Maya Schenwar:	It's funny, I've been saying again and again, I feel so much déjà vu walking around here. It's just eerie, and the Scheur room, I just remember amazing speakers, but also stealing snacks, was like a major theme apparently of my time at Swarthmore. Also, thank you for the introduction, it was beautiful. And another thing that has been kind of coming at me was, just how supported I felt here and writing about things that I was passionate about, and not just writing what I thought I should write. That definitely fueled the writing of this book. But, writing this book was really, really, really hard. So in the early stages of book writing, I was stuck all the time. Like I would wake up and just freeze. And I decided to call up a bunch of authors that I knew through my work at TruthOut and just ask them how to write a book. So I did that, and I got a lot of good and bad advice. 
	One piece of advice just really stuck with me. And that is, actually it was a terrible piece of advice, and it was, it doesn't matter what kind of book you're writing, you're writing for an American audience so if it's about prisons, whatever, it needs to have a happy ending. I was just like, ugh, I don't know how to do that with this topic! And that's because I was interviewing people in prison, I was interviewing family members of people in prison and at the time, I had a family member in prison myself. I knew that A, this subject is not hopeful, and B, not only does prison often not have a happy ending, it's set up to not end. 
	That's kind the trajectory that it's on. That's partially because when you get out, you have a record, and it's very difficult to find educational opportunities, housing, jobs, all of these things, particularly for people of color. There are these barriers in place at every turn. Also, prison is traumatizing. People experience immense violence in prison, not just the physical violence and sexual violence that happens to people behind bars, but also just being caged as a human being is a violent act. That has lasting impacts. 
	Also, and this is what I talk about mainly in the book, prison breaks down bonds. It breaks down connections between people. And sometimes it does that permanently. So, I think that this concept of the never ending-ness of prison is really important to talk about right now, because we're at this weird time and exciting time, where prison reform is kind of trendy. People are excited about opposing the Drug War. People are excited about limiting mass incarceration,  even conservatives at this point are saying prison budgets are too big. So we're at this kind of turning point but at the same time, there's still this prevailing view that prison, the logic of prison, the idea that for some people prison works, that's still very, very much with us. It's a logic of correction. In a certain way, it is an idea of a happy ending. There's this idea, not only of correction, but of rehabilitation that is built into the language of prison and is in all the official documents and it goes largely unquestioned. 
	So, it goes unquestioned even though we have two-thirds of people coming out of prison, going back within three years. So this logic has stuck to us, and the extension of that logic is that when an individual goes to prison to be corrected, then everyone around them is better off for it. That's also this 'taken for granted' thing, but it's just not the case for most families and most communities. In fact, prison is in many cases, a violent force that's exerted on families and communities, particularly in communities of color and in poor communities. I want to read a couple of stories from my book that illustrate those points. 
	The first one is about a woman named Barbara Fair. Barbara, who I got to know through writing my book, has seven sons and all seven of those sons have been incarcerated at one point or another. The criminal legal system has coursed through Barbara Fair's life for decades. Starting when she was a teen, and her brother was sentenced to prison. Soon after, Barbara herself was incarcerated for a couple of weeks, delivering a sharp premonition she says, of emotions to come. She tells me, "I can still feel the pain and humiliation that cut through me." Barbara's kids grew up in the thick of the Drug War years and their story is an example of the strangling effects of that war on poor black families. Each has been locked up for a drug-related conviction. "The greatest factor influencing my sons ending up in prison is the fact that they are young, African-American males and thus, the targeted commodity for the prison industry", she says. Barbara explains that not only are black males a targeted commodity, they're an assumed commodity. They're viewed as suspicious from youth on up. 
	Her words mirror an interview I did with Mariame Kaba, the founder of Chicago's project, Mia. Mariame spoke of how kids of color begin their lives waved down by an obligation to prove their innocence. As her sons were carted off, Barbara's life quickly molded itself around prison and its immediate effects. The weekly visits to various facilities, each at least 45 minutes from home, the expensive phone calls, the panic attacks, the money troubles, the time-constraints, the sadness. Even after her sons came home, she wrestled with the lingering reverberations of their imprisonments. By the time Barbara and I get to know each other in 2013, all of her sons have been released. But her youngest, deeply traumatized by his time behind bars, some of which was spent in isolation, currently lives in a psych ward and still depends on his mother for constant support. Barbara's ordeal is just one example of how the incarceration of large numbers of men, particularly black men, generates a landslide of consequences for women. 
	In an interview, gender and criminology scholar Beth Richie tells me, "Clearly, one of the untold stories of mass incarceration is the way that women are disadvantaged." The most obvious part is their own incarceration, but there's also the problem of women supporting men who are incarcerated and when they are released. It is visiting, housing, feeding, protecting, hiding, taking the rap for them. All kinds of things have women working to create or maintain stability when men are incarcerated. 
	Barbara Fair carried on this support work routine, Sevenfold. But amid the sleepless chaos, she gleamed a panoramic view of the system in which she was entangled, and became convinced that the best way to cope was to dig in and fight it. In the years since, Barbara has jumped into the struggle full-forced, traveling the country to speak out about bail, plea-bargains, sentencing, juvenile justice and the war on drugs. She's led a fight to oust a corrupt a New Haven judge, she held a Biking While Black protest to speak out about anti-black profiling of bikers on the street and nowadays, she's working to set up dialogues throughout Connecticut between victims and people who've caused harm. Yet, after 30 years, the challenges are still just beginning. 
	Barbara is thinking long-term, and big. She says, "I have worked so hard at reform and saw so little change, that I've come to the conclusion that revolution might be the only response to what is occurring in America relative to criminal justice and the prison industry it feeds. So I wanted to read that last part because I think there's this perception that family members and people who are incarcerated are kind of in this victim category. A lot of progressives, when they talk about this issue, it's like, 'This group of people are totally helpless.' And really, family members and people who are incarcerated are on the frontlines of fighting this struggles. 
	So I want to shift gears a little bit, the next section I want to read is more personal. My sister spent 10 years in and out of prison. This last time that she was incarcerated, she gave birth while behind bars. So this is the day that she gave birth in prison. "At 4:47 a.m., on September 3rd, 2013, Mom wakes me up with news. 'Cayla called, she's on her way to the hospital, she's really scared.' Naturally whoa, I can't believe this is happening. No one really can, including Cayla. Her water hasn't broken, she's not having contractions. Yet, at the convenience of the prison, her labor has been scheduled for today. It will be induced. Mom and I commence, waiting by our phones. No family can be present during labor and birth. Cayla's only company will be medical personnel and prison guards, who must watch her at all times. At some point after the birth, she'll get one phone call, to let us know the baby has arrived. 
	Once Angelica is born, Cayla will have 24 to 36 hours with her, then the baby will be taken away and Cayla will return to prison by herself. I've never seen someone give birth in real life. My images of it, called from movies, books and friends, all feature groups of anxious, excited loved ones. Clustered inside and outside the birthing room, radiating warmth and comfort, preparing to wring in a time of communal celebration. I can't imagine anyone having to go through it alone. Cayla will not only be alone, but also literally confined to her hospital bed. As soon as she's given birth, she'll be shackled to the bedposts. Finally, at 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday, Mom calls the prison and pleads for news. She's transferred around and finally handed off to a counselor. He doesn't have much information, he says, and he shouldn't be telling her anything. But here's what he knows: 10:52 a.m., seven pounds five ounces. Yee! I dance and cry around the kitchen. 10:52 a.m., seven pounds five ounces. 10:52 a.m., seven pounds five ounces. 
	Then I stop. Is Cayla okay, health wise? How did she handle almost 26 hours of labor? When will they be separated? Aside from weighing seven pounds and five ounces, what's Angelica like? How was she dealing with methanone withdrawal? And how is Cayla taking the anticipation of a different kind of withdrawal, withdrawal from her baby who she's only just met? Mom redials the counselor, and asks him why Cayla can't yet call. 'She's in the free world now, so there are security considerations', she's told. The warden has taken the day off and can't authorize the call, and the guards in the hospital room haven't allowed Cayla to pick up the phone. 
	The free world. This was the phrase used in the Cold War era, to distinguish the US and friends from their communist foes. This was the phrase that Neil Young used ironically, to describe many Americans' poverty and despair in Keep On Rocking in the Free World. The American president is the leader of the free world. I think, in what world do America's incarcerated live, that is when they're not giving birth alone except for the company of prison guards? Who's responsible for that unfree world? That world where mothers are torn from their babies every day? 
	Finally, my mom gets the one call from Cayla. She puts her on speakerphone and calls me in. Cayla is breathing rapidly, and I can't tell whether she's laughing or crying, as she gasps. 'Oh my god, she is so beautiful! I love her, I love her, I love her and I just want to hold her forever.' Angelica is wailing full-blast when Cayla holds her face up to the receiver. In the background, Cayla is sobbing, 'My little baby! She doesn't even know what's coming!' And her voice is heavy with the weight of the prison-bound pregnancy, the lonely labor, the painful birth, the love at first sight, the shackling, the dreaded moment of separation and the 81 days of waiting to come. A few hours after our conversation, Cayla is handcuffed and led away from her baby and back to prison. When my parents and I visit Angelica in the hospital, long after Cayla is gone, she's wide-eyed, squirming in her tiny bassinet. Taped to the wall of her crib is a three-paged note. It's filled with my sister's neat, decorative handwriting, a list of instructions. It says, 'She likes the top of her mouth tickled with the pacifier or your finger, it helps her feed. She loves to be held, she loves when you hold her hand, and on and on. Then it says, 'I was love you so, so much, baby. I promise I'll be home soon.'"
	So, on that note, the second half of my book looks at the future, and it looks at a future beyond imprisonment. That's kind of hard to do considering the position we're in right now, with 2.4 million people incarcerated. So what I did was, I looked at a bunch of different experiments and projects that are happening around the country, in which people are really grappling with this question of 'How do we move on, beyond the prison industrial complex and what do we do instead?' These, at first, are happening at a number of different levels. The first level, I think, is just de-carceration, shrinking the system. This is really crucial, a lot of times people like to talk about alternatives to incarceration, which is really important, but you have to chip away at the current system before you can build a new one or simultaneously with building a new one. And that chipping away has to happen from all directions. 
	So I think the first direction is really straightforward, which is just reducing the populations of people in prison. And this happens through all kinds of strategies. Closing prisons, reducing prison budgets, bail reform, so reducing the use of monetary bail so that not as many people are locked up in county jail basically because they're poor, ending mandatory minimum sentences so we're not seeing people serve these long, long sentences just because judges had no other option other than to give them that sentence. So all of these strategies are really aimed at paving the way for locking fewer people up and letting people out who are behind bars. 
	I would also say that the current work being done around police violence and the Black Lives Matter movement is in part, a de-carceration effort because it's challenging that criminalization of people of color, in particular black people, which pervades the criminal legal system to its core. This is a system that was built on slavery, and so really targeting that criminalization and thinking about policing and surveillance. 
	We can't just talk about equalizing sentencing, this is something that's discussed a lot. 'Oh we just have to make judges less racist, or we have to change the law so that sentencing is more equal.' No, think about the entryway to this system. Who's getting surveilled? Who's getting policed? That's a crucial aspect. Part of de-carceration comes with challenging the definition of crime. This is something I think we need to rattle our brains around a little bit for, because some acts that we just take for granted as crimes, that are labeled crimes, are simply acts that are associated with marginalized groups. Then certain very, very harmful acts are not criminalized, are not categorized as crime. So we have to ask ourselves, why is possession of crack a crime and possession of nuclear weapons for a country not a crime? How connected are crime and horror? 
	I think that every step, as we challenge the system, we really have to ask that core question. On another note, I think that sometimes a question that gets lost in this conversation is, some people who are incarcerated actually have done harm, so what do we do about that? We can't just open the floodgates, as a lot of conservatives like to say when they're talking about this issue, 'Oh we'll open the floodgates.' So we can't just say no more prison and then society will be safe and we'll all live in harmony. We have to think about different strategies for addressing harm, and I think we can't be scared to address that question. If we're not turning to prison, what do we do when actual harm happens? 
	I can't unfortunately provide the one answer that's going to cover that for the universe because that's what prison tries to do, right? Prison tries to provide this blanket solution for everything from marijuana possession to murder and says here you go, this will work. That's just not a functional system for addressing harm. I think, dealing with harm effectively really has to do with looking at particular situations, particular communities, who are the individuals involved? And every situation will be different and really, the best people to make the decision about how that harm should be dealt with are the people who are intimately effected by that harm. 
	In my book, I look at a bunch of projects happening all over the country in which people are addressing harm without policing and incarceration. Just looking at what could this totally different world look like. Well, we don't have to imagine it completely because there are projects and people who are doing it. So these are just a few examples. I look at a program in rural Montana, where people are organizing restorative justice circles with youth offenders. This is actually happening for all youth crime in this county. It's actually this strange story where this working-class, mostly Republican community was experiencing extremely high juvenile recidivism rates, just out of control. And they were also incarcerating a lot of youth. The community came together, talked about some programs that were already in place and they came up with this restorative justice model, organizing peace circles, and they said, 'Let's just try it.' 
	The system has been in place for six years. So what's done is, after a crime is committed by a youth offender, the youth and the victim and other affected parties, so family members, community members, anyone who was there during the incident ... These people come together in a circle and they tell their stories. They talk about, how did this incident impact them? The victim is centered in this situation, so the victim's story and the emotional and physical, and all of those impacts on them, economic, those are brought to the surface. That doesn't happen in court, usually. 
	The person who did the harm then talks about, 'These are all the reasons behind why I did what I did.' This story is told as well and over the course of usually several circles, the community works towards an accountability agreement, a way that this person is going to be held accountable in a form that actually helps the victim heal and also promotes future safety. It usually prevents at least that one youth from getting into trouble in the future, and also hopefully build community in a way that's going to prevent harm on a larger scale. So these are the questions that they're working with. Actually, over the period of time, these six years that this community has been working with this model, recidivism has dropped dramatically. You don't see youth re-offending, they're transformed by these circles and the work that they have to do to gain accountability. And often, even after the circles and after the youth has done the work to make amends, some of the victims have actually become mentors to the youth. That's happened in a number of cases where, over the years, they've maintained this mentorship relationship. 
	I also look at a program called Safe Outside the System, and this is in Brooklyn. It's specifically focuses on violence against queer and trans people of color. And these are populations that often don't call the police because they're often criminalized by the police when they call. So the police show up, and the victim gets arrested. This is very common. So this is a project that says, 'Okay, what can we do if we can't call the police?' One of the things that they've done, they've done a whole range of things, but one is called Safe Spaces. They are establishing businesses and other community spots, places where people already go, as safe spaces that are designated that way and they have stickers on the building. They're demonstrating that these are places that people can go who are fleeing violence. There are places where the staff is trained to facilitate a safe and comfortable space for people, a place where they can start healing in community. Also, a place where they can talk among people who understand about ways that they might seek some kind of accountability. This is specifically focused on people who are often criminalized by the police, and I think this is a really, really important project to look at because it's thinking pragmatically. It's thinking, 'Okay, this isn't just an experiment where we're going to do a little case study', it's helping people where they're at. 
	In the book, I also look at projects like the Storytelling and Organizing Project, which is in Oakland, California. This project collects the stories who have experienced harm and dealt with it in ways that didn't result in incarceration. So these stories are meant to be shared and used as examples. They've really been disseminated all over the country and sparked a lot of conversations. 
	I think that, what all these projects in common, is really a reframing. It's about thinking, when we talk about our justice system, what do we mean by justice? Is justice tearing families and communities apart, breaking down the bonds that actually help promote safety and strengthen communities? I don't think so. I think that justice is something else. Justice, in part, is about working to connect instead of isolate. It's about working to engage and facilitate thinking, and facilitate transformation. I think that above all, right now, as we embark on this path toward prison reform, we need to think, and rethink and think again about our definitions of justice. If you guys have questions, I'm right here!