My Company Changed a States Prison System.
Season 2 Episode 1.
Andre: The academy of hope came about two and a half years ago. There was a ride in South Carolina. Seven men got murdered in 30, got wounded. They locked the entire 19,000 prison system down 24 hours closed the doors.
Andre: And from that day to this nobody's ever been charged or arrested. So you got seven dead bodies from different sides and you got 30 dudes with wounds and intelligence from the police said, when you open these doors, they're going back at it.
Andre: So they kept them locked down. They said, we can't open these doors. They in here with hatches and phones. They in here waiting to get out, get at each other. They saw somebody saw me and they said, Drake, can you come to South Carolina? Took my big homie. He had never gone back to prison. He had never gone back inside of a prison. I said, yo, Don, I need you to come in here.
Andre: I lied. I said, I need you to come watch my back, man. He couldn't say no. So I got my Dom, I got one in another homie. And we, the three of us went to South Carolina, went into the prison.
Andre: They're like just one joint. Would've had the murders had 2000 people. We went up and talked to one dude through the door, talk another through the door. And I'm like this is stupid. They brought nine dudes into the day room.
Andre: I just ain't going to work. They said open all the doors up. They said, no, no, we can't do that. I said why? They said, man, they going to kill each other.
Andre: They going to kill you. We signed waivers, open the door. They let 300 men out for the first time. Since the right we had conversations with, we went dorm to dorm, prison, to prison for six days, 10 prisons, 8,000 people, not one fight.
Aaron Smith: And so what was the, the substance of that conversation that you were having with each of these interviews?
Andre: The 1st Thing they said is who are you? I said, we the niggas that got your door open. That's who we are. First of call your mom's . Let's build, take a shower real quick, man. Wash yourself. Come on. We going to build, who are you guys ,I'm here. A, get your doors open. B, keep your doors open and C, show you how to get out of here. Yeah. Not no prison program to show you how to be comfortable. I'm talking about going home.
Andre: Yeah I did 14 flipped my case I'm out. This is my big homie. He did a, he had a life sentence, 29 years flipped his case he out. This my other homie flipped his case. We out, we want to show you how to get outta here. I ain't trying to show you how to do No Woodcraft shit. I'm going to show you how to go home.
Andre: Cause that's what we do. And we had real heart to heart they were like, yo, nobody came in here and talking about, let's go home. Everybody's like, Hey, let's do Arts and crafts. Let's do some basketball, man. I ain’t got time for that!!! I'm coming here to show you how to get out.
Andre: And there wasn't one person who wasn't with that program was. we've been there for two years now. And in the two years we've been there. No stabbings, no staff assaults. No. use of force. We had one fist fight in two years.
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