All language subtitles for Dateline.Secrets.Uncovered.S11E11.720p.WEB.h264-BAE.[eng]

**

- I had so many thoughts
leading up to this assignment

as to what it was
going to be like.

Trying to imagine
going down this road

knowing it's
a one-way trip.

You know, this moment
where you get

your last glimpse
of the world around you,

but that glimpse
is through steel mesh.

- Louisiana's Highway 66.

Its beautiful countryside
is undoubtedly not lost

on the countless men
driven to the place

where they'll
most likely die.

That road ends here.

The Louisiana
State Penitentiary,

a former plantation
the size of Manhattan.

28 square miles.

Most people
call it Angola,

named after the African country
that was home to the slaves

who once worked
these very fields.

Now, Angola is the largest
maximum security prison

in the country,

where today I'll be housed
with about 5500 men.

I'm heading
into ground zero

of mass incarceration.

- There's certainly
a heightened awareness

as I walk through here
with no guards.

- For the next couple of days,
I'll be staying here,

exploring key issues
of the prison reform debate.

Juveniles sentenced
to life without parole.

- We were children
when we got incarcerated.

- The lasting effects
of the war on drugs.

- My sentence
was 150 years.

- The power
of rehabilitation.

- You know that
you've done something,

your life
is worthwhile.

- And the demand by many
for punishment.

- Personally, I think
he's where he needs to be.

- I'll also be
staying in a cell.

Not to play prisoner,
but to better understand

the purpose
and experience of prison

all from the inside.

**

- Hello and welcome to
"Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."

Whether the American
penal system

is truly effective

has long been
a source of debate.

Does mass incarceration
keep society any safer?

And do lengthy
prison terms

rehabilitate inmates
as intended?

Lester Holt spent
three days

in one of the nation's
toughest penitentiaries,

and this is
what he witnessed.

Here's his special report:
"Life Inside".

- Life at Angola prison
isn't what you might imagine.

The vast majority
live just like this.

More than 80 men
in open dorms,

sleeping on bunk beds.

But I'll be staying on a unit
next to death row

for high-risk offenders.

Or, as in my case,
a high-profile guest.

- All right, we're going to go
down the tier here...

- My home
for the next two nights

will be on a tier
called CCR,

or closed cell
restriction.

The men here are
locked in their cells

23 hours a day.

I'm given sheets, slippers,
and some toiletries,

and shown to my cell.

- Cell 11.

Go in here, please.

Go ahead and close.

[claps hands]

[cell door locks]

- Naturally,
phones aren't allowed.

All I have is my journal,
a pen, a novel,

my watch,
and an AM/FM radio.

I also have cameras
all around me

that were installed
by our crew

to record my experience
and my thoughts.

- You know, as journalists,
we know that, you know,

to get to the heart
of something,

you have to get inside it.

The closer you are
to something,

the more-the more
is revealed to you.

- I soon meet my neighbor,
William Curtis,

who is serving a life sentence
for second degree murder.

He tells me
he's locked in CCR

because he's tried to escape
multiple times.

- How far did you get?

- Not very.

- He's only allowed
out of his cell

one hour a day.

- Do you go out?

- Um, not very often.

The last time
I went out there

was probably about
four years ago.

- You haven't seen the sun
in four years?

- Four years.
It's hard to imagine.

I just want to get
through the night.

- All right, man,
you take care of yourself.

We'll be here
a couple of nights.

- All right.

- I quickly learned
that falling asleep

in prison
is challenging.

The toilets flush
loudly and often.

Cell to cell chatter lasts
well into the night.

And my bed is attached
through the wall to Curtis's.

So believe it or not,
when he moves around,

I feel it.

- Bed's not much
for comfort.

It's kind of a plastic
mattress, uh,

but it did the trick.
I slept okay.

- Breakfast arrives
at 5:30 a.m.,

delivered by a prisoner.

- In case you're wondering,
it's, uh--

looks like scrambled eggs,
grits...

[toilet flushing]

And biscuits.

To the sound
of a flushing toilet.

- No country on Earth locks up
more of its citizens

than the United States.

While we make up less than 5%
of the world's population,

we lock up more than 20%
of the world's prisoners.

Politicians, academics,
and activists say

mass incarceration
is an American crisis.

- We've gone from $6 billion
in spending in 1980

on jails and prisons,

to $80 billion today...

- Civil rights lawyer
Bryan Stevenson

is one of the nation's leading
prison reform advocates.

- I think we have hundreds
of thousands of people in prison

who are not a threat
to public safety.

- But is it about safety
or is it about punishment?

- I think we've
created a culture

that makes it entirely
about punishment.

- And you might be surprised
who else thinks

mass incarceration
is a problem:

the people who run
Louisiana's prison system.

- Yeah, I think nationwide,
you know,

we-we lock up people too long
and too many of them.

- Seth Smith is
the director of operations

for Louisiana's
Department of Corrections.

- It's not working.

It's not giving us
the results that we want.

Uh, it's costing
a lot of money.

And we send people
to prison

that aren't necessarily
a danger to society.

And then we keep people

that their time
as a danger is over.

You know, they're
no longer a threat.

- He says it's time
for Americans to rethink

the purpose of prison

from simply punishment
to rehabilitation.

- You say it's about
rehabilitation,

but I think a lot of Americans
think it is about punishment.

That should be hell.

- Sure. You know,
they've done some awful things,

but if this is
just punishment,

you know, we can
make somebody worse.

- But as I'm about to hear,
plenty of the incarcerated

do believe
it's just about punishment.

- Another day
in the field.

- "Dateline:
Secrets Uncovered"

returns after the break.

- Much of Angola prison
is farmland.

Thousands of cattle
are raised here

to be sold
on the open market,

and a variety of crops
are grown here as well.

All of it happening
with inmate labor.

That's one of the many
hot button issues

in the mass incarceration
debate.

- Another day
in the field.

- I'm on my way
out to the fields,

riding on this truck
they call a hootenanny.

Many of the men
are convicted killers,

including the ones sitting
on either side of me.

- Javonte Sanders
beat a woman to death

and stole her car.

- What's your sentence?

- It's, uh, life
without parole.

- Without parole.

- Terry Mays shot a man
in the neck during a drug deal.

- You've been here
how many years?

- 30.
- 30 years.

- Here, like prisons
everywhere in America,

most inmates get paid
pennies per hour.

- How much do you get paid
to come out here?

- 2 cents an hour.

At one time we made
4 cents an hour,

and for some reason or another,
the budget got cut.

It's injustice.

- So this particular job

is not one of the more
desired ones?

- No. This is, like, this is
the bottom of the barrel.

The field?
- Yeah.

- Nobody wanna be
in the field.

- Angola is not like any other
maximum security prison

I've ever been to.

All of this, as far as
the eye can see, is Angola.

It's a series of prisons,
they call them camps.

These guys--
you guys from Camp D?

- Yes, sir.
- They're from Camp D,

and then doing work
like this.

Today, we happen to be,
uh, picking carrots.

- So should I be worried
about my safety here?

- Well--
- If you was an inmate, yeah.

- Yeah?

- If you was an inmate,
most definitely.

- A majority of the inmates here
are people of color.

In fact, Black men in America
are six times as likely

to be incarcerated
as White men.

I certainly can't
escape the optics.

Look around.

Mostly Black men working
on a former slave plantation

under the watch of
armed guards on horseback.

It's unsettling to many.

- I know this is
a sensitive subject,

and it troubled me a little bit,
made me uncomfortable,

you know, talking to the guys,
looking around,

most of them look like me,
African-American.

The history of this land
as a-as a slave plantation,

do you see that
as an issue?

- You know, I can see

where someone could
have an issue with it.

Any piece of farmland in
the state of Louisiana

was a slave plantation
at some point,

and these guys were
sentenced to hard labor.

At least when they're
working the field,

growing vegetables,
it's something that

is giving back
to the prison itself.

- Smith tells me the crops
not only provide

the inmate population
fresh food,

but he says it also
saves taxpayers money.

It costs $1.70 a day
to feed each offender.

This will be the life
for many of these men

for decades to come.

And some have left young
children behind,

who are among
the five million kids

in America who have had
a parent in prison.

Javonte has two of them.

- I mean, you know,
the way it works sometimes

is you're in prison
'cause your daddy was in prison,

and your kid
will be in prison.

Are you afraid
for your children?

- Yeah, I definitely am.

I mean, when I was growing up--
see, I didn't know my father.

My father got murdered, um,
when I was three years old.

I never knew him.

- Have they come here
to visit you?

- Oh, yeah.
They came one time.

- So what's that--
what is it like to have your--

to have your child
see you in prison?

- Man, it hurts for me.

I mean,
I'm happy to see them,

but it hurts
at the same time.

- Because you wanna-
- Especially when they--

when they leaving
and they looking back,

it's like, oh.

- It's hard to imagine knowing
that you'll be spending

the rest
of your life here,

especially if you're
convicted as a teenager.

Advocates like Bryan Stevenson
say juvenile offenders

should never be treated
the same as an adult.

- And we put thousands of kids
in adult jails and prisons

and we started prosecuting
these kids.

And even today, we have states
with no minimum age

for trying a child
as an adult.

So I don't think
we should ever put children

in adult jails
and prisons.

- But what about ones
who committed violent crimes

like murder?

- We were children
when we got incarcerated.

- I'm sitting in on
a support group

run by
an assistant warden.

All these men
committed their crimes

before they were adults
and were given sentences of life

without the possibility
of parole.

They're called
juvenile lifers.

- I was sixteen years old
when I committed my crime.

- I was seventeen years old.

- I committed my crime
at age sixteen.

- There are about 2,000
juvenile lifers like them

in U.S. prisons today.

- I was a lot
different at seventeen

than I am at sixty now.

But still, at seventeen,
I still knew right from wrong.

So how do you
reconcile that?

- You have to be
accountable.

There's no excuses
for what I did,

and there's no excuses
for anything

that any of us
have done.

- You know,
if you wanna change,

like you say,
it starts within yourself.

- They tell me
they're no longer the boys

they once were and say they are
no longer a threat to society.

But how do I know
they're not conning me?

- When we do get the opportunity
to show that we are different,

the people'll
be able to see.

- And in the past few years,
they've all gotten new hope

to make their case
for a second chance.

- What gives you the hope?

- Right there. Right there.

- This man?

- That's our Mount Rushmore
right there.

Montgomery,
State of Louisiana.

- Montgomery versus Louisiana is
a landmark Supreme Court ruling

named after the oldest
and longest serving member

of this group,
Henry Montgomery,

who was seventy-two years old
when I met him.

- You were seventeen years old
when you were sentenced.

Do you remember what it was
like being seventeen?

- Yeah.
Young, wild, and stupid.

- Montgomery was indicted
for murder in November 1963,

the same month
JFK was assassinated.

He's been at Angola
for fifty-five years.

- Man I'm behind
fifty-five years.

In technology, I'm home
150 years behind time.

In 2012, the United States
Supreme Court ruled

that mandatory life without
parole sentences for juveniles

are unconstitutional,

pointing to science
that says it's clear

that adolescent brains
are not yet fully mature.

But that ruling didn't apply
to people like Henry Montgomery,

who had already been
sent away as a juvenile.

So that's why Montgomery took
his case to the Supreme Court.

And in 2016, he won.

Now, all juvenile lifers,

no matter how long ago
they were locked up,

can make a case that
they deserve parole.

- Mostly older guys
over here?

- Seventy-eight year old
Clifford Hampton,

is one of them.

I went to see him
in the dorm where he lives.

- This is my bed
right here.

- This is your home?

- Yeah, this is mine
out here.

- He's been locked up
sixty-one years.

- And since you've been here,
we've landed a man on the moon.

- Yeah.
- Think about that.

- Yeah. There's been
a lot of changes.

- Hampton says six decades
in prison have changed him.

And thanks to the man
sitting next to him,

Hampton will now have
a chance at freedom.

- Why do you think you
deserve parole?

- I wouldn't say
that I deserve parole.

I wouldn't use
that word "deserve"

because I took
someone's life.

I could say that
I've earned parole.

- In fact, both Hampton
and Montgomery

will see the parole board
the same day.

And I'll be there.

- How are you feeling?

- One of the things
that struck me

while walking around Angola
was how many men I met

who seemed to be focused on
changing their lives.

One of them is
Dalton Prejean Jr.

- I just knew I had
to do something different

than just do time
and die in prison.

- Since coming
to Angola back in 2004,

he says he's turned his life
around by taking advantage

of the prison's programs.

I graduated with a BA,
a 3.91 average.

I was selected to be
a social mentor.

- At the prison,
he earned a master's degree

from a Bible college.

He even became
an ordained minister.

- Thank you, Lord God.

- A couple of times a week,
Prejean Gospel raps,

his form of preaching,
to the population.

- ...I'm seeking your face,

and turning from
my wicked ways.

- It's hard to square the man
sitting across from me

with the horrible crime
that he committed.

- Your actions cause
the death of a baby?

- Yeah.

- When he was twenty-one,
he was watching his stepson.

He says the child
was inconsolable.

Prejean shook the baby
so violently, he died.

Now he's serving
a sixty-year sentence

for manslaughter.

- How do you
move past that?

How do you become
a different person?

- At first,
to be honest,

I didn't know
what I was gonna do.

It was sickening to my heart
that I would actually have done

something like that.

- Prejean says he was
filled with anger,

which had its roots
in his childhood.

This is a picture
of Prejean and his father,

Dalton Prejean Sr.

Shortly before he was executed
in the electric chair in 1990

in this very prison for killing
a Louisiana state trooper.

- You know, kids watch
television all the time

and they're like,
"Oh, you know, well,

"your dad is about
to be fried chicken".

And by me having
the same name, you know,

when people would
call my name, you know,

I would-I would
put my head down,

because I was-I was
ashamed of what I believe

that name had meant.

- But over the years,
he says,

programs at Angola
helped change him.

Opportunities that
weren't available

when his father was here
and still aren't available

at most prisons
across the country.

- There's a whole movement
around trying to revive

the rehabilitation debate
that we sort of abandoned.

We've got people locked up
with nothing to do,

and we know that education
is transformative.

It reduces recidivism.

- Education and programs
have also proven

to reduce violence
inside prison.

Angola was once known as
the bloodiest prison in America.

But things began to change
here in the 1990s,

when the prison
began to focus on more

than simply locking up people
and feeding them.

- Yeah, go ahead!

Now, in addition to
its popular annual inmate rodeo,

there are
a variety of programs.

- All right, ready? Go.

- These men are training
service dogs for veterans.

There's even a radio station
run by incarcerated men.

- ...the only one
in the nation,

the station that kicks
behind the bricks.

I'm your host...

- You can get
a lot more freedom here

depending on your behavior.

You know, we have a lot
of programs that are mentor-led,

led by other guys that are
here serving life sentences.

And it gives them purpose.

- It looks like a shop.

- Yeah, no, it does.

Looks like any-any auto shop
I've been in.

- Yes, sir.

- I talked to John Sheehan,
a master mechanic

at the prison's auto shop.

- I didn't know how
to change a spark plug

before I came to prison.

- Don't let
the uniform fool you,

Sheehan has been
incarcerated here since 1989

for killing his wife
with a shotgun.

Even though he'll likely
never get out,

he mentors nonviolent offenders
in a reentry program.

- When you can see
a man come in here,

change his life,
go back out and stay out,

you know that
you've done something.

Your life is worthwhile.

- Many graduates of the program
now work at a car dealership

outside of New Orleans.

But there are other
nonviolent offenders at Angola

who might never
get a second chance.

This man was sentenced
to more than a lifetime.

- My sentence
was 150 years.

- You'll hear
his dramatic story next.

- Welcome back to
"Dateline: Secrets Uncovered".

I'm Craig Melvin.

Of the roughly
two million Americans

currently behind bars,
about 20% of them are in

for drug-related offenses

with some serving
life-long sentences,

like the man you are
about to meet.

But a parole board is about
to reconsider his fate.

Back to Lester Holt
with "Life Inside".

- In my three days at Angola,
most of the men I spoke with

had committed violent crimes
and received long sentences.

- So you're life
without parole?

- Yeah.

- But like every prison,

there are also
nonviolent offenders

serving long sentences
that might as well be life.

John Esteen
is one of them.

- I grew up in
a middle class neighborhood,

one with
the Catholic schools.

Esteen is a Gulf War vet
who says he was lost and broken

when he came home.

- Well, I had
no direction in life.

- In 2000, he was found guilty
of running a massive drug ring

that moved kilos of cocaine
between Texas and Louisiana.

It was his second
drug conviction.

- My sentence
was 150 years.

- That's right, 150 years.

He's served twenty so far.

Esteen's case
is a prime example

of harsh sentencing laws
for both drug dealers

and especially users.

The legacy of the government's
decades long war on drugs.

More than 450,000 people
in America

are locked up
for a drug offense.

Bryan Stevenson says
criminalizing drug addiction

is misguided.

- We said those people
are criminals

and we didn't have to say that.

We could have said that
drug addiction

and drug dependency
is a health problem.

- Is that why our jails
are so full?

- Absolutely.

If you're looking for
one explanation,

this misguided war on drugs
would be at the top of the list.

- But things
have been changing.

The First Step Act,
which was signed into law

by former President Trump
in 2018,

had been projected
to reduce the sentences

of thousands of
nonviolent offenders

in federal prisons.

But that doesn't affect
more than 90% of

the U.S. prison population,
which is locked up

in state and local facilities.

Some states had already
been relaxing

sentencing guidelines,
like here in Louisiana,

which started in 2001.

But Esteen was sentenced
under the older

and harsher laws,
so he sued the state and won,

which earned him a date
with a parole board.

And now he's just hours away.

- I'm not a troublemaker.

I did everything possible
to rehabilitate.

And that's what it's about,
rehabilitation.

Gettin' a little antsy
right now.

A little nervous,
you know?

I went to bed kind of late,
you know,

just thinking about things,
you know,

just trying to get my mind that,
you know,

the possibility of
me being released.

- You leadin' the way.

You making the way
for all of us here.

You have made the way.

- Y'all be blessed,
my brothers.

- Bless.

- All right,
you all be blessed.

- His thirty-one-year-old son,
a law school graduate,

came to surprise him.

A three-member panel
must vote unanimously

to grant parole.

Our cameras weren't allowed
inside the parole hearing room.

About an hour later,

Esteen's family
walked out first.

- He made it.
- Yes!

- He made it.
- He made it.

- We were there
for his first steps

as a free man in twenty years.

- This is my freedom passing.

What? Should I go?
Man.

[crying]

- Very good, my son.

- Two other people are eager
to follow him out that gate.

Henry Montgomery and
Clifford Hampton,

who have served
a combined 116 years at Angola,

are about to face
the parole board themselves.

- Do you think
you should be paroled?

- I should be, 'cause, uh,
I ain't the same guy

as that seventeen year old guy.

I'm fifty-five years older,
you know,

and I'm mature enough to know
I ain't gonna do that again.

- But that might
not matter.

This is Montgomery's
second parole hearing.

He was denied
just a year before.

And it seems clear to many

why Montgomery
is still in prison.

- You killed a cop?
- Yeah.

- The man Montgomery murdered
was Deputy Sheriff Charles Hurt

from East Baton Rouge.

In November 1963, Montgomery,
then seventeen years old,

was playing hooky
when Deputy Hurt,

in plain clothes,
approached him.

Montgomery says
as a black teenager

living in the segregated South,
he was startled and scared,

was carrying a gun,
and he shot him.

- I know I had the gun
in my hand,

I know I shot him.
I know I did it.

And I'm sorry.

- JP deGravelles says
it doesn't really matter

how Montgomery feels.

What does matter is that
he stays behind bars.

- An attack on a police officer
is an attack

on the very fabric
of society.

- DeGravelles is
the victim's grandson,

and today he is a police
officer himself.

- There's no parole
for Charles Hurt.

You know, he-he's--

his life sentence is permanent,
you know?

And my mom, my aunt, my uncle,
our belief in the system

is that it's equal justice.

- The family of
Clifford Hampton's victim

didn't want to
speak to us on camera,

but they did tell us

they don't think
Hampton should get out either.

In 1958,
when he was seventeen,

Hampton got into

an argument with his
eighteen-year-old neighbor,

Albertha Gibson.

He flew into a rage and
brutally stabbed her to death.

- When I realized
what I had did,

I walked to the home
of the deputy sheriff

and turned myself in.

- And Hampton has another
hurdle to overcome.

In 1961, at age twenty,
he killed another inmate here.

He told me it was
self-defense.

- Angola was like
a jungle, you know?

That's what you had to do,
you know, kill or go under.

- Hampton and Montgomery
will soon find out

if they will be
granted parole.

But if they're denied,
they could eventually end up

where I'm heading next,
the prison's hospice ward.

**

- Like every
maximum security prison,

Angola can be a dangerous place.

On this morning,
a knife is found.

And when that happens,
this is the response,

a shakedown.

- What we have here
is what appears to be

crushed up medication.

- We've seen a couple
of shakedowns

since we've been here.

What kind of stuff do you find?
- Cell phone.

- Weapons, drugs.
- Homemade shanks.

- Then, captains Jarvis Callahan
and William Russo,

along with Assistant Warden
Anne-Marie Easley,

said being a corrections officer

is among the toughest jobs
in the world.

- You've had things that have
raised your anxiety here?

- Absolutely.

- The reason why
I'm thirty years old

and on anxiety medicine.
- He isn't alone.

Studies have shown
corrections officers

have a significantly higher
suicide rate

than the general population.

- Can you give me, uh,
some specific anecdotes

of things that have happened
to you on the cell block?

- An offender threw human
waste out the cell at me.

What can you do
to that offender?

He's already in the cell,
he got life.

- Here, like in so many
other states,

the institution
is understaffed,

and the officers say
they're underpaid.

- We start people off
at $14 an hour.

People in the free world
can go to Home Depot

and make the same amount
of money

and not get feces
thrown on 'em.'

- These officers tell me
that poor behavior

is often the result
of hopeless men.

Assistant Warden Easley
says one of the things

that's helped,

but something
I was surprised to learn,

that the majority
of the officers here are women.

- I think there is value
in the female officers.

You know, ladies,
we can sometimes

talk an offender down
a lot quicker.

You know, just because
we have a calming ability.

- And something else
I didn't expect to hear,

they believe that
life without parole sentences

make prison less safe
for everyone.

- If a man has life
and he has nothing to lose,

if he knows
there's no chance at going home.

- I heard the same thing
for many people who work here.

Tonia Faust works
in the prison's hospice unit.

- I personally would love to see
a lot of these guys

get a second chance.

I worry about backlash
that I would get from that

because I know that
the outside public's perception

is they're here,
they're supposed to be here.

- Do you surprise yourself
when you say that?

Was there a period in your life
that you would have been

on the other side?
- Oh, absolutely.

My mother actually worked here
as a security guard,

and I used to tell her
all the time,

"How can you work there
with those people?"

But then when
you actually get here

and you do hear some of
the offender stories,

no one is the same person
they are, you know,

from when they were younger
to now.

- Decades in prison
would change anyone.

There is an aging crisis
in American prisons,

a gray wave,
as some have called it.

More than 130,000 inmates
older than fifty-five

are incarcerated today;

that's costing taxpayers
more than $9 billion a year.

Experts say the aging
and the dying

are the most expensive people
to keep incarcerated,

and yet they pose
the lowest risk to society.

This is what a life sentence
looks like

when life is running out.

Dying prisoners
being cared for in hospice

by other incarcerated men.

Sixty-three-year-old
Frank Walgamotte

has been in prison for
forty-five years.

When he was nineteen,

he and his younger brother
robbed a store;

a crime that ended with
the murder of the owner.

Now, dying of cancer,

he's asked for
a compassionate release.

But the vast majority
of petitioners

for compassionate release
are denied.

And so was Frank.

- Frank, how you feeling?

Lester Holt.

Frank, do you think
you should go home?

Grabbing you a candy?

I can--
here, I can open it for you.

There you go, Frank.

All right. I'm gonna let
you rest, okay?

- Okay.

- He's a human being.

I'm not here to judge him.

But I don't know
how you not have compassion.

A few weeks later,
I learned that Frank died

in his hospice bed alone.

Back in my cell,
I had a lot of time

to reflect
about everything I've seen.

I've personally wrestled
with this question of...

is prison punishment?

Because if it's punishment,
it's-it's pretty bad.

Is it a place of reform?

I can certainly see
efforts to reform here.

I can't help,
you know, thinking

as we're talking to men

who were incarcerated
when they were teenagers,

and I think of
my own self at sixteen,

seventeen years old,
and it's all very complicated.

And now,
the two men I met

who committed murders
as teenagers,

Henry Montgomery
and Clifford Hampton,

are about to find out
if they'll finally get parole

and walk back out
into the world.

- "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered"
returns after the break.

**
- If there is one state
that defines mass incarceration,

it's Louisiana,

known for decades as the
prison capital of the world.

In 2019, the state's Governor,
John Bel Edwards,

said that tough-on-crime
approach hadn't been working.

Let's talk about
mass incarceration.

I suppose there was a time
that that was a good thing.

We're locking up
all the bad guys.

- Well, I don't know
if it was ever a good thing,

but we know now,
because of our experience,

that it was
counterproductive.

We had the highest
incarceration rate

in the nation for the last
couple of decades,

but our crime rate
wasn't any better for it,

the recidivism rate
wasn't better.

But the bottom line is,

most importantly,
we just weren't safer.

It was costing us
$700 million a year

just in Louisiana.

That's third only
to education and health care.

So we couldn't afford it.

- In 2017, Edwards,
a Democrat in the Deep South,

signed bi-partisan criminal
justice reform legislation,

the most ambitious
in the state's history.

You have actually reduced
your prison population here.

- We have, but we are
number two in the country

at present.

And it's a process.

- To see this happen
in a deep red state,

Law and Order South,

it's pretty stunning
to a lot of folks.

Wouldn't you agree?
- It is.

And look,
it's counterintuitive

that you can
over-incarcerate

and actually be less safe
because of it.

- The reforms
are projected to reduce

Department of
Corrections spending

by more than $260 million
over the next decade.

Some of that money
will be invested

into re-entry programs
for those coming home.

An important investment,
because every week

an average of 12,000
prisoners in America

are released
back to society.

- 95% of the inmates
are going to get out.

And when you do
next to nothing to prepare them

for successful re-entry,

then you are creating
a future

that is more riddled
with crime.

- But Louisiana's reforms focus
on non-violent offenders.

So, what about
violent offenders,

like the juvenile lifer
group I met?

Or the men
dying in hospice?

We clearly met people
in that prison

who don't pose a threat
to society.

But in your opinion,
do some people

simply belong in prison

because what they did
was just reprehensible?

- Well, because what they did
was reprehensible.

And there continues to be
opposition in the community

and among
the victim's family.

And look, whether someone
continues to pose a threat

to society is a factor
to be considered

in whether
they get released.

- But not the only factor?
- It is-- Correct.

It can't-it can't be
the determinative factor

to the exclusion
of all others.

- Both Henry Montgomery
and Clifford Hampton

face opposition
from their victims' families.

What will happen to them

when they see
the parole board?

Montgomery
is about to find out.

And someone
has come to support him.

His name is
Andrew Hundley.

He might look like
a lawyer,

but he's actually
the first juvenile lifer

in Louisiana
to be released

because of Montgomery's
Supreme Court case.

- All right. All right.
- Today's the day.

- Oh, yes, sir.

- Hundley served
19 years in prison.

At age 15, Hundley was out
with a teenage girl

when they got into
an argument.

He became enraged
and beat her over the head

with a metal rod,

and then tried
to get rid of her body

by burning it.

You committed
a pretty savage crime.

- It was a horrible crime,
it's an inexcusable crime,

and there's nothing I can do
that'll be able to undo that.

Thankfully, they were able
to look and see

how I had changed.

- So if the parole board
said that he changed

after 19 years,
what will it say

about Henry Montgomery
after 55 years?

You're the first guy
that got out,

and he's still here.

- Yeah, there's-
there's a lot of guilt.

I went to prison whenever
I was 15, a white kid,

um, and got out
when I was 34.

Henry went to prison,
a Black kid at 17,

and he's still here
after 55 years.

- Big day. Big day.
- Big day.

- The three members
of the panel

must vote unanimously
to free him.

They were behind closed doors
for more than an hour.

This is the audio
from that hearing.

Two yeses
for Montgomery's release.

Then came
the third and final vote.

- I caught up
with Montgomery

right after
he heard the news.

He told me that he had
already packed his bag.

You were getting ready
just in case?

- Yeah.
- Just in case

they said you can go home?
- Yeah.

- But you're
holding together.

- Long as I got life,

I'm gonna keep my mind
on trying to get out.

You gotta keep
your hope alive.

- Clifford Hampton's hope
remains alive.

He is about to face
the parole board himself.

I'm realizing
he has been in prison

longer than
I've been alive.

That's-- I can't even
wrap my head around it.

It was a unanimous vote.
Parole granted.

I was there moments after
a surprisingly subdued Hampton

learned the news.

So now a new
adventure begins?

- Yeah.
- Life on the outside?

- Yup.

- Can you even imagine
what that might be like?

- Imagine it'll be
pretty exciting.

- A few days later,
Hampton walked free

for the first time
in 61 years.

- We'll stop
and drop your stuff off

at your apartment...

- And Andrew Hundley
is here to help Hampton,

because in 2016,

Hundley started
a non-profit

called The Parole Project.

By 2020, it had helped
more than 40 juvenile lifers

re-enter society.

- Hit the spot?
- Oh, yeah.

- Hampton's first taste
of the outside world,

a fast food hamburger
with everything on it.

- First apartment.
This is for you.

- His temporary apartment,
painted with bright colors,

to remind him that
he's no longer in prison.

- I'm seeing so much
that's really new to me,

you know?

But I'm excited
about it all.

- Two and a half years later,
Hundley had the honor

of assisting another
juvenile lifer

in his first moments
as a free man.

- How you doing?

- In November 2021,
75-year-old Henry Montgomery,

the man who paved the way
to freedom for Hundley

and hundreds of others,
was granted parole

after serving nearly
58 years behind bars.

- In all honesty,
Henry probably should have been

the first one of us
to come home.

However, he is home today.

- You're gonna do great.
- All right.

- You're gonna do great.

- It's a wonderful feelin'.
- It is.

[laughing]

- Montgomery
and Clifford Hampton

left behind
thousands of others

who will never go home.

Their todays filled
only with yesterdays,

something my neighbor Curtis
knew all too well.

- Who's this little guy?
- That's my, uh, son.

He was killed in
a motorcycle wreck in '94.

- Oh, man.

**

In my short time here,
I learned a lot

about the human ability
to cope.

To accept. To survive.

Bye, Curtis.

Take care of yourself, man.

As I wrote
in the journal I kept,

"It's too easy to look away
from prison and prisoners.

"Dignity is earned,
but hope is essential."

- That's all for this edition

of "Dateline:
Secrets Uncovered".

I'm Craig Melvin.
Thank you for watching.