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the three day conference includes attorneys, doctors, ex convicts and interested citizens who have worked to improve prison conditions by legislation and education. It is composed of workshops and discussion groups with a goal of planning action on problems that range from the indeterminant sentence to improved medical

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care for prisoners, to plans for housing prisoners in their home communities near family and friends. Today's morning session featured a panel discussion by ex convicts discussing a wide range of topics. Karen wald is one of the conference organizers. We hope that people won't just be coming

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for a three day conference where they'll learn, be educated, maybe read something about the prison movement and go home. We hope that when people learn what the conditions of the prisons in this country are like that, they'll be activated to do something about it. And there

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are lots of things that they can do ranging from simply beginning communications with prisoners and helping them have some contact with the outside world to organizations such as the Medical Committee for Human Rights and other medical people who are trying to deal with the question of

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repression, medical repression in the prisons. The um experimentation with drugs and electric shock and neurosurgery on prisoners. People in this country are in prison who are, who are filling the prisons in this country. Are there basically because they're poor, whether they're white or black or chicano

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or asian indian, they're poor. And that's the first reason that they're in prison uh within that category of poor people. Most of those people are non white and those are the first steps in changing the prison system. The first thing that we want to change is

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people going to prison because they have to steal or because they take drugs because their daily lives are so miserable that they need to escape it. The conference will continue tomorrow with several workshops, skits and a panel discussion by ex convict women Ben Williams, reporting for

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eyewitness news from the University of California.