See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts.
Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2011/12/interview-with-former-offender-advocate-lamont-carey-dc-public-safety-radio/
We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http://twitter.com/lensipes.
[Audio Begins]
Len Sipes: From the nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety. I am your host, Leonard Sipes. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a real pleasure today to have Lamont Carey. Lamont’s been around for a long time. He’s a fixture, not only in Washington DC, but throughout the country. Lamont spent 11 years in the federal prison system for committing a crime in Washington DC, and he’s been an outspoken individual regarding the condition of people coming outside of the prison system and in the world where the overwhelming majority of people who come out of the prison system are basically ignored. He’s gotten an awful lot of press. Let me tell you a lit bit about what Lamont Carey has done within the course of the last 10 years, 11 years: HBO, for the Def Poetry Jam, on Home Box Office, he’s done The Wire, again, with HBO, probably the best crime and justice program ever on television. Black Entertainment Tonight, Lyric Cafe, he worked, he’s spoken at the National Cathedral multiple times talking about the plight of ex-offenders. He’s done a ton of media both in the United States and Canada. He’s been with Al Sharpton, with the National Action Network, and he has written a book called The Hill, just out, about his journey through prison, and he’s also, in progress, his film, a video called Outside the Gate. Lamont Carey, welcome to DC Public Safety.
Lamont Carey: Thank you for having me.
Len Sipes: All right, man. Again, what I said at the beginning, what I said in terms of the introduction is that the overwhelming majority of people coming out of the prison system, they don’t talk to anybody.
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: I mean, they don’t even talk to their own sister.
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: And here it is that you’re talking on – you know, you’ve been with a couple HBO productions. You’ve been at the National Cathedral. You’ve been at media throughout the United States and Canada. You’ve been with Al Sharpton. You’ve been at the National Cathedral. You’ve been with BET. Why is all this going on when everybody else is ignored, you’re getting all this airtime.
Lamont Carey: Well, I think the difference between me and everybody else is that I’m not afraid of where I come from. Most people don’t talk about the things that they think will hurt them, so I was once labeled a product of my environment. Now I use those experiences as my product, and that is how I make my living.
Len Sipes: But everybody goes through the same thing you went through. What is it that – I need to know this. What is it that distinguishes you from everybody else? Everybody is talking about this, but they’re just talking to each other.
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: Everybody is going into group. Everybody is talking to their friends. Everybody is standing on the corner. You’re standing on the corner at HBO with The Wire.
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: Okay, so, there’s got to be something unique and something different in your experience versus everybody else.
Lamont Carey: Well, when I came home from prison, before I came home, I decided I was going to be successful. I decided I was going to give back to my community, and with both of those goals in mind and the developing in it a grasp of entertainment, I figured that I would combine all of those and that would be how – One, I remember where I come from but also use it as a stepping stone to get where I’m going, so I’m fearless. I turn all of that into a business, and so that, I think, what makes me a little different than most.
Len Sipes: Okay, I’m going to try this one more time. Okay, I’ve been interviewing people out of the prison system for 20 years. Everybody wants to give back. Nobody wants to go back to prison. Everybody wants their voice heard. Nobody’s voice is heard.
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: There is something unique about you, I mean – that I’m still trying to get at. Everybody’s said what you’ve just said.
Lamont Carey: Yeah, but I’m driven.
Len Sipes: All right.
Lamont Carey: I’m driven to succeed underneath it all. That’s what it is. I’m driven to succeed.
Len Sipes: All right, all right. WWW.LAMONTCAREY.COM, WWW.LAMONTCAREY.COM is Lamont’s website for all the different projects that Lamont is working on. All right, let’s get around to the former offender coming out of the prison system. All right, so the guy comes out. The woman comes out. He hits the street, and what happens?
Lamont Carey: Well, a lot of – what I think throws a lot of people off when they hit the street is that they deviate from their plan that they created in prison. Everybody has a plan. I have a – I’ve been incarcerated in 11 institutions, and every individual that I came into contact with had a plan on what they was going to do when they come home.
Len Sipes: Right.
Lamont Carey: But when they get home, they – I guess because they try to live up to the expectations of their family members, they think they have to rescue their family, change their whole standard of living, and so they get thrown off, and they go after jobs, or get on another route that they didn’t plan for, and I think that’s another difference between me and a lot of people is that I didn’t deviate from my plan, so they come home. They get everything isn’t like they thought it was going to be, I mean, even me, when I was coming home, I thought that all the doors was going to open for me, I was going to be celebrated as a hero or what have you, and then when you get home and you face reality – that I have to go live back at my mother’s house, and she’s doing as bad as I thought she was doing, and I felt those urges, or those desires to want to save her, but I can’t save nobody unless I get myself right, so I had to stick with my plan and follow it to the letter.
Len Sipes: Okay, so 50 percent, according to national stats, 50 percent of people go back to the prison system within three years.
Lamont Carey: Right, right.
Len Sipes: That’s just within three years.
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: I mean beyond three years, more go back.
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: A ton of people go back to the prison system.
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: There can’t be mass hysteria in prison. Everybody’s got to know how difficult it is when they’re going to get back.
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: That they’re going to be labeled an ex-con. They’re going to go and try to find jobs, and people are going to go “Hmm. How many years you spent in prison?”
Lamont Carey: Right, well I think.
Len Sipes: Well, you know, everybody’s got to come out of there with a sense of man, it’s going to be hard when I get back to the street, I mean, how could it be any other way?
Lamont Carey: But they don’t, I mean – a lot.
Len Sipes: Are you serious?
Lamont Carey: Yeah, a lot of people don’t because you got to – something that – what took place with me in prison – prison – it’s like you’re living inside of three different worlds. You’re living off your past, you’re living off of – you got to follow the rules and regulations of the institution. You’ve got to follow the rules and regulations of the convict, and then you got this future that you’re dreaming of happening, so a lot of individuals assume that when they come home that this woman is going to help them find a job, or the man that they used to hang out with, he’s working at a company, and he said that he can get them a job there, so a lot of times, we believe in there what somebody else is telling us so we don’t see that we’re going to have to, like face applying for a job and not getting it.
Len Sipes: Somebody’s going to hook you up. Somebody’s going to take care of you. Somebody’s three hearts and a card.
Lamont Carey: Yeah, it’s the hook up.
Len Sipes: Somebody’s going to give you a place to stay.
Lamont Carey: Right, right.
Len Sipes: And nobody in prison is sitting there going, Dude, we got a lot of guys keep coming back.
Lamont Carey: Well, I did that. I figured that – the one thing that I knew: One, that I’m not a construction worker. I’m not doing no labor. Two, I knew that I never had a job before.
Len Sipes: Uh-huh.
Lamont Carey: And so, I knew that the chances of me getting a job that is going to pay me 20 dollars an hour like I deserve with no work experience, I knew it was impossible.
Len Sipes: Uh-huh.
Lamont Carey: So I decided that I wanted to work for myself.
Len Sipes: Uh-huh.
Lamont Carey: So I think that is what made me different. I didn’t expect – what I did expect – I didn’t expect that they were going to give me stuff. I looked at it as they owed me because they wasn’t there for me while I was in prison, so when I come home, that they was going to give me this, and they were going to give me that, but I also had to face the reality. What it was, was that they weren’t doing as good as I thought they were doing, but I didn’t get to see that until I came home because most of the time, people don’t reveal that they’re doing as bad as they’re doing. They might say they can’t send me no money.
Len Sipes: Right, right.
Lamont Carey: But, we live – and prisoners live in a fantasy, like I havn’t met too many prisoners that said they’re the corner boy. Most prisoners say they were the kingpin or close to the kingpin, so a lot of times.
Len Sipes: Everybody’s on the corner.
Lamont Carey: Right, so yeah – but that’s not what they say in prison.
Len Sipes: But do they really believe that? Does everybody else really believe that?
Lamont Carey: Well, not really, but what else do we have to go off of?
Len Sipes: All right, so it’s the convict world. There’s two things come to mind. The convict world is what rules in the prison system, not the correctional personnel. I mean that world –
Lamont Carey: Right, right.
Len Sipes: is what rules, and so what you’re saying is that people invent a sort of fantasy world that allows them to exist with some sort of dignity while in the prison system.
Lamont Carey: Exactly.
Len Sipes: And when they come back out, sometimes that status gets in the way of clear thinking.
Lamont Carey: Right. Because it’s distorted, because you have been incarcerated for two years or ten years, and you’ve been – you get to believe in this lie that you told yourself, and so when you’re telling people what you going to do when you come home, it’s exaggerated, you know what I’m saying?
Len Sipes: Yeah.
Lamont Carey: My guy, when I come home, my man, they been doing this. They been doing that. They going to give me –
Len Sipes: They’re going to take care of me, yeah.
Lamont Carey: Probably a few thousand, so we come out, and that bubble is burst.
Len Sipes: Now, I have talked to, in a career of 20 years of interviewing people coming out of the prison system, I’ve talked to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people who have made it.
Lamont Carey: Okay.
Len Sipes: And they’re all encouraging, and it really is really neat to hear about the woman who suffered through a life of sexual abuse and child abuse, and she comes out and she gets discouraged, and she gets determined, and she goes out and buys, eventually, three ice cream trucks, and now she’s her own woman. I mean she’s made her own way. She said, I’m not going to let anybody step in front of me and tell me no. I’m going to make my own way. I’ve told those stories hundreds of times, but at the same time, 50 percent go back to the prison system. Now 730 thousand people get out of the prison in this country every year. That’s – conservatively, 350 thousand of those people are going back to the prison system within three years, more than that afterwards, so there’s two ways. One part of it are all the success stories like yourselves, people who have risen above their own circumstances, people who have that magic moment in their lives, either through God or their families or their own sense of self determination that they’re going to make it, and 50 percent just like, you know, you ask them, “Why did you come back?” and it’s like, they can’t give you an answer.
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: It’s like, dude, I was on the corner, and somebody said, “Man, we’re going to do a hit,” and, you know, people smoking reefer, and it just got out of hand – didn’t mean to get involved in it. I mean, we’re not talking about necessarily stalking people, you know, just crap happens –
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: is the way a lot of people get caught back up in the criminal justice system. How do you make sense of all of this?
Lamont Carey: Well, again, the guys – with the individuals that I think become successful and not going back to prison, they become good at problem solving. A lot of other people let stress get the better of them. I can’t find a job. I need a place to stay, and so when things are not happening according to the way that we want them to happen, we resort back to what we know.
Len Sipes: Correct.
Lamont Carey: Because one of the other things I think that ex-offenders or prisoners face is that they believe that they have to forget their whole past, that none of those skills are transferable to a positive and productive life, so a lot of them come home thinking that now they have to erase everything, so now they’re an infant again.
Len Sipes: Uh-huh.
Lamont Carey: And so they need guidance on what to do – I mean, what route they should take to be successful because they have never lived, really, a productive life, and so when things don’t go according to plan, they return back to what they know, and the police are more aware. Surveillance is greater. More people are telling, and so that’s how I think they end up – a lot of people end up back in the prison system, or those that used to use drugs fall back under the spell of substance abuse, which leads back to prison.
Len Sipes: People have told me giving up drugs is somewhat easy. Giving up the corner is impossible. Giving up their friends. Giving up their contacts, and a lot of times, they just get involved in crap that they have no business being involved in.
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: And again, it’s not – you know, there’s a huge difference in terms of people who are involved in criminal activity, between that person who says, “I’m leaving this house tonight, and I’m committing a crime, and I’m going to do this, and I’m going to do that.” versus the person leaving the house that night, and saying, “I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do. I’m going to check out my boys on the corner and figure out what’s going down.”
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: There’s a huge difference, and so many of these people who don’t set out that night to commit a crime end back up in the criminal justice system.
Lamont Carey: Right, right. Cause one of the things is that if me and you hung out before I went to prison, the way you remember me is the way I was before I went in.
Len Sipes: Right.
Lamont Carey: You’re not fully aware of the guy that I’ve turned into. Most of the time you probably think it’s just jail talk, or jail letters, when I’m telling you that I changed, and so I’ve had this experience. When I came home, a guy came to see me from my past, and he tried to – he said I got a gun for you. That’s how he remembered me.
Len Sipes: Right.
Lamont Carey: So, the real test comes with whether I take this gun or not.
Len Sipes: Right.
Lamont Carey: And when I refused the gun, then he knows that I’m serious –
Len Sipes: Yeah.
Lamont Carey: about my change, and so I think when I come out of the house to come and hang out with you, that’s because I’m bored. I don’t have no plan. When I have all these – I don’t have a job. I don’t have all these things to – instead of me focusing on them, I just get tired.
Len Sipes: Yep.
Lamont Carey: And I just say, “I just want to breathe for a minute. Let me go see what Sipes’s doing.” and I go hang out with you, and – but at the same time I’m hanging out with you, you I’m observing the drug game again.
Len Sipes: Right.
Lamont Carey: Or whatever it is that – you know what I’m saying, it’s –
Len Sipes: Yeah it’s all caught up. It all falls together.
Lamont Carey: Right, because if you’re still in the criminal life-style, and when I come around to you, you’re always thinking as a criminal. And so, it just so happened. When I come around, this is the same time that you about to make a move. You about to go sell some drugs, and you about to rob a store, and I’m there, and you’re telling me, “Man, it’s sweet. We going to be in there three minutes. We’re going to be in and out.”
Len Sipes: Yeah, piece of cake.
Lamont Carey: And my pockets are broke. Yeah, that 50 thousand or what you say we’re going to get out of this stuff sounds really good to me right now, and I can do it in three minutes. What’s the chances of me getting caught in three minutes?
Len Sipes: Right.
Lamont Carey: And then the next thing you know, the police outside.
Len Sipes: Lamont Carey, ladies and gentlemen, WWW.LAMONTCAREY.COM. That’s LAMONTCAREN.COM. Again, to go through Lamont’s list of media involvement would take, for the rest of the day, The Wire, which is, again, the best TV program ever filmed in Baltimore about the criminal justice system, BET Washington, a book called The Hill, a book about his journey through prison, and currently a video project called outside the gate which is in progress. Okay, you’ve given me some really interesting pieces of insight, Lamont, now, let me hear what you had to say to those movers and shakers, the mayor of Milwaukee, folks here in the District of Columbia, somebody in Germany which is now our second most popular outside the country in terms of people who pay attention to what it is we do here at DC Public Safety. What do they need to know about people coming outside of the prison system, because I’ll tell you, it’s not a terribly pretty picture. Most people needing drug treatment don’t get it.
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: The stats are very clear. Most people needing mental health treatment don’t get it. Most people who need job training don’t get it. So somehow, some way, there’s a disconnect.
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: Because we’re saying these – if we have these things, if we have these programs, we can drive down the recidivism rate, but yet society is basically going: nah, I don’t want to fund programs for people coming outside of prison.
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: So talk to me about all that.
Lamont Carey: Well, what I think is, it should start – transitioning should start inside the institution. I guess when the individual gets within, maybe 18 months of coming home. If you can get programs inside there that can get them thinking on survival of – a person has to – a person has to be willing to be homeless to be free, so they have to – if you can’t think – if you can’t forsee in stack how to get around obstacles, they’re going to always fall, but the one thing that I want policy makers and program providers to understand is that, each prisoner has created a plan, whether they wrote it down or it’s mental. If you can get them to open up and try to help them stick to their plan, I think it would better their chances of success. Like I wanted to go into the arts. There are no arts programs right now for ex-offenders.
Len Sipes: Uh-huh.
Lamont Carey: So that means, my task, my journey probably was a little bit harder because I had to do it on my own, but I was willing to be homeless to be free.
Len Sipes: Uh-huh.
Lamont Carey: So, again, I would say, for programs that could help a individual think. Another thing is the college system back into the prison system. That was a kind of an eye opener to me to let me know that I had transferrable skills because when I was in the college program, I was taking up business management, and they were talking about distribution, and I was like, I know distribution. Supply and demand, you know, from the street life.
Len Sipes: Yeah.
Lamont Carey: But what school allowed to happen was, it showed me that I wasn’t as inexperienced as I thought I was. So – and I thought – it’s been said that, a person that gets a degree in prison is less likely to re-offend.
Len Sipes: It’s probably, out of all the research, the best strategy that we have. That people who come out of prison with an associates of arts degree or a bachelors degree have the lowest rate of recidivism, bar none.
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: And when I say the lowest rate of recidivism, I’m talking about saving tax payers literally millions upon millions of dollars, and saving victims of crime from being re-victimized, so when I use those words recidivism, that’s what I’m talking about. Go ahead.
Lamont Carey: So, those are two things, and since the parole officer is really our first interaction after the immediate family.
Len Sipes: Right.
Lamont Carey: It’s being taught in prison by guys and females that have been sent back to prison for parole violations, so they say, “The parole officer is out to get them, right?”
Len Sipes: Uh-huh.
Lamont Carey: So even for me, when I came home, I was on edge with the parole officer, because I’ve been told, that’s all they’re trying to do is send me back to prison, and so, that misinformation has to be broken. It has to be explained to the individual, chances are, the most you going to see your parole officer in your first 16 weeks, well at least in DC, is like three times a week.
Len Sipes: Right. There’s a lot of contact in DC.
Lamont Carey: But that is only for like, I think the longest I think I’ve been inside with my parole officer, unless I was running my mouth, was 10 minutes.
Len Sipes: Right.
Lamont Carey: So we’re talking about 30 minutes out of a week –
Len Sipes: Right.
Lamont Carey: One hour out of one day, so, you giving up one hour out of 23 hours.
Len Sipes: Right.
Lamont Carey: Most of the time, all the parole officer said is, have you had any re-arrests? Have you been getting high? Do you have a job? You answer those questions, and move on.
Len Sipes: Right.
Lamont Carey: And so, I think parole officers have to first understand that that’s how the individual is looking at them, as an enemy, because that’s what we’re taught.
Len Sipes: Sure.
Lamont Carey: So I think the best way to break through that is parole officers saying, “What is it that you really want to do?”
Len Sipes: Uh-huh.
Lamont Carey: My job is to make sure the public stays safe. That you transition, that you get a job and all that, but what kind of job do you really want?
Len Sipes: Uh-huh.
Lamont Carey: Because when I first met my parole officer, I’m sure when he asked me what kind of job that I really want, I said, it doesn’t matter, and I said that so that the parole officer won’t see me as a troubled person.
Len Sipes: Right.
Lamont Carey: But that ain’t my truth.
Len Sipes: Right.
Lamont Carey: My truth is that I ain’t going to work construction, but I’m not trying to start off this relationship on bad terms.
Len Sipes: You want to game the parole officer.
Lamont Carey: Right, right. When I game them, I just don’t want to be beefing with them.
Len Sipes: Right, right. Sure, sure.
Lamont Carey: So I’m going to say –
Len Sipes: And the way to do that is to say as little as humanly possible, nod your head up and down, you go yeah, yeah, yeah, don’t worry man, I’ll do it.
Lamont Carey: But if the parole officer say, “Okay, Mr. Carey, I understand that you have to get a job. It’s my responsibility to make sure that I’m encouraging you to get a job, but what kind of job is it that you really want so that when you go out and apply for jobs, you not only just applying for jobs at retail stores or low end stores, but you also are applying for jobs that you really want to work at.”
Len Sipes: Right. Now what happens – so there’s a plan – I’m writing all of this stuff down, the plan in prison, and that it would be nice if there were programs in prison for mental health, substance abuse, and a person without job training actually got job training.
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: And a person who wanted a college program could go to a college program although that carries tremendous controversy. In Maryland, whenever we talked about college programs, we’d get a hundred angry letters and phone calls, basically saying, I can’t forward to send my kid to college.
Lamont Carey: And that’s understandable. That’s truly understandable.
Len Sipes: Why am I giving this guy who stuck a gun in somebody’s head and threatened to pull the trigger and took money from them? Why am I giving him a college education out of my pocket, but I can’t – so there are controversies involved –
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: But we know that the better. The more training, collegiate programs, therapy programs, that you have in the prison system, the better prepared you’re coming out, and to have a realistic plan is to deal realistically with the probation officer, what we call community supervision officers here in the District of Columbia. What else do people need to know?
Lamont Carey: Another thing is, is who they – who they come home to. I know, for me, when it was time for me to go up for parole, I had to give a address to where I was going to be staying, and for me, that wasn’t the actual address where I was going to be staying, but, I’m going to give you what I’m going to give you so I can come home.
Len Sipes: Right, you got to live somewhere.
Lamont Carey: And so the problem, the problem that I see with a lot of individuals is that they meet something in prison. They meet a girl, or dude in prison, and they be paroled to those people, and they have never lived with those people.
Len Sipes: Right.
Lamont Carey: And so they find out they can’t live together. They not getting along, so that creates a problem, and now I’m rushing because I need to find additional housing, so if you can set up something where the person to return to society has housing, maybe a transitional home. A transitional home, I think, would actually be better than a lot of places that people are staying.
Len Sipes: You need a legal place to live because if the guy comes out and the sister takes him in and suddenly he’s a beef with the sister, or the sister’s husband, and he needs to go some place legal for three weeks, there’s some plays legal for three weeks.
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: Okay, what else.
Lamont Carey: Um, now, for the sub-abuse people, it’s kind of hard for me, because I’ve never dealt with that, but I do know individuals who have, was addicted to drugs before prison, but didn’t use drugs the whole time in prison.
Len Sipes: Right.
Lamont Carey: And so when they come home, they again to use drugs again.
Len Sipes: Right.
Lamont Carey: So they got to find out, like what are those triggers? What are those triggers? and the only way you going to find that out – again the parole officer, the parole officer is the person that can get the information to actually do something with it.
Len Sipes: Uh-huh.
Lamont Carey: But there has to be a relationship established, an open relationship where I can trust my parole officer.
Len Sipes: Isn’t that hard? I mean the parole officer has got this large case load, I mean not in DC. We’ve got some of the best case loads in the country, but throughout the country, you’ve got huge case loads. How are you going to establish that relationship with that person? He doesn’t trust you. You don’t trust him. How do you get to that point where you help out each other?
Lamont Carey: Well, another good thing about DC is the faith-based community.
Len Sipes: Yes.
Lamont Carey: So when I came to my parole officer, the next thing I know, they were sending me over to a church.
Len Sipes: Right.
Lamont Carey: Meeting with a guy, Jean Groves, and Miss Keels.
Len Sipes: Right.
Lamont Carey: And so, they had, they took the time to say, “Lamont, what is it that you really want to do?” And I was looking – I, I must want to work, so they said, “Okay, I’m going to call.” They called the restaurant and got a job at the restaurant. That last 24 hours because I didn’t really want to work for nobody, I wanted to work on my own, so after that experience, they were like “Okay Lamont, what is it that you really want to do?” And so I told them, this is what I really want to do. I want to work for myself and so when I convey that to my parole officer, and my parole officer said, well Mr. Carey, you have to be working to be in the street, and so you need to start a company where you going to be able to pay yourself, or you need to get a job, and so I went, and I started a LLC, LaCarey Entertainment, and I started off with something simple, selling socks on the corner, and I just kept taking that money, turning that money over, using the profit to reinvest, and then eventually I went into the studio and recorded a CD.
Len Sipes: The faith based program we have here in the District of Columbia is also one of the largest in the country and having people who truly, who volunteer to come to your aid to be a mentor.
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: That has helped a lot of guys, and a lot of people cross that bridge.
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: It’s an amazing program. All right. What else? We’re in the final minutes of the program. We got about three minutes left.
Lamont Carey: Okay. The next thing, for parole officers, when you got a guy or female that you have you gone problems with, I think if we open up and create a situation where they can go talk to the young people because all of us want to give back.
Len Sipes: Yep.
Lamont Carey: Like you said, all the guys and the females you talk to want to give back, so if you give us an opportunity. Instead of sending us back to prison, make us do some community service at a youth facility or somewhere where we’re telling them about – if you keep going down that road, this is where you’ll end up, because nobody is going to say, “Go out and get high.” Most of the time, they’re going to try to show themselves in a good light, and it’s going to be connected back to what they said they wanted to do in prison.
Len Sipes: All right. What about all of the issues that I started off with this second half of the program. I mean, most people aren’t getting drug treatment. Most people aren’t getting mental health. I mean you’re letting us off the hook here. I mean, there’s got to be programs. You know, if a guy comes out and he’s schizophrenic, and he comes out of the prison system, that medication is going to keep him, in many ways, out of prison.
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: Keep him out of trouble, keep him from hurting something. I mean there’s got to be some sort of program set up where that person’s getting their medication.
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: There’s got to be some sort of setup where somebody is knocking on his door, saying, “Are you taking your medication?”
Lamont Carey: Well, I think even people that suffer from severe mental illness, that have never been in prison, they’re pushing them out on the street.
Len Sipes: Right.
Lamont Carey: So there’s going to have to be another look taken at that because I haven’t really experienced that. It’s hard for me to say, but even I had issues. I became an introvert.
Len Sipes: Sure.
Lamont Carey: You know what I’m saying? In my apartment, everything that I need was in one room, and I got a whole empty house, so again, the parole officer is probably the person.
Len Sipes: Final minute of the program. How people – what is fair in terms of how people look at you? They look at you as a criminal coming out of the prison system. You look at yourself as something else.
Lamont Carey: Right.
Len Sipes: What’s fair? What should the rest of us know about people coming out of the prison system? How should we view them because if you watch television, and if you watch Hard Time and if you watch Lock-Up, I mean, you don’t want to touch anybody who is coming out of the prison system with a 10-foot pole. How should people – what’s fair in terms of how people should see you?
Lamont Carey: Well, I think they should look at themselves. We’ve all made mistakes, and now I came home. You can’t judge me by my past, but you can, but it doesn’t stop me from doing what I’m going to do regardless if you look at me like a criminal. I’m still going to be and do what it is that Lamont Carey is going to be, and that’s successful.
Len Sipes: Lamont Carey, it’s a blast having you. I want to have you back in six months and find out where you’re going with all these programs. Lamont Carey. WWW.LAMONTCAREY.COM. Currently, with all the other things that he’s done, he has a book, The Hill, his journey through prison and Outside the Gate, which is a work in progress, a video in progress. Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host Leonard Sipes. Thanks again for all of your cards, letters, emails, telephone calls, and suggestions. Have yourselves a very, very pleasant day.
[Audio Ends]
