty often angry, sometimes mentally ill young men,
Speaker 1: during the worst period of their lives, during the worst
Speaker 1: period of their lives, who are craving some addictive substance
Speaker 1: in an open dormitory. And they're in that dormitory by themselves.
Speaker 1: So how does this one individual assert himself. He does
Speaker 1: not carry a weapon, he does not carry a baton.
Speaker 1: There may be another officer in a controlled room some
Speaker 1: ten ft away who can sound the alarm and ask
Speaker 1: for help, but by the time help arrives, he can
Speaker 1: be beaten to a bloody pulp. So it's two in
Speaker 1: the morning. You're making around, walking around this dormitory of
Speaker 1: fifty year old guys. In the back corner, you stumble
Speaker 1: across two of them smoking weed. You have a decision
Speaker 1: to make. You can turn your back and walk the
Speaker 1: other way. You can try and bust them and run
Speaker 1: the risk that their friends will pounce on you and
Speaker 1: pummel you. So which happens, which certainly happens, how frequently
Speaker 1: more frequently than we'd like it to. And that's another
Speaker 1: reason that I left, because I feel the prisons are understaffed.
Speaker 1: I think it's is wrong to ask one man, and
Speaker 1: by the way, today more than the correction officers in
Speaker 1: the City of New York or women. So when you
Speaker 1: say that the two guys smoke weed, the corrections officer comes.
Speaker 1: He sees you got a decision to make, and someone's
Speaker 1: gonna pummel you. Do you have a system in place
Speaker 1: where you know who's more disposed towards violent behavior inside
Speaker 1: the facility when they come in, and why can't you
Speaker 1: separate them before in an anticipatory way. Well, we have
Speaker 1: what assistant we refer to a classification, and you basically
Speaker 1: separate the most serious inmates and put them in maximum security.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, somebody has to
Speaker 1: supervise those maximum security inmates. What reforms do you think
Speaker 1: could be made in supervising maximum security inmates? Generally? I
Speaker 1: don't like to open dormitories. I think every inmate should
Speaker 1: have his own cell. Cells do not have to be oppressive,
Speaker 1: they do not have to be depressing. They can be
Speaker 1: bright and airy, they don't have to be oppressed. They
Speaker 1: have everybody in their own room. Everybody should have their
Speaker 1: own room. I don't you don't selling, I don't, and
Speaker 1: I don't. Well, well, I think that I don't think
Speaker 1: that's cruel and unusual people, I think, well, I don't
Speaker 1: like to use those terms cruel and unusual. And in fact,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court has said that there is no one man,
Speaker 1: one sell rule living in the constitution. But I think
Speaker 1: that we all have privacy needs to your knowledge, and
Speaker 1: I would trust your opinion. Do the inmates do they
Speaker 1: want their own cell? They would do? They prefer it,
Speaker 1: some like company, some like company for the wrong where,
Speaker 1: But most people, I think want their privacy. This is
Speaker 1: your safety zone, right. Nobody can get you if you
Speaker 1: want to come out. You know, different people go to
Speaker 1: prisons and and they're terrified to be out in the
Speaker 1: prison yard with all these other inmates. Is there a
Speaker 1: constant pulsing sense of fear for people who were in
Speaker 1: the prison yard not in a well run prison. Look,
Speaker 1: it's the job of the officers to keep the inmates safe.
Speaker 1: And if we don't keep the inmates safe, they'll find
Speaker 1: ways to keep themselves safe. How will they do that.
Speaker 1: They'll do that by joining gangs, and they'll do that
Speaker 1: by creating In New York State a lot of gangs.
Speaker 1: I can't comment on New York State prisons. I know
Speaker 1: that it's certainly a problem in New York City, and
Speaker 1: in the city would and they do these gangs. I guess, like,
Speaker 1: if I got into prison tomorrow, is it just expected
Speaker 1: I'm going to join a gang for my own pretential?
Speaker 1: You see, this gets to the program. You're the new guy.
Speaker 1: You come into this open dormitory of fifty inmates and
Speaker 1: there's a group of maybe ten or fifteen of them.
Speaker 1: Perhaps they know themselves from the street, perhaps they self
Speaker 1: identify as bloods or crips or Latin Kings or Arian
Speaker 1: Nation whatever. Not too many of those New York. But
Speaker 1: if you're in California, sure, and they step to you
Speaker 1: and they say, here's the deal. Are you with us?
Speaker 1: And if you're stupid enough to walk into a dormitory
Speaker 1: where there are twenty inmates who call themselves bloods and
Speaker 1: you say, hell, I'm a crip, Well they're gonna do
Speaker 1: the same thing to duty on the street. Get off
Speaker 1: our turf. Prison and jail. Is this artificial scarcity that
Speaker 1: we create, right, So there's by and large, little food,
Speaker 1: there's no drugs, no girls, there's no sex. You know,
Speaker 1: there's no money, and as a black market, and so
Speaker 1: as with any place else, a group of inmates emerges
Speaker 1: and they say, we control it, the simplest thing, and
Speaker 1: this is what was happening. Certainly in the adolescent jail
Speaker 1: where that program occurred. There were never enough chairs for
Speaker 1: all the inmates, and a group of inmates would say,
Speaker 1: on Saturday mornings, when this program is on, or when
Speaker 1: this sporting event is on, there's one TV said it
Speaker 1: is for the black guys, and you Spanish guys, you
Speaker 1: stay in yourselves, because that's our time. Now in office,
Speaker 1: Sir has a choice to make. First of all, he
Speaker 1: should see it going on, and if he sees it,
Speaker 1: take it, he should take that away. Were there any
Speaker 1: prosecutions of any of the officers. Two officers actually were
Speaker 1: convicted of gang assault, and five or seven of the
Speaker 1: inmates ultimately were convicted. I don't know what the charge was,
Speaker 1: but it might have been manslaughter. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: think they intended to kill Christopher Robinson. The troubling thing
Speaker 1: was that there have been stories for some time. Uh
Speaker 1: and this is what the voice documented that this had
Speaker 1: been going on. There were bread crumbs, and that if
Speaker 1: we had done a better job of following those bread crumbs,
Speaker 1: we perhaps would have seen it earlier and prevented it
Speaker 1: to people. You know, I'd like to get back to
Speaker 1: another point you make, you know, you make the point
Speaker 1: of it how we deal with white collar criminals or
Speaker 1: with everybody uses the maid Off example. You know Martha Stewart,
Speaker 1: you've mat her many times. I'm sure she's a lovely person.
Speaker 1: So we know that some years ago she um lie
Speaker 1: to a federal officer investigating supposed insider stock manipulation. She
Speaker 1: was not convicted in the stock manipulation. She was convicted
Speaker 1: of line to a federal officer, and she got what
Speaker 1: four months in a federal prison in Alderson. So today,
Speaker 1: but for her current troubles with Macy's and Pennies, she's
Speaker 1: better off than she was when she went to prison.
Speaker 1: What did society game by that? Let me suggest to you,
Speaker 1: what if instead we had erected a ten foot high
Speaker 1: platform in Times Square and we had climate control that
Speaker 1: we enclosed it in plexiglass, we heated it, we air
Speaker 1: conditioned it, and we put a stool, you know, like
Speaker 1: a bar stool in it, and stocks well, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: put her in stocks, but I every day you want
Speaker 1: to be here at nine o'clock in the morning, and
Speaker 1: you were to remain here until five in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: You know, we'll protect you from the elements, and you'll
Speaker 1: sit here with a sign around your neck that says
Speaker 1: I'm a liar. You can bathe, but you can't get
Speaker 1: all dressed up. You can't wear jewelry, you can't wear makeup.
Speaker 1: You know, you can attend to all your personality that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. We're not looking to harm you, but
Speaker 1: you can't do all that stuff. And after you've sat
Speaker 1: in Times Square for some period of time where the
Speaker 1: world could see that you are a liar, you are
Speaker 1: to perform community service for a year where you're to
Speaker 1: go out to East New York and teach young women
Speaker 1: about nutrition, about dressing for success, about all of the
Speaker 1: things that you do so well. And in addition, you
Speaker 1: have to pay back trouble or quadruple what you made
Speaker 1: on this financial fraud. And that's it. But we're not
Speaker 1: going to imprison you. Would we have had as great
Speaker 1: a deterrent effect, would we have punished her, would we
Speaker 1: have convinced her not to try to do it again,
Speaker 1: would we have deterred others? I would argue yes, And
Speaker 1: yet we don't do those things. We don't use shape
Speaker 1: in our society. But I agree with you in terms
Speaker 1: of what you're suggesting. However, we do have that now
Speaker 1: we have the internet. As my friend once said, the
Speaker 1: Internet represents the death of forgetting. Martha Stewart is forever
Speaker 1: going to be referred to as you know, formerly incarcerated,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, that that's going to stay with the
Speaker 1: rest of her life. But was she punished? My point
Speaker 1: is simply this, as a society, our primary response to
Speaker 1: crime is prison. It's the only tool. Understand you know
Speaker 1: the aphorism that if the only tool on your belt
Speaker 1: is a hammer, everything looks like an app Well, that's
Speaker 1: that's true with respect to our approach to imprisonment. Um,
Speaker 1: what do you think of the whole prison inc notion
Speaker 1: and the privatization of prisons and the myriad of things
Speaker 1: that arise from that. Um, it's a very complicated issue,
Speaker 1: and it's very easy to be opposed to private prisons.
Speaker 1: It's very easy to demonize private prisons. Private prisons arose
Speaker 1: because governments needed them. Governments needed them because in the
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties, the American prison population was growing faster
Speaker 1: then government could create capacity for prisoners. I have visited
Speaker 1: private prisons, and I have visited many public prisons, and
Speaker 1: I have colleagues who work in the private prison industry.
Speaker 1: Running a prison isn't rocket science. What they do is
Speaker 1: they hire guys like me to run their prisons. And
Speaker 1: a private prison will run as well or as poorly
Speaker 1: as the government who contracts with it wants it to.
Speaker 1: So if private prisons don't do what government asked them
Speaker 1: to do, it's the fault of government for allowing them to.
Speaker 1: But is it is it understood in the current culture
Speaker 1: that private prisons it's kind of a wink and a
Speaker 1: nod and we're not going to force these contra I
Speaker 1: am sure that is true in some places and not
Speaker 1: in others. Um. A little over five years ago, the
Speaker 1: board of Correxins in the city allowed officials to listen
Speaker 1: to in make telephone conversations. What do you think of that?
Speaker 1: I asked, word, why? Why? What's going on that you
Speaker 1: felt you needed to have that advantage? Well, for you
Speaker 1: get you get to the question of the program inmates
Speaker 1: are running their scams over the phones. Inmates are arranging
Speaker 1: for drugs to be brought into the prison. Over there operating,
Speaker 1: they're operating over the phones. There's no constitutional right to
Speaker 1: even have phones in prisons. We could rip all the
Speaker 1: phones out and we would be well within our constitutional authority.
Speaker 1: The federal law is clear that with proper notice and
Speaker 1: the consent of at least one party, a conversation can
Speaker 1: be listened to and recorded. I felt that by giving
Speaker 1: the inmates ample opportunity, Basically we said to them, Look,
Speaker 1: by choosing to use our phones that we're making available
Speaker 1: to you, you are waiving your right to privacy. If
Speaker 1: you want to retain your right to privacy, write a letter.
Speaker 1: If you had um three things that you were going
Speaker 1: to change about the federal state city, what would you
Speaker 1: change about the way we deal with convicted Well, so
Speaker 1: that's that. That excludes the city. Let's talk about federal
Speaker 1: and federal. The first thing I do is I legalized drugs.
Speaker 1: When you say that, though, I mean obviously there are
Speaker 1: people who inside that argument talking about cocaine and her
Speaker 1: you don't care you'd legalize. I would legalized drugs. We
Speaker 1: couldn't possibly do worse than we're doing now, right, But
Speaker 1: what would you do to take it even further? I mean,
Speaker 1: you've been involved with the system for a long one time.
Speaker 1: You'd have the government dispensing cocaine and heroin. I would
Speaker 1: sell it in the liquor stores, right, and I would
Speaker 1: tax the hell out of it. You just license it
Speaker 1: and sell it. I mean, I agree with you as
Speaker 1: far as I would take all the money we're spending
Speaker 1: and all the money we're going to make, and I
Speaker 1: would reinvest it in prevention. You know, I grew up
Speaker 1: never using a seatbelt, and to this day I'll drive
Speaker 1: around without a seatbelt. My kids were now that you know,
Speaker 1: I e suppose my son when he was two years old,
Speaker 1: if I started to back the car out before he
Speaker 1: was buckled in, would have a tantrum. Right, if your
Speaker 1: kids are smoking today, we can prevent, we can provide treatment,
Speaker 1: and there will be people and there will be to spare.
Speaker 1: Bobby Kennedy had the funniest line of all. Brobbly Kennedy said,
Speaker 1: if you ever of the day, would we do. We're
Speaker 1: gonna bend down with a plastic bag and pick up
Speaker 1: your dog's poop on the street and throw it in
Speaker 1: the whoever thought that was you, you know, fifty years
Speaker 1: at least time we recycle our tin cans. So I
Speaker 1: would legalize drugs. I would reduce the length of time
Speaker 1: that people who do commit crimes, violent crimes, well, for
Speaker 1: all crimes, but for those people who scare us the most.
Speaker 1: John Mohammad, remember the Washington sniper. Right, that guy scares me. Right,
Speaker 1: he was just shooting people at random. You have to
Speaker 1: incapacitate him forever, right, Jeffrey Dahmer, Right, you had to
Speaker 1: incapac mentally ill. That's a whole different story. That's that's
Speaker 1: item four. Because they don't belong in prison, right. The
Speaker 1: great shame of our society today is that the people
Speaker 1: in prison have a mental illness. More people receive acute
Speaker 1: mental health care in the jails in this country than
Speaker 1: they do in the mental hospitals. Rikers Island provides more
Speaker 1: acute medical psychiatric care than Bellevue. The largest provider of
Speaker 1: acute psychiatric care in the United States is the Los
Speaker 1: Angeles County Jail. Mentally ill people don't belong in jail,
Speaker 1: and it is a scandal, and you're not allowed to
Speaker 1: You're not allowed to give violent inmates in any kind
Speaker 1: of a system drugs. You're not allowed to drug them
Speaker 1: or are you well if if if they're being treated
Speaker 1: for mental illness, people mentally just you're not but you're
Speaker 1: not even drug them to quiet them down. You can't
Speaker 1: know without a court order. I mean you can if
Speaker 1: there's a court order, and you do. They get court
Speaker 1: orders very rarely, very rarely. Don't equate violence with mental illness.
Speaker 1: What have we talking about? These guys that are violent.
Speaker 1: There are some people who need to be incapacitated, and
Speaker 1: I would incapacitate And that doesn't bother me. A guy
Speaker 1: who is a serial rapist, as serial child molester doesn't
Speaker 1: bother me in the least. Everybody but everybody else, the
Speaker 1: guy who commits a robbery, the guy who commits a burglary,
Speaker 1: the guy who steals your car that you know, uh,
Speaker 1: they don't to go to prison for as long as
Speaker 1: they Number three, um number three is I would change
Speaker 1: the way we release people from prison. I would actually
Speaker 1: do away with the parole boards and discretionary parole. I
Speaker 1: would make every sense a determinate sense. I would say
Speaker 1: you're gonna be under the control of the state for
Speaker 1: a period of time. Let's just say, for argument sake,
Speaker 1: five years. For the first three of those years, you're
Speaker 1: gonna go to prison, and we'll leave it up to
Speaker 1: the corrections people to decide back someimum medium minimum. But
Speaker 1: at the end of three years, you're coming back to
Speaker 1: the community. And when you come back to the community,
Speaker 1: you're gonna live in a halfway house. And while you're
Speaker 1: in the halfway house, we are going to help you
Speaker 1: connect with a relapse prevention program to prevent your relapse
Speaker 1: to drug abuse. And we're gonna help you to get
Speaker 1: involved in an a a program, and we're gonna help
Speaker 1: you find a job, and you're not gonna have to
Speaker 1: pay us any money. You're gonna save the money you
Speaker 1: earn on your job, and we're gonna help you find
Speaker 1: a place to live. And when you've saved enough money
Speaker 1: to pay a month's rent in a month's deposit and
Speaker 1: maybe another month, you can go home and live on
Speaker 1: your own, and we're done with you. What's wrong with
Speaker 1: the state, for example, building a facility that is an
Speaker 1: after care facility for prisoners to come and to live,
Speaker 1: where they go to work and they continue to produce
Speaker 1: things that the state needs. Is that a possibility. That's possible.
Speaker 1: I mean I I'm a believer that these communities have
Speaker 1: to be small. I cannot resemble prisoners. They should be normalizing.
Speaker 1: The point is that people need to be normalized as
Speaker 1: the return of the community. So I would. I would
Speaker 1: have fixed sentences and that way. What happens now is
Speaker 1: Johnny Jones goes to prison for uh five to fifteen years?
Speaker 1: Those are five or is at fifteen if parol parols five,
Speaker 1: the victims says, my god, I thought he was going
Speaker 1: away for fifteen years. Or he goes in front of
Speaker 1: the parole board and they say, Johnny, we're gonna hold
Speaker 1: you for five w years. This is what I did guilty,
Speaker 1: And my lawyer told me that if I did everything
Speaker 1: right and kept my nose clean, I'd be out in
Speaker 1: five and the proberts as well. We were in the
Speaker 1: room when that deal got made. We're not bound by that.
Speaker 1: So the whole system currently is deceptive, causes people to
Speaker 1: distrust the system, undermines respect for the rule of law,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't allow us to release individuals from prison
Speaker 1: in a planful way. So I would Those are the
Speaker 1: three things I would change. Are you glad You're done.
Speaker 1: Are you glad you're walking away from that? It was?
Speaker 1: It was, It was a fascinating career. I am absolutely
Speaker 1: glad I'm done. You are um? Was it spiritually deadening
Speaker 1: in other ways as well? I mean, because I can't
Speaker 1: think of anything more horrific than when I was in prison.
Speaker 1: At some level, there is no place else a grown
Speaker 1: man could have as much fun. When I was the
Speaker 1: warden of Hudson Prison, I used to say to people
Speaker 1: that it was a cross between being the headmaster of
Speaker 1: a somewhat down on its heels boys school and the
Speaker 1: King of England, because you were in charge and you
Speaker 1: had to deal with everything from the pipes in this
Speaker 1: hundred year old facility breaking to making sure that there
Speaker 1: was adequate food and that the food was well prepared,
Speaker 1: to making sure that there were no contagious diseases, that
Speaker 1: tuberculosis didn't spread, that measles didn't spread, that people got
Speaker 1: psychiatric care. You had to deal with labor relations, you
Speaker 1: had to deal with ethical issues, you had to deal
Speaker 1: with legal issue with a lord high governor. And it
Speaker 1: was fascinating and in that respect I couldn't have had
Speaker 1: a better career today. Martin Horn is a Distinguished Lecturer
Speaker 1: in Corrections at John Jay College and serves that the
Speaker 1: executive director of the Permanent Sentencing Commission, which works to clarify, simplify,
Speaker 1: and create New York States sentencing guidelines. This is Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. Four four