DC Public Safety Radio-Transcripts

See http://media.csosa.gov for the main site.

See radio show at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2015/11/the-amazing-life-of-sidney-davis/

Leonard: From the nation’s capital, this is D.C. Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Ladies and gentlemen, the title of today’s program, “The Amazing Life of Sidney Davis.” Sidney Davis is here by our microphone. Sidney, welcome to D.C. Public Safety.

Sidney: Good afternoon.

Leonard: Sidney has been involved in the criminal justice system as a former offender. He has 3 articles or more written about Sidney both in the Washington Post and the Washington Times. I’m going to read, briefly, from a Courtland Milloy article in the Washington Post. “While riding a Metro bus recently, I watched a driver help a blind man find a seat and then help him off the bus, waived on coming traffic to a halt and escort him in his arm to the other side of the street. It was a remarkable courtesy made remarkable because the driver was Sidney Davis who I first met in 1981 when he was an inmate at the Lorton Correctional Complex. He was serving 9 years into a 20 year to life sentence for murder. God granted me the freedom so I could help others at Davis 66 after returning to the bus. Once considered incourageable, Davis held the Lorton record for the most time spent in solitary confinement. To the disbelief of many, he declared himself to be a Born Again Christian and started an annual prison prayer breakfast and other self health programs for inmates.”

I was encouraged to interview Sidney because again, he has had an amazing life. Caught up in the criminal justice system, coming out being a driver for the bus system here in the Washington, D.C. area and instituting dozens of programs both on the outside and the inside. Again, Sidney, welcome back to D.C. Public Safety.

Sidney: Thank you, Brother Sipes.

Leonard: I am fascinated by this entire story. I want to go into a little bit about this. It’s interesting. Talk about the transformation. He’s currently running for president of the Transit Workers Union here in Washington, D.C. Let me go back to your present experiences. According to this article, you spent more time in solitary than anybody else.

Sidney: Yeah. It was a no practice. It was just me coming into contact with who I was in an environment that I had to make all kind of adjustments according to the conditions. Those adjustment depended upon me making up my mind that I was not going to allow my sentence to take advantage of me.

Leonard: People considered you to be incourageable. They were saying that you may have been one of the worst inmates at Lorton. You come out where you were instituted a lot of programs while you’re in prison and then you come out and you get involved in dozens of community programs. You’ve been mentoring lots of different people. You have built yourself up to the point where you’re running for president of the Transit Union. That’s a long road from a 20 year to life sentence in a homicide and spending more time in solitary confinement than anybody else.

Sidney: Absolutely. Let me just say that, in an environment where you have to make your mind of about who you are, where you’re going, how you’re going to get there, what kind of support you need, all of these things come in to relate to where you are going to be in the next few minutes because you’re in a prison environment where your life can be taken instantly. I had to be able to determine which way I was going to go and what I was going to do. I had just been given a 20 year to life sentence. I was still having my life in a bucket where it could only evolve around and around and around. I had to get out of the bucket. I had to make my mind. I had to have something that was stronger to convince and convict my mind and my soul about where I was going. I had to turn to Jesus who my grandmother often told me about but I refused to practice that behavior. After getting into an environment and getting into yourself, you find that that’s real. Those words become authentic. They become a center of focus of your environment and you learn to take control of your life and your atmosphere and the things around you and affect you in that manner.

Leonard: Did you ever look back at your life and say, “Heavens, I have truly lived a long and complicated and amazing life”? Did you ever take a look back and just think and reflect that all of the different thing that have happened to you throughout your life in terms of prison and out of prison and what you’ve given to the community as a result, you’re changed as a human being? It is an amazing story.

Sidney: I always reflect. I sit and I concentrate. I reflect on where I was 20, 30 years ago. I reflect on my thinking. In my reading and having to read many pieces of literature, Paul Robeson, Malcolm X. All of these were thought changing incidents, thought changing processes that made me think more cognitively in myself as opposed outside of myself. There, I found strength. The prison environment allowed the barriers, the walls, all of the conditions, the boundaries that kept me in but my mind was forever free.

Leonard: How did you see yourself when you were on the streets and entered the prison system? How did you see yourself as a person?

Sidney: Incorrigible. I mean, I was a renegade. A renegade to the extent that everything was not taken into account of what I was doing or how I was doing it. It was just doing it. I mean, when you have that kind of life in the urban environment, not that the urban environment is one that makes the influence but you adapt to a lot of things to try to find of where you are with yourself.

Leonard: How did you see yourself as a person? Did you see a future for yourself? Did you see aspirations? Did you see goals? How did you think of yourself as a person?

Sidney: My family had always injected in me and tried to stear me in the right. When I was going to school, I was always a good student. I went to school but school was not always an interest. I took trades; welding, carpentry, shoe repair. I had all of those things in junior high school and high school. School was not an instrument. I went to school to play around. I didn’t give full concentration to the maximum of my ability that allowed me not to get caught up into this criminal justice process. Subsequently, I tried to get into military because I knew that was upon me. Go into military, get my life straight, get some discipline, travel some, come out with skills and directions and purpose, but I couldn’t get in the military because they said one of my legs was longer than the other and so I did not make it into military. Therefore, I was out there, so to speak.

Leonard: So many of today’s youth and throughout my experience within the criminal justice system committing crimes end up in the criminal justice system because they don’t see a life for themselves. They live for the moment. They don’t see a future for themselves. They’re just aimless, wondering for their life. Was that you or was that not you?

Sidney: That was me. In part, that was me. Let me just say that, those kind of values are reinforced where they’re not intrinsic in the school process. They’re not intrinsic in their community in a civil way. At one time, the community cared for one another. They cared for each other. They made sure that people weren’t hungry. They made sure that the village was a nurturing place and not necessarily a place of destruction. There were some things going on. They’re drinking. Drugs was not a primary in communities back when I was coming through. Alcohol was okay. They made Moonshine. People enjoyed themselves and they work and then they loved each other and they reach for each other. They cared for about each other and they were for each other regardless of the circumstance. They would look out for one another’s children. All of those kinds of things made for the strength of the community where you had models that you could look up to. They were elders and who nurtured you and told you what not to do and showed you what to do and how to do it.

Leonard: Do you think that’s in place today?

Sidney: No. We are missing a great deal of leadership and the strength of the elders and communities. They’ve all passed away or gone to glory. That’s not in place today. What we do have is, those who were coming from prison who have experience, that can be a benefit to the young people. That’s where we have to begin to look at the value of the people who are now in prison to see what value they can bring back to bring about that reconciliation.

Leonard: Is that how you see yourself now? I was reading the Washington Post article about how you quiz students who come on your buses and ask them questions about history and asking questions about philosophy and then gauge them and tell them that you want to see their report card the next time they enter your bus. The Washington Post article went on to say that where other bus drivers were having problems, you didn’t have those problems because you meaningfully engaged the young people getting on your bus. Is that how you see yourself today taking on that mental of an elder guiding young people through the life of living in the community?

Sidney: Yes. You must be able to take a position or someone will give you one. Sometimes, the position that they give you, you won’t necessarily like. You have to take one that’s going to bring humanity close to you, let you know who you are and what you’re doing and what value you are to other people. It’s always that people in work and these institution, the government institution, you have to find something that’s more bigger than you. In order to have appreciation for life and fullness, you got to have something bigger to do than yourself. You can’t get caught up in the selfishness. What I have been given, what I have learned, what I have been exposed to is no value for me just to hold it. I have to give it back. Seeing these young people get on the bus with no directions and real playful and joyful and going out on each other is always an opportunity to put their consciousness when they step on the bus. You ask them the kind of the question that I believe they should know at that level and not greed.

I ask them about Paul Robeson. No one seem to know who Paul Robeson was and so I give them research projects. When they come back, they have, for me, the clear example who Jack Robeson was, who Elvis Presley was. I mean, what did he do? How did he become famous? All of the challenges in a particular community have to be always reinforced all the time, not just by me being a bus driver who didn’t get the money. I’m not supposed to let them on the bus.

Leonard: Everybody is supposed to do that, correct?

Sidney: That’s right.

Leonard: I mean, all of us of a certain age and when I say a certain age, you could be 25. We all have the responsibility to interact with the kids in our community and challenge them to be better.

Sidney: Absolutely. That’s a necessity.

Leonard: That’s the way we solve the crime problem beyond law enforcement and beyond the criminal justice system and beyond the correctional system. That’s your point, correct?

Sidney: Absolutely. In school, the day you have to be introduced to the life of what it means, not to be able to grow and develop and be fullness of thinking about decision making. That has to be a part of the curriculum in schools because if it’s not reinforced there, that value, of being complete in your thinking as to how to love a person as opposed to going to get a gun or going to get a gang of guys to jump on somebody. You have to reinforce the values that are strict, that are going to forever remain in the life of a child, of a community, of a family, of the broader society. We have to demonstrate that. We have to lock our minds, our spirits, our hearts into one another and know that we can make the difference.

Leonard: A fundamental change, you say, came upon you through religion. You said about something that your grandmother gave you. Do you think that that was the pivotal moment in your life that changed you as a person?

Sidney: I would have to say yes. I mean, yes, twice, 3 times. Yes, because when I was younger, I was introduced to church. I was introduced to the spirit of the reality of who this Jesus was. I didn’t embrace it until such time as I was in a predicament, where God put me in a predicament, for me to pay attention to what he was saying to me. I had to listen. I asked …

Leonard: What was he saying to you as you’re sitting in prison? Because I’m assuming that this conversion came in prison. I think, according to the article I did, what was God saying to you as you sat in prison, as you sat in solitary? Because if you serve the longest time in solitary in the Lorton Correctional Complex, you had to be doing a series of pretty nasty acts. There was a certain point where you sat there in solitary and something happened to you when I’m trying to figure out what that was.

Sidney: It was a transformation. It’s like, we being in a womb. 270 days, we lay in a womb and we’re being nurtured. We’re being nurtured according to the adrenaline and the thinking of the person that’s carrying us and then it comes a fullness of time. The fullness of time in every season where food grows right. Food cannot grow out of season and be as it was intended to be. Now, it could be [inaudible 15:04], it could be given some kind of chemical to grow but the natural order of life is for you to get quiet with yourself and yourself, see yourself as to who you are and you pray. Because the power of prayer intervenes and gives you an instant transformation.

Leonard: Do you believe that God was speaking to you directly?

Sidney: Spoke directly to me.

Leonard: What was that message?

Sidney: I asked him. I asked him if he, in fact, would take from me, all of the ills, of the drugs, and all of the desires that were not a part of the light that he was allowing me, then I would do the rest. Just allow me that opportunity. He did that. My life has been consistent with that practice.

Leonard: We’re halfway through the program. The title of today’s program, “The Amazing Life of Sidney Davis,” and it truly is amazing. He’s gotten a lot of press in the newspapers in Washington, D.C. and throughout. He is running for president of the Transit Workers Union here, the District of Columbia. He has come a long way from the most times spent in solitary confinement to a pillar of the community. I find that that’s the principal part of his story. When you got out, you ran into a jam because you’re talking on the bus, you’re talking to lots of different people and you ended up talking to people about a candidate for mayor of Washington, D.C. who was supportive of re-entry programs for people coming out of the prison system and you lost your job.

Sidney: You’re absolutely right, Brother Snipes. I lost my job because I took a position. I took a position based upon the candidate’s record. I was talking to people on the bus about not getting caught up in the emotion or be driven by your emotion, check out the record of the person. It’s the same situation where our records are always held against us once we come out of prison and people getting a job. I’m telling these folks to look at the value of the person’s record to see how they voted, to see what their thinking is and so there was a report on the bus who was recording the information. After the article came out in the paper and the same what I had adapted and supporting the candidate, Vincent Orange, who is now a councilman at large.

Leonard: The thing that gets me is that, you’ve been through, undoubtedly, a tough life. You come out, you do find work, you’re working, you’re interacting with the passengers on the bus in many pro-social ways, you say something political that transit folks objected to you engaging in political advocacy while on the bus, you lose your job. You lost your job for over a year. How did you feel when you lost your job?

Sidney: I felt kind of disempowered so to speak. I couldn’t contribute in my family. I had to go back and get another skills that I’ve had. I’m a barber by trade. I’m a welder by trade. I had to draw from all sort of skills that I learned while I was in prison. I was not going to be turning back on myself and doing something that was going to put me back in prison. My mind had been made up to do the correct thing.

Leonard: For so many people who come out of the prison system, when they do find success and the success is stripped from them, they spiral back into drugs, they spiral back in the crime. My point is that, you did not let that happen to you. That had to be immensely disappointing to you but it had to be a very hard time for you.

Sidney: It was a hard time. It was no more harder than the fact that I had done 21 years in prison without anything. Therefore, that had become a practice in my life because of that catastrophe or because of that blockage or barrier or wall that was set up, it wasn’t going to prohibit me from continuing to progress to build myself.

Leonard: You measured the process of losing your job against where you’ve been and simply say, “If I can survive that, I can survive this.”

Sidney: Absolutely.

Leonard: You did get your job back after a year.

Sidney: I went through the arbitration process and it [would be 19:41] to mean that they didn’t have facts to substantiate what they were doing to me.

Leonard: Did you get back pay?

Sidney: I didn’t get back pay and I lost my …

Leonard: You did not get back pay. Oh my heavens.

Sidney: I didn’t get … Unemployment. They took my employment. I had an option whether to go back to live the old life or to take what had come out as a result of the situation with the political thing. What came out was, here’s a choice. “You take the job, we’re taking this.” If you work, you can get more money.

Leonard: By the way, you and I, we have similarities. You went to John Hopkins?

Sidney: I attended John Hopkins right up here on Massachusetts Avenue.

Leonard: You got your bachelor’s degree while in prison, right?

Sidney: I got my bachelor’s degree in prison. Yes.

Leonard: How important was that to you?

Sidney: It was exceptionally important. I mean, to come to get my GED and to continue to go on to get the AA and then to get the BA. Those were major cons for education. It was the fundamental thing that I continue to concentrate on to make myself aware to myself so I can improve.

Leonard: Now, you know that most of the college programs have been stripped from Lorton prison. When I looked at a Washington Times article, they addressed that and they interviewed you about that. How important do you feel as to the educational process within the prison system, whether it’d be vocational or college?

Sidney: We’re talking about 2 aspects. We’re talking about education as it relates to young people, introducing them to the fundamentals of who they are. Subsequently, if they wind up in the criminal justice process, it seemed that the education is separate. In other words, there’s no more concentration. Education is fundamental to being able to respect oneself, to respect somebody else, to love somebody, to get knowledge of knowing how to grow, how to understand, how to apply to understand, how to apply economics with situation. You have to know that this life is one that you must be educated in and to be able to exchange socially, politically, and economically at whatever institution you decide to go in.

Leonard: We pulled the programs. The programs had supported … The vast majority of this programs have been pulled. President Obama is reintroducing them on a limited basis. You’ve already told me how important it was to you. How important is it to everybody else in the prison system?

Sidney: It is a fundamental prerequisite that everybody be exposed to education. It reduces violence inside the prison. It reduces violence to oneself. It reduces a behavior to get along with the prison officials. No one can’t be point the finger at for the wrong that you commit. You got to come out of that and be able to appreciate that you made a mistake. Now, what are you going to do with it? What are you going to do with the mistake? You’re going to let it grow or you’re going to cut the mistake off and begin to look more into the value of what you need to do and not only it comes to fundamental education, not only these programs being cut out.

These are the minds of people who are looking for those individuals as there’s like a … It’s just like an individual having to be ate up and not being able to think themselves out of a condition. These conditions have been created and folk in prison want to get out and tax payers want to see them come out to be better. However, people who runs this prison industry, if they’re not applying those things, then it’s detrimental to the community, to the health of the community, to the safety of the community. We have to begin to impose upon the policy makers to change the paradigm.

Leonard: Where would you have been if you did not have the college programs? Would you have come out and be the success that you are today?

Sidney: I would say yes, because I made a determination that I wasn’t going to go back the other way, regardless. I think that it was essential that I had that educational support base so that I could do even that much more.

Leonard: The articles talked about the programs that you ran in prison and it makes reference to a youth summit locally on [inaudible 24:29] engaged in. You have been involved in the re-entry community, you’ve gone out and entered kids, you’ve gone out and talked to different groups, you’ve been an organizer and an advocate for the re-entry community. Why?

Sidney: Again, you have to do things that are more and bigger than yourself. In order to be a God-driven instrument, you have to be able to touch people, in fact, with what you had been given. I believe that I have been given some divine principles that I need to impart and practice to other people to show them the benefit of the sincere happening as the day I suppose I had with an [inaudible 25:17]. Therefore, it won’t be all of this entitlement. You have to have a freedom to know and to be able to do and to practice the things that you’ve been given. Now, if we don’t have no exchange about those things, then it won’t see it. A teacher can’t engage a child like I can engage them because they haven’t been there, you understand?

Leonard: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Sidney: A judge won’t be able to do that. The students in college won’t even be able because they haven’t been exposed to it. Now, I work with Howard University. A professor there by the name of  Adel Jackson and Douglas Hall. I’ve known her since ’76. I had a chaplain of the United States Senate to pay her to come to Lorton, to teach us, and the prodigy, linguistics, sociology. Now, becoming a part of the Howard University program through Lorton was one that I had to create myself because I had the resource to do it. Ten of those men were taking those classes. I’ve still been in contact with her since coming in the community. I’ve given a [preface 26:22] up there at Howard University so that the student population that comes from different states can be able to have a practical experience of what it means to integrate their education with the reality of community work.

Leonard: You do understand that most people who come out of the prison system don’t do what you do. A lot do. I don’t want to take away from anybody who have been advocates. You have just been there steadfastly throughout working with youth, working with anti-crime summits, working with re-entry community, being an advocate. You’ve been a bus driver for years. You’re now running for the local union presidency. What motivates you to do all these things? You’ve said religion. Is there anything else beyond religion?

Sidney: My belief and faith in Jesus Christ is the ultimate driving force in my life. That’s where I get my energy. The power of the holy spirit allows me to be driven to do things to help others.

Leonard: That young men early on in life probably had all that instruction, probably had all that encouragement. You were, probably, as you said, exposed to religion but there was a certain point where it took root was in prison.

Sidney: Yes. It was the fullness of time. You cannot continue to be destructive to yourself and expect to get something out of life more. You have to be able to be a contributor. You have to be able to be a participant. You have to be able to be involved. That goes across the board with the criminal justice process. The fact is that, they don’t have experiences that would make … For the difference, once a person is caged in an environment. Now, we have to look at what value can we get out of these people now that we’re locking them up, now that they committed some wrong in society or have been found guilty for some particular crime, how can we get the best of this? Now, what I did was, I looked at the special Olympics that was a population of people that was not being addressed …

Leonard: While you were in prison.

Sidney: While I was in prison. I met this guy who was part of the world football league. His name was Joseph Wheeler and he was an oceanographer. I challenged him. He was on the field. He has some guys doing some football trials. That was in the transition of the world football league. I challenged him and wrote him a letter. He took the letter to [inaudible 29:06]. They sent this boss directly down here and we got something going. It lasted for 10 years successfully.

Leonard: All right. Final 30 seconds of the program. The answer has been quick. What message do you give right now to somebody called up in the criminal justice system doing the wrong thing, hanging out in the street, you’re talking directly to that person, what do you say to him?

Sidney: I believe that I would want this person to begin to evaluate themselves, build a support base in the community with their families, with the church, with someone that will keep them conscious, motivated, and educated about where they’re going once they are released.

Leonard: All right. That was a wonderful story, Sidney. This is a program, The Amazing Life of Sidney Davis. This is D.C. Public Safety. We appreciate your comments. We even appreciate your criticism. We want everybody to have themselves a very pleasant day.

Prison Reentry: A Former Offender’s Perspective-Lamont Carey-Transcript

DC Public Safety Radio

See http://media.csosa.gov

See radio show at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2015/10/prison-reentry-from-a-former-offenders-perspective/

Leonard: From the nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Back at our microphones, Lamont Carey, LamontCarey.com. Lamont is one of the most interesting spokespeople for this whole issue of reentry, people coming out of prison. We’re titling today’s program View on Prison Reentry: A Former Offender’s Perspective. Lamont Carey, welcome back to DC Pubic Safety.

Lamont: Thank you for having me.

Leonard: All right. The best programs we do are with Lamont. Now when you go to an event and Lamont is speaking at events, because Lamont is an author, he’s a trainer, Lamont is everything. He’s a filmmaker. There’s nothing that Lamont does not do, but the most interesting thing that Lamont does is he gets up and he gives these monologues on our understanding of crime in the criminal justice system. Lamont, I want you to start off the program with a one to two minute monologue so that people have an idea as to what it is that you do.

Lamont: All right. See when I walked out that gate, I looked straight, leaving prison behind me, leaving the streets behind me. But my mother always told me that my past would always find me. See I had been looking for a job for almost a year and wasn’t nobody hiring. I’m glad that they done banned the box, but it’s that empty block on my resume that seems to be whispering, “He done been to the penitentiary.” They told me to forget my past and change people, places and things if I really want to change. Now I’m in this new job interview not knowing what to say or what to do, so I say what I’ve been taught, that I’m a hard worker, that I’m a fast learner, that I’m a dependable. She leaned over and said, “Sir what does that mean because that ain’t what we’re looking for? We’re looking for somebody with expertise in sales.”

I smiled on the outside because on the inside I was screaming, “That’s the reason that I went to jail.” Once I was able to tell her what I knew about sales without actually telling her what I knew about sales, I got the job. See they say when things go wrong we revert back to what we know, but there’s some skills from my criminal past that are indeed transferable. iTunes. All that stuff you can get that, the whole copy.

Leonard: I do love that. I heard that live a couple weeks ago and i was just absolutely fascinated with it. You understand, after listening to that monologue how convincing Lamont is. A very eloquent spokesperson, and a very forthright and forceful spokesperson for the issue of reentry because we’ve done radio programs before where we’ve argued, we’ve yelled at each other. People just need to understand what it is about people caught up in the criminal justice system and what it is that we should be doing. Crime is rising in some cities throughout the United States. People are starting to get angry at the criminal justice system again, and what we’re saying is that if you supply the programs both in prison and outside of prison, and if you supply community support, we can dramatically reduce the amount of people who are going back to prison, dramatically reduce the amount of criminality that people get involved in and we have been saying that, I have been saying that for a quarter of a century.

Lamont: Preach.

Leonard: I’m not quite sure people get it. I’m not quite sure people listen to what I have to say. Maybe Lamont Carey, they listen to what you have to say. What is the message?

Lamont: You said it. When I hear criminal justice system, let me just be straight up, I hear the system. From my personal perspective, my community reflects all the images that I see of the criminal justice system.

Leonard: What does that mean?

Lamont: That means on the news when there’s a crime committed and the picture is flashed, ninety-nine percent of the times it’s an individual that looks like me, that comes from the community that I come from. Actually on my way here, I saw a video of a young black girl, African American girl in the classroom. I don’t know what the whole story is, but this police officer forced, she was sitting in the chair holding onto the chair as tight as she could, slammed the chair back, snatched her out of the chair and tossed her. This is a grown man. This is a young girl in school, and I can’t think where’s the justification in her being treated so harshly.

She didn’t have a weapon in her hand that she was brandishing at anybody. She was holding onto the desk. Those images are what I saw growing up on a consistent and constant basis, every time I saw the police they were taking somebody that I know, somebody that I love. For me, that created that gap, that divide between me and the police because I saw the police as a threat to my well being, and that is how I saw the criminal justice system and also I saw the criminal justice system, because again, I say the system, is when I was in school and I stayed back in Kindergarten. I don’t know how you stay back in Kindergarten when all you do is color and sleep, but I stayed back in Kindergarten and I stayed back in the first grade.

When I got passed on to these other grades, I knew that I wasn’t ready. Now I’m seeing statistics and hearing people say that they’re basing third grade test scores on how many prison beds that they will need in the future. The criminal justice system for me begins in my community, and if those statistics are what they’re using as fact, that mean that there is an opportunity for there to be an intervention in third grade if that is what’s leading to defining where they will end up with the rest of their life. Why aren’t we being proactive and putting money into programs? Not only money into programs, why aren’t we getting rid of teachers and curriculum that aren’t preparing out children to go to the next grade where they will be producing test scores that say they are going to prison?

Leonard: Okay, you’re bouncing all over the place. Number one, there’s a basic mistrust either in the poor African American community or other communities, white communities, Hispanic communities towards the criminal justice system. You’re probably going to suggest that it’s more pronounced within the African American community.

Lamont: No, I’m just speaking of from my perspective.

Leonard: From your perspective, that’s what I’m looking for. Number one, what I’m hearing is there’s mistrust of those of us within the criminal justice system.

Lamont: Right.

Leonard: In your mind there’s probably a pretty good reason for that mistrust.

Lamont: Right.

Leonard: From the very beginning in terms of the schools, the schools are improperly prepared to lift people up even those people who want to be lifted up?

Lamont: Right. To you it might seem that I’m bouncing all over the place but to me it says it’s connected. It’s based off those test scores and it defines who goes to prison and nobody is trying to stop that, so all of that is connected. It’s saying these young people will end up in the criminal justice system. If nobody is not interrupting that, then they’re embracing it.

Leonard: What you’re saying it’s preordained and it’s embraced by the large society?

Lamont: Yeah. How else could I read into that?

Leonard: Why would it be embraced by the larger society?

Lamont: If this is the truth and they’re not putting money there, they’re not switching out the curriculum or the teachers, then this has been accepted as the norm?

Leonard: Why?

Lamont: Why?

Leonard: Yeah.

Lamont: Why was it accepted as the norm? Well it may be I know I’ve been hearing, I haven’t actually seen them so it may not even be true that there are contracts with prison systems that’s guaranteed that a certain amount of bed space will be filled, so maybe this is a part of that process of making sure that the states meet those quotas so they won’t end up in court because they have guaranteed that these bed spaces will be filled.

Leonard: Your sense is that it’s all preordained for whatever reason, whether it be race, whether it be class, whether it be for whatever the reason is, it is preordained for young men and young women coming up in our society throughout the United States that they’re not going to do well in school and they’re going to end up in the criminal justice system.

Lamont: Right. My thinking is if it’s not embraced as this is the norm, then it must be embraced that there is something truly wrong with African Americans, right? That we’re going to commit crimes, that we’re going violate the law in some form or fashion that’s going to put us behind bars. That’s saying that we are born criminals and that’s impossible for it to be true. I know we come from situations, in my community I grew up that my father wasn’t allowed to live in my household for my mother to receive the Section 8 housing.

Leonard: Is it because he was caught up in the system?

Lamont: No. What I’m speaking of, again, when I hear criminal justice I hear the system. Internally that’s what it says to me. I’m just stating from my view as a young person growing up to now as an adult trying to understand all of my experiences as a young folk. If my father was hiding under the bed and jumping in the closet so he wouldn’t be found that he was in my mother’s home so she wouldn’t lose where she was living. One, it seemed like my father, for whatever reason, that he wasn’t able to have a job that he was able to pay the rent for the housing for us, whatever that reason was that he couldn’t do that, but now my mother has housing and apparently she was under an agreement that says, “If we provide housing for you and your kids, the man can’t be living here.”

Leonard: For what reason? Was he caught up in the criminal justice system?

Lamont: No, it was just public housing.

Leonard: It was just public housing?

Lamont: It was just public housing.

Leonard: It excluded your father because they didn’t want men?

Lamont: They didn’t want men.

Leonard: Oh wow.

Lamont: He could not live in a house with us. I know in D.C., because it wasn’t HUD. HUD said it wasn’t their policy, it was the policy of the Housing Authority. The Housing Authority in D.C. is re-looking at that and trying to bring families back together.

Leonard: The bottom line, what I’m hearing you say Lamont is that there is institutional bias towards people, towards themselves caught up in the criminal justice system, caught up in failing schools. They grow up a certain way viewing the criminal justice system a certain way, viewing society a certain way.

Lamont: Right.

Leonard: what does that mean? You grow up in tough schools, you grow up in tough communities, you grow up mistrusting the criminal justice system and all that means what?

Lamont: All that means, for me I felt isolated. I felt like that there wasn’t options for me, that I felt limited. Because I heard things like the school system isn’t preparing you for a future, the textbooks are old or the white man is not going to let you be nothing. This is what I heard verbally. Now I see on TV every year, every couple of months about how bad the inner city or the public school system is. Now it’s not something that I’m hearing verbally from people who have given up on life, but now it’s being broadcast and so it’s the same messages that’s being fed to our kids.

As a kid, growing up, I’m like, “All right, why should I go that route if they’re saying that route is a dead end.” I chose the streets.

Leonard: You’re not going to succeed anyway, so why not choose the streets?

Lamont: Right. How the streets seemed like an option, because those who chose the streets lived better than I did. I wanted to get out of this despair. People in my neighborhood, you can look in their eyes and see that they have given up, that they are completely hopeless. I didn’t want to be a drug addict. I didn’t want to be an alcoholic living on the corner. The drug dealers because the difference in my community. They had the cars, they had the money, they moved out of the community and it was accessible to me. I learned how to sell drugs playing in the yard.

Leonard: You understand that what you are describing, I’ll name the following five groups and there’s going to be somebody who will object because I have [inaudible 14:13]. You’re talking about Italian street corner gangs, you’re talking about Jewish street corner gangs, you’re talking about Greek street corner gangs.

Lamont: Right.

Leonard: You’re talking about just about any other group out there. Everything that you’re describing describes exactly all the other folks who got involved in the criminal justice system.

Lamont: Guess where I learned that out.

Leonard: Where?

Lamont: I learned that in prison.

Leonard: Tell me about that.

Lamont: I learned that each group has the same or similar issues as the African American communities deal with. Italians kill, rob, sell drugs to Italians. Asians do the same and vice versa. I’m only speaking from a perspective that I grew up in. I can’t talk about an Italian kid, how they grew up.

Leonard: I want to get back to that and I want to get around the criminal justice policy, but I still think that our program should be two hours long, not thirty minutes. It’s impossible. The discussion about all of this, Lamont Carey’s at our microphone. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, views on prison reentry from a former offender’s perspective. LamontCarey.com, L-A-M-O-N-T-C-A-R-E-Y dot com. It’s impossible to describe Lamont in terms of his public appearance, in terms of writing books, in terms of video, in terms of other projects that Lamont is involved in. It’s just a fascinating, fascinating person. LamontCarey.com, go to his website.

We have fifteen minutes left. In terms of criminal justice property, in terms of something that everybody else listening to this program right now needs to understand about the reentry process is what? Everything that you experienced as a child, put that off to the side for a second.

Lamont: And go to as an adult?

Leonard: What does the large society need to understand, what does the larger society need to do to reduce crime, to reduce the amount of people going back to the prison system? Then reduce of our tax burden?

Lamont: Okay, so starting from inside of the criminal institution, starting inside of prisons. One of the things that was life changing for me is that I had access to education. With me saying that, the Pell grants are so important because …

Leonard: Federal funding for college programs.

Lamont: Federal funding for college, right. Having access to education broadened my worldview. As I said in the poem that I was reciting earlier, that people told us to change people, places and things if we really want to change. If I didn’t have access to education while in prison I would have came out worse than I went in. I wouldn’t have only grown as a criminal. Education combated that. Education when I was in business management, it taught me that I was a businessman, but I just had illegal product. All I had to do was change my product and the services that I offered. Without access to education, I wouldn’t have learned it. That is how I’m in front of you now with books out, with films and plays. Education helps change the way a man or a woman sees themselves, sees the world and it shows them what exists out there.

Leonard: Before prison, you said you viewed yourself in a certain way and you saw your future as hopeless. How did that change in terms of college programs in prison?

Lamont: I didn’t see myself as hopeless, I saw myself as finding a way out and that’s why I chose turn to selling drugs, even though it was the wrong choice. How did that help me in prison? It made sense of my life. It made me see that black people wasn’t the only people that existed in the world. There are black people that are successful, and if you figure out what you want out of life and you be determined enough to achieve it, having access to college in prison helped me create a roadmap to success. It taught me that I can take my life, package my life, which I have done because I don’t have a product or service. My business is created of me, of my experiences that I was able to turn into books and CDs to motivational speaking. That’s what college did for me. If not having access to college, I wouldn’t have know that I could do that.

The other thing that we need, having a job, having housing is phenomenal, but more than that we need goals. We need to be able to set life goals for ourselves. We need to be able to think, be able to make decisions that’s going to benefit our life. We need life skills that’s going to help us to confront and overcome those obstacles we’re going to face.

Leonard: You’re talking about fundamentally rearranging how people see themselves through education.

Lamont: Yes, and education somehow, whether that’s a trade or whether that’s just through education, because we work. What society doesn’t understand is that in prison you have two choices. You either work or you go to school. It’s not like we have never worked before. We get up every morning, probably depending on what your job is, and work just about seven days a week. We are accustomed to working. We are accustomed to being on time. I think we just need the opportunities and that the community as a whole, employers understand that there is some value. One, we have skills. We’re used to working, and that we have skills that we’re not even utilizing. One of the skills that have that I learned from the streets is that I learned I know marketing. I know customer service. I know branding. Those were skills that I learned from a criminal lifestyle. I figured out through college programs how to see that in a different light, see that in a positive light, and repackage that and turn it into a positive product or service.

Leonard: We cut the prison programs, we cut most of the prison college programs. President Obama is trying to re-institute them on a limited basis, on a trial basis, but we cut most of the programs that you find near and dear. Most prison systems throughout this country lack career programs, lack vocational training for all offenders. They have them but only a small percentage of the prison population can take advantage of them. Vocational training is not there as necessary. Educational training, substance abuse, mental health, all these programmatic activities, they exist in every prison in the United States but they only serve small numbers. Why is that? If you’re saying that that is the key, then why do so few prison inmates actually get to be involved in these sorts of efforts.

Lamont: In some institutions it depends on how much time you’re serving.

Leonard: Correct.

Lamont: Right?

Leonard: Right, if you’re a lifer you’re not going to get it. If you’re there for nine months, you’re not going to get it. But for the eighty percent left?

Lamont: My thinking is that everybody should have access to some form of program. It shouldn’t be voluntary, it should be mandatory. If you don’t have a high school diploma, like when I went to prison because I was a juvenile, because of federal laws or what have you, I had to go to school and get a GED. That was the eye opener for me. That’s what led to college. Because at first I didn’t think I was smart enough to be able to take tests to pass grades, but once I got the GED I was like, “Okay.”

Leonard: I want two quick answers from you. Why is there a lack of programs, and B, if we had the programs, what would be the impact? Would we reduce recidivism by fifty percent, sixty percent, twenty percent? Why don’t we have these programs?

Lamont: I think the institutions focuses on warehousing for the most part. It’s on warehousing and maybe the impression is that we don’t want to learn. I’ve went to a prison in North Carolina, they have no program. They don’t even have a law library. In my opinion, I believe that it will have a great impact on the recidivism rate if you have those kind of programs. Most of us don’t even know that we have mental issues. Today I know that I’m affected by my incarceration because if my wife open a door in the bedroom, I still pop up or my eyes pop open because it was a safety measure in there. Those are some things that could have been addressed beforehand. Me, you know me, man I’m writing a book on.

Leonard: Yes you are.

Lamont: How to identify institutional behavior and possible ways you can help them overcome it. I think having education and access to programming, it’s cool if they give us the programming and education, but society has to be willing to accept that we have this training and if they’re going to offer us programming in the institution, let us be certified in it.

Leonard: That’s the other part of it, the larger society has got to care about people coming out of the prison system. They’ve got to be personally invested for their own protection. I mean just in terms of …

Lamont: Of safety.

Leonard: … crime, just in terms of their own tax paid dollars. It is in our collective best interest to give a break, to have some degree of understanding the people coming out of the prison system.

Lamont: Let me tell you, when I felt like I was a part of the American dream, when I cast my first ballot. I think it’s important that individuals that return home from prison should be given their voting rights back because I had never paid attention to politics until I was in prison because it was on TV.

Leonard: how much of all of this is the individual person’s responsibility? Because people listening to this program are going to go, “Okay Lamont, fine. Programs fine, I’ll give you that. Acceptance, fine, I’ll give you that. How much of it is the responsibility of Lamont Carey and everybody else coming out of the prison system?”

Lamont: It as a huge responsibility of Lamont Carey, but you also got to look at in a lot of institutions it’s controlled by gang activity. Either you’re in a gang or you pray. I just always stood on my own, was willing to deal with whatever and learn how to navigate those systems. An individual who doesn’t have the same outlook on life and confidence in themselves going to end up in those gangs, but if you give them opportunities like education and job training, that’ll help combat some of that stuff that’s dealing with the gang and all of that, because if we don’t put programs and I’m trained as a gang member. Quickly, I ended up in the federal prison when they closed D.C. Prison Lawton down. Now I’m in there with cartel leaders that could easily say in conversations say, “Lamont, when you get home I’m going to make sure you’re all right. I’m going to supply you with a hundred kilos or a thousand kilos.”

Leonard: I’ll take care of you. You don’t have to worry about it.

Lamont: Right.

Leonard: Nobody else cares about you, we do.

Lamont: Right. Before I came to the federal prison, I didn’t have access to cartel leaders, but because I had access to education while I had access to cartel leaders, I chose to use the education that I got versus the opportunities that the cartel leaders were presenting me. That’s what’s important when you’re talking about reentry. Either we’re getting a good education or we’re getting an education that’s going to help teach us how to prey on the community. The majority of the individuals that I was incarcerated with, they want to come home and they want to be upstanding citizens. They don’t want to do wrong, but they come home and we hear all of these no’s. No to job, no to voting. We don’t have access to so much stuff.

Leonard, out of all the amazing things that I’ve done since I’ve been home, I still can’t go on a field trip with my son. That’s not allowing me to be a hundred percent father. I can’t go on a field trip, and I go in schools and I talk to kids about being at risk, ending up in a prison incarcerated, but I still can’t go and volunteer.

Leonard: Regardless of your success and your success has been profound, you are still an ex-con.

Lamont: Yes. I’m still an ex-con. I still can’t even get in the White House. I’ve been on programs and I can’t get in.

Leonard: There’s a bit of a contradiction there.

Lamont: Out of all the success that I’ve had, imagine somebody with no success. Can’t even participate in a field trip with their kid.

Leonard: I think the larger issue, I mean there are the Lamont Carey’s of the world that do extraordinary things. I’ve had dozens of them before these microphones, the other people like Lamont Carey, and there’s ninety-seven percent who are still struggling with the basics. You’re laying out the issues for all of them. It applies to everybody.

Lamont: My goal is to use myself and any other individual that came home and successfully transitioned to change the face of reentry. Because I think when people hear ex-con, they still see the image of who I used to be. They don’t see this individual that’s sitting across from you or this individual that was the lead in a production at the Kennedy Center last month. They don’t see that individual that can go into a company and teach companies employees on professional development.

Leonard: They just see your past.

Lamont: Right. As long as you see my past, you’re going to miss how extraordinary I am today, because that’s what I am Leonard.

Leonard: But it applies to other people as well.

Lamont: Right, because there are thousands of us.

Leonard: That’s your point. Is it the majority, is it twenty-five percent, is it fifty percent, is it seventy percent? What is it?

Lamont: I think depending on what community that you’re in, it’s a minimum of fifteen percent of the individuals come home and successfully transition. Then again, there are those of us who have jobs, that the employer told us, “Don’t let nobody know that you ever been to prison.” If you out there listening, I need for you to get on board to abandon the box, removing “Have you ever been convicted of a crime” from the job applications. Support getting the Pell grants back into the institutions.

Leonard: Always a very fascinating conversation Lamont Carey. Thank you very much for being here. LamontCarey.com. Ladies and gentlemen, DC Public Safety. We appreciate your comments. We even appreciate your criticisms, and we want everybody to have themselves a very pleasant day.