[00:00:00.900] Imagine you've just been incarcerated for having a terminally illness- term- terminal illness that you gave to yourself, in order to keep a much more debilitating, much more painful illness at bay. For inmates incarcerated in prison as a result of their drug addiction, which is usually caused by some form of mental illness, this is a very stark reality which relates to the topic which I'm going to be discussing today which is prison reform. I thankfully never been to prison and hopefully I never will go to prison.
[00:00:23.670] Have I ever struggled with drug addiction in one point in my life? Thankfully no. Um I've studied prison culture somewhat. Any situation which people are desperate is very interesting to me. And uh I don't see addiction is a disease, but they're professionals who are much more qualified that I am to argue for that or debate that.
[00:00:39.960] So, um US population is less than one twentieth of the world population
[00:00:44.430] and yet we house roughly a quarter of the world's prison inmates, according to World Brief 2014. That's an appalling statistic about our disgusting society. And um this population has grown since the nineteen eighties, and it will continue to grow along with the rest of our population.
[00:01:00.830] Uh the main changes that need to be enacted in order for prison reform to occur are reforming our draconian drug laws, as well as um forge- fighting racism in our justice system, as well as offering more opportunity to inmates. Uh this will solve the central problem of over- overcrowding.
[00:01:18.960] So, first of all, our justice system is plagued with racism. Um more than twice as many blacks are arrested in the United States as whites, despite being a minority in this country, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice.
[00:01:32.940] Uh many prisoners are therefore aggravated by this fact and therefore made- possibly made racist in an already very racially segregated, very racially divided environment. Um when which the U.S. combats drug addiction is pretty poor. About 32 percent of inmates in state prisons and 25 percent of inmates in federal prisons were in possession of or were under the influence of some sort of narcotic when they were arrested, according to drugabuse.net twenty sixteen.
[00:02:00.990] So by placing prisoners and by placing drug addicts in prison, we are basically taking mostly decent, upstanding people and turning them into hard criminals. One of the first things that you do when you enter prison is make some friends, join up with a gang, make connections in order for your own protection. So these people then become criminally educated and learn how to comit real crimes when they get out. They use that then to support themselves.
[00:02:23.660] So when they get out, and they have no employment opportunities because no one wants to hire them because of their felon status they turn to real forms of crime like selling drugs. Then they go right back in prison.
[00:02:35.280] Um, so they become more helpless, more frustrat- frustrated, and they're more likely to be violent because now they have a longer sentence and they're less likely to get out. Racism, drug laws, and uh overcrowding contribute to violence in our prison system. Um as far as the causes of this, as far as racists in our justice system, I can't tell you a whole lot about that. Most of the racist that I've met were pretty elderly people in my family. And most of the judges that I met were pretty elderly.
[00:03:02.910] So I hate to be stereotypical. That's pretty hypocritical of me talking about racism, but um it's just something we need time- we need to give time.
[00:03:10.830] Um the American prison system serves as a great source of cheap slave labor for our government and private interests.
[00:03:19.770] Um drugs also finance some of the most overtly criminal states in the world that use state sponsored terrorism, including, but not limited to Nicaragua, El Salvador, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, and Israel.
[00:03:34.830] Um these countries are being supported by the US either for i- ideological resor- ideological reasons, resources, or because they export us our drugs that keep a workforce in our prisons according to, op um don't have a source for that nevermind. Um I'm all for making prisoners work; if we are going to let child molesters and murderers and rapists
[00:03:54.370] live they should be working, but we shouldn't be having drug addicts in our prisons as a workforce.
[00:04:00.780] Um part of the problem is the cause itself or part of the cause is the problem itself of overcrowding. It's this revolving door of once you go to prison, you get out, it's chan- chances are you're gonna go back to prison um because you lack opportunity
[00:04:13.620] so. The solutions are pretty simple
[00:04:16.980] uh first of all, we need to decriminalize all drugs. That does not mean legalize all drugs. That just basically means that if you get caught with drugs, you don't go to prison, you go to rehab. Unless you're caught with a ridiculous amount and people think that you're a dealer.
[00:04:29.920] Um Portugal has uh decriminalized all drugs and they've seen drops in addiction rates, as well as drops in violence, drug related disease such as Hep C and HIV. Um they've also broken the back of the black market in Portugal because of this.
[00:04:44.440] We need to reform our prison culture. We're offering some GED classes to prison inmates,
[00:04:48.050] we also need often more college classes, and more access to libraries and positive mental stimulation, more education for prison inmates, as well as vocational arts and trade schools so that when they get out, they have some- something to work off of, something to get employed with.
[00:05:04.930] Um, there's not a lot to be done with the problem of racists in our justice system,
[00:05:08.010] other than that we need to find, and locate, and lock up as many uh racist judges and police officers as we can for obstruction of justice. That's kind of unrealistic. That's going to be hard to do. That unfortunately needs times which we don't have.
[00:05:21.840] So you understand why some laws regarding uh drugs are ineffective and why we need to reform our prison system,
[00:05:27.900] what's wrong with racism in our judicial system,
[00:05:30.420] and how these factors create overcrowding, which just exponentially contributes to the problem. Um some of you may see de- decriminalization as a nightmare scenario. But I promise you, it's much more healthy, humane, and honest way to deal with drug addiction.
[00:05:48.340] OK, I am so thankful that I live in the United States of America.
[00:05:52.650] Uh there are a couple prisons in South America. They're pictured here and here,
[00:05:57.360] uh called Carandiru and La Sabaneta. In these prisons that are meant to house hundreds of inmates that house thousands, there are basically no guards they just at some point built a wall around the prison complex and guards line those walls. Um inside the only rule of law is established by the leaders of the prison gangs. And um the inmates are basically just left to their own devices. In these godforsaken places, um the manufacturing of drugs, not just the sale and use of drugs, occurrs on a daily basis.
[00:06:29.130] Um it's pretty commonplace as is starvation, murder, cannibalism actually, spread of HIV, Hep C, torture, and of course rape. So um we're not there yet.
[00:06:38.630] But if people continue to be apathetic about this problem, eventually we will get there. Um something needs to be done about it. But when these things happen in U.S. prisons, there's some- there's some sort of advocate for the victim and somebody is looking after the perpetrator. These places where that happens no one cares; nothing happensm nothing changes. So um if care about this, uh if we just continue to not, to be apathetic about it, these sort of things could be happening complacitly in a zoo near you.
[00:07:04.470] Nearest prison to here is Florence Supermax, less than the distance from here to Denver.
[00:07:08.910] Thank you. [clapping]