Probation and Parole in America

[Music] Truth is, it's something that many of us have experienced at one time or another. You get pulled over by a police officer during a routine traffic stop, "I need your license or registration." And then you simply deal with the repercussions from there. But what if that speeding ticket or illegal U-turn carried with it a multi-year sentence in prison? Well, for thousands of people on probation and parole in America, that is the reality of their daily lives. Any misstep, no matter how minor, can land them back behind bars, often for significant amounts of time. "Teya's Approbation set me back many, many, many times on my way to success. One person who lives with this reality on a daily basis is rap artist and criminal justice activist Meeke Mill." A highly controversial gun arrest at the age of 18 placed him inside a legal maze that he's still trying to navigate today at the age of 32. The current system has impacted both his personal life as well as his professional career, but it's also prompted him to talk publicly about the need for reform, and today he's speaking with us. I'm David A. Bear and you're listening to Deep Dive with Laura Arnold, an issues-based podcast produced by the Arnold Ventures Philanthropy. In this episode, "Pardons and Paroles in America" just where can we find that difficult balance between a legitimate need for accountability and simply setting people up for inevitable failure? So, with that as the backdrop, here's Laura Arnold and her conversation with rapper and activist Meeke Mill. "It's a pleasure to be here today with Meeke Mill, whose single handedly is raising the cool factor of Deep Dive by at least 10,000 percent. So, we are so excited that you are here. Thank you, thank you so much for joining us today. Now, we all know who you are. You are one of the most successful rap artists of today. You're ever present in Philadelphia. You're supportive of your community. You're often seen at 76ers games. You're seeing, you have a massive social media following. But most recently, you're actually known for something else, which is for being the new face of a movement to bring awareness to injustices in our criminal justice system. And that's actually what we're here to talk about today. So, we'll get to your work in criminal justice in a moment. But first, I'd like to ask you a few questions about your background. You grew up in Philadelphia. So, tell us about your story. I grew up in Philadelphia, North Philadelphia, in the beginning of my life. And I would say South Philadelphia, probably from 14 years old or now. And when I say Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Philadelphia is a nice place. We got a lot of landmarks and things and a lot of history behind it in the downtown areas. And probably 10, 15 minutes away from downtown, Northeast, South and West, I like the ghettos of Philadelphia, some of the lowest parts of America. And I grew up in the parts. Basically, grew up in an environment where you see a lot of death, a lot of violence, a lot of people ending out of prison. And your father was unfortunately killed when you were around five years old? Yeah, my father was killed when I was five years old, which is not unusual in the ghetto. A lot of us lose our fathers to gun violence into the system. My mother was a single parent mother working eight hours a day. So, I always explain it in an easier way. I'm like, yeah, your mom had worked eight hours a day. You're dead in a graveyard. So, who's basically raising you basically being raised by the streets and your mother ain't doing anything wrong by going to work eight hours a day. I would probably say she making 30, 40,000 dollars a year. So, not really like nanny money to have somebody back to watch her fully watch her at work. So, basically growing up in the streets and growing up around a ruthless people I'm talking about, the people in the corner, some of the people that selling drugs, you know, you grow up really kind of like analyzing these people and what was your first encounter with the criminal justice system? I went back to school. I got suspended from school and I didn't want to tell my mom I was suspended. So, you know, I just woke up the next day and went back to school. When I went back to the school, I got arrested for trespassing. I think that was my very first time being arrested and how old were you? Probably, I don't remember probably like 10, 11, 12 years old. There's another way that your story actually is unfortunately not unique. You were convicted of a crime with dubious evidence and where there were very serious process failures. Tell us about that. There was just a lot of trauma going on in my area. So, it was like almost mandatory to carry a gun even till this day. Like, I got arrested for the gun. Like, I knew what the consequences of being arrested for a gun your first time offense. What type of time it carried? So I was ready for that because everybody in my neighborhood was losing their lives and even my father lost his life, my cousins, uncles, all types of people. So, you know, that was like a fair mind. So, when you come from these type of places, the smart decision to do is carry a gun, anybody in this room, if you was in these environments, you would just make the smart decision if that was your obstacle and that's what you were facing it. I actually was carrying a gun and I had came out of the house. The house I was coming out was my cousin's house and I guess the police were doing a read on that house and when I'm coming out of the house, they're coming around the corner. So, when they coming around the corner, they jump out maybe four cops, all they have vests on and say police is some cops running up the block. They don't really have. They just plain clothes. And basically, they cornered me and they cornered me and I put the gun on the ground and put my hands in the air. And you were around 18, is that right? Yeah, I was 18 years old. Maybe 18 on 19 maybe. I think 18. One thing that I found very, very moving about one of your interviews is an interview you did in CNN, not too long ago, where someone asked you, well, you did bad stuff. You were you actually had, you were having a gun. You were holding a gun. You were committing a crime and your response, I thought, was very moving. Essentially, it makes the argument, you didn't play by the rules. If you hadn't played by the rules, you wouldn't have had issues with the system. The first step I would say, I grew up in America in a ruthless neighborhood where we're not protected by police. We're not. We grew up with people selling drugs on our neighborhood and on our front steps. We grew up in ruthless environments. We grew up around murder. You see murder. Seven days a week, I think if you grew up in my neighborhood, you see seven people die a week. I think you will probably carry the gun yourself. So you were carrying a gun. The police comes into this house, arrest you, tell me what happened in court. Yeah. Well, two years later, I probably served up to probably like 16 months and prison until I had to go to trial because I spent time in jail because I didn't have bell money. When I got to police station, my bell was probably about 360,000. I was charged reporting a fire arm at two police officers. Like I'm stupid enough as a black man, a point of gun at a fire at a police officer. That's suicide. So I was charged with selling cocaine to two undercover cops. And I was found only like I smoked marijuana at the time. I was found with like two bags of weed in my pocket, like seven dollars. I didn't really have any money at all. Like I wasn't like a cocaine selling. Like I got a phone with $5,000 on me. And I had probably seven, $10 in my pocket, two bags of marijuana. You were says bail at three hundred and thousand dollars, which you couldn't pay. So you stayed in jail. Yeah. So I ended up getting out after you spent time more time in jail. You get your bell lower. So at the bunch of months, I ended up getting out. So a few things I found noteworthy about your case. So first, you waved your right to jury trial because of cost because you knew that it was going to be expensive. No, I waved my right to jury trial because you know, it's two ways. If you go to jury trial, you get the maximum penalty. So this is where like the biggest kick is in the criminal justice system. You have people where you might have a better shot if you were judged by 12 people. But if you were judged by 12 people, you face getting the maximum penalty of all crimes. But if you go in front of a judge, you could get you could get the minimum whatever the judge wants to give you. So you know, nine times out of 10 people don't really have to the lawyer, the financial power to have the goal for a jury. And you know, you might get 20 years and you're going to front of a judge. You get one or two years. Right. And there's a lot to question about your case through a lot of facts, witnesses that that are potentially unreliable. The police officer that accused you of pointing the gun was himself investigated for corruption for being a dirty cop. So there's lots of complexity to your case and lots of reason to believe that you were promptly convicted. So you got sentenced to two years in prison and eight years of probation. Yeah. When they pulled the sheets, when they pulled the records, these guys had a lot of things that they said they lied about people and there was actually a secret list in Philadelphia behind the old district attorney administration where it was about 23 or 16 cops that weren't allowed to testify for the Duffy anymore. And the cop that locked me up actually happened to be on that list. So you were fortunate and that you were able to dig very deeply and find these arguments that were compelling and you only served five months. But you still had to serve the very long probation sentence. So let's just clarify for those of us who aren't super clear on the distinction between probation and parole and when we talk about community supervision. So I'm just going to spend a little bit of time clarifying what the term are. When we talk about community supervision, we're often talking about both probation and parole. So probation is community supervision that the court sets instead of sending you to jail or prison. And parole is a conditional release from prison, so you're already in prison, but you are released to community supervision after you've served the jail term. But with both of those, a parole officer or probation officer can send you to jail if you violate the terms of probation. Yeah. And the terms we often talk in the reform community, we often talk about the fact that there's lots of technical violations. So you could fail a drug test. You could police contact. That's the like most like as a black man, my hunger still hanged out in my old neighborhood in Philadelphia. People like me, we come in contact with police. If you look like this, if you dress like this in these areas, they're bad environments. Police contact is enough to get through a technical violation and technical violations and Pennsylvania. If I had eight years of probation, I could get eight years giving back to me in prison time just because I came in contact with a police officer. Yeah. Well, your home state is actually an outlier in certain senses. But in Pennsylvania, there is no limit on the length of prison time for a technical violation, meaning that you can fail you fail a drug test. You could go to prison for years. Yeah. So there's virtually no limit on the overall length of probation. You could be on probation for 20 years. My sentence started off as 10 years of probation ended up turning into 16 years of probation. So as of now, I get our probation on 2000 and 23. I think it is. You're released from prison and had to, we're still on probation. Tell us about the incident where you violated probation and they sent you back to prison. It actually was two incidents where one time I was in the airport and this is breaking it down as real as possible. When you're in the airport, they have thousands of cameras in the airport. I'm walking through the airport. I just woke up a guy that works at the airport, walked up to me and asked me for a picture. But in his dog just woke up, I'm not in shape to take a picture right now. So I'm like, I can't take a picture right now. The guy followed us all the way out. Actually, I had police excite me. So the guy just cussing me out, following me out as the police excite me to my car. I go to my car, go to my show after party. By the time show after party, go to the hotel, pack up. It's about 6, 7 o'clock in the morning again. I never even went to sleep. Like I'm trying to get back on the plane, go to sleep. When I get back to the airport, this guy, he works at the airport. So he know when my flight is leaving back. God, he's back at the front door. My guys walking and ticked their bags and the check it in. The guy pushes my guys. He actually swings on my guy first. And the guy he swings on is like my little brother. He's a kid from Baltimore. And these things I do out of kindness to my heart. Like he's a kid from Baltimore. He was shot in his head. His brother was killed. We both ride bikes. I actually took him out of that back community and was having them on a road with me. So he's like my little brother. A kid weighed two, 300 pounds, punches on him. He like 130 pounds, you know. I get out and defend my family member, you know. Get back in the car. The cops lock us up. They take me to the back. Once they see the footage, they gave me a citation. They told the thing. I think they charged the kid. Give me a citation. Nothing I never had to go to court for probably six months later. I was at uptown New York, Dutman area, attending the charity basketball game. After the charity basketball game, I went home. The next day came back. I shot a music video in that area where it was bikes around. You know, if you follow the history of me, I've been riding bikes my whole life from the age of 16 to 32 now. I'm a public figure. I put it on pictures of videos. I put it on my Instagram and I was willing. I went home and I actually came back to that same area the next day. They locked me up. I'm like, what am I getting locked up for? So, you know, months later, the case was thrown out. They gave me a traffic violation, but still I had to go back in front of the probation judge who sentenced me to probation. And she gave me a two to four years sentence. So the citation and the airport of self-defense was thrown away. The popping of Willie, which they actually charged me with everyone felony at first. It was thrown away without me even attending the court at preliminary throwing away and still had to go back to court and Philadelphia and was sentenced to two to four years. And that's basically for police contact because I came in contact with the police. Never found guilty of any crime and never committed any crime or was accused of any criminal activity. So you went back to prison? Yeah. And that is when I never been. This was like a new stage right here where you actually with the people who I found convicted of rape, murdered, like I'm living with these people seven days a week. And that is when the free meek movement started. Yeah. Tell us about that because that was an overwhelming public outcry and an overwhelming number of people who rallied in support of you. I think that was just the public being fed up. They sent me grow from 18 years old up to 32 years old. It's kind of like a big difference. I do a lot of for my community. I told you I grew up in a ruthless environment from so the earlier ages of my life, I still was like shaking the ways that I had grown up the way I grew. But I wasn't committing crime. Like I just was shaking like ignorant ways that I had coming from these environments. And people see me growing. They sent me do a lot for my community at this time. I'm 31 years old when they're doing this. So you know, I think everyone in the industry people from the city of Philadelphia, these people have been in contact with me and I've been in these neighborhoods and been in these schools. Not just doing like a turkey drive on Thanksgiving. Actually, not really passing out, making sure all the kids in my neighborhood have coats to go to school when it's cold out, making sure all the shelters are being able to enjoy holidays myself. Like and these things that wouldn't get publicized the way they should because I'm doing them myself. And I think my city got fed up and at the time, I was in like solitary confinement. And I had like one CEO was telling me like, yo, you have like a lot of people out here marching for you and like standing up for you. And I was like, I have any contact with the world. And I just was, I couldn't really get excited because I couldn't see it. But when I got out and got sent to a state pen in the century, I was seeing like National News like CNN, all of all the big big big news platforms at talking about it. And a lot of and a lot of artists beyond say Jay Z some multi people. Yeah. People rallyed around you because your experience spoke to them. Yeah. And these people actually knew my character. Nothing they believe that like this. And this is the big kicker. You have a lot of kids don't time and penitentiaries like I said with murderers and rapists like because of technical violation, you are raising these kids and prisons around killers like me when I went up 31 years old. So I know how to I know who to involve myself with and who to take information with and who to let it go with. You are raising these kids from these rooflands environments taking them putting them on probation and then putting them inside these prisons. And my cell, he might be a a 45 year old life for a guy who killed six people. He may be rehabilitated, but his mind he's not in a in a in a in a condition to raise a 18 year old kid that he live in with. And you know, when they do these things, these situation, these these things will continue on and on and these kids will come out with worse admire friends and they actually went in with and just for technical violations. And it's not really committing crime. So you know, you think I didn't commit crime and got put in a state penitentiary. I'm 32 years old. I got put on probation when I was 18 years old. So everything in between I never have committed crime. But at 32 years old, I got took off from pantaxes, uh, Dawn community service, actually taking care of my community, uh, making money, having a job and pulling people, uh, still rising above when the eyes were against me coming from these situations I came from and took from this time being placed back in the penitentiary, which is actually worse than being broke is below zero because you got your freedom took away from you. So if you think someone like me who had that much going on, imagine when they do that to kids, or, uh, young men and women who don't have anything going on, it's like the eyes against you at times, times 100, you know, when you get took from maybe you got out of prison and you did do something wrong. Maybe I put on probation and you got a job and you've been working at this job for say nine years. And one day you are stressed out, you smoke marijuana, uh, you might got PTSD, seeing a lot of murders in your neighborhood. You can't sleep at night, you smoke marijuana. Nine years you get locked up for six months and six months is called lenient, uh, that's lenient to them. Right in the interim, you lose your job, you lose your kids, you lose your life, you lose everything your job, you lose your kids to the government, to the state, everything in six months. Where do you go from there? Right now. And make you and your friend Michael Rubin and some others created a movement, an organization called reform. Yeah. Tell me about that and tell us about what you hope to accomplish. The support I had was like from like Michael Rubin, Jay Z, Beyonce, Robert Crav, maybe, uh, Clarissa, Mike Novakratz, Robert Smith, we just wanted to combine all of them and do something like ventures and come up with a way to use our influence, money, anything our resources to make the biggest change we could possibly make in the criminal justice system, probably starting with parole and probation because a lot of people is probably, how many people in America is 400,000 people? At least 350,000 people are sent to jail or prison every year for a violation of a supervision condition. And me, even speaking on Colin Kaepernick, I always thought police brutality was bad. I even was brutalized by a police myself, but I always deep in my mind used to think about how many people families get ruined, how many lives get ruined on paper, do the court papers where they just reprimand you back to prison because of a violation. And sometimes they reprimand you and send you back to prison for something that you can't control, like drug addiction. You have had experiences with drug addiction and you got violated because of your addiction to percussette. Yeah, like you talk about that. Yes, I was sent to the dentist probably in 2013, 14 when I got two of my Wizntee Porton. I was prescribed percussettes and probably I had a show every night, probably three days after I got my T-port. So I used to take two or three of them every night before I went to sleep, so I wouldn't fill it when I perform. And you know, that kept going. And I did that for two weeks straight. And then one day I didn't do it. My body just felt like I felt bad. I felt sluggish all day and it felt like I needed to take these pills again and I took them pills again. And actually, I got addicted. You know, when I went to, well, I'm from in Philadelphia, if you get one dirty urine, like you're going to prison, it's nothing to stop that. It's 98, 90% of the time you get an opiate dirty urine. You're going to prison. So when you go see a probation officer with the smart thing B to tell your probation officer that I'm addicted to percussette, no, because I, my whole career is on the line. I have a family back home. I'm trying to go home tonight. My freedom is on the line. So I never told my probation officer and I had a dirty urine and time to go back to court. And fast forward, I was locked up, I think two times for that. I was put in prison two times for addiction. And they had programs. They actually have city of Philadelphia had programs where you can be sent to rehab. And if it's really bad, you can be sent to rehab where you stayed at night at, you know. And one of the reforms that your organization and many reform communities are trying to push forward is to not have somebody who is, who has an addiction, be sent to prison for that, but rather have that person deal with the underlying cause, deal with the treatment and put that person on a path to success. As opposed to locking them up in jail where they're not going to get treatment, you're not addressing the underlying issue and they're likely to destroy their lives. And they used my probation to a suburban area. I used to always tell my judge, I don't think it's safe for me to live in this area. I'm telling you, this is a city where 400 black men look like me die a year. They let me use more my probation to my government county, which is a suburban probation where they deal with a lot. It's more Caucasian than black, whereas a lot of kids that's addicted to opiates on these probation. And my probation officer, then I'm telling you about that, it's like a coach. She like, I had a dirty year and she asked me, do you have a problem? I said, yes, I have a problem because I believed in my heart. She wouldn't just send me straight to prison. She put me in a program right then and there. And I told her, I was like, I'm a celebrity, man. I wouldn't want to be in a program where I'm in a room with 20 people and have to pour out my business in front of 20 people who know me. And I don't know them. I wouldn't really participate as much as I should. And I'm saying, I was like, if I could pay my own money and you can approve it, you could pick where I could actually really get the treatment I need, I'm ready to go. And she let you do that. Yeah, she let me do that. And I never took a pergocet and my life has been two, probably two and a half years, maybe three years from that day. I think that was January 2017. I mean, do you think that you'll always be an activist, giving what you felt and what you've experienced? Yeah, I think this has been placed on my life. I'm actually not even a survivor. I'm on Bell. I wake up every day like a woman that works for Rock Nation. She texts me the day and she said, yeah, come through the building today. I need something to talk to you about. She was a part of helping me get out of prison. I had to text her back like this. Can you tell me what you're talking about? I'm thinking she talking about Supreme Court answer today or the court answer today. You got to go back to prison next week. You know, I wake up every day with that on my mind of I'm on Bell. I could tomorrow they can answer and say, you got to go back to prison or I could get grabbed by the police for anything, for busing or you turning on speed and then the car. So you served five months. There was this public outcry. You got out of prison, but you're out on bail because your case is still pending. So you still have the specter and the stark cloud of this case. It needs to be resolved and you're still on probation. I can wake up tomorrow and go back to a state penitentiary. So you know, that's still on my mind every then. And I was about to say, I survive. I live in this every day. So you know, I'm a fighter and I feel like I have a platform and I had a voice to really fight like a lot of people they might hear my music. You might hear me. Meal activist for reform or speaker for reform. And then you might hear my music. It's talking about it has this underlying with violence and things like that. These are the things that I actually came from. I'm not promoting violence. It's like actually being a social forecaster when you go to a, it's a page called No Guns on Instagram. If you go to a one day, you see it probably two, three people dying in my city every day. I'm the social forecaster talking about the obstacles and the ways out and what I had to do to make it out through these things. So, you know, it's two different sides to me and I always still wanted to be labeled as me. I'm a big male, a lot of whims. Just just my life and I'm speaking up for the people who don't have a voice. What do you say to critics who say that you need these draconian rules? Yeah. Because people need to know that actions have consequences. That's a really prevalent talking point, unfortunately, in a lot of circles. Yeah. The people who don't live what you live. What do the actions be actually make sense? What do you think? I think probably everyone in the world have seen before. So, you know, that's your mistake. You're on probation with God. The next time you've said, you got to do six months in hell and feel fired, you know what I'm saying? That's kind of rough. And me, I come from ruthless environments where people don't even get you a set of chances. People that look like you are killed you over the smallest things. I still have an open enough heart to know like people deserve chances in life to make it. That's just period. I have an eight year old son. He doesn't do everything right. My mother raised me from work, from being on welfare and not having anything. Me being raised by some fellers, some people that felled on the corner and me looking up to these guys and me coming in the house with these ways. My mom knew I needed chances and I got chances and I came back and changed everything about my family. So, you know, if you don't believe people in the world deserve chances, you might got a lot of waking up to do, you know. If you can make crime, you should go to jail and you should do the time that comes with that crime. I think any criminal that's dedicated to living in life for crime, you know, when you get hurt, doing this crime, it's time to go to jail. But you got people making honest mistakes going back to prison and actually doing good. You know what I'm saying? I'm not hair speaking for like low lives, people who don't work, people who don't take care of their families, people who don't do it as opposed to do to move forward in life. I'm speaking for the people who actually are trying to escape these situations and better themselves and I always been trying to do that. And if I did have, it was many times where I'm like, man, I'm turning back. I'm going to jail anyway. And that's where I come from. A lot of kids growing up, people tell you could be anything you want to be. At one point in my life, I ain't believe that. I'm going to go to jail or I'm going to die anyway. So there's no need to even try to be the best I can be. So, you know. Make your inspiration to so many of us and we are grateful that you spend time with us here on DeepDive and more importantly, we're grateful that you do the work that you do. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for being on DeepDive. Thank you for having me and I appreciate you for having me. Thank you. But oral ventures, our mission is to maximize opportunity and minimize injustice. And reaching this goal requires us to re-examine the fundamental fairness of our current probation and parole systems. What we heard today, Mek Mills case, is a glaring example of how this current system can and often does create and perpetuate a destructive cycle. We can all agree that poor decisions should carry consequences. And of course, being offered a second chance does come with certain levels of responsibility. But the punishment should also fit the crime. Induling out multi-year prison sentences for relatively minor infractions applies in the face of fundamental fairness. You've been listening to Deep Dive with Laura Arnold, produced by the Arnold Ventures Philanthropy. If you'd like to learn more about their organization, check out their website at ArnoldVentures.org. By maximizing opportunity and minimizing injustice, we make change for the greater good. Again, that website is ArnoldVentures.org. Thanks for listening, everybody, and we'll see you again next time on Deep Dive.