Prison cell

Why, Brian, I need a favor, dude.

That TV in the Prison Cell studio is just blinking on and off, and it's super distracting.

Can we just turn that off or something? Thank you.

Okay.

He woke up.

He woke up the next morning in a jail cell with no memory of how he got there.

And a year later, after spending an entire year waiting to be sentenced, a judge then told him he received five to seven years.

And in that moment, he made a decision not to waste a single minute of his time being incarcerated.

Um, played in CFLs, NFL free agent for a while, um, college coach as well, and I was wrongfully imprisoned in China for three years.

So, um, since coming home from my wrongful imprisonment, um, I've authored multiple books, including my award-winning memoir, um, "NFL to Prison Cell." I'm an award-winning writer, um, an award-winning global servant, have founded multiple global impact organizations.

Um, the Be Elevated U Foundation is our youth and community empowerment organization.

So we deal with literacy, mentorship, social-emotional learning, helping young people get college scholarship opportunities and community service.

I'm good on you, big dog.

He reminds me of Eddie Murphy in Trading Places in the Jail Cell.

It's

very weird.

But before we do that, I think it's important to discuss your own journey to this philosophy, because that in itself is extraordinary.

And for people that don't know your background, At 15 years old, you're sitting in a jail cell awaiting trial, I believe, for multiple charges, including burglary and armed robbery.

So pretty serious stuff.

You're using drugs and alcohol.

But this girl, her father was a teacher in another school.

She convinced him to come and visit me in jail and try and save me.

And he came in that jail cell and he told me, you don't belong here.

You're capable of great things.

If it's way too crowded, it's really hard for staff to manage that population effectively, which means people get away with more things, right? Staff aren't going to do as good of a job of searching them when they need to.

They're not going to do as good a job searching cells, screening stuff that's coming in, monitoring their phone calls, monitoring visitation.

Staff get away with more things because, again, there's less oversight.

When there's fewer staff per inmates in the facility, we call staff-inmate ratio.