And now from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, the Act Spiles, with your host, David Axelrod.

You mentioned the Koch brothers in some of the rooms I walk into and you get met with gridded teeth.

But on one issue, criminal justice reform, the Koch brothers are fighting side by side with the left, the ACLU and others,

to try and change some of the draconian laws that were put in place to fight drugs and crime that have only crowded our prisons and not solve the problem.

And I had a chance to sit down with Mark Holden, who is an attorney for Koch Industries, but has made criminal justice reform his mission.

From 1980 to 2008, the number of people incarcerated in America quadrupled from roughly 500,000 to 2.3 million people.

One in every 31 adults, that's 3.2% of the population is under some form of correctional control in America.

The US is 5% of the world's population and we have 25% of the world's prisoners.

And there's of course great disparities between African Americans and Hispanics and white Americans, African Americans incarcerated nearly six times the rate of whites,

African Americans and Hispanics comprise 58% of all prisoners in 2008, even though African Americans and Hispanics made up approximately a quarter of the US population.

I raise all these statistics because my guest today has made this his mission to deal with this issue of over incarceration.

And he comes from what some will consider an unlikely source.

Mark Holden is lead attorney for Koch Industries, has been there for 20 years, but is mostly detailed to this mission now of trying to bring about criminal justice reform.

Mark, it's really good to be with you.

It's great to be here. Thanks for having me, David.

I'm curious as to how you became interested in this issue.

We can talk later about how the Koch brothers became interested and Charles Koch became interested in this issue.

But I'm really interested in you and your story. Tell me how you became acquainted with this problem, this challenge, this...

Well, it all started in Worcester, Massachusetts. Does any good story does? I think we could all agree.

If you're from Worcester.

If you're from Worcester, yeah. And you get out. I'm kidding.

But I grew up in Worcester, my mom still lives there. And when I was in college, the best job I had before I went to law school, I was a correctional officer at the Worcester County House of Correction.

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