Transcript for Jared Kushner hosts first forum on prison reform at White House

This was not an issue that I was part of the campaign and one of the reasons that I was excited about this president was I saw that he had potential to be present for all Americans and guess you can come from the traditional governing our government background. I saw the president as somebody who would take on all differences issues that would impact what people. This an issue that I had personal experience with so I spent some time. Thinking about. Well from the from the from the White House what can be done so we started doing the way that that we would look at problems of business we said okay let's assess the problem. Let's come up with a plan to try to drive solutions and lets you know come to a vigorous execution phase. How what I found is that there's a lot of this government who were very very passionate about this issue really wanna drive change and I think we started doing that I think we have a lot more. Effort that's going to be able to come. One of the things get Tito's ticket to the president obviously as this has to be the president's initiative Russert would be able to be working on here. And so we gathered bunch of experts this meet with the president and explained to him you know the situation with 650000 people leaving prison every year. How about these people become future criminals would victims. And often how the people leave from prison or more disadvantaged when they got into prison. And it makes them more likely to commit future offenses than it is for them to have opportunities in and to live a second chance once they paid their debt to society. The president's response is really remarkable he look at it one of the people in the room says the president has said. Well you know you campaign that you were gonna work for the forgotten man woman of this country and there's nobody more forgotten or under represented the people in prison. And I guess you write down the president said that's right we got to do something about this and since then he's been all into you push this initiative and and has really empowered his team and let his team. To try and drive solution suite working in the federal level we're working in the state level with a lot of great governors who are here today. And with a lot of you who are really you know in the field and doing great work so that's how we got here that's why we're doing it and we believe we make a lot of progress.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.