John Oliver explains how hard it is to leave prison in America, provides happy ending

John Oliver noted on Sunday's Last Week Tonight that a lot of the subjects he has covered this year involve the messed-up aspects of America's criminal justice system, which is all pretty depressing. So this time, he said, "instead of talking about how people wind up in prison, I thought we'd talk about about how they leave." Prison re-entry is a particularly relevant topic, Oliver added, because about 6,000 federal prisoners were released last week, the fruit of the reforms to mandatory minimum sentencing.

Getting out of jail is generally portrayed in the movies and TV as a happy event, he added, but in real life it's often just a brief, confusing respite before going back behind bars. Ex-prisoners are often denied a whole host of government services — some you probably never knew about — and it's hard for them to get jobs to pay for their survival on their own. Even for ex-prisoners who do find work and "are trying their hardest, satisfying the conditions of parole can be maddeningly difficult," Oliver noted, backing that up with a video of an employed former prisoner named Bilal Chatman.

"It's not always easy to care about the welfare of ex-prisoners, and some are going to re-offend no matter what you do," Oliver said. "But the fact remains, over 95 percent of all prisoners will eventually be released, so it's in everyone's interest that we try to give them a better chance of success." And — lest you think this is just another bleak look at another legal quagmire — he ended with a real success story, Chatman. Oliver never seems all the comfortable in his interviews, but Chatman is plenty confident, and the kind of subject you want to root for — especially since some of his coworkers did not know about his time behind bars before he went on national television Sunday night. Be aware, there is one un-bleeped-out reference to a "f--k barrel" early on. Peter Weber

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up