Venerable newsman Ted Koppel stopped by this morning to talk about the news of the day (Britney?) and his new documentary on the Discovery Channel: Breaking Point, which premieres Sunday night at 9 ET/PT. WATCH VIDEO
The documentary focuses on the overcrowded American prison system, particularly in California.
Koppel and I discussed the documentary in preparation for his appearance, and here's our conversation:
Q: Your last two documentaries have focused on international issues -- the prison at Guantanamo Bay and Iran. So why choose to look at California's prison system?
Ted Koppel: It's a huge national problem. We focused on California because that's where the biggest problems are.
The U.S. has more people in prison than anywhere in the world. We have four times as many people in prison than 25 years ago. The level of overcrowding is growing, and in the next five years, the cost of running prisons in California is going to overtake the cost of all public education in that state.
It costs the same amount to pay for an inmate for a year as it does to pay for tuition, room and board at Harvard, about $43,000.
I mean, pick your statistic...this is a serious problem.
Q: The people in your documentary seem to think that Proposition 184 -- the so-called "Three Strikes and You're Out" law -- is too harsh for non-violent offenders. Why doesn't California just change the law?
TK: It's a great question, and I think the reason is that nobody ever gets elected by saying anything that can be perceived as being soft on crime.
The prisons are overcrowded, but if you're running for office and you say that people who commit non-violent, drug-related crimes should get them outta there, then will say you're soft on crime, and poof, there goes the election.
When you say that we need to have vocational training programs, anger management, drug or alcohol rehab programs, you're perceived as caring more about criminals than the public.
Q: But isn't it in the public interest to have people who are able to contribute to society?
TK: Yes, but again, if you're an elected official, your advisers would tell you to think twice about saying something like that.
So to them, what's the solution? $7.4 billion for building new prisons. That's perceived to be an answer.
Q: With less access to education and drug rehabilitation programs, your documentary shows that prisoners are less able to succeed on the outside when they're paroled. You interview a man named Travis Tippets, who tells you that it's easier for him to live on the inside because he doesn't have the skills to succeed on the outside. We know what the implications are for him -- he'll more than likely end up back in jail. But what are the implications for the public?
TK: Let's take the example of Travis Tippets. If he had been taught almost anything where he could have gotten a job for $10, $15, maybe $20 an hour, he would become a contributing taxpayer. That's better for everybody.
Out of all these people that are in prison, 90% of them are coming out. So the question is, what do you want them being trained in? Being criminals, as they are right now, or some skill that will benefit society? It's our choice. We just need to have a little bit of vision that if we only started treating some of the non-violent criminals in prison with a little more concern for how they'll be on the outside, then we'd all benefit.
Q: Are there any solutions?
TK: Vocational training programs, anger management programs, drug and alcohol rehabilitation. Those are the things you need to be funding. You need to be cutting back on those aspects of Prop 184 that are not dealing with violent criminals.
I can well understand the public's attitude about people who commit rape and murder, people like that need to be locked away for a long time. But for non-violent criminals, it would be a far more useful expenditure to try to treat all of the drug addiction than it is to just grab people as soon as they're caught with whatever amount of crack they might have.
The Supreme Court will be looking at the discrepancies in sentences between people caught with crack and with powdered cocaine. I think you have to be carrying approximately 15-20 times the amount of powdered cocaine to get an equal sentence for carrying crack. And of course, crack use is mostly found in the black community, and powdered cocaine is a largely white phenomenon.
Q: Did anything surprise you in doing this reporting?
TK: Yes. No one will use the term or acknowledge that it is institutionalized segregation. But that's quite literally what is going on inside these prisons, because there are too many prisoners and too few correction officers.
They need to maintain the gangs to keep order, so the end result is that the Crips hang with the Crips, the Bloods with Bloods, Hispanic gangs hang together. Everything inside the prison -- where they sleep, play cards, watch TV -- everything is divided by race.