B.J. was one of many fellow inmates who had big plans for the future. He had a vision. When he got out, he was going to leave the dope game for good and fly straight, and he was actually working on merging his two passions into one vision. He'd spent 10,000 dollars to buy a website that exclusively featured women having sex on top of or inside of luxury sports cars. (Laughter)
B.Dž. je bio jedan od mnogih zatvorenika koji je imao velike planove za budućnost. Imao je viziju. Kad izađe napolje, nameravao je da ostavi drogu zauvek i nastavi sa normalnim životom i zapravo radio je na tome da spoji svoje dve strasti u jednu viziju. Potrošio je 10.000 dolara da kupi veb sajt čiji su ekskluzivni sadržaj žene koje upražnjavaju seks na luksuznim sportskim automobilima ili u njima. (Smeh)
It was my first week in federal prison, and I was learning quickly that it wasn't what you see on TV. In fact, it was teeming with smart, ambitious men whose business instincts were in many cases as sharp as those of the CEOs who had wined and dined me six months earlier when I was a rising star in the Missouri Senate. Now, 95 percent of the guys that I was locked up with had been drug dealers on the outside, but when they talked about what they did, they talked about it in a different jargon, but the business concepts that they talked about weren't unlike those that you'd learn in a first year MBA class at Wharton: promotional incentives, you never charge a first-time user, focus-grouping new product launches, territorial expansion.
Bila je to moja prva nedelja u federalnom zatvoru i brzo sam shvatao da to nije kao ono što vidimo na televiziji. Zapravo, vrvio je od pametnih, ambicioznih muškaraca čiji je osećaj za bisnis u mnogim slučajevima bio izoštren kao kod generelnih direktora koji su me obrlaćivali šest meseci ranije kada sam bio zvezda u usponu u Senatu države Misuri. E sad, 95 procenata momaka sa kojima sam bio zatvoren bili su dileri droge van zatvorskih zidina, ali kad su pričali o tome šta su radili, pričali su to u potpuno drugačijem žargonu, ali biznis koncepti o kojima su pričali nisu se razlikovali od onih koje biste učili na prvoj godini MBA studija u Vartonu: promotivni podsticaji, nikad ne naplaćuješ novom korisniku, fokusno-grupisanje lansiranja novih proizvoda, teritorijalna ekspanzija.
But they didn't spend a lot of time reliving the glory days. For the most part, everyone was just trying to survive. It's a lot harder than you might think. Contrary to what most people think, people don't pay, taxpayers don't pay, for your life when you're in prison. You've got to pay for your own life. You've got to pay for your soap, your deodorant, toothbrush, toothpaste, all of it. And it's hard for a couple of reasons. First, everything's marked up 30 to 50 percent from what you'd pay on the street, and second, you don't make a lot of money. I unloaded trucks. That was my full-time job, unloading trucks at a food warehouse, for $5.25, not an hour, but per month.
Međutim nisu trošili mnogo vremena na ponovno proživljavanje vremena slave. Većinu vremena, svi su se samo trudili da prežive. To je mnogo teže nego što možete zamisliti. Nasuprot onome što većina ljudi misli, ljudi ne plaćaju, poreski obveznici ne plaćaju, za tvoj život dok si u zatvoru. Ti moraš da plaćaš za svoj život. Moraš da platiš za svoj sapun, svoj dezodorans četkicu za zube, pastu za zube i sve ostalo. I teško je iz nekoliko razloga. Prvo, sve je procenjeno za 30 do 50 procenata više od onog što bi na ulici platio i drugo, ti ne zarađuješ mnogo para. Ja sam istovarao kamione. To je bio moj posao sa punim radnim vremenom, istovaranje kamiona u skladištu za hranu, za 5.25 dolara, ne po satu, nego za ceo mesec.
So how do you survive? Well, you learn to hustle, all kinds of hustles. There's legal hustles. You pay everything in stamps. Those are the currency. You charge another inmate to clean his cell. There's sort of illegal hustles, like you run a barbershop out of your cell. There's pretty illegal hustles: You run a tattoo parlor out of your own cell. And there's very illegal hustles, which you smuggle in, you get smuggled in, drugs, pornography, cell phones, and just as in the outer world, there's a risk-reward tradeoff, so the riskier the enterprise, the more profitable it can potentially be. You want a cigarette in prison? Three to five dollars. You want an old-fashioned cell phone that you flip open and is about as big as your head? Three hundred bucks. You want a dirty magazine? Well, it can be as much as 1,000 dollars.
Kako da preživiš? Pa, naučiš da posluješ, sve načine poslovanja. Postoji legalan način poslovanja. Sve plaćaš u markicama. One predstavljaju valutu. Naplaćuješ drugom zatvoreniku što ćeš mu očistiti ćeliju. Postoje donekle ilegalni poslovi, kao što je vođenje berbernice u svojoj ćeliji. Postoje i prilično ilegalna poslovanja: od svoje ćelije napraviš prostoriju za tetoviranje. I tu su i nelegalni načini poslovanja najgore vrste, koje možeš prošvercovati unutra, možeš prokrijumčariti drogu, pornografiju, mobilne telefone i kao u svetu van zatvorskih zidina, rizičnost trgovine se nagrađuje, znači što je poslovanje rizičnije, s tim će biti i profitabilnije. Želiš cigaretu u zatvoru? Od 3 do 5 dolara. Želiš staromodan mobilni telefon na preklapanje koji je velik kao tvoja glava? Tri stotine dolara. Želiš pornografske časopise? Pa, to bi moglo biti i do 1.000 dolara.
So as you can probably tell, one of the defining aspects of prison life is ingenuity. Whether it was concocting delicious meals from stolen scraps from the warehouse, sculpting people's hair with toenail clippers, or constructing weights from boulders in laundry bags tied on to tree limbs, prisoners learn how to make do with less, and many of them want to take this ingenuity that they've learned to the outside and start restaurants, barber shops, personal training businesses.
Kao što možete zaključiti, jedno od glavnih obeležja zatvorskog života je snalažljivost. Bez obzira da li su to ukusno smućkana jela od ukradenih ostataka iz skladišta, oblikovanje ljudske kose sa makazama za nokte na nogama ili konstruisanje tegova od šljunka u vreći za prljavu odeću vezanoj za grane drveta, zatvorenici nauče kako napraviti nešto od ničega i mnogi od njih žele da prenesu ovu snalažljivost koju su naučili u život van zatvora i otvore restorane, berbernice, započnu poslove ličnih trenera.
But there's no training, nothing to prepare them for that, no rehabilitation at all in prison, no one to help them write a business plan, figure out a way to translate the business concepts they intuitively grasp into legal enterprises, no access to the Internet, even. And then, when they come out, most states don't even have a law prohibiting employers from discriminating against people with a background. So none of us should be surprised that two out of three ex-offenders re-offend within five years.
Međutim ne postoji obuka, nema ničega što bi ih pripremilo za to, nema nikakve rehabilitacije u zatvoru, nema nikog ko bi im pomogao da napišu biznis plan, osmisle način da prenesu koncept biznisa koji intuitivno zamisle u legalno poslovanje, nema čak ni pristupa internetu. I onda, kad izađu, mnoge države čak nemaju ni zakon koji bi zabranio poslodavcima da vrše diskriminaciju nad ljudima sa takvom pozadinom. Dakle niko od nas ne bi trebalo da se iznenadi kad dva od tri bivša prestupnika ponovo izvrše zločin u roku od pet godina.
Look, I lied to the Feds. I lost a year of my life from it. But when I came out, I vowed that I was going to do whatever I could to make sure that guys like the ones I was locked up with didn't have to waste any more of their life than they already had.
Vidite, ja sam lagao Federalcima. Izgubio sam godinu dana svog života zbog toga. Ali kad sam izašao, zakleo sam se da ću uraditi sve što mogu da bih bio siguran da momci kao oni s kojima sam bio zatvoren ne moraju da protraće više vremena od onoga koje su već protraćili.
So I hope that you'll think about helping in some way. The best thing we can do is figure out ways to nurture the entrepreneurial spirit and the tremendous untapped potential in our prisons, because if we don't, they're not going to learn any new skills that's going to help them, and they'll be right back. All they'll learn on the inside is new hustles. Thank you. (Applause)
Nadam se da ćete razmišlajti o tome da na neki način pomognete. Nabolja stvar koju možemo učiniti je da smislimo načine kako da negujemo preduzetnički duh i ogroman neiskorišćeni potencijal u našim zatvorima, jer ako mi to ne učinimo, oni neće naučiti nove veštine koje bi im pomogle i vratiće se u zatvor. I sve što će ponovo naučiti u zatvoru su nove muljaže. Hvala vam. (Aplauz)