Translator: Delia Cohen Reviewer: Ellen Maloney
Before I get to my comments,
I want to make one other comment and that is this:
This is a remarkable program; it really and truly is.
I've had an opportunity in my life to be involved
in a lot of activities of all sorts.
And I think I can honestly say that I have not heard
a set of presentations, a set of discussions,
that were as thoughtful as these have been.
You deserve an enormous amount of credit.
(Applause)
It is also, for me, a deep honor to be with you.
A few months ago, I began preparing for this talk,
and we had a conference call with the TEDx team from San Quentin.
And the first thing that struck me was how thoughtful people were
and also by how immensely determined
they were to take control of their own lives
despite the enormous obstacles that were stacked against them.
Before we had that conference call, I was quite concerned.
The question I had for myself was: what did I have to offer you?
On that conference call, I discovered something very different,
which is what you had to offer me.
We talked for an hour and 20 minutes.
I took five pages of notes, which I still have.
And ever since, I've been telling others
that what they should do is visit incarcerated people
in locations in their neighborhood.
And that way, they could have the experience that I have had,
and it is a remarkable experience.
My hope is that this talk is your talk:
That I can help others see how much you have to offer them
and see how much you have to offer our society more broadly.
I'd like to start by taking a step back, a long step back.
I took a course when I was in college, Philosophy I,
taught by a rumpled Greek professor, Raphael Demos.
Professor Demos used to amble into his classroom.
He would take the wastepaper basket, turn it upside down,
and use the bottom of the wastepaper basket as his lectern.
(Laughter)
Then he would dissect the great thinkers and philosophers of the ages.
In lecture after lecture, his course was designed to lead us
to one broad conclusion:
Nothing, absolutely nothing, can be proven with absolute certainty.
Every system of thought ultimately rests on an assumption or a statement of faith.
And if nothing can be proven with certainty,
then all decisions are about probabilities.
When I make a decision -
this was true when I was in government;
it was true when I was in the private sector before that -
I would first think of the possible courses of action,
then I would make judgments as best I could
about what I thought the odds were of potential outcomes
from each possible course of action,
and finally, I'd weigh those judgments against each other
to reach the best conclusion.
Very often I would take a yellow pad, and I would go through these steps
on a piece of paper in order to have more rigor and precision.
Having said that, ultimately these are all judgments:
judgments about probabilities and judgments about odds.
I had a skeptical mindset before I took Professor Demos's course.
But his class, his course, gave me an intellectual framework,
which has guided my thinking and my decision making ever since.
To give you one example, when I became Secretary of the Treasury,
one of the first things we did was set up an Office of Community Development
to focus on poverty in inner cities and in distressed rural areas.
Shortly afterwards, I received a request -not a request, a demand, an instruction-
from a senior Senator on the Hill to come to his office.
He was concerned that I was focusing on community development
and not on what he called "my job": economic policy.
I respectfully disagreed and told him that poverty is a critical economic issue.
I said that because I looked at poverty from the perspective
of economic probabilities.
That is, I looked at the probable economic benefits
of measures to combat poverty, the savings that could be had,
and the productivity benefits that could be obtained
by our entire society by enabling the poor to function more effectively
in the American workforce.
Then I compared the costs to the benefits.
My conclusion was that the benefits of combating poverty
would far outweigh the costs,
that the measures were good and important public investments,
and that combating poverty should be part of the nation's growth agenda.
To get back to the conference call we had a few months ago,
or a couple of months ago I guess it was,
one of the most powerful takeaways was when one of you said,
and I'm paraphrasing,
"When something happens, when we are considering some action,
we should not react, but instead we should respond."
"Reacting," he said "is emotional and impulsive.
Responding is waiting and taking time to be thoughtful."
And that distinction, between reacting and responding,
matches with my earlier discussion,
because if you respond thoughtfully
what you're doing is you're taking the time to think through the odds
or the probabilities of different outcomes from different courses of action.
Reacting emotionally is the opposite of that.
One of you told me that 28 of you discussed reacting versus responding
and realized that together you had already been incarcerated
for 715 years for four minutes and 26 seconds of reacting.
You have put a tremendous amount of thought,
the same kind of thoughtfulness you've evidenced here this morning,
into understanding that distinction,
and a tremendous amount of effort into changing your approach.
As you know, the laws of California have changed recently.
There was reference to more people being paroled under Jerry Brown -
Jerry Brown was my classmate at law school,
and I know Jerry well and I've talked to Jerry about criminal justice reform -
under Jerry Brown than any time before.
A great many of you now have the possibility of earlier release
than seemed conceivable not long ago.
And some of you have told me that has changed the way
you as individuals behave in prison,
and some of the speakers this morning have already referred to that.
You are now focused on increasing your chances of parole more quickly
and on preparing for life after release.
Preparing for the outside world was not pressing before.
Now, the outside world is a real prospect.
Now you're trying to learn the skills, behaviors, attitudes, and approaches
that can help make your lives productive and meaningful outside these walls.
You may not call that probabilistic thinking,
but that is exactly what you are doing.
And there is a profound lesson in our society, in all of this,
about criminal justice reform.
The prospect of release has a more powerful effect
on changing behavior than the absence of that prospect.
Now, society needs to catch up with your decision making
about criminal justice reform.
We need to apply probabilistic thinking
to the issues of our criminal justice system.
Not long after I left government, I helped found a Washington think tank
called The Hamilton Project.
One of the first issues we looked at was to apply an economic lens
to the criminal justice system.
It was apparent that we all needed to learn what you, in this room,
have known for so long:
our country's criminal justice system is broken
and it needs fundamental reform.
America puts people in prison for acts that other nations do not,
mostly minor drug offenses.
And we impose longer sentences for most crimes.
The rate of incarceration in the United States
is six time the average of the large industrial nations.
We need sufficient alternatives to prison for low-level offenses,
greatly reduced sentences for the vast majority of offenses,
and reform of parole and probation policies
that are currently far too rigid.
There's also far too little help in terms of rehabilitation,
although San Quentin is a model for what can be done in that respect,
and massively inadequate help after release.
Taking a probabilistic approach...
(Applause)
I'll tell you something very interesting; a few weeks ago, I was on a panel
with some very, very distinguished people, not me distinguished but the others were.
We discussed the economy and all kinds of things.
The only subject that got applause from that crowd was when I said,
as part of my discussion about the economy,
that i thought a prime economic objective should be criminal justice reform.
There's an awareness out there of how badly broken our system is.
The question is can we get our political system to function effectively
in response to this issue.
Taking a probabilistic approach to criminal justice reform
involves, as I said a few moments ago, looking at the costs and the benefits.
We must continue to reform our system for moral and social reasons,
but we also need to analyze its economic effects.
When you do that, it becomes patently clear
that our current system is failing, not just you,
although it certainly is failing you,
but all of us.
Today's global economy is highly competitive.
For our nation's economic success, we need to equip every American
to be effective in the workforce and to help drive productivity.
Having people in prison who should be in the workforce
because of a lack of alternatives to incarceration, overly long sentences,
and rigid parole policies harms the American economy
for every single one of us.
So, too, does failing to help prepare those who are in prison
for life after release.
We all know that crime can have terrible costs for its victims
and for our economy more broadly.
But providing appropriate incarceration for those who commit crime
shouldn't deter us from addressing the immense deficiencies
of our current system.
They are an injustice to so many, and they're a serious detriment
to our nation's economy.
We all have a role to play in solving this.
Those of you who are incarcerated need to keep doing what you are doing:
working to make the best decisions you can every day,
taking advantage of the opportunities that some of you have described
here this morning to improve your skills and your education,
thinking about what kind of life you want to have after release,
and working to get yourself ready for release.
We, as a society, need to make sure that others in prison around the country
have access to programs and opportunities to do the same,
to take responsibility for the next chapters in their lives,
and to act on the probability that they have a contribution to make,
an important contribution to make to our society,
because they do, and you do.
People outside prison need to learn,
and one of you said this on our conference call,
that you are not just the crime you committed.
You are not just incarcerated men: you are fathers and brothers and sons.
In other prisons, there are mothers and sisters and daughters.
You are thinkers and pastors and artists and teachers.
We are all, every one of us,
much more than the single worst thing that we have ever done.
(Applause)
Oh, okay. That's my last page; if I didn't have it, I'd have to make it up.
Thank you.
(Laughter) (Applause)
If I didn't find that, no, then what I would have done,
I would do my version of rap.
(Laughter) (Applause)
(Cheers) (Applause)
With all due respect, I think we're better off with my last page,
(Laughter)
whatever it may be.
(Laughter)
Businesses, and I'm still very much involved in business,
businesses must learn the same lesson.
What we've got to do is put aside, and somebody mentioned this before,
stereotypes and biases against hiring former prisoners.
(Applause)
We absolutely and definitively need to ban the box on job applications
that asks if you've ever been in prison.
(Applause)
That is counterproductive to our economy
and monstrously unfair to the former inmates,
because it disqualifies applicants before they are even heard.
And government has to act; there has been some progress in some states.
California is obviously an example, but there is far, far more to do.
And we need to come together on what seems to be,
at least hopefully is, an emerging bipartisan consensus at the federal level
to support reform of the federal criminal justice system.
What I'm really saying, to use your framework,
and a lot of these remarks as you can tell came from the comments that I heard
on that conference call and that I made my five pages of notes about.
To use your framework,
what we really need to do is we need to get to a situation
where society responds to criminal justice issues and not just reacts.
Yes, crime hurts people; it hurts people badly,
and I don't want for a moment to diminish that.,
but as a society, we cannot base our criminal justice system
on these understandable reactions alone.
Instead we need to look at the probabilities,
and we need to respond thoughtfully,
just as the speakers here this morning have spoken so thoughtfully,
in a way that is likely to achieve the best results for all of us.
In or out of prison, you are part of America;
you are part of our society.
(Applause)
And America has a powerful stake in your success,
because it is part of ours.
Thank you very much.
(Applause) (Cheers)