John Oliver has spent several episodes talking about various aspects of the American prison system on HBO’s Last Week Tonight. He brought up the prison system again last night and even interviewed a man who was in prison about the struggles of reentering society after serving a sentence.
Last month, the Justice Department announced that 6,000 federal inmates will be released from prison and that process was completed last week. As the Washington Post reported, the decision came after the U.S. Sentencing Commission cut down the possible punishments for nonviolent drug offenders and decided to make that change retroactive.
With so many prisoners returning to society all at once, Oliver and his team looked at how hard that can be. Later, Oliver spoke with Bilal Chatman, a former prisoner who thankfully has a job. But he’s now worried about how he will be looked at by his co-workers now that they know he was in prison. Chatman also discussed trying to maintain his new life after prison.