We begin today's story in a car in Harlem.
Two eyes trace a once familiar landscape.
It's been 25 years since Edwin Eddie Ellis has walked these streets.
As he steps onto the sidewalk, the sounds of hip hop and local children playing fills the air,
A stark contrast to the prison yard he's just left behind.
He wonders how many of those children would also go on to spend decades locked in behind a barred door.
Because for the past few years,
Eddie has been conducting an investigation in prison unlike any that had been done before.
And it was time to take his findings to the public.
I'm Hannah Fry, a mathematician who studies patterns in human behaviour.
This is tales of data and discover.
A few years later,
a researcher in Brooklyn named Eric Cadora is working for the Centre for Alternative Sentencing and Employment.
Their aim was to find ways to deal with crime that didn't just send people to state prison.
Settling down with a cigarette, Eric is skipping through news reports trying to find something useful.
An interview from the New York Times catches his eye.
It was from 1992 and detailed the recent release of an activist named.
His name was Eddie Ellis.
He was actually the former director of communications for the Black Panther Party.
Black people, we are organizing to stop racism.