This TED Talk features prison reform advocate Peter Oco recorded live at TED Global 2017.

I want to tell you a story about Manson.

Manson was his 28-year-old interior designer, a father to a loving daughter, and a son,

who found himself behind bars due to a broken-down judicial system.

He was framed for a murder he didn't commit, and he was sentenced to the gallows.

There were two victims to these murders.

The victim who actually died in the murder,

and Manson, who had been sentenced to prison,

for an offense which he did not commit.

He was locked up in a cell, 8 by 7,

with 13 other grown-up men for 23 and a half hours a day.

Food was not guaranteed that you'd get. And I remember yesterday as I walked into the room where I was, I imagined the kind of cell that Manson could have been living in, because

the toilets that the small rooms that were there were slightly bigger than the 8x7 cell. But being in that cell as he awaited the executioner, because in prison, he did not have a name.

Manson was known by a number. He was just a statistic.

He did not know how long you'd wait.

The wait could have been a minute, the executioner could have come the next minute,

the next day, or it could have taken 30 years. The weight had no end. And in the midst of the

excruciating pain, the mental torture, the many unanswered questions that Manson faced, he knew he was not going to play the victim.

He refused to play the role of the victim. He was angry at the justice system that had put him behind bars.

But he knew the only way he could change that justice system or help other people get justice was not to play the victim.

Change came to Manson when he decided to embrace forgiveness

for those what put him in prison.

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