Andrew Jarecki

of cruelty?

What's the nature of punishment?

Are we putting people there to try to make them better, rehabilitate them?

Are we putting them there because they're drug addicts and we're trying to get rid of them as opposed to rehabilitate them or as opposed to try to get them off of drugs?

So obviously, prisons have become pretty much a catch-all for the ills of society.

So if you have mental illness,

much more likely to go to prison.

Once you're in prison, if you're mentally ill or you have bad social skills, you're much more likely to get into a scrape with a guard who probably isn't trained to deal with somebody who's mentally ill.

And you're much more likely to get murdered, which is what we saw happening in Alabama.

The guards sell the phones to the men inside.

Which is also crazy.

Yeah.

I mean, there's so many drugs in the Alabama state prison system.

And I spoke to one of the people who was incarcerated there early on, on a contraband cell phone.

And I said, you know, where are all the drugs coming from, the amount of drugs here?

This is an incredible, you know, human wasteland.

You're seeing just high, high percentage, maybe 80 percent of the people are addicted to drugs, many of whom were not addicted to drugs before they came in.

And how are you getting all the cell phones?

And the guy looked at me like I was, you know, stupid.

And he said, you know, we don't leave, right?