1
00:00:08,375 --> 00:00:11,598
Three, seven, eight,

2
00:00:12,844 --> 00:00:15,164
two, four,

3
00:00:15,474 --> 00:00:18,544
zero, three, seven.

4
00:00:20,114 --> 00:00:21,544
Hodge.

5
00:00:21,544 --> 00:00:24,195
Three seven eight two four
zero three seven.

6
00:00:25,615 --> 00:00:30,139
I went to prison; that was my federal
inmate registration ID.

7
00:00:31,199 --> 00:00:35,817
The first thing that happens when you go
to prison is they take away your name,

8
00:00:36,377 --> 00:00:40,397
and from that moment forward,
you're that number.

9
00:00:40,817 --> 00:00:44,967
Hodge; three seven eight
two four zero three seven.

10
00:00:45,187 --> 00:00:50,516
It's the beginning of the dehumanizing
experience of mass incarceration.

11
00:00:51,432 --> 00:00:54,641
In 2001, I was a businesswoman.

12
00:00:55,577 --> 00:00:58,808
My organization and I became investigated.

13
00:00:59,118 --> 00:01:02,268
I went to trial believing
justice would prevail,

14
00:01:02,268 --> 00:01:07,115
and instead I was originally given
an 87 month federal prison sentence,

15
00:01:07,115 --> 00:01:12,445
as a first time, non-violent,
white collar offence.

16
00:01:13,029 --> 00:01:16,236
In addition to that,
I received three years probation.

17
00:01:17,539 --> 00:01:19,340
Now, like so many of you,

18
00:01:19,670 --> 00:01:25,265
I wasn't aware of mass incarceration
until it visited my doorstep.

19
00:01:27,383 --> 00:01:33,276
I had family members
who went to prison, distant relatives,

20
00:01:35,196 --> 00:01:39,301
and friends who had gone to prison.

21
00:01:39,715 --> 00:01:42,526
But prison was something
that happened to other people.

22
00:01:42,956 --> 00:01:46,732
While I was in prison, I wasn't Theresa.

23
00:01:47,945 --> 00:01:50,395
I wasn't Irma and Charlie's daughter,

24
00:01:51,245 --> 00:01:53,061
I wasn't Darcelle,

25
00:01:53,942 --> 00:01:57,732
Charlene, Tammy, or Latanya's sister.

26
00:01:58,602 --> 00:02:01,074
I wasn't even Lauren's mother.

27
00:02:01,074 --> 00:02:05,499
I was Hodge; three seven eight
two four zero three seven.

28
00:02:08,508 --> 00:02:11,819
In 2006, was when I was convicted,

29
00:02:12,493 --> 00:02:15,765
and I had six months to prepare
for going to prison.

30
00:02:16,705 --> 00:02:18,789
It's kind of funny
when I think about that,

31
00:02:18,789 --> 00:02:21,543
because how do you really
prepare to go to prison?

32
00:02:22,083 --> 00:02:25,337
I did it, and I still
don't know how I did it.

33
00:02:26,877 --> 00:02:30,624
My mother, my four sisters,
and my daughter and I,

34
00:02:33,024 --> 00:02:37,479
we got in two cars, we left Maryland,
and we headed to West Virginia.

35
00:02:38,279 --> 00:02:43,167
Alderson Federal Prison Camp;
the first federal prison for women.

36
00:02:43,167 --> 00:02:45,743
It was established in 1927.

37
00:02:45,743 --> 00:02:50,091
The reality is, everything about a prison
was designed for a man.

38
00:02:50,861 --> 00:02:55,915
While I was in the parking lot,
I had three big concerns.

39
00:02:56,825 --> 00:03:02,286
The first one, I was afraid I would never
see the women who took me to prison again.

40
00:03:03,106 --> 00:03:08,808
I was facing six years inside the prison,
and death was a possibility.

41
00:03:09,658 --> 00:03:11,951
So I was very fearful of that.

42
00:03:12,621 --> 00:03:17,169
The second thing was, I was concerned,
would I be relevant again?

43
00:03:17,589 --> 00:03:21,524
Would I find meaning in my life,
professionally or personally?

44
00:03:22,914 --> 00:03:25,905
The third fear was for my safety.


45
00:03:27,515 --> 00:03:28,795
I was afraid.

46
00:03:28,795 --> 00:03:31,571
Television had informed me
up to this point,

47
00:03:31,571 --> 00:03:33,306
and what I was afraid of

48
00:03:33,306 --> 00:03:37,146
was that I possibly would have to fight
my way through prison,

49
00:03:37,146 --> 00:03:39,663
or that I could be raped.

50
00:03:40,903 --> 00:03:44,614
Somewhere on television,
that stuck in my mind as a possibility.

51
00:03:45,144 --> 00:03:48,790
The reality is, "Orange
is the New Black" was not out yet,

52
00:03:49,220 --> 00:03:53,423
and I didn't have anything
else to inform me.

53
00:03:54,706 --> 00:03:58,549
When I arrived in prison,
what I discovered was something different.

54
00:03:58,889 --> 00:04:03,515
I found amazing women
who too were in prison.

55
00:04:06,186 --> 00:04:09,246
Prison is kind of a microcosm
of the rest of the United States.

56
00:04:09,246 --> 00:04:12,771
It's a combination of everybody,
with one exception:

57
00:04:12,771 --> 00:04:16,389
we have more black and brown men
who are incarcerated.

58
00:04:16,739 --> 00:04:21,254
There's 2.3 million people
in American prisons today.

59
00:04:22,759 --> 00:04:25,885
America has 5% of the world's population


60
00:04:25,885 --> 00:04:29,194
and 25% of the world's prisoners.

61
00:04:29,995 --> 00:04:36,248
The number of women imprisoned
from 1980 to 2011 has increased by 586%.

62
00:04:38,743 --> 00:04:42,915
Today, there are 200 000 women
who are in prison,

63
00:04:42,915 --> 00:04:47,286
and another one million who are under
some form of correctional supervision.

64
00:04:48,036 --> 00:04:52,012
There are three million children
who have a mother,

65
00:04:52,582 --> 00:04:55,581
or maybe a mother
and father, who's in prison.

66
00:04:55,581 --> 00:05:01,195
The reality is, we are incarcerating
too many people for too long.

67
00:05:01,425 --> 00:05:05,470
Two years into my prison sentence,
I received a sentence reduction,

68
00:05:06,093 --> 00:05:08,545
and my prison sentence 
as reduced to 70 months.

69
00:05:08,545 --> 00:05:10,631
That's five years and ten months.

70
00:05:10,941 --> 00:05:14,991
The good news for me at the time
was I had already served over two years,

71
00:05:14,991 --> 00:05:18,778
and whereas when I first walked in,
I wasn't sure if I could do the time,

72
00:05:19,268 --> 00:05:22,871
at this moment, I actually knew
I could go the distance.

73
00:05:22,871 --> 00:05:24,299
And so I was really excited,

74
00:05:24,299 --> 00:05:27,617
because I had about two and a half years
to go when this happened.

75
00:05:29,477 --> 00:05:33,727
When it was time to leave prison,
I was really excited.

76
00:05:34,507 --> 00:05:38,468
But, to be honest, I was afraid again.

77
00:05:39,005 --> 00:05:40,847
This time I wasn't afraid


78
00:05:42,457 --> 00:05:45,587
when it comes
to the women who I met.

79
00:05:45,587 --> 00:05:50,236
I was afraid when I was leaving
what would happen to many of them.

80
00:05:50,676 --> 00:05:54,490
A lot of them didn't have
the support system I had;

81
00:05:55,320 --> 00:06:01,105
I was concerned that they were going back
to under-resourced communities,

82
00:06:02,745 --> 00:06:04,975
not a support system like mine,

83
00:06:05,525 --> 00:06:06,577
and I was concerned

84
00:06:06,577 --> 00:06:11,463
that many wouldn't be able to reconnect
back to society in a meaningful way.

85
00:06:12,023 --> 00:06:15,178
I never met a woman who was lying
on her bunk saying,

86
00:06:15,178 --> 00:06:17,770
"I can't wait to go back to prison."

87
00:06:18,180 --> 00:06:20,812
It's absolutely no way of life.

88
00:06:20,812 --> 00:06:26,000
And yet, 70% of people who go to prison,
within three years return.

89
00:06:26,000 --> 00:06:28,806
That's not just an indictment
of our government,

90
00:06:28,806 --> 00:06:30,896
it's an indictment of all of us.

91
00:06:30,896 --> 00:06:35,325
Because at the end of the day,
we've made coming home entirely too hard.

92
00:06:36,725 --> 00:06:39,303
I'm going to tell you a story.

93
00:06:39,823 --> 00:06:43,694
It's actually one of the worst things
that happened to me since I came home,

94
00:06:43,694 --> 00:06:47,241
but it is the one thing
that motivates me the most.

95
00:06:49,381 --> 00:06:52,826
As I was preparing to start
this business with my daughter,

96
00:06:54,616 --> 00:06:59,645
I needed to get a job
to just pay a few of the bills.

97
00:07:00,021 --> 00:07:03,479
I had managed to keep
my overhead extremely low,

98
00:07:03,479 --> 00:07:06,576
because I was determined
I wouldn't allow prison to ruin my life.

99
00:07:06,576 --> 00:07:09,289
I was going to be an entrepreneur again.

100
00:07:10,439 --> 00:07:12,648
A girlfriend of mine
called me, and she said,

101
00:07:12,648 --> 00:07:17,271
"I think I've found a job that you can do
while trying to start this business."

102
00:07:17,691 --> 00:07:19,631
I said "Okay", and she sent me a link,

103
00:07:19,631 --> 00:07:24,988
I took a look at it, and I agreed;
it looked like a job I actually could do.

104
00:07:25,828 --> 00:07:30,836
I would be working from my home,
using my computer, and my internet,

105
00:07:30,836 --> 00:07:34,719
to do some back office work
for an organization.

106
00:07:34,719 --> 00:07:38,006
It paid probably slightly
above minimum wage.

107
00:07:38,456 --> 00:07:41,683
So I went online
and I applied for the job.

108
00:07:45,553 --> 00:07:50,414
I put in my name, my address,
my phone number,

109
00:07:50,414 --> 00:07:52,464
and very basic information.

110
00:07:54,314 --> 00:07:57,265
Then, the question appeared;

111
00:07:58,579 --> 00:08:05,049
the dreaded question that those of us
with an arrest or conviction fear.

112
00:08:06,365 --> 00:08:09,273
"Have you ever been convicted of a crime?"

113
00:08:11,203 --> 00:08:16,151
I took a deep breath,
and I checked "Yes", and I hit "enter".

114
00:08:17,561 --> 00:08:19,433
The screen went black.

115
00:08:24,273 --> 00:08:25,829
Then a message appeared.

116
00:08:25,829 --> 00:08:27,154
It said,

117
00:08:28,544 --> 00:08:33,054
"Something you answered
disqualified you for this job."

118
00:08:33,974 --> 00:08:36,123
Well, I knew it wasn't my name.


119
00:08:36,123 --> 00:08:37,123
(Laughter)

120
00:08:37,123 --> 00:08:39,222
I knew it wasn't my address,

121
00:08:40,093 --> 00:08:42,163
so it was pretty obvious.

122
00:08:44,293 --> 00:08:47,746
There's so much going on
in the news around "Ban the Box";

123
00:08:47,746 --> 00:08:50,899
that is a real life example
of ban the box.

124
00:08:51,349 --> 00:08:54,922
It's the reason why the box needs to go.

125
00:08:55,532 --> 00:08:59,035
It's not even the right conversation
we should be having.

126
00:08:59,638 --> 00:09:01,966
We shouldn't be allowing employers

127
00:09:01,966 --> 00:09:05,606
to discriminate
against millions of Americans,

128
00:09:05,606 --> 00:09:08,085
keeping them locked into sentences


129
00:09:08,926 --> 00:09:13,605
and mistakes they [made] five, ten,
fifteen, thirty years ago.

130
00:09:14,745 --> 00:09:18,759
We can't even have the right conversations
around the right to work

131
00:09:18,759 --> 00:09:21,341
until we ban the box.

132
00:09:21,791 --> 00:09:26,162
So as you hear all of this going on,
pay attention to it.

133
00:09:27,608 --> 00:09:30,160
Because we need people
who are coming home from prison

134
00:09:30,160 --> 00:09:32,081
to have their human capital restored,

135
00:09:32,081 --> 00:09:35,701
so that they can be good mothers
and fathers, good community members.

136
00:09:35,701 --> 00:09:37,970
and take care of their families.

137
00:09:40,900 --> 00:09:42,573
So what can we all do?

138
00:09:42,573 --> 00:09:44,666
We all have a role to play.

139
00:09:44,666 --> 00:09:46,308
Three things.

140
00:09:46,308 --> 00:09:47,738
First:

141
00:09:49,968 --> 00:09:51,830
language matters.

142
00:09:54,628 --> 00:10:00,357
Stop using the word "ex-offender",
"ex-felon", "convict".

143
00:10:00,827 --> 00:10:03,242
When you are referring to someone,

144
00:10:04,302 --> 00:10:08,008
if you're not sure what
to say, say their name.

145
00:10:09,768 --> 00:10:14,305
Second thing: on Wednesdays,
take five minutes,

146
00:10:15,365 --> 00:10:19,634
read an article, learn about this topic,
share it on social media,

147
00:10:20,584 --> 00:10:22,574
talk to someone about it.

148
00:10:23,174 --> 00:10:24,439
And the third thing:


149
00:10:25,339 --> 00:10:28,579
if you're an employer, employ someone;

150
00:10:28,579 --> 00:10:30,261
give them a second chance.

151
00:10:30,891 --> 00:10:34,086
If you're a legislator,
humanize this topic.

152
00:10:34,086 --> 00:10:37,465
Bring people in, talk to them,
get to know them.

153
00:10:38,375 --> 00:10:41,270
I can assure you
that if you get to know people,

154
00:10:41,270 --> 00:10:45,161
you won't feel like you need
to discriminate against them.

155
00:10:46,931 --> 00:10:52,595
Last: for me, I stand firmly in my shoes,

156
00:10:53,114 --> 00:10:56,232
I embrace the 14 years


157
00:10:56,232 --> 00:10:59,142
that I was in conflict
with the criminal justice system.

158
00:11:02,132 --> 00:11:05,789
I have incorporated
that experience into who I am,

159
00:11:05,969 --> 00:11:08,352
and today it's neatly tucked into me.

160
00:11:08,902 --> 00:11:10,803
It's a part of my past.

161
00:11:14,309 --> 00:11:18,614
I am not three, seven, eight,

162
00:11:21,027 --> 00:11:24,502
two, four, zero,

163
00:11:25,487 --> 00:11:27,439
three, seven.

164
00:11:30,817 --> 00:11:33,079
I am Theresa Hodge.

165
00:11:34,508 --> 00:11:35,986
Thank you.

166
00:11:35,986 --> 00:11:38,381
(Applause)