The human stories behind mass incarceration | Eve Abrams

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 23 March 2018

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The United States locks up more people than any other country in the world, says documentarian Eve Abrams, and somewhere between one and four percent of those in prison are likely innocent. That's 87,000 brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers -- predominantly African American -- unnecessarily separated from their families, their lives and dreams put on hold. Using audio from her interviews with incarcerated people and their families, Abrams shares the touching stories of those impacted by mass incarceration and calls on us all to take a stand and ensure that the justice system works for everyone.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This TED Talk features audio documentarian Eve Abrams, recorded live at TED Women 2017.
0:09.4	I have never been arrested, never spent a night in jail, never had a loved one thrown into the back of a squad car or behind bars,
0:19.3	or be at the mercy of a scary, confusing system
0:24.0	that at best sees them with indifference
0:27.1	and at worst as monstrous.
0:29.6	The United States of America locks up more people
0:32.1	than any other nation on the planet,
0:34.8	and Louisiana is our biggest incarcerator. Most of you are probably like me,
0:41.5	lucky. The closest we get to crime and punishment is likely what we see on TV. While making
0:47.7	imprisoned, I met a woman who used to be like us, Sheila Phipps. Before my son went to jail, I used to see people be on television fighting saying, oh, this
0:58.3	person didn't do it and this person is innocent.
1:01.1	And, you know, you snubbed them or you dismissed them and like, yeah, whatever.
1:05.9	Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of people deserve to be in prison.
1:09.0	There's a lot of criminals out here.
1:11.0	But there are a lot of innocent deserve to be in prison. There's a lot of criminals out here. But there are a lot of innocent people that sit in jail.
1:15.6	Sheila's son McKinley is one of those innocent people.
1:19.0	He's served 17 years of a 30-year sentence on a manslaughter charge.
1:23.7	He had no previous convictions.
1:25.5	There was no forensic evidence in the case.
1:28.1	He was convicted solely on the basis of eyewitness testimony.
1:32.4	And decades of research have shown that eyewitness testimony
1:35.7	isn't as reliable as we once believed it to be.
	...

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