Convicted Felon Voice for Prison Reform
HOWELL: Welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM. I'm George Howell. As a teenager Shaka Senghor committed murder but behind bars he found a purpose. And now he is a leading voice for prisoner reformer in then United Stated and the author of this book, "Writing My Wrongs Life Death and Redemption in an American Prison". CNN Poppy Harlow sat down with Senghor and talked about his life, his mission and his unlikely political allies.</s>HARLOW: Shaka Senghor will always bare the title convicted felon.</s>SENGHOR: At age of 19, I shot and killed a man.</s>HARLOW: But of course his lines didn't start up that way. You were an honor roll students. What happened?</s>SENGHOR: I was, you know, once I started going to the things at home. I got to stop taking interest in school. And it's one of the things that now when I look back specially working with a lot of young people, I think about how we sometime fell as adults to really pay attention over on what's happening with children. So led them well for honor roll students are like barely showing up in class.</s>HARLOW: You say no one ever stopped to say, what's wrong?</s>SENGHOR: Yeah.</s>HARLOW: Why are your grades falling off? Not one person?</s>SENGHOR: Not one person. I recently felt like, kind of like the ideal like middle class family. A lot of siblings, a lot of fun times but also a lot of very hurtful and painful times, dealing with abuse from my mother and dealing with dissolution of my parents' marriage.</s>HARLOW: He served 19 years, seven of them in solitary confinement. You knowingly chose the street life?</s>SENGHOR: Yeah.</s>HARLOW: No one pushed you there. Nothing forced you there. Why did you choose it?</s>SENGHOR: Well, I was looking for love and acceptance. And I ran away when I was 14 years old and, you know, I was naive like most 14 year olds and thought that somebody's parent would take me in and shelter me from the abuse but that didn't happen. And so when I got introduced to the drugs trade, it came under the guides of love and acceptance. And when you're a young vulnerable teenager who has been hurt and damaged and you're looking for that type of emotional connection to anybody this saying, "Hey, I love you and I have your back" and so I chose that lifestyle.</s>HARLOW: You felt accepted there.</s>SENGHOR: I felt accepted. Definitely.</s>HARLOW: He sold crank by age 14, was shot himself at 17, and murdered a man by 19. In a drug deal gone array (ph).</s>SENGHOR: I realized that not only had I tragically caused somebody's death but I devastated somebody's family and that I couldn't take that back. I got a letter from my son while I was on that 4.5 in distant solitary. And then they let him wrote me and he said, "Dear dad, I know you are in prison for murder. Please dad, don't kill again. Jesus watches what you do". And as a father, I realized that I had not only failed my son, but that I was failing a whole generation of young men who are growing up in the neighborhood. I realized that I needed to do something different in my life and the first thing was taking full responsibility for the decisions I made that landed me in prison. But also to figure out a way how I can utilize that experience to help other young men and women avoid the path that I had taken.</s>HARLOW: The aunt of the man Senghor murdered wrote him a letter of forgiveness while he was serving time. She told me she loved him because God loved him. I think a lot of viewers watching this will ask, you are a former felon, a murderer, you took a man's life. Why should people listen to you now?</s>SENGHOR: Because I think in order to solve a problem you have to be as close in proximity to it as possible. And the reality is that, you know, gun violence is a large part of what's happening in American society. And who better understand how to solve that than somebody who's gone through it.</s>HARLOW: In "Writing my Wrongs," Senghor asks the central question, how do you emerge in a society that is so unforgiving? There is a lot of discussion right now in Washington about prison reform. Are you hopeful?</s>SENGHOR: I'm very hopeful. I think that we had a space now where the American public is a lot more aware. Because I feel like, you know, if you're footing a bill for this, and to not get the return on investment that's been promised to us, I think it's really unfair. And our prison system currently operates as one big warehouse.</s>HARLOW: A warehouse.</s>SENGHOR: Yeah. A warehouse. Warehouse of misery to be specific. And so the reality is, either you can help and you can further hurt them and then you can wake up and say okay, I'm not surprised that they get out and come back.</s>HARLOW: A 2014 study from the Bureau of Justice statistics followed inmates from 30 states for five years. It found nearly 70 percent of former prisoners returned to prison within three years of being released.</s>SENGHOR: American society that we have a choice in, what kind of men you want to retire. So, either you want healthy men and women who are ready to reenter society as contributing members of society or you want broken men and women who's going to come out and wreak havoc on society.</s>HARLOW: Today he works with the cut 50 initiative, a bipartisan effort to reduce the U.S. prison population by half by 2025. Who is your biggest ally in this fight?</s>SENGHOR: We have multiple allies, surprisingly. I mean, Newt Gingrich has been a great ally. A lot of people from the Republican Party, and, you know, different politicians, so, you know, I just think it's a time in the country where everybody is realizing that we've done this thing wrong for a long time. I think if you think about what the cornerstone is a faith, is forgiveness and redemption. And I think that when we look at our country, that' the foundation of the country, is built on faith, different faiths. And no matter what faith you come from, background you come from, that's a deep part of it. And sadly it hasn't been extended to those who are incarcerated.</s>HARLOW: Are you an anomaly?</s>SENGHOR: I don't think so. We're going away a lot of greatness. We are basically dismissing people's humanity. And I think we feel considerably and then when it comes to young specifically inner city kids, we're quick to thought them away, we're quick to judge them more harshly than other kids are judged. It's a reality of the racial dynamics and the class dynamics in America. We're not always honest about that.</s>HOWELL: The path of the prisoner former, Poppy Harlow, there for us. Switching now to whether the calendar may say that at Spring bud in the North Eastern United States, hey, it feels a little bit like winter again. Karen Maginnis is here with us to explain what's happening here.</s>KAREN MAGINNIS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, a one, two punch and if you are viewing us from New York City or Washington D.C.. Yes, there is some snowfall to report.</s>HOWELL: Karen Maginnis. Thank you so much. Still ahead here on CNN NEWSROOM. A Lion attacks a man on the outskirts of Nairobi, ahead. The attacked the aftermath and they grow in fear at the African cities expand into wildlife habitats. Stay with us.