The House I Live In Storyville

THIS PROGRAMME CONTAINS SOME STRONG THIS PROGRAMME CONTAINS SOME STRONG

My family came to America fleeing persecution in Europe. For my mum's

parents it was the Pogroms of Russia in which thousands of Jews

died. As children my brothers and I were

taught we were the lucky ones who meat it out. But with that luck

came a responsibility. Never again didn't just mean that people like

us shouldn't suffer. It meant Be seated, please, ladies and

gentlemen. I would like to summarise for you the meeting that

I have just had with bipartisan leaders. America's public enemy

number one in the United States is Keep in mind that school is going

to let these students out in 15 Sure we've got problems over this

nation but never forget, there's nothing wrong with America today

that a good election won't cure. That is why I believe the tide of

battle has concerned and we are beginning to win the crusade for a

drug-free America. What shame that we American people could act and be

All of us must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and

Democracy, liberty, opportunity and My name is Nannie Jeter. I was born

in Crewe Virginia, a very small town. Coming north, I think I would

prove I was going to conquer everything that needed to be

conquered. Nannie Jeter was like a second mother to me. Though she

started out working for my family, she was never a nanny, Nannie is

The night is a celebration night. Our families were close and her

children and grandchildren were my play mates growing up. As we got

older, I saw many struggling with poverty, joblessness, crime and

worse. When I asked her what she thought might have gone wrong, her

answer was simple. I think drugs. Drugs is the monster. The killing,

the steling, people being destroyed, it's devastating. What happened to

my son with drugs, I would love to change that. Drugs in America,

pollsters have identified that as the number one issue in this

country. They are taking drugs in growing numbers. A battle to

control the drug markets is deadly. To understand what drugs had done

to Nannie Jeter's family and others, I wanted to get out on the road to

talk to people. I know first hand the devastation we as a family have

had to endure because of the drugs. Putting it before my kids, putting

it before my mum, sister. I had two kids and I lost them to the streets

because of my own problems. Time and again I learned how one

person's struggle had grown into a crisis for their family and the

community. How many people here had any kind of drug involvement?

in here for selling drugs. I have a 30-year sentence. I killed a guy in

1984. I was doped and out of my head. As I began to look around,

the very real problems associated with drug abuse began to seem just

one part of an even larger problem facing the country. It's true that

drugs have destroyed lives, that heroin and cocaine, for example, do

nothing to engender individual dignity but while cover the drug

war as a journalist I came to understand the war against them has.

The war against drugs is heating up. Somebody said we are going to fight

a war against lis sit drugs because drugs are bad. There's no argument

there. But think about where we are 30 years later. If you look at all

the money spent on drug enforcement, prisons, probation officers, judges,

narcotics agents, and everything else that has expanded due to the

war on drugs t gratifies us and makes us feel we are tough on crime.

But to what end. We are the jailingest country on the planet,

beyond Russia or China. Nobody jails their population at the rate

we do. Yet drugs are purer than ever before, they are more

available, younger and younger kids willing to sell them. It's

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 53 seconds

draconian and it doesn't work and I am not a big Superdrug dealer. I

do what I have to do, I know how to survive, I dib and dab if I have to.

It is not hard to tell these are the junkies, right. I think the

economy drives off drug money. You have judges getting high, too. Cops

sniffing coke. The boys are behind us. When I think about people

living in inner city neighbourhoods, think about the principle of a

quality of life chances. You should not be able to enter a hospital

ward in an inner City Hospital of newborn babies and predict with

near certainty on the basis of their class, background and race,

where these kids, where these healthy newborn babies are going to

end up in life. The dope lot, that is what this is, 77 Cromwell Towers.

This is where I'm from. For now. Every war starts with propaganda.

With the drug war our definition of what a drug user or drug seller is.

Became almost a war time cartoon of The truth is drugs aren't yours,

you are just a minuteion, somebody without any real authority, selling

somebody else's dope. It is like fearing the guy at the dry through

win der at bur -- window at Burger King. Sometimes cops view you as

you live over here but they don't view you like them like twas your

I I wouldn't want to work anywhere else. I feel the need to be here as

a minority superviser. Predominantly, a minority

neighbourhood. What we deal with here is a lot of lower level

narcotic activity. We do mostly I will start making my way up there.

Sometimes I think you can trace any Magic man, what is up? You been

drinking right? No. Sober. How long has it been? Two months now. Good

for you. You have a good one brother. Magic man, he's been

around forever. We like to look at the war on drugs as good guys and

bad guys and on the ground it is Drugs are never going to be gone. I

get that. To say you are going to be drug-free completely, (Laughs)

In drug work you never got that satisfaction, because you don't get

rid of drugs. You have small victories here and there, but if

you look at the big picture, are we getting anywhere, you could be

Anybody else in the store? No. going to get you the search warrant.

You can smell it in here. You want a hair cut? He's got cocaine

If you talk to people in law enforcement, they believe that the

community is completely corrupt. They believe everybody's living off

drug money, that there is no moral centre. They see communities that

blame everybody but themselves for what's going on. And then you talk

to those communities and they genuinely believe that law

enforcement is using drug laws to destroy the community. Over time, I

have discovered that everybody involved hates what's going on.

is interesting with this war on drugs, how little the American

people know. I never thought about it before. As I started to ask

around, I found if people knew anything about the war on drugs,

they thought I was talking about something in a foreign country.

6500 people died in drug-related incidents in Mexico last last year.

The biggest drug industry in the world, isn't in Mexico, not in

Colombia, or Afghanistan, it is in the United States. We in the United

States perhaps, our dirty little secret between 10 and 16 billion

dollars are spent by Americans to pay for these illegal drugs,

creating a demand. The thing about the war on drugs is, it tries to to

deal with the health problem as if it was a legal problem. When people

are distressed they want to smooth their distress. So the real sque

not why the addiction, but why the pain. One of the realities, most

people get interested in this country for drugs are selling drugs

to support their own habit. If you stand in a court, you are watching

poor uneducated people be fed into a machine, like meat to make

sausage, it's bang, bang, bang, My mum used to tell me I was going

to die before I turned 18. When I was 14-years-old, that is when I

started getting into fights and stuff like that. Now, I'm 28-years-

old, sentenced for crack cocaine. am the discricket court -- District

Court Judge. I have sent over 2600 people to federal prison.

I grew up around gang members and drug dealers. They were my role

models. Coming here today, Maurice's best chance is a sentence

of 20 years. Drug laws often carry what are called mandatory minimum

sentences below witch a judge cannot sentence a defendant.

have a guy like Maurice, who grows up in a bad family situation with

heartbreaking details of how he got where he is today, but even if the

judge wanted to give him a sentence below 20 years, he can't. My mother

was addicted to drugs. I don't remember my father at all. He got

killed when I was three-years-old. There was a death around me, I seen

a lot of people die, a lot of friends are dead. It could have

We are here in the Bible belt, law and order Oklahoma, the prison is

the largest employer in the county. Employees live all around here. If

you take out a prison, the towns would dry up. I don't know there is

a job I could do better in the world. They should have written

prison guard on my head when I was born. The job was built for me.

incarcerate women at the highest per capita rate. We have 1500

inmates, majority of our drug- related crimes. I am here on a 12-

year drug trafficking sentence. am 34-years-old, I have been here

since I was 23. I am doing a life sentence for second degree murder.

I killed a guy in a bad drug deal. I have sold tonnes of dope. We have

a nice secure facility, I can keep anyone you want to keep. The

facility is as secure as it can get. Turn around spread your butt,

spread it with your hands. As it turns out drug laws have

become so harsh, even the the non- violent can be locked up with

sentences once reserved for violent crimes. We need to lock up people

we are afraid you of, but not the I am a law and order guy, I am a

firm believer, no free rides. Here you recognise that your chances to

manipulate the system are done. That door slams behind you and you

have absolutely no ability to control what goes on on the other

side of that door. You can't open the door. This is where most people,

if they are a newcomer and first time offender, they really figure

out this is prison. This is what the next five, ten, 15, 20, 30

years of your life looks like, this While following the steps that so

many Americans take through the world of the drug war I couldn't

help but notice at every stage black Americans were

disproportionately represented. every war you have an enemy. When

you think about the impact on poor people of colour. We haven't been

willing to look in the mirror and ask ourselves what is going on.

it turns out nearly everyone I talked to knew about the impact of

the drug war on black America. Disproportionate number of black

people are prosecuted. While people could tell me all about their first

hand experience of this, very few had any idea where it came from.

Here is America as you and I like to think of it, the land of the

free and the home of the brave. But from every part of the nation come

newspaper headlines telling us of an enemy, America's secret enemy

The drug war began as a war on dangerous narcotics. You can trace

modern drugs enforcement back to the early 50s. When you start today

see the rise of the urban narcotics squads. Government agencies charged

with the enforcement of narcotics laws have been able until recently

to decrease steadily the number of addicts in the US. It was plausible

as a policy because the use of the dangerous narcotics was a counter-

culture. It was the jazz man's vice, it was in the back alleys. There

was no mass marketing, no drive up drug corners. It was a very small

percentage of the American population that was engaged in the

use of heroin or cocaine. In the 1950s as drug use was was growing,

law enforcement became focused on There's no question there was a

passion with which the early narcotics enforcement culture

pursued black America, even though the addict population was

distinctly bye racial. In the 06s drug use grew widespread in America.

By the late 06s most urban areas had a mass market for drugs. By the

'80s you were looking at McDonald's. At that point you can't claim you

are try to go isolate a counter cultural phenomenon. You are

fighting a war against a whole In October 2009 I joined Nannie

Jeter at the funeral of a family member I knew. Over the years drug

had dep lie affected her life and the funeral brought back terrible

memories for her. My son James died in 89, or 87, I can't quite

remember. Before he died he said mummy, I'm tired of tI cannot live

this life. It doesn't matter what I do, I just just want to die. All I

know my son used a needle. Though I had known about James's death at

the time, I didn't know the extechbt his addiction or how

widely the war on drugs had affected the family. I began to

realise the full extent of T didn't realise my father was a

heroin addict. I got the news in jail. What were you in jail for?

Drugs. Drugs have been going on for so long, it's tough. Again and

again I heard how drug drug laws had done more to punish individuals

than to prevent a serious effort to prevent prevent drug abuse. What

was it doing to other families. There is a structural problem in

the country that we keep ignoring. We have two million people in our

jails and prisons and a million are African-American, most males. That

is a pattern that has overwhelmed the African-American community

because we have a generation of kids that have the assumption that

they are destined to be in the criminal justice system. What

people need to see is the next generation of children aren't going

to be like I was or like my parents were or like my grandparents were,

a generation better than those who At the precinct they told me my

charge charge was a conspiracy 24-year-old Anthony Johnson of New

York was arrested along with two Right now you have pled guilty to a

charge which requires a five-year mandatory minimum. I can't get less

than five years, that seems harsh when you think about the fact he is

not violent at all. It is critical to present Anthony as more than a

drug dealer. John is one of the best criminal defence lawyers in

Vermont. I needed help with this kid. Though Anthony Johnson was

arrested in Vermont he is originally from the very same New

York housing project when I first met Shaniqua. You know Anthony.

He's 24-years-old, he is looking at five to 40 years of jail. By the

time he gets out he won't have a life. Following Anthony's legal

team as they investigated the steps lead to go his arrest, I learned

more about where he came from. More clearly than before I could see how

the vicious cycle of the drug war spans generations. I wish my father

was there for me. I I was outside the front of the building and I

noticed him doing a little hand to hand, and and then I figured he was

a drug dealer. I seen him a couple of times doing it. Did sku him

about it? No, I never asked him. Why? Because I don't ask those

questions, I knew. I really didn't When I heard of it, he's selling

drugs, to be honest with you, to be totally honest with you, it didn't

surprise me. Where we lived, where he came out of. The drug dealers

are looked at as leaders of the community. If your mom can't pay

the rent, they pay the rent F you need food, they would give money to

the household for food. Everybody wanted new converse and he would

get them for you. The drug dealer would come from up the block, you

pick out a pair, you pick out a pair. We came back on the block, we

all carrying sneaker boxes. Everybody wanted to know. We would

tell them where we got them from. Every time he came on the block,

you were under him. Ice-cream van came, he bought us ice-cream and he

didn't have to pay. He would tell the man, get them an ice-cream and

we all got ice-cream. Honestly, I loved him. I loved him because when

they came around, it was Christmas. As you get older, they say you get

your own money, sell drugs. I don't know how to sell drugs, I said. He

said, you don't have to know how to sell them. He gave me the drugs, I

stood there and he would point and they would come to me. I had my own

sneaker money, I had my own movie money and my own power. Where I

come from, the neighbourhood, he was hood famous. My Big Brother

came from doing the same thing. But it was mostly one person, my man

tAY, he was everything I wanted to be. He had the girls, the clothes,

all the jewellery, the cars, the money. That is what I wanted.

wanted to be Tay. Tay showed me how John, I missed your call. I wanted

to check with you and give you a chance to talk to Alicia where we

are at. Anything under ten, I try and make them go beyond that. Five

to 40 would scare me. I was always proud of him, but I always figured

he was OK, that he was good. I know I screwed up. You need that father

figure in your life. I know my daughter needs me and I don't want

me and her to have the same relationship me and my father had,

looking at me in pictures. I don't Watching Anthony's child sleep

hundreds of miles from her father, I could see the painful cycle

gripping his family but I also had to wonder what compelled him to

make the choices he Z It is interesting people ask the question,

what about personal responsibility. You only thing you don't do is

blame criminals for the crime that they committed. You blame everybody

else and everything else. I wish the answer were that simple, but

let's take a little step back. There are structural impediments.

What you see over and over again in urban America are kids who live in

a crowded home, who are hungry when they go to school, lack attention

because they have heard noise and gunshots where they live. I don't

think people fully understand in the inner city, these kids are

making rational choices. I profiled a girl like this, a ten-year-old

girl, the men she steps out of the door way, there are drug dealers

out there, no economic opportunity. The school is warehousing her. She

doesn't see any prospects. How is she supposed to get out. At the end

of the day when there are no resources here and your teachers

aren't stressing to you come to class, not caring, you are not

going to come to school, you are going to sell drugs. To go to the

drug kofrner is the rational act for somebody going to work for the

only company in a town, which is the only economy working in this

town. Those arrested soon find themselves in a cycle from which

few ever really escape. People don't realise that when you arrest

a young black man, the first thing when he gets out of prison, he

can't get a job because of his record. If you have a felony charge

you need to be working, trying to move yourself forward. If he wants

to go back to school, he is ineligible by law for certain

grants. He can't get certain health care benefits. He can't live in

certain neighbourhoods. His family that was the centre piece of his

life, if they are living in public housing, they can't take him in

only people who deserve to live in public housing are those who live

responsibilityy there. For the rest of your life you have to check that

box on employment applications, dreading that question, have you

been convicted of a felony. As a physician I am concerned with the

cash yul tis of the war on drugs, the frontline users and petty

dealers. Rather than seeing the drug problem in isolation, you have

to see it in a social context. These are not problems that are

just intrinsic to individuals. They represent multi-generational family

and social conditions and human failure. You say all the things

that you knew when you were coming up that was wrong. Now I am

starting to do them, but I can't control it because I got these

problems. I am using drugs, I am halfway selling drugs, using drugs

and now I got these two little boys. I don't know how to really be their

dad. I know I am supposed to. I don't know how to stop doing what

I'm doing. To be their dad. Seeing the pain Anthony's father carries

over both his oin choices and the infact of outside pressures I

wondered how a matter of public health didn't just inspire drug

laws but became the full blown target of a war. America's public

enemy number one is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat it, it is

necessary to wage a new all-out offensive. The US war on drugs was

initiated under President Richard Nixon to get his polls up. From

most people I talk to the drug war was born in the late 60s under

Richard Nixon. I have no sympathy for the pushers and peddlers and

others in this country. We are going to restore freedom in America

again. When Nixon ran for President, he talked about the problem of

crime in the streets. The wave of crime is not going to be the wave

of the future in the United States of America. This is really the

first time in a major way that the issue of drug crime became a

national political issue. Richard Nixon is credited as the first to

coin the term a war on drugs, what most people don't realise is that

under Nixon, two-thirds of the drug war budget was devoted to drement

rather than -- treatment rather than law enforcement A programme of

law enforcement alone is not enough. He understood the need to address

addiction. This means that on the treatment of addicts, we must go

parallel... He did things that were progressive, by standards of what

came after him. The more I learned about Nixon, the more confusing he

became. Privately he knew he would be more successful with drug

treatment than enforcement but publicly Nixon returned to the

simple crime fighting rhetoric that worked for him before. We must wage

what I have called total war against public enemy number one in

the United States, the drug of dangerous drugs. Nixon is re-

elected... As his tough talk proved a recipe for electoral success,

I am very much a law and order kind of guy. I would rather have ten

police cars than one soup kitchen. But sometimes I think we need to be

smarter about what those police officers are actually out there

doing. Maybe because he's seen the epitome of a hardened prison

official. I think a long time ago we made drugs into this huge thing

and we've made it so illegal and we've made it such a national issue

with that tough on crime stance, you can't get elected few don't

profess to be tough on crime. have tone sure drug dealers are

punished, swiftly surely and severely. You can't stay elected

few don't do things to be tough on crime. Beef up law enforcement and

build new prison space for 24,000 inmates. Nobody can afford to be

the first guy to say wait a minute we can't afford what we are doing,

let's do something different. If you made a noise like like you are

going to be soft on crime, you People It is like they are paying

for our fear instead of paying for their crime. I heard the same

frustration, that political rhetoric robs them of the resources

they need to do their jobs. People want to lock people up and keep

them locked away and then when their sen sense is over they expect

the person to be reformed or a different person. If you haven't

given them skills, how can they be. I am a cabinet making here, when

these guys get out of prison we help them get a job. He's got one

strike against him, but he can say I am a licenced electrician or

carpenter. For a lot of guys you have they are had self-respect, I

guess. It's been false self-respect, because they were tough or because

they stole a lot or because they sold a lot of drugs. This gives

them the chance to anchor themselves to something good in

these rehabilitation programmes. Prison is not a nice place, but I

am glad I came here, it's made me a better person. This programme is

the best thing that happened to me in my life. We are seeking change,

accepting we cannot change our past but can change our future.

problem is when you get into lean budget times, the citizens of

Oklahoma say if we have to spend money on something, let's spend

money on fences, handcuffs, cell doors. The rehabilitation

programmes are the first thing to get cut. If we don't have the

resource available, that equates to not not being able to give an

offender a trade or skill and they go back to the same behaviour on

I am Larry Cearley, the marshal here. Magdalena is a small spot. We

are 250 miles from the Mexican border. We have US Highway 60, a

main corridor for drugs. For the last 29 years I have been working

in law enforcement, the the major thing that's changed is drug

trafficking. At first glance he seemed from a bygone re of law

enforcement. But as enforcing drug laution has

become the the primary focus for police here, the nature of his work

We are fishing, but you look at trucks like this, that is an

Arizona truck, somebody has been driving for 24 house because they

don't want to get caught. This is telling me this person right here

could be a drug trafficking. What is giving you that impression?

truck and fast food. It is supposed to be illegal to profile, but after

working so long, you kind of know who is doing something. Is it sort

of phoney when people say they don't profile? It is all phoney. It

is all phoney. If you don't profile vehicles, you are not in law

enforcement. That is the way it is, man. Come on. What about profiling

What the war on drugs did was destroy the police deterrent in a

subtle and unintended way. Going up to 15th street and dixie, he's

going to have crack. We are sargeants in narcotics and we don't

do street level drug deals. We do larger quantity cases, looking for

dealers and and suppliers. A world away in the streets of Miami, I

began to see the real impact of the drug war in law enforcement

Totally unrelated to the drug deal, but we stumbled on a house with a

lot of money, marijuana. Sometimes that is how things happened. Nobody

respects police work more than me. There are a lot of detectives who I

admire for their professionalism and craft. The drug war created an

environment in which none of that was rewarded. A drug arrest does

not require anything other than getting out of your radio car and

jacking people up. Probably cause, are you kidding? There is a good

number of people in this area that are involved in drug dealing.

problem there is a real tendency on the part of law enforcement to

think geographicically to throw resources at an area. It is fish in

a barrel for law enforcement. When you need to make an arrest, you

trawl through there. People who are in the area not not committing

crimes get stopped. It makes everybody angry. Watching arrest

after arrest, I began to see for the first time the destructive

impact of drug laws not only on those they target but on those who

enforce them as well. The problem is that cop that made that cheap

drug arrest, he is going to get paid. He will get the hours of

overtime for taking the drugs Doug. He is going to get paid for

processing the prisoner. He is going to get paid for sitting back

at his desk and writing the paperwork and he is going to do

that 60 times a month so his base pay might end up being half of what

he is paid as a police officer. We are paying a guy for stats. Compare

that guy to the one guy doing police work, solving a murder, a

rape a robbery, if he gets lucky he makes one arrest for the month. He

gets one slip signed. At the end of the Monday, officer A made 60

arrests, officer B made one arrest. Who do you think they make the

sergeant. In a city like Baltimore, our percentage of arrest for murder

rape and robbery are half of what they once were. Our drug arrest

stats are twice what they once were. It makes the city unlivable. Nobody

can solve a fucking crime. Beyond the incentives that exist for

individual officers it turns out whole departments have a monetary

interest in increased drug arrests. Most people don't realise that the

financial incentive is built into the system, virtually guarantee the

overwhelming majority of drug arrests in the United States will

be for non-violent, low level drug offences. A couple of months ago we

did a two day operation and arrests 200 people, majority of them for

selling drugs. A lot of the money comes out of seizures from the drug

profits, the bigger players are making off this. So I guess that

If I leave this room but go out there and get in my old truck and

drive down the highway with $5,000 cash in my pocket that I earned, if

I am pulled over by a state trooper, defective tail light or something s

they can take that that $5,000, never charge me with a crime, take

my truck, keep them forever. It goes on every day in counties all

over this country. Can we get a toe slip for this fine piece of

$25,000 I got out of a seizure. police department operates on the

money it seize s? Sometimes. This is legal within the state of New

Mexico. It is legal. What happens is with every successive encounter

with a citizen that goes awry... The guy was upset, that we were

stopping him illegally. He feels he was violated. Is that fair? Maybe

not. Despite their commitment to their work, officers expressed

growing concern not only about the effectiveness of drug laws but also

their larger impact on the police and the public. How much time the

community has spent feeling like they couldn't trust the police, it

is one of the biggest problems. Providence, officers who appeared

on TV as the picture of tough on crime cops to years, seem

conflicted over what a better approach might look like. If you go

out there and cause chaos, and sent to boot camp, national service.

Something. We are doing our part out here and it is frustrating for

us because it it seems likes because they are addicts they find

themselves committing the same crime, that put them in jail, a

week or so prior. Can I see your ID please. Some responsibility lies

with the parents. Straighten your kid out. That is easier said than

do, when you have absentee patients. Sometimes the father is non-

existent, the mother is trying to raise a family. Those kids, the

percentage of kids that break out of that is really really low. If

you keep having kids and you can't afford them, you know what, you

have to have a certain amount of responsibility. I am not saying

spay them, but come on. I pay them 5,000 dollars to get a vasectomy or

something, it's cheaper in the long run. Why are you laughing?

Watching seasoned drug warriors struggle for answers. I wondered

what it was about drugs that made them such a perceived danger in the

first place. You have to understand the war on drugs has never been

Looking to find out more about the longer hestry of drugs in America,

I found an unlikely source in Lincoln historian Richard miller.

Historically anti-drug laws have always been associated with race.

In the 1,800s certain kinds of drugs were common in this country,

cocaine was widely used. Heroin. People using drugs was something

that was just ordinarily accepted. Opium for example was used by

middle-aged successful Whitehouse wives in the south. If people were

addicted or abusing drugs they were viewed sympathetically as people

who had to be helped. It was Seen as a public health issue. One of

the first changes was on the west coast when smoking opium was made a

criminal offence. Why would opium smoking be illegal in California

but not in Mississippi. What was going on in California that was a

concern about smoking opium. It had nothing to do with opium itself.

The concern was with the people associated with smoking opium and

that was the Chinese. Who had come to this country and many of whom

were in California, working hard, working for very little pay, and

becoming part of the American success story. But their success

was taking jobs away from white workers, so politicians got

together and decided they got to find something about the Chinese

for which they can be criminalised to get them out of the way. You

can't throw people in jail because they are Chinese, but you can throw

them in jail because they smoke opium. In the same way we saw

things going on with cocaine. It was mid sl aged successful people

in this country, business executives, physicians, house wives.

Around the turn of the century cocaine began being associated with

blacks. They can with stand - they can work hard all day long again

threatening the jobs of white workers. They were arresting these

people because they committed some sort of drug violation. Next we see

the change in reputation that hip has had. It was a crop from

colonial times. Then in the '30s, it changed into something vicious

and fearsome called marijuana because at that time marijuana

smoking was being associated with Mexicans, working hard, working

cheap and what was being outlawed was not being Mexican but some

habit associated with Mexicans. These laws set a very dangerous

precedent of control. It seemed time and again drug laws targeted

any immigrant group seen as a threat to the established economic

order. But how then did black Americans who came to this country

over 200 years ago become the primary targets of drug laws in the

modern era. The way to think about African-American history is an

immigrant story. The transition from the rural to the urban, it is

one of the great mass migrations in the history of the world. When

blacks came out of slavery they were heavily concentrated in the

south and farming type jobs, as industries were expanding in the

north, blacks were recruited to come to work in factories. This

gave rise to the great migration of blacks flowing into urban areas.

Before she came to work for my family Nannie Jeter joined the wave

of black Americans who moved north during the great migration. She

took me to her childhood home in southern Virginia. We grew up with

a beautiful outside life, the Old Vic role la would play and we would

dance and it was a completely different world. I loved life in

the south. In that environment that seemed so wonderful in the south y

did you decide you wanted to leave the south? I left the south because

I had. Black people couldn't say they were raped if they were raped.

You never heard a rape, only the white lady got raped. But the black

woman - I was innocent but people didn't think I was innocent. No-one

knew I was leaving. I wanted to bring my children up different. The

north was the way out. I thought it would make a dig difference -- big

difference. She had never spoken so openly about her past and what

compelled her north. But as I learned more about her life I began

to see the deeper roots of the drug war for black American families.

Sadly what many of these families came to find is that they had not

really escaped Jim Crow at all. But found themselves in a new system of

racial control, a new Jim Crow. Racially discriminatory laws across

America ensured that poor people of colour, migrating from the south,

would be confined to certain parts of the city that we now think of as

ghettos. Very few people know this but if you look at how African-

American housing patterns were established in the '30s and 40s as

a result of the new deal, the FHA, a democratic New Deal Programme to

inspire home ownership did more to create ghettos than any other

federal programme before or since. Why? Because when they were

creating the culture of home ownership in America, they were

exclusionary to black people. They put them in the areas that maybe a

bit economicically depressed and subject to heavy rentorship. They

red lined those areas and they would not write FHA mortgages in

those areas. Once the areas were red lined that was designed for a

ghetto. In 1950, people were poor but had jobs. Industries had moved

out of the inner city, leaving behind concentrated populations of

poor people, vulnerable to drug trafficking and all the other

problems associated with joblessness. What happens when

groups are denied to the core economic engines in a society, they

create their own, out of pro hinted comins. That was true of the

Italians and Jews and everybody else who came to the cities a

generation before African-Americans arrived. In 1969 during that time,

I couldn't get a job.. When I came to work for your parents, I was

happy just to have this job. Do you remember the first time you saw me?

Yes. It was about three days old, your mum brought you home from the

hospital. You were a beautiful baby that I fell in love with. You

became my baby. I loved your family. I I guess I never dreamt you guys

would ever leave new hefen. -- Newhaven. We moved to a comfortable

suburb of New York City. I didn't know how this impacted Nannie and

her family. Your mum said my husband will double your pay if you

can go with us. I was always working in New York, whilst my kids

were in Newhaven. My youngest son James, he started to smoke

marijuana at 14 and at 20 he started to really go into drugs. It

is still amazing how you spend your life providing, loving your kids

that you don't see the mental power that is going on in their life.

Then you look at white kids, they have their parents and they have a

house keeper that loves them. But yet still your kids are most of the

time alone. What happened with James? He died with AIDS from using

needles. As Nannie and I returned to Newhaven together I saw my

birthplace with new eyes, processing so much I hadn't

understood about the intersection of James's life and my own. But

what else had I missed. Growing up in the wake of the civil rights

movement, I guess like many people I imagined things were going to get

better for black America but as it it turned out in many ways the

worst was yet to come. Growing up in Florida, I remember thinking I

never wanted to leave Florida. I used to tell my parents before we

would go out and do something illegal, I used to say God is on

our side because he knows we are poor and I so he understands what

we are doing. I actually believed that shit. Carl Hart was part of a

generation of black men who experienced first hand the most

dramatic escalation of the drug war in American history. Today a

Professor of psychology at New York's Columbia University his past

experience remains a driving force in his work. Growing up in the '70s

and '80s, many of my friends, family members got caught up in

drug use. I was always interested in drugs abuse. What I do today, I

give people drugs in the lab to study the effects of drugs like

meth am fete meet, marijuana. Karl's research is on the science

behind addiction, his own experience has shown him how often

drug laws are shaped less by scientific concerns than political

ones. In the '80s, I was concerned about the havoc that drugs were

wreak nothing our community. Or the havoc I thought drugs were reeking

in our community. That brings us to the major effort that I am

announcing this morning. In the long history of the drug war, no

single chapter would turn out to impact black America more deeply

than the eight years of the Reagan presidency. What will you do when

someone offers you drugs? Just say no. While Nancy Reagan's popular

slogan took what would seem a mother approach to drug prevention,

her husband took a tougher approach. We intend to do what is necessary

to end the drug menace and eliminate this dark evil enemy

When Reagan announced he was plan to go rev up the drug war, it was

political opportunity more than ever. At the time drug crime was

actually on the decline. Less than 2% of the American population even

identifies drugs as the nation's top priority. But then of course

they got lucky. Crack cocaine... Crack co kaib. Crack hit the

streets and suddenly there was hysteria about this brand new

demon-like form of cocaine. Today there is a new epidemic. Smokable

cocaine, otherwise known as crack. It is an uncontrolled fire. The

American people want their government to get tough and go on

the offensive and that is what we intend with more ferocity than ever

before. If smaller cities don't have a crack crisis now, they will

soon. They are just carrying on like it is their living room, like

this is their home, like they belong here. They don't belong here.

What we saw were images of black urbanites on TV smoking crack

cocaine over and over and over. And then using incredible stories were

associated with crack cocaine. They If you go back to the '20s and 30s

this is what people were saying about marijuana. If you say that

now in our society, people would look at you as if you were crazy.

When you have a new drug introduced into society, you can say

incredible things about that drug and people will believe you.

society is now infested with drug abusers. There is a tremendous fear

of this epidemic that was going to overcome all of us, not only with

drug addiction, but with violence and terror that was going to come

out of this. Tremendous fear led to this view the criminal laws would

save us. The laws raced through Congress in record time, there were

no hearings held, no consultation with experts. This is something

that had to be dealt with, election year fever did take hold of some

people. With overwhelming support Reagan signed into law an

unprecedented array of mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes,

but no drug would receive harsher penalties than crack The penalties

were outrageous. The acceptance of coke is widespread commonplace

among professionals. Whilst were using powder cocaine in board rooms.

Blacks were using crack cocaine in public housing and on the street.

What is the response? I want to know why I am I am being treated

like I murdered somebody. Many people, including judges, began to

question the disparity in sentences between crack and powder. That's

the major reason why I have agreed to be interviewed. In my view it it

is not fair to have 100-1 disparity in the difference between powder

cocaine and crack cocaine. Let me explain what that means. A crack

defendant with 5 grams of crack cocaine is treated the same as a

powder cocaine defendant with 100 times more weight, in other words

500 grams of powder cocaine. I don't think most people realise

this. What is the difference between powder cocaine and crack

cocaine? Do you know? All crack cocaine comes from powder cocaine.

The difference is you add baking soda, water and heat from an oven.

That is the only difference. I run a group called Familys Against

Madatory Minimums. I think what I didn't know was how hard it would

be to change the laws. Julie Stewart first learned about the

severity of mandatory minimums when a family member was picked up on

marijuana charges. I started meeting other families who kids

were in for so much longer. In her fight, Julie took her cause to the

US sentencing commission where she found an unlikely ally. I was the

first federal judge in the nation to search as the first chair in the

sentencing commission. sentencing commission vote today

make crack and powder cocaine exactly the same. Is crack

dangerous, yes it is, but the commission looked at this on many

occasions and found that crack cocaine is00 to 1 was unjust.

can be no doubt that the sentences for crack...

51% of the crack is used by the white population. In Los Angeles

there has not been one white conviction. Not one. Despite the

evidence presented by judges and experts, Congress was unyield.

my view at least, the findings are very vulnerable. These people are

killing our kids. They are disrupting society. These people

I don't think people understand how crucial this is, how serious this

is, what is going on. Look can at Maurice's case, he is facing a

double mandatory minimum from ten years to 20 years. Does he deserve

a a 20 year sentence, I don't think so. After years of concern from the

bench about unfair sentencing, the Supreme Court rule judges should be

given back a certain degree of discretion to determine what a fair

sentence would be. Judge Bennett did something historic. I am the

first judge to do a One to One sentencing ratio between crack and

powder cocaine. He took it from 30 years to 18 years, but it didn't

help. In Maurice's case, the justice was Trumped by the

mandatory minimum. Judge Bennett's decision to use a One to One ratio

turns out to be symbolic. The money mum is ten years and then with me

having a prior drug felony, the minimum is 20 years, so I got a 20

year sentence today. If I go round the country and see the people in

jail unbelievable sentences, how did this go wrong? Well, I don't

know it went wrong, it is just I guess the system worked. The system

worked the way Congress planned for it to work. They are not going to

come home and campaign on the fact that for more lenient sentences for

drug dealers. Just the opposite. I want tough sentences for drug

dealers. But whether Congress started out with race in mind or

not t turns out that minorities are targeted by these mandatory

minimums, 100 to one ratio more than others are and that's not good.

It is interesting because African- Americans do not use crack cocaine

any more than whites. Whites use it more. African-Americans Make up 13%

of the population and they are 13% of the crack users. The rest of the

users are white and brown, which is amazing, because 90% of the crack

cocaine defendants in the federal I came back south for multiple

reasons. To attend some court proceedings. Of course I am here to

see my family because they are all here. Like so many people I met in

the world of the drug war, Carl's story turned out to be more complex

than I originally understand. After breaking ouft his past, Carl found

himself drawn back into the world I found out Tobias was my son eight

years ago. I was 16 when I found out. He is now 26. Nine years later

I am still struggling with him because I am responsible for this

person being here. But yet I had no influence on how this person was

shaped. Right now, he has two charges, he has a cocaine charge.

It's not encouraging. I ain't too good. You should make sure you get

a small gig, I don't care what it pays. I am just afraid that you go

before a judge and then they are going to say how are you getting

your loot. I don't care. You can do whatever you want in life. If you

have this stuff hanging over your head, you are going to be shackled

by the system. Please, man, do It's difficult because I know his

fate. It's the same shit we grew up with. It's cycles. Particularly in

light of what I am trying to do There's a general belief that black

people are using drugs disproportionate to their numbers

in the population. I like to see evidence be used in

our shaping of public policy. All of this was completely missed in

the hysteria in the mid-80s and 90s about crack cocaine. After spending

so much career studying drugs and drug laws in the black community,

Carl's focus has turned to a new drug and new target for law

enforcement. There is a new drug epidemic in the United States,

methamphetamine, like crack, it is cheap, potent and leads addicts to

serious crimes. All across America, we have got people who are trying

to lure children into using meth. By the 1990s we were seeing a

similar phenomena as we saw with crack co kaib. -- cocaine. The

people associated with methamphetamine use are trailer

parks and gay folks, two despised groups. When we think about the

country's response to meth, meth users have been vilified and the

reason we have to recognise it is so we can be careful or more

critical than we were with crack cocaine. Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri,

the heart land of the methamphetamine use.

For a long time crack cocaine was the drug populating prisons. Meth

has rapidly caught up with it and probably overtaken it. Today the

average person I sentence at a drug case is a non-violent, blue collar

worker who lost their job and then turned to manufacturing

methamphetamine to support their habit and we treat them like they

With their rates of incarceration rising, white inmates have start

today receive the kind of harsh sentences that blacks have faced

My name is Kevin Ott, I am in here for trafficking met amphetamine. I

start my 14th year in a couple of months and I will be here until I

die. I have life without parole for Pnchts Ifucked up, but I don't

think I should die for it. I have life without parole. I will stay in

prison until I die. It is a slow death sentence. I have to wait

until I die. The reason I started with meth was because I got laid

off. Somebody said, here, try to sell some of this and get you a

little extra money. Then I started using it. Then I had to sell it to

pay for it. How much is three ounces? It would fit in a small

envelope. If you have been busted for two prior drug charges, smoking

pot or having pot or meth, whatever it is and then you get a

trafficking charge, they give you life without parole, it's mandatory,

life without parole. Kevin has always been a good son. His father

was drafted and was sent to Vietnam. He looks very much like a boy, he

was a boy. He went to Vietnam and came home a very damaged boy. He

saw people that were maimed, injured, shot and killed and I

think he became addicted to heroin to help ease his personal pain.

After losing Kevin's dad, Kevin stepped up and felt like he was the

man of the household. When I first came in, there was only a few of us,

five or six at the most. A couple of years ago I heard that there

were 92 people in the state of Oklahoma that had life without

parole for drugs and it keeps growing. I fought it and it's over

with. It's been over with probably nine years. I took it all the way

to the Supreme Court and they wouldn't hear it. So here I am,

waiting for the law to change or The time I have been locked up, my

mother has lost two of her brothers, one of her brothers daughters

directly relate today drugs. Then my sister, my younger sister was

coming to visit me in prison and died in a car wreck. It's been

pretty bad for my mom. She's pretty strong. Today people have to

understand the drug war is actually a war on all Americans and I think

people keep saying that is about them, no, it is about you. No-one

imagines when they saw somebody African-Americans getting locked up,

that it would apply beyond the black community, but it does.

Unemployment at 9%, America is struggling through the worst

recession since... Thousands of people, job job ps and

hopeless look for a way out. Before I got into drugs, I looked down on

A funny thing happened on the way to the 21 century. We shrugged off

so much of our manufacturing base. For the the types of jobs you could

raise a family and be a meaningful citizen. We got rid of so much of

that, we marginalised a lot of white people. Lo and behold, white

people when they are denied meaning, denied meaningful work, they become

drug addicts too and they become involved in the meth trade and

start turning themselves over to the underground economies.

Capitalism is fairly colour blind in the end. Our economic engine,

when it doesn't need somebody, it doesn't need somebody s it doesn't

give a damn who you are. White people found that out a bit later

After hearing so much about the failure of the drug war and the

harm it does, I wanted to understand what drives it. Far from

the frontlines of the war I discovered a vast and less visible

world of people who play a part. This chair in comparison to other

types of restraint chairs is the most humane. The person in the

chair can breathe easily and it is The war on drugs has to be a war at

every level. It has to be a war on the streets of the cities. It has

to be a war at the state level and has to be a war at the federal

level. Before in the prisons I guess the only choice was you could

get a Torah or a Bible. Things have changed now. All sorts of people

get a vested interest, the financial financial interest in

keeping the system going. It is a growing market, there are a lot of

prisoners in the United States. That's what I mean by growing. Now

you got me feeling awkward because of the camera. Put it down. We are

the largest in the world as far as private prisons and jails. We are

profitable, we are highly rated in the stock market. It homes your

ability to do it less expensively. Because we have to earn profit.

There is a whole range of corporations Taser gun

manufacturers, private health care proviteders, than depend on prisons

as their primary employer. these people are not try to go do

anything wrong, they are trying to make society better, but their

actions become part of the thrust that makes bad parts of the drug

war more feasible. The question we have to ask is, why given that it

seems to be a failure, why is it persisting. I am beginning to think,

maybe it is a success. What if it is a success by keeping police

forces busy. What if it is a success keeping legal establishing

justified. Maybe it is a success on different terms than the publicly

stated ones. Perhaps not surprisingly, it was people on the

inside who turned out to be most aware of the dangerous pressures

that outside forces exert on the system.

My job is to keep the people inside who are supposed to be inside. I am

going to do my job. As I have come along in corrections over the last

20 years, I have watched it grow into this thing, it is almost a

self-fulfilling prophecy, you build a bed, they fill the bed. It grows

and grows and grows of its own accord. You almost can't stop it.

You can't afford to stop it. So now you start talking about we could

cut corners and reduce, if we reduce by closing that facility.

You can't do that, my community will dry up and blow away. The

private prisons, they actually go to a town and say if you use your

tax money to buy the land and build the facility, we will rent it for

you and you will get rich and we will all be rich together. That

only works if there are prisoners in the bed. Now you start to find

people who fit the criteria. Now it is going to grow faster. You can't

let that town fail. So you can't change the way you think about

locking people up. You need a new enemy? It is the same enemy, you

just need more of them. Though my journey had begun with a simple

question, it was forcing me to confront unsettling realities

facing the country. Instead of saying let's get rid of these drug

addicts and dealers and once we throw away the key on them, we will

solve the problem, why not say this, all these Americans that we don't

need any more, the factories are closed we don't need them, the

textile mills are gone, GM is closing plants, we don't need these

people, let's just get rid of the bottom 15% of the country, lock

them up. Let's see if we can make money money off off locking them up.

Even though it is going to destroy families, where these people are

probably integral to the lives 6 other Americans, let's get rid of

them. Why not just say kill the poor, if we kill the poor we are

going to be better off. That is what the drug war has become. Of

father was a war crimes investigator in Europe. We often

talked about his experiences. I was reading the work of someone who

wrol about the destruction of European Jews in the Holocaust.

have long known that the process of destruction was an undertaking step

by step. I realised there was a chain of destruction, what he was

talking about could be expressed by links in a chain. Round-the-world

in more than one society, people do the same things again and again,

decade after decade. Century after century. Now this chain of

destruction begins with the phase we can cull identification, in

which a group of people is identified as a cause for problems

of society. People start to perceive their fellow citizens as

bad or evil. They used to be worthwhile people but for some

reason now their lives are worthless. The second link in the

chain of destruction is ostracism by which we learn how to hate these

people, how to take their jobs away, how to make it harder for them to

survive. People lose their place to live. Often forced into ghettos

where they are physically isolated, separate from the rest of society.

The third link is confiscation. People lose their rights. The laws

themselves change so it's made easier for people to be on the

street, patted down and searched and for their property to be

confiscated. Once you start taking people's property away, you can

take the people away. The fourth link is concentration. Concentrate

them into facilities such as prisons, camps, people lose their

rights, they can't vote any more, can't have children any more. They

are exploited often. Final link in the chain of destrix is

annihilation. This might be indirect with medical --

withholding medical care. Or might be direct where death is inflicted,

where people are deliberately killed. These steps tend to happen

of their own momentum. A lot of people would be disturbed and

outraged by the thought of any part of this process could be going on

in America. But it wasn't until I began studying the drug war that I

realised some of these same steps were happening. For instance,

identification. All of us agree the greatest domestic threat facing our

nation today is drugs. The way to take a problem and make it a huge

problem is first you ask the wrong question and then you feed us the

wrong answer. Who is responsibility? Let me tell you

straight out. Everyone who uses drugs S everyone who sells trution.

And everyone who looks the other way. You identify people, their

characteristics, you make them other, using fear mongering as if

they are the cause of our problems. These people are killing our kids.

These people are wrecking our society. Secondly ostracism.

Society learns to hate drug users. If you are a casual drug user, you

are an accomplice to murder. apply special laws to them. These

people who have been identified as drug users become criminals. If you

break the law you no longer have a home in public housing.

ultimate effect is isolation, being cut off from mainstream society.

started out, we identify them, figure out who they are, start

making laws laws to prevent them from being around our children.

Where do they go. The area of the least opposition, the modern

American ghetto. We manage to isolate the poor economically.

force them out of the place where they can live and work be

successful and now you make them criminals. Once the economics has

done its business, then you can have different levels of policing,

Confiscation, any property they find on you can be subjected to

In the drug war, there is more that is being confiscated. It is being

taken from them, all hope in the future. With the drug war we have

gone as far as the concentration phase. My government says we are

fighting a heroic war against drugs and the war against people who use

drugs. Francsly a lot of them -- frankly a lot of them will have to

be locked up. Extraordinary numbers of people are in prison because of

drugs, yet it is not a place to get drug treatment. They come out and

then we are surprised we have the highest re-offending rates. This

concentration of people, who it is in inner city ghettos or prisons,

creates a culture of hopelessness that is incredibly corrosive. When

they don't have any prospects, people turn to drugs. Then we will

pursue them and be able to to hire a bunch of prison guards and parole

officers and drug treatment people. In the short-term some people have

jobs. Annihilation, that is not happening with the drug war in this

country. But there are subtle but real ways that don't involve

indiscriminate mass killings, such as preventing births. Violence in

prisons. People swept up in drug It is important to remember or

realise that it isn't the war on drug users is the same that what

happened in other societies, but they both are wars on ordinary

people, people just like us. have to have an enemy for

everything. The way Germany in the '30s rebuilt their infrastructure,

rebuilt their industries and rebuilt their pride, their

nationalism was by saying that these people, this group of people

is the cause of all of our woe, if we hate them, we will be better off.

We do say those people are bad for us and if we hate them, our lives

will be better. Everybody has to The drug war is a hos kaus in slow

motion. It is not somebody organising racial superiority or

arguing for the destruction of a given race or religion. That

doesn't exist. Let's be honest about what was unique to the

Holocaust. But there is an incredible destruction of human

life that is class-based, not race- based but class-based that is going

on under the guise of a war against I know they want people to learn a

lesson, but to be honest, all this time is not really helping anybody.

For instance my daughter. It is making her grow up like merks the

cycle is -- me, the cycle is just continuing. This is a letter

written by your aunt. I just wanted you to know a bit about Maurice.

When he was six months old his father was murdered. That was a sad

day. My sister then began using drugs lns

Of all the years I spent in narcotics, I zbnt out there every

day and say let's inflict harm on the community. Unintended

consequence was that we probably did inflict harm. Two young kids

with the mother. Kevin has been locked up 13 years.

So now we write letters and we call and we e-mail and just with a

prayer that somebody will hear us. Because our day will come and I

believe it will come. I don't think my son is going to die in prison.

Walking away and leaving him is the hardest thing that I do. I don't

know what the solution is, but I know the solution can't be more of

what's got us to this spot. It can't be more of the same.

America's drug problem, a result of hundreds of years of history,

economic policy, social policy and misunderstanding. Let's not make

the most visible manifestation of it, people being out on the street

and using the problem. It is not the problem, it is the

manifestation of the problem, it is You have to deal with the whole

picture. After 40 years of incalculable

human cost, it is hard to imagine how something so deeply rooted in

American life can possibly be changed. We find ourselves as a

nation in the midst of a profound have largely been ignoring at our

peril. At many levels across the country there are people trying to

change things. After 30 years all my colleagues who are afraid for

the politics, we have to go a different way. You have never had

so many people on the same side of this issue, we fought a war and

have been unsuccessful. How do we prevent people from becoming drug

addicts. Too many people in jail that don't need to be there. There

is a lot that is not working. recent months, under increasing

public pressure, the first signs have emerged that the drug war

after decades of failure and unsustainable cost may be changing.

Congress took action today to fix what many have called a very unfair

gap in federal sentencing rules for crack cocaine as opposed to powder

cocaine. President Obama signed a law at the White House today

cutting the aish yo to 18--- ratio to 18-1. Despite a few first steps,

those experienced with criminal justice know it will take more than

experts, activists and a handful of law makers to undo the damage

decades of drug laws have caused. The political infrastructure is so

wedded to the status quo, they are so consumed with the next election,

there will never emerge a shred of leadership that will change the

situation. It is up to us. longer can drug laws serve as a

stimulus package for prison communities on the back of poor

people. We don't need to wait until we get consensus. We need to do

what is like. If there are people who are sentencing experts that are

supposed to tell Congress and the public what the right thing to do

is, I just urge you to do it. believe it is in the interest of

every American that we thoroughly examine our entire criminal justice

system. You need to care about the person down the the block. If you

let their rights be compromised, your rights are compromised.

anything ever going to be done about this. It's going to have to

come from the people out there. We can't do it from in here. Do you

know what it is like to go home at night knowing that did you a

personal injustice. I did an Back in 2008 when I began filming,

despite the excitement of the election of Barack Obama, the

thoughts of Nannie Jeter stayed with me. I feel I cheated myself

out of what I could have accomplished. I never knew I wanted

to be in politics, to be a voice for someone to say what was wrong,

whether it changed or not, but to make known it was wrong. I have

learnt so much and I tried to tell it to other people. But it's like

people are going down the same road you went down before they learn.

You make mistakes through life. Mistakes are always there. You make

a lot of mistakes with your life. But when you somehow blow your kids