Full transcript
0:00The following program contains explicit language that may be offensive to some viewers. And when they get in there, there's a raw reality. There's a there's an emptiness. There has to be a sinking feeling when you see that jail cell and you see another human being look you in the eye and say, "Hey, man. I'm really here." And this could be you, but for
0:19the grace of God, I would think they're doing a a a real good job. And uh and they're missionaries in a sense. Well, I ain't shit. Yeah. One, two, one, two, nigga. Line for line, line for line, how we get down with the rhyme. Yo, it be a line for line, line for line. This is
0:40how we get down. Yeah. Line for line, line for line, this is how we get down. Yo, can you feel me? Storytelling, rap me, I ain't telling them niggas ran in the spot for selling. Word up, pushed up, man got mushed up. Seen them at a rap show. Acting like fat cap though, glasses gold, shining like a real big
0:59boy. This nigga had mega ice on chips. Ahoy cats around it. This political brown kid all out the wind. Yo, my man walked in pulling mids south. Sun had fan clients out order me out twice. Keon chill. Watch them niggas. Hey yo, that clicks on my state. They both way and far rock away with Blake Carrington. You
1:16know the kid with the most dope getters and terrors on fashion click. They rock low sweaters. That's my man. That's my man too. Call them up on the strength of the wool and watch your game through grab the cell. I got a heist to pull off. Well, at the end of the week, I'm buying you a Lexus, nigga. I ain't
1:31talking about Hancock. No time for weed. Plus, no time to get locked that night up in the staircase. Cousin had me lay st all out of my face. We going to get that crunchy jump all of his lung. Don't try to front. You was sweating this hill for anger. Guess who walked in it? His man from Faragate. Confront him with the
1:48ruger on his back. Walk in black. Where's your man? Where's the sky blue land at? Stop playing Woo in the back. Smacked him with the G. Runny said he being 15. He's not lying. Wait for the millennia green to pull up. He got the D car shit on two rings. Six carrots a beast plus the chain swing like anchors
2:04on ships flooded with all diamond chips. Back pockets, two clips, four fifths with rubber grips laying two bottles of brass. I was slaying meditating. Red dot be waiting for my payment. Heard the key in the lock. Cock the Glock. Turn the lights out. Dip on the couch. Key on his mouth. Infrared his head when he entered. But a soft very leather with
2:22direon's wife Kenya the bitch larger than life. Yo shorty be fucking mad Colombian nigga fuck her get on the floor meet the black legs loop strip fast the bitch out on clayorn drawers. Yo Rayo about to spray for chill ghost thought for a second turned around threw the nine in his meatloaf. Yo, where's the cash in the stash? That's mixed. I
2:40don't know. Shot his hand, he started screaming like a [Music] bitch. Juveniles who attend the session shown here do so voluntarily at the suggestion of the police, probation officers, or social workers. Most of these children are delinquent or delinquent prone, but some have not been
3:00in trouble. Almost all the prisoners shown here are serving life sentences. Well, I used to be, you might say, a dove uh in my earlier days as a judge. That's 25 years ago. Problems were different then. Violence was not as rampant. But since I've been chief justice uh for three years now, there's hardly a week goes by that I uh don't
3:23receive a half dozen letters, very tragic in nature, from older people. How Now, if you think anybody's for playing, you can get it out your head cuz we ain't up here to play with you. If you got any tough guys up here, I want them to stand now. Now, like I said, we ain't up here
3:44to y. We're up here to tell you what these joints about and how y'all running messing up y'all lives and where y'all headed at. So, what I want y'all to do while any of these men's up here talking to you, I don't want them you be looking around the room or down up. I want you to be looking at the
4:03man. And if I catch you looking any place beside that, looking at that man, I'mma hang my feet in your ass. And if you don't believe me, just try me. I'm not in a mood for it today. I'm I'm I'm sick and I'm not up here to play games. So when I got said, when this guy is talking, any one of these guys up
4:23here going talking, I want you to play close attention. Do I make myself understood? I can't hear you. I still can't hear you. What y'all y'all got? No motherfucking voices. I can't I tell y I can't hear you. So we ain't up here. I told you we ain't up here to play no game. Excuse me.
4:44We ain't up here to be be playing no games with y'all. You understand? See y'all that when I see y'all know y'all y'all sick. You know that. My experience as a juvenile judge of some two years as well as my review of thousands of juvenile files clearly reaffirms in my mind that one of the
5:06major and I emphasize major since there is really no exclusive cause uh for juvenile delinquency is the peer influence. The Lifers Project, which is basically a juvenile outreach program, uh perhaps uh offers the best known available offsetting influence uh to this major
5:29cause. When we came out of Jamesburg, Nadale, and and hung back out on the same corners that we had left before we went to the institutions, uh everybody looked up to us. Uh we was the down cats once we was out. We could box the best. We could bribe the best. We did everything the best as as in regards to
5:47breaking law, being involved in crime. But now with the juvenile inst uh intervention program, we feel that we are changing that peer image. I started out when I was 8 years old. My name is Frank Binhammer. I've been incarcerated for the past 14 years for the crime of murder, for killing a
6:08cop. Most of us see these young people as a reflection of ourselves. They're robbing themselves of an opportunity to live before the hell they've even begun to know what life is all about. No one helps you to rehabilitate yourself while you're at those institutions. They only teach you negative
6:29things. They teach you to hate, man. To hate any damn thing that represents authority. And I'm not referring to police, prosecutors, and judges. I'm talking about your school teachers, counselors, your parents, because your parents represent authority. But worst
6:49of all, they teach you to hate yourselves, to think of yourselves as being nothing, less than nothing, to be human waste, shit. And when you come out of those places, you treat yourself like you're shit. You think that while you're in a juvenile institution or prison or
7:09something that you've paid your debt to society? That's a goddamn lie. You never stop paying because once you're released from a juvenile institution, the so-called straight kids in the neighborhood aren't permitted to associate with you. You're going to be thrown back into the human cesspool,
7:30ground up a bit more, spit back out of the society, and it's going to become a revolving door until you get on your goddamn two feet, accept responsibility for yourself as a person, and make the changes in your life that are necessary. No one's going to help you. Rehabilitation is a
7:52force. You have to do it. You have to be big enough to get up off your ass, turn that shit around and do what you know is right for you. All right, let's talk about my own experience when I grew up in the streets of Philadelphia, right? I went to reform school the first time when I was 10
8:08years old. I come out of reform school. They assigned a social worker to me who had come from middle class America, graduated college, never had to work a day in his life. His mother and father gave him everything. didn't have any idea or conception about what prison was or what I was living. That's why it's failing out there today. The people who
8:27are the social workers, the parole officers, the probation people are from middle class America. There's very, very few of them who've come from the ghettos or the slums. So, how can they possibly relate to a child who is going through these traumas in his life? Whether he has a broken home, they didn't come from a broken home. They came home from a home
8:47that where they had supper every night. They didn't have to sit down and eat sugar and bread and go to sleep with an empty belly. So, how can they relate to these kids? We live this. I'm going to tell you something about a something else about [Music] jail. Rape. You all can get raped. I'm
9:08going to tell you how they do it. You're laying on your blanket. Your mind's thinking about the bricks, you know, the streets outside, about your women, your women, about your men. Same thing. Two, three guys walk in a cell, they take that blanket, they wrap it around you. Now you're like a mummy. You can't move, man. You You can't move. Then they kick
9:25you over the bed. Then they fucking your ass. Yeah. Can't happen to me, but it does. All right. Now you got raped. It happened. Okay. It happened. Man, I'm gonna get me one of them shanks that man's talking about. Them knives. Them homemade knives. I'm gonna get even with them. Yeah, I'm gonna get even with them. So you do catch me walking and you
9:46got that shank and you stick me with that shank, my man. You stick me and you kill me. What happens to you? Now you're doing a two to four. We'll say what happens to you when you kill me. You end up with a life bit. You murdered someone, didn't you? Even in here they consider that now I raped you
10:02and you murdered me. You were just protecting yourself, man. And you end up with a life bit. So you're a loser right from Jump Street. The guy just took it Saturday night right in this jail. just took it Saturday night. This ain't the first one, but it goes on. He tied a bed sheet to a pipe and he tied the other
10:20one around his neck, man. And he hung up. Hung up. He's dead. He don't owe the state nothing. He don't have to worry about getting raped no more. You don't have to get worried about getting ripped off. He don't have to worry about nothing no more. He's even. He's even. It's in the papers. Man will show you.
10:41It's right in the paper. Inmate hang self. A railway state prisoner. Forget who he was. Really don't matter to me. It don't matter. I don't give a fuck. In fact, they want to hang up. That's their business. They got more nerve than I got. They got more nerve than I got. Or some guys do it our hard way.
11:03They get up on a fourth tier and they dive off head first and hope it kills them. And hope it kills them. That's how bad these joints are. And you are kicking the doors. You're kicking them. Please let me come to jail. Are you nuts or what? Are you fucking insane? Some of you like to get high off
11:22of reapfers and dope and wine and whiskey. I'm a freak for getting high off of news articles. They're talking about getting tough on juveniles. Sure enough, tough. They say if you want to be a juvenile and act like an adult, that's how they going to treat you. They're not building no fucking Jamesbergs. No boarding towns, no Annendales no more. They're talking
11:43about building juvenile prison just like Rawway where you can't even breathe. Identification of serious crime. That means if you commit a crime, any kind, they're going to put you on TV 15 on up. 15 years old.
12:04Do you want your mother friends to look at your mother and say, "Oh, Darthothy, I didn't know that was your daughter. I didn't know she steal caught. I didn't know she broke his." How do your mother going to feel? How would my mother feel? A lot of the parents say, you know, well, my kid couldn't do that. Even
12:20though he might have been busted for 10, you know, 10 uh beanies or something like that. It ain't his kid. Never is. I used to be the same way with my son. Can't get in trouble. My son's been through this program. Really? Yes, it been true and it helped them. I just didn't go on that particular session cuz I wouldn't have
12:39had it in me, you know, to get down on them like the guys do. You know something? I don't like you because you're white and you're supposed to know it all and have it all. But I don't like them because they're black and they're putting me down. My name is James Herby. I'm here for murder. I've been here four and a half years. I have
13:02about nine more years to serve. Maybe if I'm lucky. When I leave this session and go to my room, I'm wrapped up. I'm so tight, man. I feel bad. Real bad. But I'm trying to make them aware of what's really happening to them. They can't see it or they don't want to see it, but I'm assure them. You're following in my
13:24footsteps, man. You're saying, "Wow, I want to be like that guy. I admire him." Well, I ain't shit. If I was something, I'd be out there where you are. Same thing you're doing now. They did it five, maybe six, seven times. Your babies under me. I done had the finest things of life. Cadillac, pistol,
13:46suit, pocket full of money. Bitches on both sides. But what do I have to show for it now? A pair of state brogues. Turn over and I can't get no more. Don't know when or where or how or who's going to send me something. If I could change places with
14:08you right now, give you my time and I take your freedom, do you think I'd do it? That's right. You know it. You know it. I've been watching you people, my partners here have been talking to his and I, you know, I think I a lot of you's got a bad attitude. I think I think a lot of you want to be convicts.
14:29He's got that look. Got young people walking in this door every day, 20, 21 years old. Little bullshit drug reps, drug convictions. They come in here tip and light, man. Is scared to death. Scared of every move they make. They don't want to be seen, heard, or known. I had one come up to me the other day.
14:46He got threatened 10 times. He's been in here one week. His life's already been threatened 10 times. 21 years old. He's in here for murder now. He you think he could take care of himself? Scared to death. He don't want to come out of his room. He's trying to get protection already. He doesn't know what to do. So,
15:02he goes to other inmates. We're not going to protect him. None of us are going to protect him. We We're in here protecting ourselves. Each one of us can't turn our back on the next guy. How are we going to protect somebody else? The only way we can help anybody out is keep us from coming in here. Once you're
15:18in here, we ain't going to help you no more. There ain't nothing we can do for you. You got to help yourself. And you're going to end up like this. Guy ended up hanging himself who I just talked to three hours before he did it. He told me he was tired of living in his fucking filth hole. He took care of
15:32himself. He got out of it. He got out of it all. That's that's the easy way out. Some of us can't take that. I got a wife and kids. I can't let them down. I already let them down enough. Now they're they're still waiting for me. I don't know why. I don't know what good I am to them. The hell good am I? They're
15:48living on an image. They're living on something they knew at one time. I got a 30ft wall keeping me between my wife and kids. Just think if you had to sit in this place for the next 20 years, you couldn't go out that front door no more. What would it do to you? Would take a hell of a lot of steam out of his,
16:03wouldn't it? I know it took a lot out of me. I was a tough guy on the streets. Big superfly, got busted, went all over all over the television stations, organized crime, hookup, everything. I never was involved in none of that bullshit. All I had was a couple friends of mine. We were doing drugs. You ever hear of a bad
16:23trip on acid? Well, there ain't no acid trip that can do to you what this will do to you. Ain't none in the world as bad as this. Because all I wanted was some money to fix fix my motherfucking habit. So he grabbed the pistol. And why he did that? Because I put his brains against the wall. I didn't give a fuck about him.
16:45And he ain't give a fuck about grabbing the pistol. So I didn't give a fuck about killing it. So a month later after we spent the money, shot up in dope, we hanging out back on the corners again. I got the bitch tricking again. I'm drinking my wine and the man rolled out on me.
17:07Somebody seen me coming out the store. I get busted. And how a motherfucking dog I was. I told her, told him where she was at. She's sitting right down there in Clinton right now with life in 18 years. And I've been down here since I was 18 years old. And she's been sitting right down there since she was
17:2517. And I'm 31 years old now. I have received numerous letters from children who have made the visitation, writing to me and advising me that they thought they were pretty cool before they came here and now they realize they're not so cool. So y'all keep on doing that dumb silly bullshit thing you're getting away with
17:46it. It ain't slick. Only ones you're hurting is yourself and your parents. The ones that really love you trying to help you. Cuz when you come down here, you ain't got nobody. You lose everything. When the program first started and we had some older officers here, um they weren't they weren't in favor of it. They thought it was a sham.
18:08another way for the inmates to get over on the administration. But the inmates have proved themselves and with the younger correction officers uh I believe that they feel the correction officers feel that it's a good program. I think that one of the significant aspects of this program is that the idea and the program was generated by the inmates
18:26themselves. Uh it was their conception that this was uh something that would be meaningful and would work. Morning life speaking. My name is uh Richard Row. I'm serving 30 to life, 30 to life, 5 to 7, 15 to
18:4620. The charges are chose assault and battery, kidnapping, and habitual offender. In terms of crimes, I was convicted of felonies three other times other than this time, ranging from when I 19 years old. The idea started well we're in our office myself and a few
19:08other other members lifers and uh we seen a high a college tour come through the prison right and at this particular time my son was getting in trouble brushes in with the law. So I uh said to the guys I said maybe it's possible we can approach administration maybe we can get like the towns around here to bring
19:27juveniles in and let them come on a session and we can rap with them and tell them what it's really all about. Okay, we approached the administration at that particular time which was over a year ago and uh the idea was not feasible to them then. So what it was was I think it was sometime in June my
19:45wife seen an article in the papers, right? And it consisted with Judge Nola and Chief Anthony O'Brien from the Woodbridge Police Department. So I asked her, would you do me a favor and call them up and see where they're at? See if they're really sincere about helping kids. So when she talked to him, she called me back and said, "Yes, they
20:03are." So I made contact with them. I think the the uh significant benefit is the kids. I think there is a an ancillary benefit to the prison in the sense that uh the inmates themselves feel that they're doing something worthwhile and the prison feels that they're doing something worthwhile. Uh but those things uh uh are not nearly as
20:24significant as the fact that we might be able to turn five or 10 or 20 kids away uh from a life of crime and have them wind up in the same place. Definitely will help the prison administration, right? Then you look at it the other way. It's helping the uh prisoners in here, letting the people
20:44know that they're not animals. This was the purpose of the program, the life is group to let the people out there aware know if a man makes a mistake that doesn't mean he's a stone outright animal. I mean, we all got feelings. We're all going back there. Well, I won't say all. So, if it helps them, like I call it scratching their back.
21:02It's scratching the men in his back. You know, if the administration was to like say, "Well, we're going to give you $3 a day to do it." Then what you're saying is this inmate is working for the cops and that's just what he'd be doing. And I mean I wouldn't do it. Me I ain't too fond of any cops really. You know what I
21:20mean? Like I'm doing double life. A lot of these guys like Clem 15 years. You can't be too fond of them. But we'll work with them to help you know help these kids. I just got a letter from a boy who's doing a 2-year sentence in Boytown. He's a 12-year-old kid. He's in there for playing hookie from school,
21:41minor infractions with the law. Now, he was in here on one of the sessions, and when he came in here, he broke down and cried. Now, he told me that his mother works every day and she's not home there to supervising. And he said he doesn't have anybody he could talk to. Well, he's talking to me. I would think they're doing a a a real
22:02good job and uh and they're missionaries in a sense. And I would hope that someday somebody a parrolling authority or somebody will recognize that. I think it's a very a real selfless act on the part of the uh the prisoners. And it's probably something that takes a great deal of humility uh to bring oneself out to publicly admit wrongdoing
22:24where they say, "Hey, I was a bad person and this is what happens." And I'm hoping that maybe by my example, you're not going to have to slip on that same banana peel. I think it should have a very positive effect. It's something different. It's something that we haven't tried before and I think they should be hailed for the the good
22:42motives that they have. Many people claim that the uh the prisoners are doing this just to get a better deal with parole to get in tight with you. How do you react to that? You know, some of the prisoners, if you were to look at the long terms that they have to serve, the consecutive life sentences, the
22:56ridiculous amounts of time that society sometimes imposes on an individual to guarantee the incapacitation. Some of them may not literally be eligible for parole in my tenure as a proboard chairman in my lifetime. One fellow just today indicated to me and he's one of the original founders of the program that he appeared before the parole authorities and didn't receive favorable action.
23:18There's no such thing as rehabilitation in the state of New Jersey. There's no such thing re rehabilitation in no prison. The man who wants to be rehabilitated has to come from within. He has to be self-motivated. The lifers group has created selfm motivation in almost 65 men. A man when we come up and get up in the morning and we know we
23:38have a session with children, we have something to look forward to because we know at the end of the day after seeing these kids, it's like giving somebody a gift. And when they break open the package and the joy that's in their eyes is the feeling we feel inside of us after talking to these kids. Yeah, I
23:56know. It stopped me from cutting. And I never had no thought of shoplifting, boy, cuz they telling us about Clinton. Mm- I won't want to go there. I wrote him I didn't get a return letter, but I wrote him and told him the progress I made. I just told them I was going to school like I should. I straightened
24:15myself out. I want to do better, make something of my life instead of fooling around. Would we have turned ourselves around if somebody had talked to us? I'll say 85% of us. Yes. The other 15% you could beat him with a hammer, chain them to the wall. You're
24:37not going to change them. It was a show. They were threatening you. Yeah, that's all they was doing there. If you turn around, he said, man, they just seen who had the most breakins and all that. Hey, I had this many in. That's all they was doing. Huh? Yo, they was talking records of content. Tell who had the best pistol and
24:59whatnot? So, you think that only dumb people get get sent? I mean, they just trying to scare us or whatnot. They just don't want us to come there like they said cuz they don't want to stab nobody no more. That's what they was doing. Like it was a gang. I heard some kids on the way back they say, you know, yeah, well, you
25:17know, like a don't mean nothing to me. But I think that they they when they think about it, I think they were kind of scared. They they don't want to let down their image of being cool. But I think it really it had to touch them somehow or another. I can hear them going around talking about, oh, I steal
25:33this and steal that. But when they get up there, they going to wish they never stole nothing. Maybe this will help some of the people on the outside realize that we're people, too. You know, we're not just animals locked in a cage living in filth and everything. We got feelings and we can think for ourselves and we miss our
25:52we miss everything we lost. We want it back eventually. You know, in November 1977, Richard Row was transferred from Rowway to Trenton State Prison to serve up to one year for the crime of bribing an officer. The bribe involved $5. Ro
26:16hopes to be returned to Rowi within three months. T Robert Clemens or Clem will be parrolled from Rowway prison on February 14th after 15 years in jail. He has several offers to lecture and eventually hopes to counsel juveniles in a proposed institution he is helping to design.