So in this country today
We have 2.3 million people who are locked up behind bars
Right about 700,000 of them are in jails and about 1.6. Million are in prisons. That's at any given moment
But we also have about 5 million people who are on probation or parole
That's that means they're over 7 million people who are under some type of carceral supervision in this country
Which is really an extraordinarily high number.
But when you add to that people who have been released
We have
20 million people who have a felony criminal record we have over 50 to 70 million people who have some kind of a criminal record
including misdemeanors, but that can show up on job searches and housing applications and so on so we have really what's an epidemic of
people who are stained
By mistakes that they've made and who are tracked and who are discriminated against and who are constantly stigmatized
By our system and by our society.
My name is Marc Howard. I'm a professor of government and law at Georgetown University
I'm also a volunteer professor at a maximum-security prison in Maryland and at Georgetown I'm the director of the prisons and justice initiative the
Subtitle is about the real American exceptionalism
and that's actually a play on a concept that people have often put in a positive light that the
America is a city on a hill is a shining example for the Democratic world and when I'm actually pointing to is the real American
Exceptionalism is actually very negative. It's a very dark sordid
underground of prisons that few people know about and realize how horrific they are and when you look comparatively
Compare the u.s. To France Germany and the UK when you look how the u.s.
Compares to these countries in terms of the criminal justice system in terms of the prison system
You realize that what takes place in this country is exceptional cruelty
So what I do in the book is I go through what I call the criminal justice
Lifecycle where I compare the U.S. To these three European countries in terms of
Plea bargaining in terms of sentencing policy terms of prison conditions in terms of rehabilitation with in prison in terms of parole
Opportunities and in terms of societal reentry after a period of incarceration, and I should go along this criminal lifecycle
And show how on each and every dimension the US has extraordinarily cruel compared to other countries.
The most shocking thing I discovered about European prisons was really how different they are from American prisons
There are not places where people go to get worse to become more violent to become more mentally ill to become more
Criminalized, but actually places where people go in order to try to improve and society tries to work with them
And they're not always successful and there plenty of problems in recidivism is still an issue in all countries
But the goal of the prison system
There is really to help people want to transform people so there are many more opportunities
For vocational training for job preparation and really to help people be able to integrate
Successfully into society when they get out and that's something that is altogether lacking in this country
And that's what I discovered the contrast kind of in both directions. Is that the US is worse than I ever could have imagined and
European countries while they're still tough places and obviously there's still violence within prisons
And there's still plenty of bad people who are within them and probably belong there and some for a really long time
but the emphasis and the goal of
Prison is to help people is to make people better and to help
Society overall whereas in this country the goal is to punish people further to degrade them to
dehumanize them, but then ultimately
When they do come back into society which 95 percent of incarcerated people will do one day look what we've been creating
We've been creating conditions that read
Criminality that leads people to being a social and unable to
Unequip to come back into society productively, but at the same time
I think what is really crucial and underlying all this is a
Completely different mindset in terms of how we treat other people in terms of how we treat the less fortunate in our society and in
Terms of how we forgive people who have made mistakes now obviously there's a spectrum of different types of mistakes and some
Weren't earlier release than others
but I think we need to rethink the humanity of the
2.3 million people who are locked away behind bars in this country, which is something that often gets forgotten
Ignored and they're all ultimately abandoned
Another inspiration started with a tragedy which would happen when I was a senior in high school
And I was 17 years old when a friend of mine a classmate that I'd known since we were three years old actually
experienced the murder of his parents and
wound up being wrongfully convicted and sentenced to 50 years to life in a maximum-security prison in upstate New York and
To me that was a shocking moment and I actually believed he was innocent. My name is Marty Tankleff
I'll be turning 46 year old this year
in
1998 I was charged with the double murder of my parents and in 1990 I was found guilty and sentenced to 50 years to life
During my time in prison. I lost touch with a lot of family and friends
but I reconnected with one friend, Marc Howard, from high school more power who eventually got involved in my case and
Now he's dedicated a book to me. When I was incarcerated when Marc and I reconnected
he was a professor at Georgetown and he knew one of the things we were looking to do is raise some new legal issues and
one of the legal issues we were raising was ineffective assistance of counsel and
How that integrated to my case is we were trying to tell a story
that the prosecutors never interviewed family and
friends
So one of the biggest things Marc did was he reached out to I think it was like 50 or 60 of my high school
classmates, which were also his high school classmates
And he posed one question them did the police ever speak through the DA's office ever speak to you
Did Marty's lawyer ever speak to you and what he did was as a non-lawyer he wrote a friend of the court brief
Which was signed by 50 to 60 of my high school classmates.
That was considered part of the pria process. If you have a family member a friend who's innocent
First thing you need to do is make sure they have the best representation possible
If they god forbid or found guilty you have to ensure they have the best representation even on appeal
but perseverance is key and
Never giving up is also key
You have to continue to shine light on the wrongful conviction you have to educate people why it's a wrongful conviction
And I think that is something that Marc Howard did
Extremely well in my case
Is that he was able to write editorials and op-eds
From a non lawyers point of view why he believed my case was a wrongful conviction
He actually took on kind of this legal role in one aspect
which I think actually gave him the opportunity in the
Motivation to go to law school. So after my friend Marty was exonerated, and and I was going through law school
I got more and more involved and invested in this issue of criminal justice and prison reform
and
I started teaching at Georgetown a course called prisons and punishment and one of the highlights of the course for the students was a visit
Of a prison of a maximum-security prison and that was really really gratifying and inspirational because we got to meet with a panel of inmates
but I wanted to go even deeper and
More about prison life and experience it more without obviously going in myself
For a long-term stay and so what I did is I started to volunteer
As a volunteer professor in a maximum-security prison, and I started going on a weekly basis
And I've been doing this for the last three years, and I'm very very
Committed to the group of incarcerated men that I teach on a weekly basis
and I find that I've discovered through them an incredible level of
Humanity that combines intelligence that combines creativity good humor hard work. They're they're a tremendously
committed group of
Students few people really have the opportunity to go into a prison when they do they don't really want to talk about it actually
That's one thing I've learned that there are many people
Who hide their past experience in prison and so as a result our society,
I think is left in the dark about what goes on and we have movies and shows
That add some drama and often present
I think a warped perception of what actually takes place within prison so for me when I got the experience and the
Possibility of going in first leading students on tours, and then teaching regularly into prison. I realized that this is something
I want to do more and even commit my life to
Which is to trying to expose the horrors of prison life and the way in which prisons are run in this country
and to try to then inspire, I hope fellow citizens of this country and of the world to do something to change it. I
Came to this book not as a scholar who had some dispassionate object of study that he wanted to write a book about
But rather I came to it with this passion
For the injustice that had taken place and occurred to my friend
And then as I've got deeper and deeper in this through my law studies and teaching in a prison for my care for the people
Who were locked up and who are incarcerated and were forgotten and so the product it's a scholarly one,
but it also has a great deal of
personal connections to me
And it's one that I'm incredibly passionate about one that I'm very committed to and then I've really reshaped and rededicated my life to
and what I would hope is that readers of the book get a sense of that passion and get
Mobilized and motivated to reform the horror show that is the American criminal justice and prison system.