This TED Talk features criminal justice scholar Jarrell Daniels,

recorded live at TED Salon, Education Everywhere, 2019.

When I look in the mirror today, I see a justice and education scholar at Columbia University.

A youth mentor, an activist,

and a future New York State Senator.

I see all of that and a man who spent a quarter of his life in state prison.

Six years to be exact, starting as a teenager on Rikers Island for an act that nearly cost a man his life.

But what got me from there to hear was it the punishment I faced as a teenager in adult prison

or the harshness of our legal system. Instead, it was a learning environment of a classroom

that introduced me to something I didn't think was possible for me

or our justice system as a whole.

A few weeks before my release on parole,

a counselor encouraged me to enroll in a new college course

being offered in a prison.

It was called inside criminal justice. That seems pretty straightforward, though, right?

Well, it turns out the class would be made up of eight incarcerated men and eight assistant district attorneys.

Columbia University's psychology professor Geraldine Downey and Manhattan Assistant D.A. Lucy Lang co-taught the course,

and it was the first of his kind.

I can honestly say this wasn't how I imagine starting college.

My mind was blown from day one.

I assumed all the prosecutors in the room would be white.

But I remember walking into the room on the first day of class

...