A Conversation with Jarred Williams: Mapping the Practice and Politics of Decarceration in the U.S.

Hi, everyone, welcome back to Social Work 504. Today, it's my privilege to interview Jarred Williams. He is a Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship finalist and we'll hear more about what that means. Most recently, he was also a research associate in the University of Michigan Law School. And he's currently developing a nonprofit organization that he's gonna tell us about, as well. So welcome, Jared. >> Hey, thank you for having me. >> I am so excited to talk about your story and about your research. And I mentioned this very prestigious fellowship that you are a finalist for, congratulations making it that far. >> Thank you. >> Can you start by giving us a little bit of background what the Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship is, and how you came to apply for that fellowship? >> The Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship is a fellowship from Open Society Foundation, which is funded by George Soros. And the purpose of the fellowship is to find young people, people that are established in the criminal justice reform movement, and journalists that can make a dramatic impact or show potential to make a dramatic impact to decreasing incarceration. And so, each year, there's hundreds if not thousands of applications and you go through this long process. Just last week, I went through my interview which is somewhat of a grueling process, and so as of now I'm waiting for results. >> Awesome, and so one of the reasons why I assume you made it this far into this prestigious fellowship process is because you're doing some incredible work in the area of prison reform and getting into the depth of that. But before we dig into your specific work, I know that you're an expert and you have some great background knowledge on the context of incarceration. Particularly where the US is positioned globally in terms of incarcerating its citizens. And that's something we're learning about in this course. Can you just give us a little bit of background on that? >> Sure, I think it's important to look at incarceration rates from a global level and then maybe work the lens down to a more national level, a state level, and then maybe how it even impacts certain individuals. And some examples of that and often heard statistic is that we have 5% of the world's population and we incarcerate 25% out of all the people in the world. And there's 7.5 billion people in the world, and there's more than 300 million people in the United States. But of all those 750 billion people, that we have 25% of all the people behind bars. >> So one of the reasons i really wanted to talk to you is not only because you're doing this incredible work, looking at prison closures but also that your work is informed by your personal story. And that you're so generous in sharing your story, it's kind of like, a lesson, a lesson to be learned essentially around the impact of incarceration and making early mistakes on someone's later life trajectory if you really want a longterm trajectory. Do you mind sharing just a little bit about your story whatever you feel comfortable sharing and how that kind of informed, bringing you into the work that you do now? >> Absolutely. I've more than open about it when I was just after my 18th birthday, I was driving around with a friend and there was a car that was running, someone was warming up a car in front of their house. And he was like, I bet you $100 you won't drive off in that car, and so I said, I bet you I will, as a stupid 18 year old. And so, I did, I drove off in the car, I drove around the block, and I parked the car basically. One thing led to another and I ended up being arrested. And eventually I had 54 court dates, I was sentenced to an indeterminate, which means that you're eligible for parole, technically and there's various ways to define that. Five year sentence, so I got five years for my first offense. After six months of incarceration I came before the judge, and they ended up giving me 14 years of probation, which means that I have to report to a probation officer basically every month for 14 years. Now, you could look at that from two perspectives, is that I did something wrong in society and I was punished in some way. >> Mm-hm. >> And you can also look at it is. I didn't come from an impoverished family, my family was middle class. I had what anyone would probably consider the Brady Bunch existence and the story could also be interpreted as, the story of mass incarceration just doesn't impact impoverished communities or people of color. >> Or people of color, yeah, absolutely. >> Like, Brady Bunch type families can get caught up in this mass incarceration, too. And so, it's an important thing to know that the- >> So anyone in a sense who makes a mistake, or has a youthful indiscretion, or makes a poor decision, and does not have the resources to advocate for themselves, could certainly be caught up in the same cycle as some of them who are visible communities that we have to think of. >> Absolutely. >> Yeah, and so what was the impact of having 14 years of state sanctioned kind of control over your life in terms of your career prospects, your ability to move about freely, what was that experience like? >> At that time I had a full academic scholarship to Oklahoma State University so obviously I had to leave school. >> Because at that time, this was a felony conviction, and so at that time, that somewhat disqualified you from attending that university. >> Yeah, definitely being in prison disqualified [LAUGH] me from do attending that university. And so, when I got out, I mean I wanted to do right, prison at least in the fact that you don't wanna go back is definitely I'd probably say generalized impact on most people that are in that situation. So I started working for a construction company, I'm doing like made manual labor work. And then, they went out of business after six months. So I managed to save a few dollars. I applied for jobs. I applied for jobs. Due to my commonal record, I was denied even access to any type of job. And kind of like somewhat of a last ditch of employment effort, I went to McDonald's, and I tried to apply for a job at McDonald's. And since there was a cash register in the building, they wouldn't give me a job. And so, I kinda came to just feeling that I'm not wanting by the United States due to nothing other than one youthful indiscretion. And so, I left. My friends were going to Florida to become a dive instructors and so I would save like about 800 or $900. I went to Florida, became a dive instructor, and I spent the next almost decade traveling around the world teaching scuba diving. I started in the Caribbean. Eventually I branched out. I backpacked through Africa, India, and Asia and the inequality that you see that's maybe less noticeable in some respects in the United States. Once you make it to Africa and India and those types of countries, it is extremely evident that there's this half that's completely poor, this half that's completely rich, and nothing in the middle. >> So the way that we're able to somewhat mask economic inequality in this country, there are different systems through educational systems or housing or employment that those inequalities become laid bare in other nations essentially. >> Right. >> And that was your experience and seeing that up close. >> Absolutely. And I had this epiphany, I guess, that that scene made me realize that all I was doing was running from a problem, and in some respects, I had a unique I was in a unique position where I did have an academic scholarship. I didn't have the only barrier, per se to my overcoming this was a criminal record which is no small barrier. And so I ended up getting a job for an environmental organization where I move to Maui, Hawaii. Where I took pictures of pectoral fins of humpback whales for identification purposes. That's how I did [INAUDIBLE] should think. And, I met the lady that would eventually be my wife. And education was always of interest to me. And I realized that to overcome this type of barrier, that I felt, and still feel, that education is one of those ways that it makes that possible. So I started at a 3,000-person community college in Maui and I went to this a whole year there. >From there I transferred to Honolulu which has the University of Hawaii. I graduated magna cum laude from there. I applied to lots of graduate schools. And even at this point where I've shown at least some type of redemption, some type of academic execs and intellectual curiosity, still applying for graduate schools. There was lots of applications where you had to check the box as they say. >> Mm-hm, yeah. >> Have you ever been convicted of a criminal record? >> Or of a crime. >> Or of a crime, right? >> Yeah. >> And if they, and in so if you checked that box, I mean you're basically required to give a mea culpa. You're supposed to tell them what you were convicted of, how you've changed and that process. So then, your application goes to the dean of the entire college. He does a risk assessment on you to see if they'll let you in, will you, or do you present a risk to the school community. I actually was accepted to some of those institutions, but I chose Washington State University. So as of now, I am a PhD candidate, which means that I've finished my course work, I've defended my thesis. I'm writing my PhD. >> Your dissertation? >> My dissertation, and I had the opportunity through networking and going to conferences I met some influential people. And after I was no longer required to be in the same geographical locations to my graduate school, I decided to try to get work experience. And so, I sent my resume to a few people and the University of Michigan law school ended up getting it. And they contacted me and I started working there and that's for my professional career. >> Yeah, what an incredible story about how you essentially worked your way back to the United States. After feeling like you were, there was no place for you here because of having this felony conviction from this single indiscretion, right? And so, I know that some of that was the inspiration for this. Amazing cross-country project that you embarked on that I know is related somewhat to your dissertation and also to your Soros Fellowship application. Tell us about how you ended up traveling the country and documenting prisons. >> Well, I was doing my first year of graduate school. I was a research assistant for actually a former Soros justice fellow. And, he was doing a research project on the economic impact of opening a prison in a rural community. He had written an article already and he was doing a follow up article. >> Mm-hm. >> And so- >> So what does it add to that community in terms of jobs? >> Jobs- >> Opportunity to- >> Yeah, it does opening up a prison. They were, the narrative was that if we open up a prison in these rural communities it will provide jobs, it will provide income and prison guards, you don't rent houses, they eat at diners. It provides this economic boom, right? >> To a small town. >> To a small town, a small rural town. And so he was doing a follow up article and my job was to find all the prisons that had opened in a certain period of time from 2010 to 2013. >> Okay. >> Well, during my research process I started seeing that prisons were closing and the mass incarceration peak was at 2009. And that even though this was 2010, I was finding literally, and ended up finding hundreds of prisons that had closed. >> So we had hit our pinnacles essentially of incarcerating folks. We were starting to actually, for the first time in a very long time see a decline in the number of folks even at the state level and also at the federal level, who were being put away for these long sentences, right? >> Right. >> And so, as a part of your research and driving around, you started to see that all these prisons that had opened up in this short period of time were not sustainable, they were starting to close. >> Right, and so I decided to try to figure out first of all, there was no one that knew how many prisons were in this country. And that's something that astounded me. >> So across level state- >> Federal. >> [CROSSTALK] >> They could approximate it but would be within a hundreds of prisons, so- >> Because there's no database where you can go and say, hey, is there a new prison in a particular community? There's no one who records that. >> Right, some federal statistics try to do that, but the last census of adult correctional facilities by the Bureau of Death Statistics, the last count they did was 2005. And so basically from 2005 on they had no idea how many prisons had opened, had closed. The private prison industry was starting to come into the mix and so I in some respects made it my mission in life to try to figure out how many prisons are in this country. Which would seem like, not that hard of a prospect to really but I am. So I started looking at resources not only federal statistics that weren't even available after a certain point, but like the Department of Corrections websites. But some of those hadn't been updated since 1966 in some respects. >> In terms of the information because we didn't have websites in 66. But the information that was posted, yeah. >> [CROSSTALK] Updated since then. And so it was just really a labor of love, I guess you would say. Google searches, I called thousands of prisons. And at one point I started making a list. Some were more willing, and some were less willing to provide information. And so I made a list of prisons that were within maybe a 600 mile radius of Washington State University which is in Pullman, Washington on the border of Idaho and Washington. That, and during one summer I decided to take a road trip. And to get inside of a prison especially with a criminal record is extremely difficult. But if you approach them as a researcher or as someone writing an article, maybe they would take that as a journalistic piece. And you framed that in a right way where you're not, cuz I wasn't trying to hurt prisons. >> Sure, your aim is not to close prisons down, it's really to document a phenomenon. >> Document, right, yeah, I'm a researcher, it's about facts, right? I try as much as I can of course with well did you take our personal opinion out of it. And so, I took the three-month road trip and visited prisons just to try. So when I would call them on the phone some people I felt would be more apt to give me information if I was standing in front of them. It was much easier for them to deny. And so I made a list of those and went and visited prisons under the guise of but sometimes I felt research article was the best way to approach it. Sometimes I used the guise of article and maybe they assumed it was a journalist or an article anyway. >> Sure. And I was relatively successful. I would say I entered 75% of the prisons that I got into when I was. I would say I was successful in the same because documenting a prison open or closed is helpful in this extent that we have those numbers. But how many people are in those prisons and what are the racial makeups of those prisons? And so- >> But also I think didn't your work take it even deeper than that, you started looking at spatial clustering of prisons, right? >> Yeah, absolutely. >> And the way that politics played a role in where prisons opend and closed, and the way that some of those economies that we thought we're going to flourish under prisons were not necessarily flourishing, is that right? >> Absolutely, and maybe a simple comparison would be helpful, let's say like a shopping mall. A shopping mall, whether a shopping mall is successful or not successful depends on a lot of facets. >> Sure. >> Does the shopping mall have a movie theater? >> Is it in a good location? >> Is it in a good location? >> Sure. >> What kind of stores are in there? >> Parking, gotta have good parking. >> Does it have good restaurants? The quality and the types and the pricing of clothing there. So, a prison is just an extreme version of any other type of business or institution. And so, when it comes to prisons the important factors are the political environment. Are there harsh or less harsh sentencing policies- >> So, the particular states legal and kind of policy directives around how harsh they are on particular crimes, right? >> Yep. >> For example, using your own life example. How long they choose to institute a particular sentence for a particular crime. And that's a very state level decision that could influence per se whether or not they need a larger prison to hold people for a longer amount of time. >> Right, incarceration rates are a product of two things. How many people are arrested and how long they're sentenced for. Those are the two factors that lead to an incarceration rate. >> And those are often state and even local decisions. >> Yes, we don't have one state criminal justice system. We have 51 criminal justice systems including Washington DC. >> That are completely kind of separate from the Federal system. >> Disaggregated from each other without a doubt. And the same sex marriage, the recent legalization in different forms of marijuana are a perfect example of that. You can walk into a legal marijuana shop for recreational use in the state of Washington and buy an ounce of marijuana no problem. If you got caught with an ounce of marijuana here in Michigan, they use to have a mandatory but they've cancelled it and now, but they used to have a mandatory minimum of 25 years. And so, now people are imprisoned for things that are legal in the United States- >> So, you can cross over a border for example and get several years of prison for something that is decriminalized in the state next door. >> Right, it's always been framed as an economic issue. And that's why generally the professor that I was working for was looking at the economic impacts, because if you're speak- >> Of prisons. >> Of prisons, because if you're speaking to policymakers that's what they care about, they care about budgets. And so, the first point I want to make is that an economic argument is not going to solve incarceration. It has to be framed around a social issue, that it's unfair, that it's unequal. And so- >> So, saying that it doesn't make good dollars and cents to let people out of prison isn't gonna convince anybody? >> It isn't gonna convince anybody. >> Gotcha. >> But unfortunately, the rise of mass incarceration which, by the way, in 1970 there was 350,000 people in prison. And between 1900 and 1970 say, the prison population didn't increase by 5%. And between the mid-1970s, 1974 to be specific, to 2009 it increased by 5 times. And so, at that point, 2009, we had 1.6 million people in prison and- >> And I think we're at about 2.2 million today, right? >> Well, and 700,000 people in jails, and so maybe this- >> In jails, okay, so if you're combining folks who have been sentenced, and folks who are waiting to be sentenced, but they're all incarcerated in some way, it adds up. >> Right, and this might be a time to make a distinction that might be important, a simple distinction. And that is between incarceration rates and imprisonment rates. Incarceration rates are all the people that are in Federal, State and in jails. And an imprisonment rate would be people that are just in Federal and State prison. And so, the jail population, the statistics are taken on December 31st of each year, it's a snapshot, a single day. And so, on that particular day, this year there was about 609,000 people on that particular day. At the worst, there was 750,000 people, but that's not the whole picture. In this country, in an average year, 12 million cycle in and out of jails, just jails because they make bond, because they have short sentences. And so, to say that 700,000 people have a jail experience in a year. >> Is really underestimating that issue, right? >> That's just the population on that one thing. But 12 million people in this country go to jail every year. >> Gotcha, gotcha. >> Which is this incredible statistic in my view. >> I also wanna capture this piece of your work that looks at the impact of private prisons. Because you have done some work that looked at almost like states partnerships and we're seeing that quite a bit. There's quite a bit of controversy around prison privatization, and so you looked at kind of state partnerships with private prisons to some degree. And some of the decision making that happens around those business relationships, if you will. >> In the academic end either criminal justice reform that would be called the prison industrial complex. Because it's a much more broader and multifaceted and nuanced issue than just a monetizing prison, right? It's like, say, their Corrections Corporation of America going and buying up a State prison, and then running it like a business, or managing it like someone would manage a hotel. >> So, for example, we think of a prison as a building, right? A secure building, but there are hundreds if not thousands of functions that have to happen in that prison, right? So, for example, the people who work there are often not members of that community but they may be contractors or contracted out through a private employment agency. The food that inmates or prisoners are served is typically not made by folks who are local or by folks who work for that prison directly. But they're actually a service provided by an outside company, right, that's contracted to provide food. Aramark, for example, is one of those companies we've heard a lot of controversy about, particularly here in Michigan. And so, you think about all of the different business contracts that go into keeping a prison functioning that a state has to manage. Should they choose to privatize versus have local community folks working in that prison in all of these capacities? >> And I would like to add, too, a really important factor is health care is something that's privatized too and- >> So, even down to there's a particular ambulance company you might call if an inmate needs to go to the hospital. >> Yeah, and people quite honestly die all the time in prison due to relatively simple things, like hernias. Or they're denied treatments that anyone would typically get that end up seriously impacting, handicapping, or killing them on a regular basis. >> We've seen quite a few settlements and lawsuits. There have been a series of podcasts and news stories that have come to light about some of those very issues, as a matter of fact. Absolutely, yeah. But I mean, you talking about food, the most consistent one is having maggots and food that is not edible by any means. >> Yeah, that actually happened right here in Michigan. And so there was a case that came to light with the food servicer for Michigan prisons, Aramark. So this company that was really providing not enough calories, so inmates or prisoners were essentially being starved, in some sense. And then also the quality of the food, as you say, was infested, or was rotten. And the state was paying millions of dollars a year to provide this food, right? >> Again, in many states, and in the current times this has changed, but in some states it hasn't. The states are required to give the nutritional value of a handful of peanuts is typically what the states are required to feed, and in most instances- >> In terms of protein, fat- >> Yeah, yeah, that's the whole nutritional requirements. So if they can meet that standard, which obviously might be a little lower than it should be, then federally or legally they're doing their job. >> Yeah, absolutely. And so any other lessons that you learned around some of the dangers that we've run into, in terms of the privatization of prisons? And things that you've learned from your research on how communities have negotiated these private partnerships? >> A standard private prison contract, and they vary from state to state, in the best case scenario, a private prison will buy a prison or manage a prison for a state and it's a business transaction. It involves a business contract. In the best-case scenario, the contract is for 20 years and the state guarantees that they will pay for 95% capacity. Meaning that whether the prison has 95% of its bunks filled with prisoners, the states have to pay for those individual beds. >> And so, there's a cost associated with each available spot for an inmate, if you will. And the states have agreed in many cases to pay the cost, whether that inmate exists or doesn't exist. >> Yeah, and some of those contracts are for over 99 years, and so now you have a distinct invested interest. >> They're on the hook. >> They're on the hook for filling prison beds, they might as well. And so now if you have a social institution, if we wanna use that term, for a prison and running like a private corporation, that is built on profits and growth. And the contracts are a set price that a state pays for an inmate in a bed. And so that price doesn't change. The only way that you can have growth or have profits is to reduce cost. And so reduce- >> So now meals should cost less, healthcare. >> Meals should cost less and guards get paid less. There's less guards per inmate ratio. And across the board, private prisons are more violent. Phone calls, say, are more expensive. On average, if you make the minimum wage in this country, you have to work for an hour and a half to make a ten-minute phone call to a loved one that's in prison, so. And all that comes through privatization, and privatization is spread out. And so now that guards are being paid less, that lowers the income for state run prisons. And so private prisons don't just impact the people, the communities of where the private prison is, it flushes out to you. Now state prisons all of a sudden think, well, we don't need so many guards, we don't need proper food. >> Because they're setting standards. >> They're setting standards, right. Like I said, it's an economic issue in some respects. >> Absolutely. >> Right. >> So what's happened in the research where you've gone around looking in these communities at the impact of prison closings, for example? What has happened to some of these smaller more rural communities where a prison has closed up shop? >> It's similar to the research that the professor that I was doing the research for, what he found I guess is important to say, just when a prison opens does that- >> Create some type of long term boom. >> And the answer to that across the board is no. Initially, the construction of the prison might bring some economic benefit. >> But that's a very short term thing, right? >> That's a very short term thing. >> In two or three years those jobs are gone. >> Right, and prison guards are unionized. Means that the longer you're with a prison, the higher placement you have. You have tenure. >> Seniority. >> Seniority, right? And so the people of those individual counties, I think 85% of the time did not get those jobs. The jobs were taken by other prison guards that drove from other counties. And so it actually- >> So the local impact is very minimal. >> Or none, or it sometimes harms communities, because especially now that prisons are closing, you have a structure that, you can't turn a prison into a hotel very easily. >> Or a school. >> Or a school, or any other type of community, so that's a challenge, too, that we're facing. >> What do you do with these empty prisons? >> What do you do with these prisons? And they've come up with ingenious ways. Movie studios have bought prisons. There's another justice fellow in Sanford that has flipped prisons, is what he called it. And what he does is he goes in, and the people that own prisons or states still have to pay property taxes. And so it still costs them money even if it's closed. So he goes in and negotiates and they eventually sign the prison over to him for free. And he has turned them into a place where juveniles are starting to, maybe getting in trouble or at risk of getting in trouble, and he teaches sustainable farming and things of that nature. Norway, other countries have turned closed prisons in to people that are waiting to get visas in those countries. And so there's become ingenious ways to use those prisons, but it's challenging for us. >> Yeah. >> What do you do with this superstructure? >> Absolutely, so I wanna close out by talking about your nonprofit that's under development. I know that you are just going to do wonderful things. You have already turned your own story into this incredible motivation to bring to light all of these facts around the incarceration and the impact of prisons. But what's the focus of this nonprofit that you're developing? >> The focus of the nonprofit is that, it's a lady we know, Nicole Remsberg, that I'm working with presently. And she was responsible in Pennsylvania for implementing a mental health risk assessment for juveniles in every county in Pennsylvania, which is no small task. And so- >> Sounds like a social worker. [LAUGH] >> It sure does. And so I have expertise in prison closures. But criminal justice is a multifaceted, and nonprofits are a multifaceted thing. And so we want to make sure that we're not completely focused on prison closures because prison closures is an end result, right? We have to reduce capacity. In order to reduce capacity, that takes things like sentencing policy changes, different ways of how we monitor people, parole and probation after you get out of prison. Diversion programs like drug, and so we're- >> So the goal is to have fewer people to funnel into prisons so that prisons won't be necessary to the degree that they are right now in terms of their scale and their scope. >> Right, so we're just developing the framework, but I'm able to be centered around my data and my expertise as far as prison closures. But prison closures don't happen. The criminal justice system is massive. We spend 80 billion dollars a year just on state prisons alone. And maybe half of a trillion dollars on the criminal justice system, in general. And so to have a nonprofit that's just if you focus on prison closures, those don't happen without involving lots of other nonprofits. And so we're making kind of a consortium of people that we feel that changes that need to be made. And we are also identifying ways that you can close, closing a prison is not by purpose. That's not how I would measure success, because it impacts communities. People lose their jobs. And you go from closing one prison, and then those inmates are transferred- >> They have to go somewhere else, right. >> And now, instead of being triple-bunked in they're quadruple-bunked in a cell. And so, there are states, like New York, that offer economic incentives for private businesses to build factories there, to rehire guards, to offer economic incentives to, quote, newer communities to hire guards. There's places like here in Michigan that sends legislators and a job-mobile to the communities impacted by closure to offer retraining, re-education, and so there's a proper humane and sustainable way to close a prison. >> Sure. >> And then it should take a little bit of time too, for the communities to adjust. A lot of times the prisons are announced on January and closed in January. And that type of closure isn't humane. >> Doesn't really leave a lot of time for that community, right. >> Right, and so. If you're given like say a six month window, in New York they're required to give a year notice, that gives you time to also empty the prison in a more natural sense. To parole elderly inmates, to parole people that are really close to parole. So, when you're actually transferring inmates at the closure process, it's a smaller population. >> Sure. >> Have less impact on prisons that they go to. >> Sure, and it sounds like your non-profit that you're building is in a fact bringing all of those voices to the table and trying to look at prison closures through this kind of multi-dimensional lens and making sure that community voices are heard, that processes are followed that also, hopefully lead to decarceration, where it's responsible, that you're really in effect trying to do that in a way that we haven't seen before. >> Right. Because it's, the goal before was that prison closures lets, there's two sides of prison closures. There's the criminal justice reform side which wants policy changes- >> Sure. >> They advocate, they demonstrate, they do, when they're trying to, when a typical group tried to get social reform. >> Mm-hm. >> But the reality of prison closures is a political decision. >> Mm-hm, sure. >> And, fortunately, since the, I say fortunately, but since the 2008 economic crisis, we found ourselves in a political position that had socially minded Democrats and fiscally minded Conservatives. Come together the more liberal people got worried, wanted more social justice and the conservative side was worried about budgets. >> Mm-hm. >> And so now we're in this incredibly unique time where we have this strange bedfellows as you would say. These people it's like- >> There might be some common goals between them even if their intentions behind it are different. >> Right, and I think it's important to note that it is not an us against them scenario. In some respects, and i'm not saying this broadly, but in some respects, i'm willing to work with a conservative person that I might not agree with on other social issues. If we're all in agreement on prison closures and we have a plan that's sustainable and reasonable I'm willing to work with that person and that's what criminal justice reform organizations need to learn too. If you're going to get something done it has to involve people that you might not always be like-minded with. No one agrees on every issue but if we agree on this issue, let's see how we can work together, >> Absolutely. >> And I think that's the political issue and it's changed, that people, some criminal justice reform people are having problems with coping with that in itself. >> Yeah I think that's a wonderful way to end our discussion today, and I just wanna thank you, Jared Williams, Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship Finalist we wish you the best of luck with that and we thank you for joining us today. >> Thank you very much I'm glad to share. >> So that concludes our conversation students, and we look forward to chatting with you again soon.