John Oliver interviews ex-prisoner while examining the prison re-entry system

John Oliver has tackled many aspects of America’s broken criminal justice system, from mandatory minimums that have resulted in prisons crowded with non-violent offenders to an unjust bail system that privileges the wealthy.

Oliver then sat down with a former prisoner, Bilal Chatman, to help address the seemingly unending number of obstacles he and countless others faced upon leaving prison-starting with society’s negative approach to ex-inmates. It turns out numerous laws that make it tough for former inmates to gain employment or apply for housing, in a few cases forcing them back into a cycle of crime, date back to the 1990s.

“Once your money runs out, you can find yourself hungry and desperate because, in many states, anyone with felony drug convictions can be banned from government food benefits”, he continues.

On Sunday night’s “Last Week Tonight”, John Oliver spent almost 20 minutes on the topic of prison re-entry.

“Imagine”, Oliver said, “if you had f*&ked a watermelon”.

“People are judgmental – people that don’t know”, Chatman said of how society looks negatively at those who have served prison time. At one point in his monologue, Oliver cited one statistic that said half of all people who get out of prison will eventually go back. “I’m not that same person. I’m a taxpayer, I work, I’m a citizen, I’m a voter”, Chatman told Oliver. I’m not that prisoner today. “Those the things that define me today”. “I don’t want anybody to look at me as the ex-con”. At the same time, I want this opportunity to be for somehow who say, ‘Oh, man, I can never get a chance.’ There’s always a chance.