have a dog other kids in the
neighborhood had a dog so one day I
asked my dad why don’t we have a dog and
my dad said because they used hunts on
us meaning that the Nazis used dogs to
attack and intimidate my family my dad
and my grandmother during the three
years that they spent in Nazi
concentration camps we also didn’t have
a German car no Volkswagen no Mercedes
no BMW Nazi cars is what my dad called
them last summer I was standing at the
Hertz rental car counter in Berlin when
the clerk said to me mr. Rosen I’m very
sorry we don’t have the car that you
reserved and my face kind of fell and
the clerk said but don’t worry mr. Rosen
I have really good news for you I’ve got
a car that has a sunroof and it’s
leather and it’s big it’s a wonderful
luxury car mr. Rosen let me show you the
beautiful Mercedes Benz that we have for
you and I thought this is going to be
kind of an interesting road trip where
I’m going to be taking this car I’ll
tell you where I took this car at the
end of this talk let me first tell you
why I went to Germany to begin with and
what I learned there last summer I went
to Germany with 20 other people from the
United States a pretty distinguished
group a governor another District
Attorney several prominent academics
conservative activists progressive
activists the head of a nonprofit
Association
few reporters 60-minutes the television
news program and convicted murderer from
Germany has a very low crime rate and a
very low incarceration rate meaning a
very low percentage of their citizens
who are in prisons by contrast the
United States murder rate is six-time
pardon me is nine times as high as in
Germany and we incarcerate ten times at
the rate of ten times as many as they do
in Germany in the United States will
spend more than 50 billion dollars a
year on prisons more than nine billion
dollars a year alone in California in
fact California is one of sixteen states
where there are more people in prison
than there are in college it costs about
$50,000 a year to house someone in
prison for those of you that are seniors
you know that the cost of going to a
university all in cost can be something
like $50,000 a year or maybe even more
than that now I know everybody here is
going to graduate but six out of a
hundred American men who graduate from
high school but not college will spend a
year in prison before they turn 34 high
school dropouts 28 out of a hundred will
spend a year in prison before they turn
34 african-american men who drop out of
high school 68 percent 68 out of a
hundred will spend a year in prison
before they turn 30
however it was not always this way in
the United States this is our
incarceration rate from 1925 to about
1975 an incarceration rate is a fancy
word for saying what’s the percentage of
our residents who are either in jail
or prison and you’ll see that from 1925
to 1975 that 50-year period
it’s about a hundred per a hundred
thousand and it’s pretty stable it goes
up a little bit in around 1940 comes
down a little bit but it’s very stable
but then something quite dramatic
happens from the mid-1970s until today
and you’ll see from the mid 1970s until
today the incarceration rate shoots up
to where it is today at around 700 per
hundred thousand in a Sevenfold 700
percent increase now to put this in
context a little bit what about other
countries right well when we compare
ourselves to other democracies to other
first world democratic nations our
incarceration rate is off the chart as
you can see we’re by far the highest
every other country in Europe including
Australia Canada is much much lower than
ours and as you see Germany almost maybe
1/10 little nine times fewer people
incarcerated than in our country so
there was a study done by the National
Academy of Sciences in 2014 and they
concluded that the growth in the
incarceration rate in our country over
the last 40 years is historically
unprecedented
and internationally unique now it’s
historically unprecedented because look
what we were for 50 years so it’s
unprecedented for ourselves this is not
the way we’ve done things in this
country but it’s also internationally
unique when we compare ourselves to
other countries we’re incarcerated far
it turns out that even as the
incarceration rate in our country
increased and increased and increased
crime fell and fell and fell
now some people will say oh well the
reason that crime fell and fell and fell
is because our incarceration rates rose
and rose and rose see in the argument is
simple the reason crime went down is we
got tough and we set more people to
prison
we made the prisons harsher we made the
prison sentences longer we didn’t let
people out on parole and that taught
people and that’s why crime went down
that’s a pretty simple and
straightforward argument kind of appeals
to a wild-west sort of mentality and
remember when you’re trying to persuade
people of something a simple argument
something that people can understand
kind of gets you halfway there towards
persuading them people can understand
something they’re more likely to agree
with it than if they don’t understand it
now the problem with this argument and
there’s only one you know sort of very
small problem with this idea is it’s
completely wrong and the way that we
know this is it turns out that crime
doesn’t just have sort of trends in
cities or countries but across the
Western world across the developed world
Europe Australia Canada it turns out
that crime has moved in parallel since
the Middle Ages and we know this from
all kinds of records that we have
uncovered and it turns out that from the
kind of mid 19th century until the 1950s
1960s crime fell throughout cities
around the world and then from the 1960s
to the early 1990s crime rose property
crime violent crime rose all over the
Western world but then beginning in the
early 1990s until today crime fell all
throughout Europe Australia Canada the
United States it fell in all of those
places now let’s take a look at our
neighbor to the north Canada the reason
I like to use Canada as an example but I
could do this with any country in Europe
right we share a border with Canada
right we think Canadians are sort of
like us except nicer a little bit nicer
I think that’s the stereotype of
Canadians so if you look here these are
a comparison of robbery rates in the
United States and in Canada and you’ll
notice that the rates kind of tick up in
the early 1990s in both countries and
then begin to fall to rates that weren’t
seen in either country till the 1960s so
crime robbery fell in both countries the
same with homicide our rate is on top we
have more robberies we have more
homicides the Canadian rate is
underneath but you’ll see the same kind
of pattern again in the early 1990s
there’s sort of an uptick in murder
that’s what homicide is a kind of murder
and then from the 1990s in both
countries it falls back to levels not
seen since the 1950s or 1960s right so
in other words in the United States and
Canada crime was rising in the 60s 70s
80s and early 90s in both countries
crime went up and then crime started to
fall in both countries okay well why did
the crime fall well if in the United
States you say it fell because you see
we got tough and we put a lot more
people in prison but what a Canada do in
terms of its incarceration rate here’s
what we did right our incarceration
rates on top we responded by throwing a
lot more people in prison for a lot
longer our crime rate goes way our
incarceration rate goes way up
what in Canada do nothing the same thing
that they’d been doing for the last
hundred years and what’s interesting
about Canada is their incarceration rate
of about a hundred per 100,000 people
wait a minute where we heard that before
that’s what our incarceration rate was
from the night from 1925 until 1975 and
so it turns out that what effects crime
rates is a lot more than just how many
people that you put in prison New York
University Law School couple years ago
came out with a very documented
extensive study and they found that
increasing in cart they found three
things number one increasing
incarceration rates
more people in prison for longer will
have a negligible effect on crime number
two better policing including the use of
data to target police resources has
played a significant role in the drop in
crime and number three certain
socioeconomic factors have played a
large part in reducing crime and those
factors are in aging population smaller
families and decreased alcohol
consumption so let’s sort of move from a
little bit from a lot about statistics
and policies to what I saw in Germany
now German prisons are very different
than American prisons number one they’re
a lot smaller the largest prison in
Germany is Tegel prison in Berlin it has
1,200 inmates
most German prisons are much smaller
they have 300 to 500 inmates in them by
contrast American prisons very large the
largest Rikers Island in New York over
14,000 inmates
Angola State Prison in Louisiana more
than five thousand inmates California if
you drive an hour and a half north to
San Quentin thirty five hundred inmates
if you drive an hour and a half south to
Soledad state prison 3600 inmates much
much larger secondly German prisoners
wear their own clothes they dress just
like you do they cook their own meals
and they have tremendous freedom of
movement within the prison by contrast
American prisoners right we all know
they wear identical uniforms they’re
confined in their cells for most of the
day and they eat meals in these large
cafeterias German prisoners have their
own cell telephone in it
and their own toilet as well and let’s
look a little bit at high during prison
this is the most recently built prison
in Germany it was built in 2013 so you
see from the outside right barbed wire
looks like a prison this is a an
entryway into it this is just a place
where everybody can walk through the
prison to get from one place to another
you see there’s a lot of natural light
there’s kind of a sense of design and
style and the photos I’m showing you are
exactly what the prison looked like when
we saw it last summer so if the photos
if you think that oh gosh it looks
immaculate it looks cleaner than than
this High School that’s this is how it
looks that exactly how we saw it again a
lot of a lot of light a lot of natural
light a lot of glass that comes in this
is you’ll see this is looking into the
the dormitories where individuals live
and right there’s kind of a balcony on
each floor a couple balconies for
inmates to go and get a little bit of
fresh air right the only difference is
yes there’s bars there so someone
doesn’t try to jump or try to escape but
it’s very pleasant there’s a lot of
grass and it’s a it’s a feeling that’s
more akin to being frankly on a junior
college campus than it is to being in a
prison so I’m going to take you this is
a hallway and the doors on either side
are where the cells are so we’re going
to take you into a cell and in just a
moment here so this is what a typical
cell looks like it’s not very large
about a hundred square feet I mean they
told us that and you know this thing
called the metric system which Americans
don’t understand but it’s about a
hundred square feet and you’ll see
there’s a little they’ll be emit there
would be a mattress over on the side
there a small mattress there’s a desk
there’s a telephone there’s a window for
natural light and there’s also an area
there’s a little partition where there’s
a toilet and a sink now President Obama
visited a federal state prison last
summer he went to
El Reno federal state prison in Oklahoma
and he saw prison cells there that were
about this size the difference being in
those cells two or three inmates would
live whereas in Germany there’s only one
there’s a lot less violence in German
prisons than in American prisons and
part of that is because individuals are
living in their own cell now for some of
you that are going to college next year
the size of this cell is very much the
same size as the dormitory that I lived
in when I went to UCLA maybe the the
room I had the dorm room I had was a
little bit larger but there were two of
us in it but there’s a big difference
between kind of two college students
maybe one who’s a little bit to clean
and one who’s too messy and having a
rapist and a murderer or sharing a cell
this size right think about that so now
this is there’s little cafeteria areas
on each of the floors and there’s the
little kitchen here and we asked the
German prison officials in that kitchen
are there are there knives are there
pots and pans you know are there
dangerous and deadly weapons from the
American perspective and the German
correctional officer said well of course
I mean that’s what you would cook with
so much different view about what
inmates should have the German view is
trying to have people live in prison the
way they’re going to live when they’re
outside of prison they’re going to need
to cook their own meals and know how to
do that so let’s have them do that here
and this is just another view of that
now very interesting things about German
prisons every year if an inmate in
prison is doing mental health counseling
going to the classes they’re supposed to
go to doing vocational training doing
all the things they’re supposed to do in
prison they’re allowed to leave the
prison for a few hours or even overnight
regardless of the crime they have
committed and every year there are
hundreds of thousands
of prison visits prison leaves what we
might call furloughs and out of those
hundreds of thousands of leaves we asked
well how many times has an inmate not
come back how many times do they not a
committee do they commit a crime when
they’re out and the answer out of all of
those leaves each year 0.3% of inmates
either don’t come back or commit a crime
while they’re out that’s three in a
thousand we don’t have anything like
that in the United States German prisons
there are four kinds they don’t call
them minimum medium maximum security
they think that calling a facility
maximum security will lead to violence
between the inmates and between the
inmates and the staff like everybody’s
got to be tough because they’re going to
maximum security so that they have
facilities were inmates or serving
sentences of five years or longer
facilities where they’re serving
sentences of five years or fewer
juvenile facilities so if you commit a
crime when you’re eighteen years or
younger you would go to a juvenile
facility and you would do pretty much
your whole sentence there so most of the
people in the juvenile facilities are
actually in their early to mid-20s but
the Germans want to try to segregate
younger offenders away from older more
hardened criminals so as not to have
these younger offenders become more
hardened criminals and number four they
have something called open prisons an
open prison is where you go when you
have six months or less remaining on
your sentence and at that facility
you’re encouraged to leave during the
day and look for a job and look for
housing and you just have to come back
there at night the people that work in
German prisons are much different than
the people that work in American prisons
very difficult to get a job as a German
correctional officer fewer than 10
percent of the applicants are accepted
it’s like getting into UCLA or Berkeley
or something like that to get a job like
this their training they have two years
of training most of their trained
is in social work counseling
rehabilitation some of it is in physical
control kinds of techniques the
facilities as I’ve shown you this high
during prison the German prisons they’re
very nice places to work they’re clean
the staff eats the same food as the
inmates and the atmosphere in the
prisons is actually quite relaxed it’s
not tense and and angry now the obvious
question is why article 1 of the German
constitution human dignity shall be
inviolable to respect and protect it
shall be the duty of all state authority
that’s the very the number one most
important thing in the German
constitution and that’s been cited by
the German Supreme Court to give inmates
one person per cell no solitary
confinement no death penalty and
everyone’s eligible for parole there now
of course this German Constitution
didn’t come out of nowhere I wanted to
show you the picture of chaka Singur he
was the convicted murderer from Detroit
who came on this trip with us he’s been
released he’s doing very well
he spent seven and a half years in
solitary confinement in a Michigan State
prison the German officials think that
this is cruel and almost torture and
were surprised that he’s not completely
insane now I said to you that I showed
you the German constitution that
Constitution in Germany was written in
1949 while Germany was occupied by the
United States Britain in France after
World War two that was written in the
shadow of the Holocaust and what the
German government had done and so it’s
not a surprise that the number one thing
was respect human dignity now finished
my week-long trip there got in the
mercedes-benz and started to drive to
Bergen Belsen the car started to speak
to me in German and give me directions I
don’t speak German and I wasn’t real
calm
of all being told what to do in German
particularly given the fact that I was
going to Bergen Belsen I arrived at
Bergen Belsen about three hours later my
father and grandmother were in Bergen
Belsen from January 1945 until April 15
1945 this was their third concentration
camp they’ve been in two other slave
labor camps in Poland by the time I got
to Bergen Belsen in 1945 there were
60,000 people and 10,000 corpses that’s
dead people in an area less than 0.2
square miles less than half the size of
your campus here so there wasn’t a need
for people to shoot to kill people
disease like typhus and typhoid killed
thousands of people even after the camp
was liberated in April of 1945 by the
British another 10,000 people died the
next month in March of 1945 at the same
time my my family my dad my grandmother
were there and Frank and her sister
Margot you may have heard of her died in
March of 1945 so I got to the camp these
are some photos of what the camp looked
like it was burned to the ground by the
British to get rid of all the disease
that was there and so sort of a memorial
that’s been set up on the site I met
with dr. bernd Horseman he’s the chief
archivist at Bergen Belsen and I had
correspond with him before I came he’s
about my age he’s not Jewish
he grew up near this camp and I sent him
the information about my family I spent
about half the day with him and half the
day walking around and he was actually
able to show me the records from the
that the British Army kept in the Jewish
Committee kept of the people that had
survived the name of the Jewish
Committees records is called Sherita
Plata which is often translated as
Holocaust survivors or something like
that but the Hebrew is much more
poignant
it means counted remnant and in the
records I saw the original names of my
my dad and my grandmother
my remanence I walked around the camp
there’s mounds like this all over the
camp where there’s tens of thousands of
people that are buried underneath there
I didn’t go to Germany to forgive or
forget and I didn’t either but I went to
learn how did a country that had done
such horrible things recreate itself so
quickly into one of the most enlightened
when it comes to crime and punishment if
Dostoevsky was correct when he said the
degree of civilization in a society can
be judged by entering its prisons then
how civilized are we what I learned from
visiting gleaming prisons talking to
correctional officers and convicted
criminals and in walking through a quiet
field of mass graves is that the world
might be broken but it can be repaired
because we’re all created with human dignity thank