YouSaid · the spoken record

Mark Holden

lines on the record: 61
first: 2015-11-09
most recent: 2015-11-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Stuff at a corporate. So, what happened was we started twenty years ago. I started with a company. And I started out doing labor and employment litigation. And one of the first cases I had involved some issues at a refinery in Texas and some employment issues with some employee, well, obviously with employees. And it kind of mushroomed that case, that situation kind of got drawn up in a bigger issue around regulatory compliance. And there ended up four of our employees were indicted. They were indicted for alleged violations of the Clean Air Act and also for violations of false statements, conspiracy, all these other things. So for employees who are all nonviolent, alleged first-time offenders who were facing anywhere from five to 40 years in prison. And it was an issue of noncompliance that they had discovered, they had corrected, they had disciplined the people who created it, reported it to the state, it was all documented by the state, and then it was a perfect storm.”
2015-11-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 10 - Mark Holden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, really, it's what Charles and David, and Charles in particular, it's really, we look at the moral, the constitutional, and the fiscal aspects of it. That's how we look at it from Charles' perspective primarily. It's helping people improve their lives and removing barriers and obstacles to opportunity, particularly for the least advantage.”
2015-11-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 10 - Mark Holden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“eighty billion dollars a year on incarcerating people who probably don't need to be in prison and don't need to be there that long, that's three to four times more per capita than we spend on education. Then you look at the human cost, which we probably incalculable, but just look at the numbers. One in 28 children in this country have a parent in prison. If it's African American, it's one in nine. A lot of those kids, they're under 10 years old, at least half of them when their parents went away. And is it surprising they have their own issues? So for me, there's the race issue you mentioned, which is undeniable. I'm not going to defend that, but it's really for me at the end of the day what I saw, it's about poverty and poor people in a system that I don't think it's intentional, but it's brutal if you don't have resources.”
2015-11-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 10 - Mark Holden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Created that we've created in the name of being tougher on crime and it's really not working and we're seeing a reaction to that now. So for me, like I said from an early age, I never bought into the Willie Horton stuff. I mean, the prison I worked at, there were some bad dudes, but most of them was more just sad poor people who couldn't get out of it and got hooked on drugs. I'm not saying they made mistakes, but if they had, you know, again, if they had been born to a different person in a different neighborhood,”
2015-11-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 10 - Mark Holden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The key was, for me again, my parents would not let me stray, and I tried and did kick my butt. If you don't have that support, you get caught up in the system, you get run over. And the problem, I think, is still today that we're treating people who maybe have a drug problem or need a job, or maybe just need some positive reinforcement in life, someone to care about them, not to be touchy-feely, but that is very important. We treat them like criminals. We don't differentiate, and we put them in prison. We've been doing it now for 30-something years, and it's not working. That's what I think the nub of a lot of the problems are, particularly in the federal system. And I do think that it's the whole thing. We're treating people that we're mad at, like people were afraid of. And then you combine that with some of the changes that came after the 80s, ending all the Pell grants, ending all the education in prison. So all you're doing is warehousing people, and they become better criminals. I mean, that is the problem. And so it's a cycle that's been...”
2015-11-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 10 - Mark Holden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“White kids, you're all poor white kids. That's the thing. There was a couple of my friends who were black, but it was by and large poor white kids because that's what was made up of. And we were working class.”
2015-11-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 10 - Mark Holden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So for me, from an early age, I saw that. And it stuck with me. And it's a system that really, if you look at it, these were kids that probably, you know, you can't, we can legislate a lot of things.”
2015-11-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 10 - Mark Holden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, they all start out there. It's like they were poor, they got caught with drugs, some of whom were in juvenile, and then they graduated to adult. And it was all originally based on drugs. And then over time, it turned into more either petty and then more serious crime to feed their drug habits. And then some of them one guy actually is serving life for murder. He was a bad dude, but it taught me early on a lot of the things, or I saw firsthand again, it's a situation that if you don't have the ways and means and you don't have family support, you're going to get, you can get tripped up in it. And once you get tripped up in our system, it's very difficult to get out of, whether you're rich or poor. If you're rich, you're probably going to be okay. You'll be able to get access to the best lawyers and that type of thing and the best handling of your case. You'll probably get a break. But if you're poor and you make a mistake, it's a brutal system and you're probably going to get run over and it can ruin your life forever.”
2015-11-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 10 - Mark Holden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, what surprised me was there were a bunch of kids that I lost track of in middle school who were in prison. Same school, same neighborhood, same churches, same everything, and then they were in prison. And for me, it was similar to what the president said down at El Reno when he was there, there before the grace of God go I. And really the only difference that I can tell to this day, and I've thought about it a lot over the last several years, particularly this past year when we've been working on these issues so much, that if I didn't have strong parents and strong family structure, it probably could have been me or very easily could have been me. And so for me, that was what Brian Stevenson, who I'm sure you know from the Equal Justice Initiative calls proximity. And so I was proximate to it from a young age from the time I was 18, 19, 20 years old. And what it taught me was, is that this was at the beginning of the drug wars and people were getting hooked on drugs and getting into psychosocial.”
2015-11-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 10 - Mark Holden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, Worcester didn't have a lot of patronage, but I benefited from what little there was, I guess. So Mr. Degan, who's a great guy, lived across the street from us forever, where I grew up. And summer and winter, they had a need for excess guards for whatever reasons. And I was able to fill in for a couple of years when I was in college. And so that's how I started working there. And as I said, it was the most money I made. I think I made like six bucks an hour back then. And it was just very interesting. It stuck with me till this day.”
2015-11-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 10 - Mark Holden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you're from Worcester and you get out, I'm kidding. But I grew up in Worcester Mass. My mom still lives there And when I was in college, the best job I had before I went to law school, I was a correctional officer at the Worcester County House of Correction.”
2015-11-09 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 10 - Mark Holden · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source