00:00It's Tanya Christian, news and politics editor at Essence Magazine. Today we're at the nightly
00:08news set speaking with Lester Hull about his criminal justice initiative. Lester,
00:12thank you for joining us. I'm happy to be with you. This week you're doing your justice for
00:16all initiative throughout all of NBC. How did that project come about? One of my producers went with
00:21the Vera Institute, a criminal justice organization. They went to Europe and looked at the way
00:26European prisons are trying some very different things as to how they incarcerate people and the
00:32idea of rehabilitation. He came back so excited we thought okay we've got to move this to the next
00:37level. So we put this idea together and we said we wanted a centerpiece special, a dateline hour,
00:44and we got the green light right away but we still didn't really have our plan. And then someone came
00:49up with the idea what if we we go inside a prison and maybe Lester spends a couple of nights in prison
00:55as a way to really get close to the story. And so that's kind of where it evolved.
00:59So this week you're spending two nights at Angola prison. How did you decide that prison in Louisiana?
01:05We chose Angola and Louisiana because Louisiana used to incarcerate more people in any state in the
01:11country, maybe in any place in the world. They came to a realization a few years ago that it wasn't
01:17working. That simply locking more people up wasn't making them any safer and they knew they had to go a
01:22different way. So the legislature passed a series of bills and laws that enabled them to reduce the
01:29level of incarceration. The reason I wanted to be in the inside was this is a story that's been
01:34primarily told from the outside in. We wanted to reverse that. It also allows me to use a unique
01:40storytelling device in which I'm really taking the viewer on a journey through not only just to kind
01:45of gawk at prison light but to focus on some of the critical criminal justice stories from within the
01:51prison. So what are some misconceptions about our prison population? Well I don't know if it's a
01:56misconception but I think I was struck by how old some of these prisoners are. Now intellectually we
02:03understand if you're sent to life in prison you're going to die as an old person but when you're
02:07confronted with it and you see it and then find out that some of these men had been arrested or
02:13convicted when they were 16, 17 years old, that's a real big issue in criminal justice reform right now
02:19because the Supreme Court said you can't, you can no longer send a juvenile to prison without the
02:27possibility of parole. Based on your visit in Angola, what was a story that stuck out for you? One of them
02:34is the gentleman who was housed in the cell next to mine. He's in the area, we were in an area that's for
02:41inmates who have caused trouble or who are special circumstances. He's there because he had tried to
02:47escape several times and obviously failed but what struck me about him was he's been in that cell now
02:55for four years. He's allowed out once a day for one hour. He can walk within the tier but he's had
03:02opportunities to go outside and hasn't gone outside for four years. It really helped me wrap my arms
03:07around the what this does psychologically and emotionally to to people that are incarcerated.
03:13This week you're going to have a town hall and you've invited a number of people who are kind
03:20of experts on this subject to speak at this town hall. So can you tell me about that? Who have you
03:24invited? What will they be talking about? We're trying to bring you know knowledgeable voices, people
03:29that have passion to this subject and we're going to be doing it on the grounds of a prison, Sing Sing
03:33Prison in New York State. It again achieves our goal of kind of working from the inside out. There will be
03:39incarcerated inmates in our audience so we're going to try and get a wide variety of you know opinions
03:48and people who are affected in this system in many different ways. Throughout the week what should
03:53viewers expect from the NBC Justice for All initiative that's running? Well we're going to be doing stories
03:59on various aspects of criminal justice all week long on Today and MSNBC and Nightly News. I'll be reporting
04:06primarily stories on nightly news. We're going to look at this issue of false confessions because
04:13most people will sit here and there's no way I would admit to doing something that I didn't do.
04:17But guess what? It happens and happens more often than we want to think and there is a reason behind
04:22it so we're going to explore that. That's one of many stories that we hope to touch on and this is not
04:27just a one week and we're done. I mean this is really kind of our next launching pad to even
04:33more interesting and compelling ways to kind of tell the story. What do you hope viewers will get
04:40from this special? I hope they will think about something we don't normally think about. Maybe
04:44you drive by a prison from time to time but you don't really think about what goes on there and most
04:48of our knowledge is you know Shawshank Redemption and a host of other movies. I think it's important
04:53we think about it if for no other reason than 95 percent of the people locked up are going to be out
04:57someday. They're going to be sharing the sidewalk with you, the streets with you, maybe living in
05:02your neighborhood and you know they bring a lot of baggage in terms of you know trying to find jobs,
05:09trying to find meaningful work, getting other rights that we take for granted and becoming
05:14functioning members of society. I mean rehabilitation is a long process that starts behind bars
05:20but ultimately you know has to be dealt with outside. Well thank you so much for speaking with me. Sure,
05:26really great questions. Thank you very much. And viewers thank you for joining us on this Essence
05:30News special with Lester Hull.
Comments