Tonight, we have a cancel culture in this country.
It's our criminal justice system.
America has a higher rate of incarceration per capita than Australia,
a literal prison colony.
[audience chuckling]
If you have a felony conviction,
you are banned from health care and from real estate.
For life. My soul can be redeemed,
but that record stays there for life.
You want reform and you want to be progressive--
I want public safety. I want real public safety.
I want people to feel safe. It's about your own self-interest.
[audience applauding, cheering]
[muttering]
Ta-da!
Welcome!
Thank you. My name is Jon Stewart. Welcome to the program.
Tonight: cancel culture.
What is happening to us?
It's like you can't even call women in your office "sugar tits" anymore...
[audience chuckling]
...without some Karen saying, "I don't care for that."
But you know what? You can't just throw people away.
Although some of our politicians are urging us to do just that.
We've got to patrol the streets, we've got to arrest people,
prosecute them and put them in jail.
You have to lock them up.
I don't care about social justice. I only care about real justice.
You commit a crime, you go to jail.
[audience chuckling]
You know what's weird?
No matter how much she has to say, she does it in one breath. Huh?
I believe she has gills.
[audience laughing]
Yeah. We have a cancel culture in this country.
It's our criminal justice system,
a vicious cycle where even minor offenses can snowball
into a life sentence of misery.
Right now, America has about two million people locked up
and none of them caused the 2008 financial crisis.
[audience chuckling]
For some perspective,
it is a higher rate of incarceration per capita than England, France--
It's four times the rate in Australia, a literal prison colony.
[audience laughs]
It's ten times the rate per capita of the Dutch,
the thieving Dutch.
Those clog-wearing motherfuckers
will steal the tulips right out from under your... [speaking Dutch]
[audience laughing]
Even the current axis of authoritarian states,
China, Saudi Arabia, Russia,
we outstrip all of them.
We've jailed more than three times the people per capita than Saudi Arabia,
a country that just decided it was okay for women to drive...
[chuckles, high-pitched] ...but not to the bikini store. [squeals]
[audience chuckling]
Up to one in three Americans has a criminal record.
Look to your left. Do it in the audience, right now.
Look to your left. Look to your right.
Both of those people are cops. You're going to jail.
- I'm sorry. That's-- - [audience laughing]
Thank you for coming tonight, but... [chuckles]
Look, to be fair, there are reasons to incarcerate individuals
who present a danger to society.
In fact, why don't we hear a danger to society tell us about it.
Out of control criminals.
Predators and murderers.
Gun-toting thugs.
Urban gang members dealing drugs and killing.
...a man literally defecating on the street
in front of people who are sitting at a restaurant.
Hey, hey, hey!
You don't have to bring James Corden into this.
[audience laughing]
I didn't say which one he was in that. [chuckles, stammers]
But with that two million number are many low level offenses,
and there are also over 400,000 people who haven't even been convicted.
Most are stuck behind bars because they don't have money for bail.
In other words, poor people.
It seems getting arrested is less about penal code
and more about zip code and tax code.
Take a look at this graph,
which was more than likely very helpful until whoever made it sneezed.
Here's what it shows.
Rich neighborhoods, less jail.
Poor neighborhoods, more jail.
And then of course, if you do this, uh, right here.
Boom. Boom!
Yeah!
- Sorry. - [audience chuckling]
And thus...
"The Problem with Incarceration."
America's bondage fetish occurs at the intersection
of Unquenchable Thirst for Punishment Avenue
and Unforgiving Entrenched Poverty Lane,
which is actually in Tribeca, which is shocking.
- I, uh... - [audience chuckles]
We love our gated communities.
Make no mistake about it.
The vast majority of incarcerated people are poor.
And in prison, they get poorer.
Rather than rehabilitating people,
in prison they're somehow charged for rent, restitution,
public defender fees and mental health assessments.
The average amount of money people owe when they're released from prison
is $13,000.
One formerly incarcerated woman owed over $80,000
for a two-and-a-half-year stay.
Where did she go to prison? Brown?
[audience laughs]
Dartmouth?
[audience chuckling]
So, apparently, the first thing you're gonna need when you leave prison
is a good job, which is tough,
because having a criminal conviction
is one of the biggest obstacles to getting a job.
If you say-- They ask you, "Have you ever been arrested for a felony?"
And you say yes, guess what happens to your application?
They file it in the trash.
You owe a lot of money, but you can't get a job
because having a criminal record is not the best résumé builder.
And while you do pick up skills and certifications in prison,
those skills don't exactly count as AP credit in the outside world.
So poor people incarcerated on minor offenses
become trapped in a downward spiral,
which means the system is working as designed.
If you just let smaller infractions go, they just get bigger and bigger.
If you allow "nonviolent crimes" or crimes that are not as "serious"
to go un-- undeterred or unpunished, they turn into bigger crimes.
You don't put up with the small stuff, 'cause if you let the small stuff go,
then they're gonna try for the big stuff.
And then once they get away with that, all hell's gonna break loose.
So true.
You know who started out jumping turnstiles?
Hitler.
[audience laughs]
If only the Jews had charged him for rides.
You gotta crack down on shoplifting, you gotta crack down on smoking pot.
You gotta crack down on resisting arrest or we don't have a society.
I have to tell you, when I was 12 years old, I-- I shoplifted.
- I got caught shoplifting at a Kmart. - What?
I did, I shoplifted a little bit when I was a kid.
- I shoplifted a couple of times. - Everybody has shoplifted. Let's face it.
Almost one in every four kids ends up at the emergency room
thinking they were going to die because they smoked weed.
- No, Greg. Only you. - I'm one of those kids.
One time as a teenager I ran from the police
- because I was drinking. - Oh, that's cool.
That's-- Everybody does that.
[guffawing] Everybody does do that,
but not everybody pays the fucking price.
Like turnstile jumping.
If you're poor and Black, turnstile jumping can land you in jail.
But for other people...
- Ho, ho, ho! - Ho, ho, ho!
Wow. Turns out white men can jump.
[audience laughing]
Hey, man, let's do drugs.
Smoking weed in the park with your friends in the city?
You're busted. That's a crime.
Suburban kids, who clearly smoke the same amount of drugs?
Yeah, that's not a crime so much as it is That '70s Show.
And God forbid you skip school.
[inmate] I had the handcuffs. The handcuffs was chained around my waist.
And it had a lock on it, like I was going to break loose and kill somebody.
I'm 15 years old and I'm in here
basically for skipping school.
Huh.
What does that look like in a-a different zip code?
[lip-synching to "Twist and Shout"]
Oh, Ferris.
I love that crazy little bitch.
[audience laughing]
But he literally hijacked a fucking parade float.
Take a look at this.
[audience cheering, applauding]
- Your Honor. - May I...
...address the court?
- I have done... - ...terrible things.
I've made mistakes in the past.
Crazy stuff. Gangs.
I smoked marijuana.
Illegitimate children.
- I personally have... - ...robbed banks.
- I've done all sorts of... - ...corruption.
Fights on boats in Rhode Island.
- And every once in a while, I... - ...killed a lot of people.
- But because I was a... - ...rich, white...
- ...suburban teen... - ...I never had to face...
- ...a single consequence... - ...of my actions.
- If I was poor... - ...or God forbid...
...Black or brown...
- ...any one of those things... - ...would have been...
...the end of my life.
- And I just want to thank you for... - ...keeping me out of jail.
And, uh, for being that kind of a judge...
- ...uh, because now I am... - ...a US Senator...
...a Supreme Court justice...
...President of the United States...
- ...and it's all... - ...thanks to you.
[reporter laughs]
- All right. - [audience cheering, applauding]
We're gonna dig into this a little bit more.
Uh, and we're joined by Mark Shervington.
He's an organizer with the Release Aging People in Prison campaign,
working to end mass incarceration
and promote racial justice by reforming the parole system.
We've got, uh, Jay Jordan, the CEO of Alliance for Safety and Justice
and national director of the TimeDone campaign,
which organizes people living with past conviction records
to eliminate the barriers blocking them from success.
And we have Larry Krasner,
who is, uh, the district attorney of, uh, Philadelphia.
Uh, first, Larry, uh, fuck the Eagles.
- All right. Second. - [audience laughing]
That's a-- That's a terrible way to start this, isn't it?
Uh, you are the DA of Philadelphia.
Can you talk a little bit about this street-to-jail pipeline?
So, uh, you know, what has happened in our society is,
even at the level of the laws we pass,
the entire system has been oriented towards arresting, incarcerating,
and destroying the futures of broke people,
Black people and brown people.
The reason that we cannot put in jail producers of opioids
is because our criminal laws are written
so that we cannot hold the people who destroy the economy
and who destroy our health with things like opioids responsible,
but we can catch a homeless person for stealing food
and put 'em in jail for a long time.
We have some very basic structural problems
that just have to be changed.
And Jay, you-- you know, having experienced this,
what does being in that system mean?
So, in America, there are, uh, about 100 million people with a record.
Like, let that sink in.
100 million people in America right now
has some sort of arrest or conviction on their record.
That's more than the entire population of Canada.
They face what is called collateral consequences.
These are social, civil and economic sanctions
that kick in after you serve your time.
Seventy percent are lifetime bans,
and more than half are employment related.
We're talking about banning people from entire sectors:
insurance, real estate, education, health care, finance.
If you have a felony conviction, you are banned from health care
- and from real estate? - For life, for life.
That's just the economic impacts, right?
The social impacts are even worse.
I have a record.
Twenty years ago, fresh out of high school,
was involved with a robbery. Right?
Did seven years, got out.
- It's been 11 years since I've been out. - Right.
My kid are two and four.
I'm getting choked up because this is-- It hits home.
My kids are two and four.
And we got a schedule from summer-- for summer school,
and there are field trips on there.
And they said, "What parents want to chaperone the field trips?"
I can't chaperone these field trips.
My wife is 46 years old, I'm 38.
We want to have a girl, but it's a high-risk pregnancy.
So I said, "Hey, let's figure out adoption."
We can never adopt a kid.
I love-- I love the fact that we live in a country
where we talk about second chances and redemption
and one nation under a God.
But, like, my soul can be redeemed.
But that record stays there for life.
Mark, you-- you know, even getting out is a twisted labyrinth.
It's-- It's very difficult going through the parole system.
I experienced that firsthand.
Uh, I was incarcerated.
Uh, and in case you're wondering, no, it wasn't for selling Bibles.
As a young man, my girlfriend was sexually assaulted.
And, uh, I would say, you know, in hindsight,
regretfully, I took someone's life as a result of that.
Uh, judge sentenced me to the lowest possible sentence
you could get for murder in the state of New York,
which is 15 years to life.
Meaning after 15 years, I could be released.
The parole board thought differently and denied me parole, uh, nine times.
So that 15 doubled.
I was arrested at 20 and I was released at 50.
- What did they want you to do? - I don't know.
I had done everything except walk on water.
They don't want to take a chance.
And you had completed the programs within the prison
that they had asked you to complete:
certification programs, educational--
I completed the programs that they required
and several others voluntarily on my own.
One thing that I noticed about the prison programs is
the people that I talked to that had gone through them said,
they told us when you get out, it's gonna help you get a job.
It's going to give you all these skill sets.
But the currency that you develop in prison
can't be spent outside of the prison.
Just being in prison itself did nothing.
We took the initiative to-- to redeem and rehabilitate ourselves
to prepare ourselves for release.
What served me best was being mentored, uh,
by older folks who help young men like myself, uh, redeem themselves,
and to become assets to ourselves, families and communities.
Larry, you know, isn't it true that it's almost impossible
to grant grace to prisoners in this country politically,
because the outcry from the people-- They-- They expect no blemishes.
They expect that no one who gets out is going to come back in,
and if they do, it's your fault.
Yeah, it's a little bit like saying,
"Well, the person who runs the hospital has got to go because somebody died."
I mean, it's just a completely unrealistic approach.
What we're supposed to be doing is managing risk, increasing safety.
No, not every single person is gonna have a perfect outcome.
The truth is the polity-- policies we've been following
for all these years, when we became the most incarcerated country,
are terrible.
We don't have a public safety system in America.
We have a crime response system.
- We spend $266 billion... - [Stewart stammers] Yeah.
...$266 billion fucking dollars on responding to crime.
We're not protecting people.
When somebody commits a crime, we have DAs.
When somebody commits a crime, we have police.
When somebody commits a crime, we have jails, prisons, probation, parole.
All your tax dollars are going to respond to crime.
So when you hear people talk about public safety,
and why do you have folks defecating on the side of the road,
or people with mental illness,
or people with substance abuse issues that need help,
the only response we have is government saying,
"Well, let's just put them in our bureaucracies."
You're put in a worse position getting out of prison.
Now, four out of five landlords do background checks,
and nine out of ten private employers do background checks.
So, what are we saying?
We're saying that if you have a record in America, and you try to go get a house,
rent-- rent a home, you can't rent anywhere.
So you're aggregated to the same areas as everybody else.
Predatory lending,
buy here, pay here loans,
buy here, pay here car lots,
bail bonds, right?
- We're working these low wage jobs. - Now you're trapped.
Exactly, so now you're trapped in what we call,
"post-conviction poverty."
Larry, you know, if you think about critics of the system,
you look at the last election, every commercial that was run
was about the chaos and violence in the streets.
Yeah, and they were all politically wrong.
- Understood... [stammers] - The fact is that didn't work--
...but it's not about being wrong, it's about being effective
and they scared the shit out of New Yorkers,
and almost pulled off an historic upset.
And they totally failed in Pennsylvania. They totally failed in many other places.
So this is not a successful strategy.
And, frankly, the longer the mainstream Democratic Party,
the longer they push criminal justice reform away,
the more endangered our democracy's gonna be.
- [audience applauding] - For you two having been in the system
and survived, and thrived in spite of it,
what can change within the system
that can actually bring about more positive outcomes?
What could help, uh, incarcerated folks
is to actually allow them to be treated and considered
as human beings, to start with.
[audience applauding]
So, three quick points.
First, we have to elect people with the intestinal fortitude
to do the right thing, right?
- Like, we have to elect... - [audience applauding]
We have to elect good folks.
Like, you need elected officials to say, "I'm gonna do the tough work,"
and then we need to be there when they are undoubtedly
- gonna face backlash. - Backlash.
[Jordan] We have to be there.
They tried to recall you. It failed miserably, right?
Because the people, like, on the ground said,
"You know what, we're gonna back these politicians up."
Point one. Point two, the work that we do is about safety.
Mm-hmm.
It's not just the absence of crime it's the presence of well-being.
[Stewart] Right.
When you think about safety, just think about it for a minute,
where you felt most safe.
What did it smell like? What does it taste like?
Aesthetically, what it would look like, right?
No one answering those questions ever said, police sirens,
- jail, prison, probation, parole. - [audience laughing]
No, you're like, "Backyard barbecues with my nana."
You know what I mean?
But we don't have a system that's rooted in shared safety.
We have a crime response system.
So if we truly want to stop the guy from defecating on the side of the street,
don't put handcuffs, put your arm around him and said,
- "What do you need?" A continuum of care. - [audience applauding]
- Last point.
- Wow. - Last point, last point.
There are 100 million people in this country
that have a criminal record.
There's 100 million of us, here.
We've served our time, we paid our debt to society,
and we're facing 40,000 legal restrictions.
When will my sentence end?
If my time is done, my sentence should be complete.
Whether it's two years, three years, four years, five years,
heck, give me ten years, at least shield the record
so I can go on with my life.
We have to stop people from not being able to take care
of themselves and their family.
And that's repairing the harm,
that's passing sunset laws in every single state.
[audience applauding]
I can't thank you guys enough, uh,
Mark Shervington, Jay Jordan and Larry Krasner.
Guys, thank you so much for joining us today.
Really appreciate it. [stammers]
[audience applauding continues]
[stammers] Unbelievable.
Well, uh, they spoke earlier about some folks
that are on the vanguard of trying to fix this problem.
How do we fix incarceration?
Uh, well, we went to talk to the governor whose state
has the second highest number of incarcerated people in the country,
and we did it in San Quentin Prison.
It was his idea, not mine.
[Stewart] Governor Newsom of California,
- thank you for joining us. - Good to be with you.
Uh, first thing I want to say is I was handsome once too,
so don't think that's gonna last forever. 'Cause it's not.
This is coming for you.
- [laughs] "This is coming..." - It's coming for you.
- So don't think you're... - Jesus. Unbelievable.
So, if you had your druthers,
how do you reform America's prison system?
You just have to reform, I think, a consciousness with the public.
- It begins with the public. - Mm-hmm.
We've been conveying fear and anger,
and it's manifested in terms of recidivism rates
that don't have to persist and exist.
And, so, we have to completely reimagine.
To integrate the outside and the inside in a much more strategic way.
We've got to look at reentry with a much longer runway,
and not just dump someone out there on a bus with a couple of bucks,
going right back to the neighborhood where it all started.
And all of a sudden within 14 minutes,
they may be back in the old past patterns.
And gotta make sure that happens before you're released,
and have real programming, so there's a real handoff.
That's not easy, but it's absolutely achievable.
This is not that complex.
Yeah, no. Listen, it's-- it's all-- it feels very aspirational
and very impractical.
My experience walking inside of San Quentin,
uh, was jarring for a couple of reasons.
We looked at a television program,
you know, guys that were learning how to edit and doing all that.
- It was fantastic. - Yeah.
And it was 12 guys,
and you could see the difference that it made in their lives...
- Yeah. You got it. - ...but it's artisanal.
The frustration of that experience,
I think for both of us, is what the hell is wrong with us
when we know that that artisanal program, if scaled,
would reduce crime rates in this country profoundly?
We're shutting down San Quentin as we know it.
San Quentin as a prison, as we know it, will cease to exist in 2025.
- So this is-- this is shutting down? - This is shutting down.
This thing is shut down as we know it, and I'm converting it to... [stammers]
...one of the world's, I hope, preeminent reentry facilities.
We have 500 volunteers here.
We have 1,000 of the 3,200 prisoners here that are in deep programming,
80 different programs.
And we could take it 10x, in terms of scaling. It's what we're going to do.
But when we walked out of this prison and you turned around,
and four of the prisoners were just standing there.
Almost as though there was an invisible fence.
- Yeah. - And there was. [stammers]
Yeah, the same guys who were walking us around and touring us
couldn't have been-- couldn't have been more gracious.
That yellow line said, "Out of bounds."
Yeah.
And that reminder
- that they live on the moon. - Yeah.
How do you expect anybody to walk out of the moon
and adjust with, you know, 200 bucks in their pocket,
no real certificate skills that matter to the outside population,
a strike against their name because they're a felon?
I don't understand how the recidivism rate isn't 90%, truly.
Uh, the answer is we got to bring the community into this environment,
because we're in the homecoming business.
- Again, you may not like it... - So--
...but folks are heading home everyday out of these gates.
And how are they heading back?
Do they have a mindset of community, of empathy, care and collaboration?
Or are they gonna go right back to their original form?
Listen, most people that are already out there
don't have a mindset of community, collaboration,
- and all these other things. - Yeah.
As I look in here,
programs that are being created have a currency within this prison,
- but on the outside... - It's hard. Yeah.
...that money doesn't-- that doesn't mean anything.
And that's the problem.
Are we giving a false hope to a lot of the prisoners in here?
Because a lot of what they say is, "What was I doing in there?
I was told the path to redemption is along this certification process,
and then I got out, and this is meaningless.
I'm considered a pariah, and I can't move on with my life."
And the stigma's real,
but I think the stigma, and the internal shame,
and the internal stigma, is even more pronounced.
I think-- You heard from a young man in there.
Says, "I can finally send--"
His name in a byline of the newspaper, and he sent it to his mom.
It's the first time, he said, his mom's ever been proud of him.
- That's a kid whose mind is stretched now. - Mm-hmm.
It's not about the certificate. It's not even about the program.
Not for him.
I mean, for the work-- He's gonna get out--
- But what he gets out... - Right.
...is now, all of a sudden,
he's found something he never thought he had,
which is some self-respect, not just self-loathing.
Thinks he might actually be worthy, and all of a sudden his mind is shifted.
And I see people doing well on the outside across the spectrum.
I just hired two folks up in Sacramento that are working in our office
that spent time, quite literally, right here,
that are doing extraordinary work.
You're talking about changing this from a factory into something more human.
But you can't treat them as humans
when they live in this alien, dehumanizing, factory environment.
This system isn't built to cherish each individual
- and get them to see their own worth. - No. No.
This is built to keep them from killing each other while they're in here.
Correct. But as a society, you're right,
we have to actually believe in the core tenets
- of what we "practice" in our faith. - Right.
And that's second damn chances.
And redemption.
And the ability to turn your life around.
So let's talk about the parole process just very quickly.
Within a parole process are a bunch of people
that are very familiar with prison culture,
and very few people, uh, familiar with neighborhoods and reintegration.
Uh, I deal with 70, 75 paroles every single week.
Some of my predecessors, none even bothered to look at them.
They rejected every single one.
They're tough, and they're folks that are perfect on paper.
You look back and say, "What the hell did we miss?"
Mary Reese, you wanted, uh, to commute her sentence.
You sent her back to a parole board.
She's been in prison for a series of burglaries.
Not nothing,
- but clearly not a violent offender. - Right.
She failed her parole hearing
based on having borrowed, I think, hair gel from another prisoner,
a-and some other things.
And on the flip side of it,
you have an offender who was let out and killed a police officer.
Yeah, yeah, recently.
- Devastating. Yeah. - Devastating.
We have a system that cannot tell the difference,
and we have a public that demands certainty.
Yeah, and we still have the same dungeonous rooms
for those two perpetrators you just described.
One that's benign.
Not particularly violent, not particularly problematic.
And others that have every reason to be considered concerned.
We haven't evolved. There's no innovation.
We talk about reform.
We don't talk about innovation in the criminal justice system.
I mean, here-- here's the problem that you run up against,
is in that reimagining, you run up against political reality.
Simple things like
instead of giving them $200 when they walk out the gate,
giving them $1,000 when they walk out the gate.
And you guys couldn't-- couldn't do that politically.
You vetoed that because, I imagine, you had to.
Yeah, well, with a combination of that
and we should've done it through the budget process.
By the way... [stammers] ...I know-- I know the realities.
That-- That person that killed that police officer,
the district attorney accused me
- of being responsible for that. - That's right.
I live the realities, I don't know them.
- It's not intellectual, I'm living them. - That's right. Sure.
- That's, I mean, that's-- - And that puts you on your heels.
No, it didn't put me on my heels. Actually, it put me on my toes.
Right. You want reform, and you want to be progressive--
I want public safety. I want real public safety.
I want people to feel safe. It's about your own self-interest.
[Stewart] Right.
You want to make sure your kids are safe, you're safe.
You don't have to turn your head when you're getting the ATM machine.
Uh, "Abso-fundamentally-lutely," that's the core of any real reform.
Now, you were going to say "fuck."
- He was gonna say "fuck." - I was.
The governor-- the governor-- I want that written down.
- The governor was about to say "fuck." - I know. Is this cable?
He flipped it to "fundamental", which I thought was a wise choice.
Yeah, I thought it was wise, too.
Uh, look, is ultimately the incarceration rate
and the recidivism rate in the United States,
purely a failure of public policy, or is it a failure of our morality?
I think it's all the above, but-- but spare me the morality
that somehow these issues are unique to America.
What is unique to America is the over-incarceration,
the mass incarceration, and the deplorable outcomes,
and the guns that exacerbate these conditions
out on the streets and sidewalks.
So, yes, I think, it goes to your point.
It's morality, sure,
but it's also because we've chosen an uniquely American way,
we've chosen the conditions and chosen this reality.
Right. Well, uh, appreciate you taking the time
- and, uh, an eye-opening trip. - Thank you, sir.
[chuckles] Glad you came out.
- Thanks. - Thanks, brother.
[audience applauding]
Uh, I gotta say this though, uh,
it looks to me like Gavin Newsom has vocal cord muscles.
I've never seen that before in a man's neck.
Just as he's talking,
his head would just go higher, and higher, and higher. It's tremendous.
Uh, that's our show. For more resources, head to our website.
It's the only website left on the entire Internet,
- so you can't miss it. - [audience laughing]
And we got a weekly podcast because everyone has a fucking podcast.
[audience laughing, applauding]
And...
And if I may say to the audience tonight, if you're looking for a podcast producer...
[audience laughing]
We end tonight with a final "for fuck's sake."
Violent crime is surging in Louisiana.
Woke leaders blame the police.
I blame the criminals.
If you hate cops just because they're cops,
the next time you get in trouble, call a crackhead.
[audience laughing]