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.J. 是個有長遠計畫的囚犯 B.J. 是個有長遠計畫的囚犯 他很有遠見 出獄後循規蹈矩,不再碰毒品 他正將兩件他熱衷的事合為一項夢想 他花一萬美元買了個網站 講述女人在豪華跑車上/車內做愛 講述女人在豪華跑車上/車內做愛
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.
我在聯邦監獄的第一個星期 便知道情況不如電視上看到的那樣 監獄裡有智慧、有野心的人比比皆是 他們的商業頭腦 很多時可以媲美行政總裁 像那些六個月前宴請我的大老闆一樣 而我當時還是密蘇里州參議院的新秀 和我一起蹲大牢的囚犯當中 百分之九十五的人在外頭賣過毒品 提起往事時 他們總說圈內獨有的行話 但他們談論的經商理念 與你頭一年在華頓MBA課裡學到的不相上下 各種促銷手法,如永不向新客人收錢 舉辦產品發表會 拓展據點
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.
但他們沒花多少時間緬懷黃金歲月 人人只一心努力求存 而這比你所想的困難得多 與大部分人所想的相反 你坐牢,納稅人不會為你付生活費 自己的生活費要自己負責 肥皂、除臭劑、牙刷、牙膏... 通通自己買 監獄裡日子難過有幾個原因 第一,什麼都比街上賣的貴三到五成 第一,什麼都比街上賣的貴三到五成 第二,你賺不了多少錢 我負責卸貨,那可是全職工作 在食物倉庫卸貨 收入只有5.25美元,不是時薪,是月薪
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.
你怎麼能生存? 你得學會用各種方式賺錢 那裡有一套合法的買賣方式 買東西便付郵票,那是裡頭的貨幣 你幫獄友清理牢房,向他要錢 有些賺錢方法輕微違規,如在牢房外開理髮店 有些賺錢方法明顯違規,如在牢房外幫人刺青 有些賺錢方法嚴重違規 像走私毒品、色情刊物、行動電話 情況一如外面的世界 這些交易都有風險 風險愈大,潛在回報愈高 想在監獄裡抽煙嗎?盛惠三到五美元 想要舊款的折疊式手機嗎? 電話大小和你的頭差不多,盛惠三百美元 想看色情雜誌嗎? 可能要花一千美元
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.
你該知道,絞盡腦汁是牢獄生活的最佳寫照 你該知道,絞盡腦汁是牢獄生活的最佳寫照 把倉庫裡偷來的剩菜煮成佳餚 把倉庫裡偷來的剩菜煮成佳餚 用指甲剪幫人做髮型 把石頭裝到洗衣袋裡來製造重量,然後綁在樹枝上 囚犯學習如何用最簡單的方式做事 很多人想把這份才智 運用在出獄後的事業 像經營餐廳、理髮店 及個人健身訓練指導
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.
但是裡頭沒有更新訓練 沒人為他們準備任何事 也沒人幫他們撰寫創業計畫 把忽然想到的生意點子 轉換成一盤合法生意 監獄裡甚至連不上網絡 很多州政府沒有法例保護有前科的員工 很多州政府沒有法例保護有前科的員工 使他們免受歧視 因此在座各位不必驚訝 三分之二的囚犯出獄五年內會再次入獄 三分之二的囚犯出獄五年內會再次入獄
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.
我欺騙聯邦政府,在牢獄蹲了一年 但我出獄後 發誓定必盡我所能,去幫助囚犯 發誓定必盡我所能,去幫助囚犯 不讓他們在監獄裡浪費更多時間
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)
我希望你能考慮用某種方法幫他們 最好的法子是培養囚犯的創業精神 最好的法子是培養囚犯的創業精神 以及那些未開發的驚人潛能 否則,沒有自給自足的新技能 他們很快便會重回監獄 只會學到更多違法賺錢手段 謝謝