77% of prisoners released in America
will be back behind bars within five years.
Re-offending is one of the biggest problems
facing justice systems around the world.
And nowhere is this more apparent than in America,
a country that has a quarter of all the world's prisoners.
Yah.
But can wild horses help?
You don't feel caged anymore.
Definitely I feel like the horse is tamin' me sometimes.
These men are prisoners and horse whisperers.
They teach you a lot about relationships,
about hard work, perseverance, patience.
At Arizona State Prison,
the inmates trade their
handcuffs for horses.
They are learning to tame wild mustangs
as part of a rehabilitation program.
Since it was introduced, re-offending rates
amongst those who have completed the program
have fallen to 4% over the last five years.
Mustangs have been a part of
the American west since it began.
The horses in the wild, those that are on
Bureau of Land Management lands, are protected.
But when wild mustang herds grow too big,
they struggle to find enough food
and can damage the local ecosystem.
To keep the population under control,
around 6,000 are rounded up each year.
Most end up in government holding pens
at a cost of around $49 million annually.
But some are broken in and sold on
through horse whispering programs like this one.
We care for, house,
and try to get
horses adopted out.
My name's Anthony.
Anthony Garrison.
And my horse name is Flex.
I'm in prison for burglary and drugs.
I've been in since 2010.
I don't get out till February of 2021.
My name's Toby, and the horse's name is Clyde,
from Bonnie and Clyde.
I'm in for drug possession,
and I've been in for 4 1/2 years.
Drug possession.
4 1/2 years for simple possession.
6 1/2 years for simple possession.
Yeah.
Since the 1970s, successive US governments
have encouraged the harshest punishment for some offenses,
including mandatory minimum sentences
for drug-related crimes.
This has seen the prison population
balloon 500% in 50 years.
This program is a drop in the ocean,
helping only a small number of inmates,
but it's an imaginative solution to help solve
the rehabilitation problem in American prisons.
The incarceration issue in America, it's obviously huge,
and the difficulty is to programs like this
are really not that easy to develop.
The aim of the Wild Mustang Program
is to teach prisoners life skills
that will prevent them from re-offending.
In the long run, this will keep the prison population down.
If we can reach a handful of inmates,
and they don't re-offend, it's a huge saving.
Not just the monetary saving,
but you have a person who has now
become a productive part of society.
The untamed animals
show many similar traits to the inmates.
Whoop.
In the wild, these horses are primarily focused on survival.
Well, a lot of the guys that come into prison
have this, kind of, same mindset.
There are so many parallels to what
the horse goes through and what the inmate goes through.
The inmate has to learn how to live different.
They have to learn how to think different.
The basic principle is you make the wrong thing harder to do
and the right thing easier to do.
Of the 50 inmates who have been
released after completing the program,
only two have returned to prison.
The inmates are taking responsibility
for something beyond themselves.
Rehabilitation programs like this
could help break the cycle of re-offending.
♪ Another day, another mile ♪
♪ You've been gone a good long while ♪
I'm just not the same person I was when I first came down.
I don't think the same, I don't act the same,
I don't react the same.
It's taught me to help me with being selfless.
This job isn't about me.
This job is about this horse right here.
As I give up my time, my patience, and my energy,
I'm the one who's actually being taught the lessons.
♪ Another hill, another climb ♪
♪ Cain't afford to lose no time ♪
Pioneering programs like this
are time consuming, hard to establish,
and can only help a small number of inmates.
But they're effective, bucking the trend of re-offending.