Andrew Jarecki

There's a level of cruelty –

that I think we have intrinsically.

You know- You certainly want your other a person, right?

Absolutely.

And that's to some extent why-

When it's exposed, right, when there's transparency, when the press is allowed to report on what's happening inside prisons, people kind of get a conscience because they start realizing, I wouldn't want to do that in front of my kid or I wouldn't want to do that if it ends up in the paper.

I wouldn't want, you know, and I think that is kind of a balancing effect, which is one of the reasons why this like war on.

on transparency, it's a huge problem, right?

We're not allowed to see what's happening in prisons, even though we're paying for them.

And the Supreme Court had this ruling that said that wardens could deny access to journalists simply by citing safety and security.

But meantime, the last 20 years,

No journalist has been harmed inside a prison.

So who's all the secrecy keeping safe, right?

We're sort of perpetuating the system.

Our job going into the Alabama state prison system was to shine a light on that.

It shouldn't be that these guys who are incarcerated have to take life and death risks using contraband cell phones to show what's happening in institutions that I'm paying for and you're paying for.

We're spending $116 billion a year in the United States on prisons, jails, parole.

That is an insane number.

if we're spending that much money, we should sort of know what every one of those dollars is going to.

And we should have watchdogs who will say, hey, guess what?