Re-Air Date: 9-5-26
Original Air Date: 4-24-26
Welcome to this throwback edition of Solved, the short-lived show too beautiful for this world, hosted by the producers of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast. We wanted to share this episode, Why You Should Care About Prisons in the Fight for a Better World, while we take a break, because the ICE detention and deportation regime is continuing to get worse, and it's not just an immigration story. It's also a carceral one. There have been more than 50 deaths in a 500-day period, making it worse than peak COVID. Detainees have no access to grievance systems, and the private prison companies are making billions. So here's what the Best of the Left team had to say about prisons back in April of this year.
Welcome to Solved the Political Discussion Show for people with attention spans and those looking to develop one. My name is Jay, and our other resident solvers are Amanda, Dion and Aaron, who will offer a greeting now.
Hey there.
Hello.
How's it.
Collectively, we produce the venerable indispensable, not to mention award-winning podcast. Best of the Left we're humans. That's us, curate progressive media on a chosen topic, creating episodes that are greater than the sum of their parts. On this show, we use those same curation skills to pull together stories and ideas that help us solve some of society's biggest problems.
Because if we don't tell you how to think someone dumber on the internet will today, we're exploring our punishment system that deals with the people who commit the kinds of crimes that the punishment system makes. More likely we'll be starting with the victims working our way through the system and landing back on the victims again, because it turns out that perpetrators are essentially always also victims making for a nice, neat self-perpetuating circle that any number of people have found a way to profit from.
Now, although this show is best enjoyed with an attention span, we understand there's a chance you won't make it to the end. So we'd like to give you the conclusion upfront, leaving the mystery of how we got there.
Pay attention to the victims, not just because it's right, but because doing so is a preventative measure against future harm. We're going to continue the trend of decarceration and prison closings because it's both cheaper and more beneficial to society, to engage other strategies.
We're even going to get conservatives on our side as they're the ones living in rural communities where prisons are being built, turning their towns into, soulless prison towns. For the prisons that do exist, there are a lot of good ideas to align them with actual healing rather than perpetuating trauma.
But that's only in the meantime, until we can completely rethink our cultural approach to what real justice looks like
. As promised, we're starting today with the victims, this article from The Atlantic, the People Most Ignored by the Criminal Justice System. This is written by Lenore Anderson, and to set the stage, they say quote.
More than one in four Americans have been a victim of violent crime in the past decade, but fewer able to get the help they deserve.
Less than 10% of violent crime victims get assistance from victim services agencies, and two thirds of victims report never receiving mental health or financial assistance. Many suffer further losing their jobs due to injury, accumulating, insurmountable medical debt, and assuming financial burdens left over from deceased loved ones, all while facing the health effects of the traumas they have suffered, such as chronic and debilitating stress, hypervigilance, depression and insomnia. End quote.
So the disconnect in advocacy around the justice system is that there's kind of two groups. There's the group that just wants to strengthen it, make it bigger, harder, faster. And then there's the decarceration, abolition People who want to reduce the size of the system we have and maybe get rid of it in entirely and in the mix.
Victims tend to be overlooked. And so this writer founded the Alliance for Safety and Justice and has surveyed as part of their work over 10,000 victims of crime. And says, quote, we
found that most victims prefer an approach to public safety that addresses the problem at its roots, say, by treating addiction, offering conflict mediation and mentorship for vulnerable youth, or providing crisis assistance for people with mental illness and prepares people with convictions for reintegration and law abiding citizenship victims are generally no tougher on crime than non victims.
They prefer rehabilitation over tough justice, even though they've had firsthand experience with crime. And the criminal justice system, in quote, which the writer points out, is in contrast with common wisdom, but is probably something that we should start paying closer attention to because the people who pay close attention to it, either the advocates who know deeply why the system is broken, or the victims who find themselves a part of the system unwillingly, all recognize. Something has to change actually. Lots of things need to change.
I'll probably hit this point. Several times throughout this episode, but this is a culture issue. We talked about this on Almost solved and article from A.R. Moxon about how we have a culture of abuse and we need to create a culture of healing.
This is all about the culture of abuse. We, we don't actually want prisons to make people better. We just want to punish people. And that Jay said it over and over again in the intro of the punishment system. That's, 'cause that's what this is. It's not about making anything better, and it certainly isn't about making the victims whole for whatever crime happened to them.
That's not even a consideration because depending on what is done to you, what do you get from someone being locked in a box away? There's no recovery, there's no restoration, there's nothing. It's just that person is being punished. guess some people might find some solace in that, but it doesn't make whatever happened better.
And that's just because we're in this culture of abuse and the solution to an abuse is more abuse, not healing. So we're gonna have to figure out some stuff more than just policy stuff, but like how, how we change this culture from one of punishment to one of actual justice.
that people don't profit off of.
yeah, for sure. I think this also is a function of the individualized society that we live in. And I'm not saying people don't have empathy when a crime happens for the victims of the crime. but I also think a lot of the framing around crime is me and mine. Like how do I keep myself safe?
There is crime happening to other people and I am worried about me. And that's what prison serves a function of, of like lock people away so that I can feel safer even if I wasn't the victim of their crime. and that just, again, I, it feels very, I don't even wanna say American, obviously it's capitalist 'cause there's people who profit from this narrative and this fearmongering.
but I definitely think it's just like us as individuals and how we view the world through the lens.
And people also don't see it as a failure of our government or a failure of the systems that we have, and they look at it as an individual problem. These people are bad. So therefore, instead of why have they fallen through the cracks? Why did they drop outta school? Why, do they feel they need to do really desperate things for money or, you know, belonging?
I mean, like, all of these things are not talked about hardly at all when we talk about the system and how badly it is not only, treating the people who are in the system constantly, but the rest of us don't benefit from this either. We just live in an environment where we think we have to be afraid of everyone, and that if someone does something that we deem as bad, then there must be something actually wrong with them instead of the fact that society has failed them in some way.
And that paradigm has led us to, I mean, look, we're talking about private prisons a lot lately because of what's happening with ICE and the detention centers, which are some of the most horrific human rights abuses we've seen, and like we got here because of the decades of not addressing what is actually wrong with the system and with our society.
And the little nuance I would add that I, think, sort of touches on what all three of you just said is that, yes, people want to punish other people, but the bit that they're missing and that, that I think is important to include is that they think that punishing people is the appropriate policy response to make society better. They're just wrong about that. And so I think, that both things happen. I think people have like a little bit of a bloodlust for like, bad people need to be punished. I feel good when bad people are punished, but they think that there's not a contradiction there. They don't think to themselves like, well I know this is bad for society as a whole, but it feels good for me.
You know, they actually think that their feelings are aligned with the greater good. , and I think it's the masking , that Amanda was pointing to is like, it makes me feel safer to have people locked up. And so those are two sides of the same coin. It's like, I really want people to be punished, 'cause bad people do bad things, and I hate that.
And I want them to be pu punished. And also it makes me safer. how I know it's better for society because I feel safer. And again, they're just wrong about almost every element of what they're saying. But it has an internal consistency.
Which explains. So this article, gets into describing tough on crime reforms. It, they went back to Reagan and, how the rhetoric began to change then. But then it says, quote,
in response to high profile homicides, president Bill Clinton championed sentencing policies such as three strikes and You're out.
Wide net surveillance, militarized police agencies, pretrial detention, and harsh prison sentences and conditions became standard. These changes were popular, but focused on punishment and retribution with little regard for helping victims or alleviating the deeper common causes of crime and violence.
and this is what does set victims apart from non victims. They know intimately how poorly our system supports those who have been hurt by crime. And it goes on.
Additionally, ignoring victims can perversely result in more crime. I saw this firsthand fresh out of law school in 2001.
I began working with parents of incarcerated youth who were virtually all low income people of color. Almost every young person I encountered had been a victim long before they were ever arrested for committing a crime, a phenomenon, all too common for both youths and adults entering our justice system. So it's, we are running our system on vibes instead of on evidence. But the evidence is mounting so much that we might start to tip the scales. And we're even gonna be talking about conservatives who have seen a little bit of the light recently. And you know, all of this can give us a little bit of hope.
mean, based on their theory of, how this works, this should be the safest country on planet earth, right? spend more on the police than any other country. We spend more on incarceration than any other country. We have more people in prison than any other country. Are you feeling safe yet? Like eventually the logic of this goes to we all have to be in prison, and I think
Yeah.
I mean, that's, it's being tried right
Oh boy.
Uh, okay. But you're asking, this, critical thinking of a group of people who literally celebrated. Trump by saying, daddy's coming home and he's gonna punish everyone. Like you're deeply entrenched in that patriarchal like power dynamic to think that like punitive actions are what causes change, what influences behavior to be better instead of, again, like there's a correlation between being abused and being an abuser, and there's a reason you do what you know.
And if all we know is punishment, all we know is that harshness, then like that's the society we're gonna live in. So I, I love this evidence, but it is hard because there's so much evidence, there's so many studies that have been done to say we're doing it wrong. as Dionne said, you can just use your eyes, you can just feel the society that we live in and how punitive it is.
And yet we still have crime. People still don't feel safe. so I desperately want us to make a pivot. I just don't know how we like combat the cultural. And of course it's gonna take time and patience and shows like this that continue to reiterate over and over and over again until maybe like we make strides advocacy work, it's joined by the general population.
so of course the thing that. We all know that it's sort of something that we probably feel like we don't even have to say, but obviously we should. I'm reminded of, again, from almost solved how we were kind of called out for not saying something that we all obviously believe, but we should say it out loud, right?
This is a racist fucking system. And so when we talk about the people who want people to be locked up, they are often people in who are white in pretty safe neighborhoods.
Yeah.
They, the fear is of an other. It's not like my neighborhood is dangerous and therefore I'm afraid. In fact, it's people of color who end up predominantly living in neighborhoods that are more dangerous because of income inequality and structural racism and all the other things who are more often the victims of crime.
So like the disconnect there is wild and like just reinforces the fact that, by and large white people who think that we should have the most severe criminal justice system in the world, think that they would never ever be someone who committed a crime, which is an absurd way to think, but they think that because they think well.
I'm a good person who's, you know, never had anything really go wrong for me, and therefore, like I would never do something like that. Well, yeah, you've never been desperate. you had most of your needs met your whole life. Maybe you haven't been traumatized too severely, like good for you. You lucked the fuck out.
And the idea that they can't recognize humanity in humanity is part of the problem. And that's the fight we're up against. 'cause like, yeah, all the studies show what we should do. It's the racism that stops progress from being made because they actually think there's a difference in the type of human involved, which is so deeply fucked up.
And like, until we really make progress there, it's gonna be very hard to bring those people along.
Sometimes people don't need to be brought along. sometimes they need to be defeated and made to live in a different world than the one they would prefer.
Yeah. proven wrong.
is to bring enough people along,
Yeah.
you know, we just bring enough people along to win in democratic fashion, and then we can build a better society.
I think it just came up with a tagline, Bring enough people along, prove the rest of 'em wrong. There we go.
​
next up, more hope jails are closing across America. Why this written by Brian Dolinar in the nation and it says, quote,
on September 18th, 2023, after a protracted battle in the courts, Illinois became the first state to adopt a cashless bail system. Bail reform has been implemented in New Jersey and New York, but now Illinois has the strongest legislation of any state in the country.
Uh, spoiler alert, the headline was. Jails are closing in America. Why? And they sort gave it away right away. Cashless bail, policy is spreading and is making a huge difference in the number of people sitting in jail because I, I don't have the stat in front of me, but it is like a, a shockingly high percentage of people who are in jail but haven't actually been convicted yet.
They're just waiting for trial. And if we could just not have those people be in jail, use a different system to make sure they show up, then we wouldn't have so many people being traumatized in jails all the time. article goes on.
Bail reform has changed the conversation with the falling number of incarcerated people. Activists have new ammunition to argue against jail expansion. A letter calling for no new jail was co-written by Jerome Wright, who spent three decades in prison and is now a board member at VOICE Buffalo.
The letter was endorsed by some 30 organizations.
And then speaking of the city where he lives, Buffalo, New York was, considering a new prison. Jerome Wright says, quote,
the world is moving toward decarceration. Wright said in an interview, Buffalo is ignoring the larger trends. If you get 1500 beds, you're going to find a way to get 1500 people to be in there. Bail reform, be damned end quote. And that's, another major element of our system is that, you have to think about our vast prison system as infrastructure.
And infrastructure takes a lot of time and money to build. And by the very nature of in infrastructure, you always have to build it before you're using it. And so predicting how many people are we going to need to lock up by the time this prison is done is an interesting and kind of fucked up math to have to do.
Right? And by the nature of spending money on something, whether it's a person or a government, if you spent money on something, you're gonna want to get the use out of it. You're not gonna want to realize. We spent hundreds of millions of dollars building a mega prison only then to realize, oh, we could have just changed our policies and not needed to lock up so many people.
That's kind of embarrassing. And so that, that's the point that's being made here. It's like if you build a prison and put beds in it, the incentive is there to try to fill those beds. And that is an incredibly perverse incentive in and of itself to have a system in the country that sort of pushes people to want to put more people in prison as opposed to let's try to have the fewest number of people in prison as possible, like by reducing crime number one, but also reducing, the punitive nature of how we deal with crime when it happens.
Do you guys remember Kalief Browder?
Yes. Uh, yes.
For those who don't remember, it was, I think it was 2015, Kalief Browder committed suicide after being released from Rikers Island. He was in, held for 700 days in solitary confinement in Rikers Island. Without trial. He never went to trial. He was never convicted of a crime.
I mean, what does 700 days of, of solitary confinement due to any human being, especially someone who's sitting in a prison for not committing a crime. But that's, I mean, that was a major story at the time. I think it should have been a bigger story and still should be talked about, because that is why a state like Illinois would go with cashless bail, because there are people all over the country just sitting in prison who may or may not have done anything that's, you know, we, we have this idea that you are,
innocent until proven guilty. But in this country we don't do that because of this infrastructure that's built that Jay was talking about. Like that's once you build these buildings, they have to be used. And Jay made an offhand comment before we started talking about, we were joking about, uh, my laundry room is a mess.
And Jay said, A great way to keep your laundry room clean is to have less clothes. And like a great way to keep less people in prison is to have less prisons. Like that's, I mean, it's, it makes logical sense, but if, if the goal of your society is to have less people in prison, that makes sense.
That's not the goal of this society. We keep, we've talked about this multiple times now, but that's not the goal of this society. It's clearly a society that was built. Like Amanda said, this is a racist society and this is a direct outgrowth of the end of slavery. This is a way to have a, underclass of people that you can do whatever you want to.
Like, you know, go watch Netflix's documentary 13th Slavery's still legal in America. It's just legal. If you're behind those bars and prisoners are treated like subhumans in America and you're treated that way, whether you're convicted of a crime. Still waiting to decide if you've actually committed a crime.
And that is, I mean, it's horrendous. Like it's, it's not, it, it's one of those things when, I hate when people say this, it's so un-American, but it literally is un-American in the sense of it's should be unconstitutional, but it's not the way it functions. And it's because we've spent all this money on all these structures.
Now we gotta fill 'em up. We got all these people working. It's a jobs creation program too. Like there's the, the secondary function of that, it keeps people employed. It's, it's a whole economy unto itself, and it's based on human suffering and misery.
yeah. And not to mention the economy that comes out of, paying. prisoners next to nothing to make things for the economy at large. I mean that part alone should be completely illegal,
and of course there's like corruption with subcontractors and how much they charge for certain services. To me, you know, if we're going to spend the amount that we allocate towards law enforcement to prison systems, we could at least do a model like Denmark where they invested money. But it is all in the, objective of reducing recidivism and also just making, like they have more of a restorative justice way, like reintegrating back into society. Uh, life in their jail, in their prison reflects society. It doesn't separate you cause you to live a different life than what you're supposed to live once you're integrated back into everyday society, and I think those models have shown their success, so I'm not opposed to spending my tax dollars towards something, but like, if we're going to, let's, let's actually do something that works instead of just throwing money at systems that are cruel, inhumane, and also don't keep us safe.
Their approach is much more about recognizing that if people are in their justice system, like something went wrong, right? Like, we didn't take care of this person in some way. They clearly need support to be a better member of society. So let's focus on that. The idea that punishment is the only goal is counterproductive, and we don't seem to understand that.
We are more into the punishment and the idea of it than we are thinking about the fact. If someone gets out of prison, I want them to be able to function. Like, why would everyone not want that? Because if you don't set them up to be able to function in society, you are going to repeat the cycle. And this is why we call it a cycle.
Like there is nothing there to ensure that we aren't making hurt or damaged or broken or whatever the words might be. People why would we not want to make them better? They're going to come out eventually while some of them don't we want them to be better? Don't we want that?
Isn't that the goal? And we just do not think that way. And it is, it's bonkers. I don't get it.
so we've talked about the societal, but like on an individual level, We distance ourselves from things that we're ashamed of. And shame is one of the strongest emotions, one of the most volatile emotions that you can have. It's dangerous. But I think in society we put on a good face, we mask.
And we also don't like to acknowledge that we all do harm onto others. We all participate in harm at some point in our life, whether it's in a crime sense or just a hurting other sense on an emotional or physical level. And I think when you have that and you can't actually like, forgive yourself when you have a hard time with the like, reparations model, why would we be able to imagine a system that's better, that's compassionate?
When we don't center that in our own relationships, you know, one-on-one. We don't have compassionate relationships at work. We don't generally have them at home. Uh, when you're younger, like parents aren't generally compassionate with their children. Hopefully we're changing that. I'm not shitting on parents, but how many states do we have where capital punishment is like still legal, most of our states.
And I think that's just like reflective of how we engage with one another. So of course, as broken people, we have created an entirely broken system. And the objectives of that, I think have gotten completely lost.
A couple of thoughts based on this conversation just now. you know, Dionne talking about the guy who was not convicted of anything but took his own life after being in Rikers Island. It just brought to mind again, the old saying that regulation is written in blood. why would a state like Illinois or New Jersey be so motivated to change their cash bail system?
It's not just because advocates and the writers of white papers made the best arguments. Politics is reactive in a lot of ways, and it's generally too slow to react and ends up requiring a lot of suffering before it. Rises to the level that people decide to, take action on it.
Which actually brings me to a, another article. This, this was like on the cutting room floor for this conversation, so I didn't pass it around. But this from March of this year says this from boltsmag.org
judge orders Colorado to stop throwing prisoners in solitary for refusing to work. And after telling the opening story, it says,
the judge ruled that Colorado had failed to abide by a change voters made to their state constitution in 2018.
That erased language, allowing quote, slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime in quote, recognizing like the 13th amendment of the US Constitution, abolished slavery, uh, at the end of the Civil War, but included a carve out about, slavery being allowed as part of punishment for a crime.
Colorado voters said, no, we should change that. That is not how we want things to work in Colorado. So the fact that. It seems like the Colorado Corrections Department is not living up to it. Of course, they're arguing that they are, and it's going through the courts, but you know, the judge ruled against the state saying, your actions are not living up to what the voters said.
And so, again, it's like we're doing bad things. We still have this bad nationwide policy written into the Constitution that slavery is allowed if it's for punishment for a crime, but state by state, we can make the decision to change our constitutions to effectively outlaw that where we are. I mean, the, the idea that anyone would oppose that would be like, even, even the people who want to lock people up and throw them away, would they be willing to say out loud, I want them to be enslaved? That's, that's tough. They, they, they might think it. I, I'm, I'm seeing the look on Dion's face. I think they'd, uh, say it behind closed doors. I don't know that they'd say it in public.
​
Next up, more hope we, this is the most hopeful show anyone has ever recorded about our punishment system in Arkansas. A small community fights the nation's next mega prison, written by Lauren Gill for the Nation Magazine. And. So this, this is a long piece, and so you know, we're not telling the whole story.
But the, the summary is this. The Nation magazine documented what happened when Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders purchased an 815 acre ranch in rural Franklin County in Arkansas to build a 3000 bed mega prison. and how the conservative community that voted for her fought back and began questioning incarceration itself.
So to start, this is from a, a quote from an 83-year-old cowboy rancher who unsurprisingly voted for the Republican, uh, governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders. So it says, quote,
as Don found himself thinking and talking about prisons more than ever, he questioned his vote.
I always thought my whole life, I thought, that's the governor's problem. Let them solve it. I just voted farming. That's their department. Let them run it. But they're not running it. They're not taking care of us and. It is the same pattern over and over and over again that people don't understand what is not right in front of their face.
They are often not sympathetic when they don't have personal experience. I get it. But the fact that conservative people confronted with a mega prison in their community, which frankly it's always conservative people who are going to be confronted with mega prisons in their community because that's where they build 'em. And when faced with it, they begin to see the light, and that is hopeful.
Yeah, the reasons for seeing the light vary, but at least they do, I guess is the, is the underlined point there. I mean, I was actually really pleased to read about people who were upset by this, like people who didn't want to live next to a mega prison. And, it got me thinking about the, the movie, uh, the Zone of Interest because that's about Nazi Germany and people living right next to a concentration camp and like living daily life, you know, and so like, I'm, I'm glad there is a strong, I don't want this here now.
Why? Yeah. There's varying reasons why, but some of these people do seem to come to the conclusion that like, yeah, this isn't good. Is it like mega prisons? Maybe that shouldn't really exist at all. Maybe I don't want that anywhere, not just right next to me. And like, that's the line of thinking that we can hope that people kind of go on.
And reach, reach the conclusion that, right, like what is the benefit here to our society? What are, what are we actually doing?
I think often when we talk about conservatives, like there's that, uh, leftist, elitist looking down on conservatives for not being as aware or, you know, whatever it might be. But, uh, you know, I took great hope from this article and yes, everything Jay said, like, of course, personal interest, same with Amanda, caused them to take action.
But this was a great story of organizing and when you think of a lot of moments in society when there were strong organizing, role people, conservative people were a part of it. So like labor unions that crossed political divisions. And I think, you know, in America we have a great propaganda system and I try to use that to be compassionate about people who maybe don't take action until it directly impacts them.
But what I got from this article is that there's hope. When the moment arises, people can organize and they can fight back against, you know, the systems that be, ' cause this was a great triumph for that community in particular.
I just read, uh, a little substack. I, I can't remember the author, so I'm not gonna be able to give 'em credit. But about how fantasy is not reality. The problem with fantasy movies and, and stuff like that. But he, he, he brought it into real life. He said as a small child, his fantasy was that he was the fastest person in the world.
And then he started running races against other kids and realized, oh, I'm not fast. And we're witnessing this with Donald Trump. Everything Donald Trump says is, is not real. It's made up. It's bullshit. And when it actually has to come in contact with something real and tangible, it falls apart. And this, this fantasy that prisons are good.
Prisons keep you safe when it hits your backyard, when it hits you right in the face, the fantasy falls apart. And all you're left with is the reality. And like Aaron said, there, there is this multi-billion dollar machine designed to keep people living in the fantasy. But every now and then, none of that works and reality peaks through and they have to see it.
And that's why there's always hope, because I mean, there's, there's gonna be some delusional people that even in the face of reality, clinging to the delusion, we're not talking about them, talking about the vast majority of people who, once they see reality, they can't go back to the fantasy. And, these people were confronted with reality right in their face and thought, oh.
What this isn't right, and I think that can happen in a lot of areas, but specifically this one, like it is a hopeful story. Reality is, is reality and no bullshit can and hide it forever If, if it ever comes up against reality.
Yeah. And you know, this is, Arkansas and not too far away is Alabama, which is a state known for its horrific prisons. Right. And that has gotten, you know, I don't know to which corners it has reached, but that has gotten significant attention in the last decade. And there have been lawsuits and documentaries and, and all of that.
And part of the, I mean, speaking of documentaries, I'm gonna shout out, uh, The Alabama Solution, which came out last year, focusing specifically on Prim, where there were horrific murders and human rights abuses going on, and how. The public eventually fought back against that. But what mega prisons in rural areas made me think about more is, you know, as we've been talking about, these places become employers of the community, right? And so they definitely are sold in some places, in some towns as like, look, we're gonna bring jobs to your community. And people may be like, okay, that sounds good.
But the whole idea of a prison as an employer is a messed up premise in and of itself, because you are paying people not that well, but you're paying people to go work in a very highly secure, and by its nature, secret place where then of course, the secrecy leads to abuse and violations of every kind because you're in this alternate reality.
That is what it creates. Like this is not, if you go into a prison, it is another world. It's completely different from the outside. And when you have people working there and spending their days there, not only do they also experience trauma, which is also mentioned in here, but they are given extraordinary power over other human beings.
In a secret, very well secured environment. That alone is a psychological, you know, it's incorrect. Let's just just say it like that. It, you should not put any human into that environment. Give them that kind of power and then, never let anything about what's going on. See the light of day.
And that is why there are so many abuses in the prison system, because, I mean, in the trailer for the, this documentary or The Alabama Solution, they talk about how they won't let journalists in is just like the detention centers. They don't want people to see what's going on and they can get away with it.
And so the whole dynamic is a mess. Like we are creating an environment that absolutely, you know, clears the path to humans doing horrible things, even if they didn't think that's what they would do before they went in there.
You guys are really teaming me up for a couple of my favorite quotes from this article. So. describing one local resident who opposed the construction. They were accused of nimbyism, just like not in my backyard. And they actually admitted that they were the kind of person who's like, well, it was just about I, I don't want this near my property first.
But here's what they ended up saying.
McChristian says, she grappled with the criticism, admitting she'd been naive about incarceration in the state. And then speaking, she says, as I've come to know more and more, I've just been horrified about our entire prison system. She told me, she talked about wanting state officials to tackle root causes of crime, like poverty and poor education, and prioritize programs to keep people out of prison after release.
And she also said, quote, my
NIMBY stance was for my family property in the beginning. Now it's for my whole state. She told me, I say, no, we don't want a prison. We don't want this mega prison in this state. We don't need this mega prison in this state. So that person had a total transformation of their perspective.
And then on the myth of benefits, it goes into detail. I mean, I'm, this is just yes, ands to everything Amanda laid out. It says, quote,
prisons are proposed as a kind of all purpose solution, though they kind of rarely deliver on promises of economic development, or at least the delivery of economic development is really unseen.
Allan ScheptScheptSchept told me, generally speaking, the worse a community is economically, the less of a positive impact a prison will have. And then it goes on.
Corrections officers have a higher rate of divorce and substance use. One study found that 34% of officers suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder compared to 14% of military veterans and 7% of the population.
The people who go home at night, they bring that stress and tension outside into their families and neighbors and friends and communities. The prison almost begins to imprison the community in a way or create a very similar kind of atmosphere. Fear in quote
That line in
like
got me. Mm-hmm.
that is not what people get told when it's suggested that, hey, we could bring jobs to your area and like torture the people who work there and give them post-traumatic stress and then they will go out into your community and inflict that on everyone else.
And by the way, turn your city into a prison city. It's like the, the other part of this article. Is that they go to another city that had a, the similar experience, but actually had the prison built to see what happened in, in the aftermath. And of course, now it's a prison town that is dying because nobody wants to live in a prison town. So all the kids are leaving, everyone who's left is stuck in a dying town.
And I don't have the numbers in front of me, but like a lot of the people who work there don't live in the area. 'cause again, no one wants to live near a prison. So the, the whole pitch that a we need prisons to put people in prison is built on a fallacy and is not, actually how we should be thinking about things.
And then to bolster the idea, they have to dangle the carrot of economic development and jobs. But what that actually looks like in reality is we are going to come in and carve out the soul of your town. So the town will technically still exist, but it will be dying. And all the people we employ to work here will be in a incredibly traumatizing, uh, situation.
And you'll have to deal with that too.
Know, all I kept thinking about was, the images during COVI of prisoners, I mean it was all over, but I think New York was highlighted , , but I know it was more than one place where they were like holding their hands out.
The very tiny slits of the windows in this concrete prison they were in and like waving. You know, makeshift signs or kind of like pieces of material to try to get people's attention because COVID was running rampant through the prison system and nobody was doing anything about it. And they were all just sitting ducks with no protection of any kind.
And of course, you know, the kind of restrictions that these prisons put in place during COVID were things like just keep everyone in their cell, which is, you know, effectively solitary, right? And that image of those hands out the window, just like, Ima, 'cause these were places where you would walk down the street and you could see that, and it, the idea that you could walk by a place where people are imprisoned and like not even realize it, you know, if you're in a more of a city environment, of course a mega prison in the country, you would notice.
But like, just the idea of that there's something like deeply, deeply messed up about it. And if you're not affected by that, if you're not affected by living next to a mega prison or, the environment that is behind those, you know, gray concrete walls and what it is doing to people, I'm not really blaming anyone. It's easy to not see it. It's easy to not. Think about it, because that's the point. That's what they want. They want this to exist outside of the public eye. Don't make anyone think about it outta sight, outta mind,
but it's, if you live nearby, you're gonna be thinking about it a lot. It's probably not the environment anyone wants to live in, but it's also a sign that we shouldn't be doing it this way at all.
It's very rare that you want to hide something that's good, like, you know, maybe a surprise party. It's temporary, but a structure, a an entire way of, of doing things that is based around secrecy, almost always a bad
thing.
yeah, yeah.
It's convenient for people too, though. Like if you hide it, then I don't have to think about it, and I don't have to wrestle with the fact that we have this cruel system. Right. Yeah.
Oh, it's intentional. That's what I'm saying. It is intentional. We don't, they don't want people to think like, Hey, wait a minute. That seems, that seems bad.
Well, and then of course we have a pandemic. We have one of these catastrophes. And who is the most impacted? Who does it hit in that way? Yeah. The most vulnerable people in our population. Surprise. The ones that you've forgotten about, the ones that you don't want to think about. Yep..
so the article highlights, at least there's one Republican state senator who can think clearly, at least on this issue. I'm sure we disagree on other things. Senator Bryan King told residents quote.
There's no way the state's going to afford what we're fixing to go down. He told residents, look at Alabama, look at Utah.
These prisons, these mega prisons are mega financial disasters in quote. So like, I mean, I'm, I'm listening to all the conversation about how we shouldn't be able to morally stand to have these institutions in our, in our midst, but of course people can stand it. But what people often can't stand is their tax dollars being spent badly.
talking about the costs, the article says, quote,
the project manager clarified in a letter that the prison would cost at least $825 million, nearly double the 470 million that Governor Sanders estimated in 2023. In response, lawmakers introduced a bill to allocate $750 million with the possibility of amending the amount up to 1 billion end quote.
And I just think like Arkansas has a billion dollars and they think that's the best possible thing they can do with it. Sanders ran on this as part of her campaign, said it was gonna be less than half a billion dollars. And it's like, well, it might be twice as much, but Yeah.
The legislature's like, cool. You, you do, you, let's, let's do it.
I just wanna put that price tag next to the Denmark Prison that I talked about where everybody gets a dorm, they have a fridge, a tv, it costs, I wanna say a hundred million pounds, which is $132 million. So like if we're gonna spend that much, come on. Like, what?
What the hell? Literally, what the hell?
Mm.
that's kind of the point I was I was gonna make is like this is for a 3000. A person prison, right? Like that, that was the number you're gonna spend a billion dollars
Yep.
incarcerating 3000 people. Like, think, think about what you could do with a billion dollars for the state of Arkansas, let alone to just turn 3000 people into storage.
Like it's, it's, it's obscene on a financial level that forget all the moral and ethical implications. Just like that, that's just a bad use of, money, period.
And, you know, let's, I pulled up the stats here just for fun. Like Arkansas's not doing well in most areas when compared with the rest of the country. So, you know, for healthcare, they're number 47 for education. They're number 36. That's not great. Maybe you could do some work in those areas with that kind of money.
yeah, people in the state do have some other ideas for how the money could be spent. The article says this is in response to a woman suggesting funding work education programs instead of more prisons. That same state, Senator King says,
considered her suggestion. we know what is not working now.
And, you know, at some point in time you gotta try something different.
Oh,
Understatement of the year. Like, you know, well, we, we tried this for, 150 years. 400 years, and I think we're starting to figure out that this isn't working. Maybe we should look in other directions.
It, it actually like full on infuriates me when conservatives have that moment. As we've been screaming forever, you know, ever about this stuff. Like, it just makes me wanna tear my hair out, but, you know. Okay, I'll put that aside. Good on you. Glad we're glad we're thinking about new ideas here.
We have some. Let's talk.
​
Next up, there is a cross ideological report put together by the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute Working Group on criminal justice reform. This is called Changing Prisons to help people change, and it starts this way saying, quote,
policy change within institutions has to begin at the state level through the Departments of Corrections.
For For example, California has rebranded their state corrections division and renamed it the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. For many, these are not only name changes, but shifts in policy and practice. It also explains how our current incarceration system is incredibly traumatic for people, and that's bad.
So good conclusion there. They explain that reintegration with society is incredibly difficult when people are traumatized, which doesn't feel like it needed two think tanks to come together to figure that out. But it's, I, I don't, I don't mind that they came to the conclusion, I just wish we didn't need to be told this incredibly obvious thing.
And so they come to this interesting theory, they begin advocating for cognitive behavioral therapy programs in prisons. And so it says this quote.
CBT programs help people identify negative thoughts, practice skills for use in real world situations, and learn problem solving skills. For example, a person with a substance use disorder might start practicing new coping skills and rehearsing ways to avoid or deal with a high risk situation that could trigger a relapse.
Thus, the widespread implementation of cognitive behavioral therapy as part of correctional programming could lead to fewer rearrests and lower likelihood of re-incarceration after release. And finally, it says, quote,
Evaluations of CBT programs for justice involved.
People found that cognitive restructuring treatment was significantly effective in reducing criminal behavior with those receiving CBT showing recidivism reductions of 20 to 30% compared to control groups. End quote. What w what was everyone's like as you were reading this? 'cause we all know where it goes next, but, as the listeners catch up, what was your, like initial reactions to the idea of therapy in prison?
Obviously
I was like, imagine if this was at the forefront, like on the preventative end of things versus the cleanup
I remember the reaction to, uh, people seeing pictures of you. You remember Anders, Breivik He was a, mass shooter in Norway, years ago. And he's in a relatively high security prison in Norway, and it looks better than a lot of elementary schools in America.
It's just more open. They have a lot more access to activities, the basketball courts, amenities, the foods better all of that. And the consensus was anger here, I think like he should be suffering, but like, that's not, what's the benefit? Him suffering doesn't bring back the people that he killed.
Right? And if your goal is to make people better and reintegrate to them in society at some point, by the way, he's still in prison because he may not be able to be reintegrated back in society. He might end up in prison forever because he can't go back. But their goal is to get people back in and to do that, warehousing them, making them like, as Amanda said, live in this alternate reality where the rules there do not apply to the rules outside.
That's just a complete and total, like one-to-one step to get them to go back into prison at some later date. My reaction is like, how, how on earth has no one seen this before? Why is it so hard for people to accept that the way we're doing it is wrong? Unless this is actually what you want?
Like, I, I think, I do think there's a lot of people that like, they just like it like this. They do like the idea of these people suffering and don't really care what happens after that, just as long as they're suffering.
I'm like, so on the individual, I feel like we're chasing our tails of like societal versus you know, people and like how they perceive the world. Because to me, like when you think so harshly of others, that's because that's what's been done to you. Like you weren't shown grace when you've messed up. You were shown punishment when you did something wrong, and therefore that's the only way you can conceptualize this really bad thing.
Like clearly you have to be. Suffering. You have to be, you know, on the brink, live a miserable rest of your life because that's how our society is structured. You do a bad thing, you get punished. And so, you know, when I said the original thing about imagine at the forefront, I think of this on several levels.
Like if we invest in an education, but we also integrated, and also promoted, like emotional intelligence. Like the things that Jay pointed out that they worked on in therapy, in prison are things we should be teaching children. Emotional regulation. How do you deal with, difficult situations?
How do you navigate conflict? Like those are all basic skills that I do feel like we don't necessarily teach as a society. We leave it up to parents. So we have very different children in our society. Some learn it, some don't. What happens to the ones who don't?
Amanda had a feelings class in school when she was a
I had a feelings
didn't, and I, and I, I think, I think we can tell the difference these days.
Well, we also, we kind of, uh, we draw that as the generational line 'cause we're only two years apart, but like that is the tip over a point
I
did.
for how things shifted? I think. Well, yeah. I mean, not everyone had a village teacher, but like, there was something happening in the early nineties in like, it was like, it wasn't, she was new, you know, when I was in, uh, probably second grade or something.
It was like, we're introducing this person who's, it was like new ideas like that to try to bring different skills to kids in school. But, uh, you know, it's, it's helpful,
Or we could just build big, cement blocks and throw people away. And I'm the,
right? Yeah. You could
that's the alternative. Who needs
feelings class?
whichever costs less, whichever costs
less is the one I want to do.
I personally am thinking that the feelings teacher might cost a little less, just on a hunch. I think that might be the.
So my initial reaction to the, the therapy was, yes, but is it going to really make a difference? Like, are we bringing a feelings teacher to a shiv fight? And, um, so like I, you know, I'm like, I'm not, I'm not downplaying. Apparently the research says that it like, does make an impact 20 to 30% reduction in recidivism.
Great. However, they do get to sort of the problem here, that I was like feeling in my gut. And it says, quote, even
the most robust CBT program that meets three hours per week leaves 165 hours a week in which the participant is enmeshed in the typical prison environment, such an arrangement is bound to dilute the therapy's impact. Boy, that is a gentle and cautious way of saying
that.
And so, like, this is where the re report pivots pretty hard because it's like, therapy's good. Maybe we should have all of prison be therapy. So
again, tearing my hair out.
So they start re-imagining pretty hardcore. Saying quote, cognitive
communities in prison would be an immersive experience in cognitive behavioral therapy involving cognitive restructuring, anti criminal modeling, skill building, problem solving, and emotion
management.
These communities would promote new ways of thinking and behaving among its participants around the clock.
Blending the best aspects of therapeutic communities with CBT principles would lead to cognitive communities with several key elements, a separate physical space, community, participation in daily activities, reinforcement of pro-social behavior, use of teachable moments and structured programs.
This cultural shift in prison organization provides a foundation for restorative justice practices in prisons in quote and. As someone who's been paying attention to politics for 25 ish years, the American Enterprise Institute was always one of the, the bad guys. You know, they're like friends with the Bush administration, you know, free market principles, which, has plenty of ick, for me on it.
and it's weird that they are, they're like the conservative think tank that kind of stuck with the compassionate conservatism branding that the administration tried to push. Like sure they committed war crimes and killed hundreds of thousands of people, but they said that they were compassionate about it.
And the American Enterprise Institute, I've been trying to wrap my mind around them for a while and like, it kind of seems like they mean it too. And so that's how you end up with a conservative think tank that co-writes a paper that includes the term teachable moments. That's the one that stuck out to me.
I'm like, man, American Enterprise Institute is into teachable moments. Now that's a, that's a interesting turnabout. I, I wouldn't have seen that coming, but yeah. You know, teachable moments and restorative justice, they're all in.
Great.
I, I mean, like, it does like kind of comport with the, at least branding of being a Christian, right, like that you think that other people can change and be redeemed and, get better. if you really are a compassionate, conservative Christian, then it does make sense that you want to help people.
I think it should, it.
Yeah,
It should.
I think what, even just in this conversation, I'm being reminded of the fact that we can't do much until the right kind of starts to get on board. you know, we can do some things, but like big structural change is really hard to do with just the left fighting for it.
And if you. Start to have more conservative organizations start to talk about this kind of thing and that, hey, maybe we need to do this differently. Maybe it would be better. Like that is how we eventually might make some incremental progress, so, great.
Mm. So to get there, it says, quote,
we propose the Transforming Prisons Act funded through the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Assistance, which would permit states to apply for funds to support innovative programs and practices that would improve prison conditions, both for the people who live in prisons and work in prisons.
This dual approach would begin to transform prisons into a more just and humane experience for both groups. They point out, no one ever talks about the, the suffering of the prison guards. Maybe, maybe that's the, the tactic we should take is like, if, if, if we want people to care, won't anyone please think about the prison guards, they're having a hard time.
Uh, also the, report encourages other development in rural communities so that they are not so tempted by the idea of building prisons, which of course we are now intimately familiar with. Having read that article about Arkansas.
And this is all like. It connects directly to a conversation we had recently about inequality in this country. Like, this is all great prison reform, making prisons better, making prisons more rehabilitative, making them less of a reliance and, and just having less prisoners, period. It's a good thing. But that's all addressing the results, the symptoms of deeper problems.
And like that billion dollars in Arkansas, if you spent a billion dollars on preventing the structures that created the crimes in the first place, I mean, that's, that's where you need to start directing your energy, is addressing inequality, addressing all the structural causes that create people in desperation and, put them in, situations where they are likely to do crimes slash get crimes committed against them.
Like that's, if it's connected to that, that's when you start to really see some changes. I hope maybe the American Enterprise Institute is doing some research on root causes and not just symptoms.
Yeah. And of course there's still the problem of private prisons. And so until we stop incentivizing the uh, capitalist structure by putting more and more people in prisons, we are still gonna have a problem.
Speaking of looking at deeper structures and, uh, root causes in, just in case you were worried we were gonna leave it at, let's make prisons happier, nicer places. Uh, no. We bring you to this Boston Review article written by Amanda Alexander, making Communities Safe Without the Police, and the opening salvo is pretty good, so I'm just gonna read the whole thing.
It says, quote,
as a country, the United States deals with violence through policing and punishment, typically in the form of incarceration. We do this even though policing has an unbroken history of perpetuating and enforcing racial inequity and generating harm, ranging from fatal violence to a generalized environment of hostility, enmity, and fear.
We do this despite policings myopic and debilitating focus on individual wrongdoing devoid from its structural and historical context. We do this even though incarceration has been demonstrated to have criminogenic effects, meaning it can make people likelier rather than less likely to commit further harm.
And an opening statement like that would probably lead people to think like, well, but what are we gonna do? Because we all swim in this water and can't imagine anything else. And that is what most of this article is about. And so it says, quote,
perhaps the myth that we must uproot most urgently if we are to uproot the others and end harm in our communities is the story that we do not know what to do.
In cities and towns across the country, people have produced safety in ways the criminal punishment system has not and cannot. These are solutions people have long needed and deployed. And the moral question of our moment is whether we will invest in them as though every single child.
Survival is our shared business end quote. And it goes on to describe sort of members of a community and how they react. And if you can't imagine this, then I guess I won't tell you what you should think about that and the community you live in or the life you lead or anything like that. But you may want to ask yourself those questions.
So, it says, quote.
Right now people are intervening to prevent violence, interrupt it, hold people accountable for it, and help people heal. Some of their solutions are housed at nonprofits, while others are informal. Neighbors rush to crime scenes as soon as if not before the police arrive to help minimize retaliatory violence and support people in the early crushing moments of grief,
Elders hold circle processes in their homes to address harms that police courts and prisons cannot or will not. Healers provide remedy and power to survivors when neither could be found in the courts. These neighbors or solutionaries. To borrow a phrase from activist and author, Grace Lee Boggs are everywhere.
They have always been Communities, especially those of color historically subjected to violence and inequity would not survive without these networks of safety end quote. And what I said before, reading that about like if you can't imagine these people, or being one of these people to rush to crime scenes, might want to think about what that means, about how you live, where you live, how you grew up.
Like that is directed at me as much as anyone else. Like that's not how my brain works. And. I see my own blind spot about that of like, I grew up in a place where that wasn't a thing because it didn't need to be a thing. And so I, now understand that as part of the reason why it's hard for people who live in areas that generally don't need policing, that they then think, how could we get by without police?
It's because you don't live in a community that knows how to handle itself.
This is the, backlash to defund the police, like completely distilled. I didn't really understand it. But now, now connecting, this is like, oh, when people heard defund the police, they thought the other side of that was complete and total anarchy.
Only that people will be, turning cars over, setting buildings on fire and nothing will happen and it'll just be okay. Well, like that doesn't make any, but that's really what people thought because without police there is nothing. Police are the only thing keeping us safe. And that's how a lot of people really think.
I believe for a long time that calling the police is giving up on the situation. Like it's, probably it should be your your last resort. Yeah, for sure. But a lot of people think it's the first call you make, like something happens. Just call the police. Why they make things worse.
I think of the police as a danger. I've never thought of the police as. Solutionaries, that's a great term, by the way. Like, they don't, they aren't solutions. Like the last time that I had an interaction with police was dealing with a family member with, uh, a mental health problem. And someone in the group called the police, which I thought, oh, this is terrible.
This is the worst possible situation. And it was immediately cop comes in hand on gun, like, Nope, this isn't that. The situation, like had to talk to , the police, about why this isn't a thing that, well, number one, you shouldn't be here . I'm sorry that someone called you, but, that's their go-to.
Like they are not about solutions. They're about punishment. They're about violent resolution to conflict. There are many, many other options that this country doesn't seem even ready to entertain as ideas. And that's, , like, you know what Jay said? Like, it's why would a lot of people have thought about this?
Because it doesn't affect you. And that's the, like, the kind of the running theme of all this is like, if, if things aren't in your life, if you haven't been affected by them, then you don't have a reason to think about it. There's a whole structure in place to keep you from thinking about it. So when.
The first you hear of, of a solution to this problem is defund the police, and you don't have any framework to go on to how there could be other solutions. I, I guess it does make sense that there's just this giant backlash because what you're fighting in your mind is absolute chaos.
Yeah, I mean the way that it was described in the article, the solutionary is like on one side I'm like, that's really beautiful. And then the other side, I'm like, what a heavy burden for a community to bear. And it makes me wish that we just had more like structural ability to support communities instead of making the communities themselves always have to be doing triple, quadruple duty to help themselves.
Right? Like it's, it does seem so obvious that this is the kind of support we should give people, and yet that's not part of our systems, or aren't part, it's not part of the structures that we have in place. And so it's always going to be individual communities trying to keep themselves okay. And, and yeah, like I see, I see both sides of that.
I see the beauty in that, the, like, I'm in awe of it. And then there's also the side of like, that burden shouldn't fall on you.
I think there are systems that exist under our current societal structure. so for example, in Savannah, Georgia, they have a response team and it's a psychiatric nurse, I wanna say a, police officer and one other, kind of medical team, maybe a paramedic or something. And they ride around in an ambulance and they respond to exactly what Dion was talking about.
Like someone who's in mental health crisis, uh, they're able to go in and they have seen like a reduction of the amount of. People who are having a mental health crisis, being transported to prison or jail, you know, whatever temporary thing has to happen. And so I like that model. I think it's imperfect.
There's definitely critiques that could be had, but under our current societal structure, like it's a good kind of gateway to get us to the quote perfect system or more perfect system. and I know in Georgia at large, we have a crisis response team that does the same thing. And the objective is not to have police officers show up when there's other things going on because the police do mitigate a lot of calls that they're not really a police call, right?
Like there should be someone else in society that answers this. But what we have is police. So we send police. so I think again, investment is gonna be the thing that changes. unfortunately with our crisis team in Georgia, they're short staffed. It's long wait times, you know, things like that.
Whereas our police continue to get increased budgets, are more militarized. Yeah, we got COP city of course, or the training ground, right? But if they took even a fraction of that, put it into the crisis team, what you would see is again, a lot of mitigation. and maybe that's scary. Maybe that shows that we don't need police as much as we think we need police.
but when Jay was asking like, you know, if this doesn't sound like something for you, I would love to be in public safety, but I don't want to be a cop. I know what that is. I know can't be the one great person in a terrible system. Like that's not the reality of it. but to my community to be able to help in that way, which is what public safety is supposed to do, like I would love to do that.
Which brings us to where this article flips the script on funding. It says, quote, public
debate, primarily asked, can we be safe while defunding the police? Instead, we should ask, can we be safe without defunding the police? Meanwhile, the responses that are effective are vastly under-resourced, in part because of the investments we have made in policing and incarceration.
If we want to solve the urgent problem of violence, we must direct resources of all kinds, money, creativity, human capital, media stories, and more to toward real solutions. This presents an opportunity not only to break with the myth that law enforcement serves the interest of public safety, but also with its associated entitlement to monopolize conversations about violence, prevention, and safety. that's the big one for me, is like it monopolizes the conversation because. They have a monopoly. I mean, that's, you know, go talk to a libertarian about the government having a monopoly on force. Like they have the right to force the police are the arm of the government that gets to use force on citizens.
That's how we've set it up. It's literally a monopolized situation where it feels like the only solution to problems is the one solution we have. Then all debates exist within those confines. How do we make police a little bit better? How can we convince police to murder a few less people each year? And it is long past due that we break outta that mindset.
I mean, the, the whole idea of a modern police department is only a couple hundred years old if that, let's, remember that humanity had ways to deal with the people in their society, uh, you know, in a lot of different ways. compared to what we're doing now, we still have the power to choose something different.
You know, I've been thinking this whole episode, but I haven't said it out loud. I've just been thinking about the book, the New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. And that came out over a decade ago, which is kind of hard to believe. And if anyone hasn't read yet, get on it because like. The structure and the system and the psychology that we're dealing with right now.
It goes way back. As Jay said, you know, policing just started 200 years ago. Oh gee, what happened about 200 years ago? You know, like we, we know what's going on here. this is so ingrained in our society that to undo it, to get the people who instantly freak out at the words defund the police to have a different reaction is a unfortunately, like slow and painful process.
And, you know, we haven't been having the conversations we were having in 2020 lately, because everything else is on fire too. And so it's hard to have those conversations. But this is a big deal. And as I said at the beginning, it is directly tied to what we're seeing now with immigrant detention centers and how they're being run and the abuses that are happening there.
If you're angry about children and families and innocent people being treated like shit, being served, crappy food being ignored when they're sick, being killed, because that's also happening, you should also be upset that that is happening daily in our regular old prison system. Like there is no difference.
These things are the same. So. In order to undo all of this, we need to do some deep, reflective work on why it is the way it is and start to propose solutions like these, alternate ways. A lot of this is gonna be local, you know, organizing within your community to make changes because it's, really hard to do on a larger scale, and the political will, it seems, is not there on a larger scale.
At least not yet. So yeah, we are confronted with a huge, huge problem that is making, that is absolutely directly affecting everyone's life. Even if you haven't touched the criminal justice system, and maybe we should do something about it, Jesus, like, ugh.
People are starting to get it to wrap up this article, there will be plenty of, threads left over. It's, it's, it's a long piece, but we always put our articles in the show notes, so you should check it out for yourself. People are starting to get it. It says, quote,
Researchers, practitioners and local leaders are moving away from individualized notions of violence and toward public health based approaches.
To understand the structural causes of violence, these approaches focus on preventing injury or death by addressing underlying social detriments of health, centering the needs of people most impacted by violence and providing support for navigating trauma. And it goes on about violence, be getting violence, quote,
violence, victimization is sometimes considered a recurrent disease because people who experience assaultive injuries are often re-injured in cities.
It is estimated that up to 41% of patients treated for violent injury are re-injured within five years. Experiencing violence also significantly increases the likelihood of engaging in violent behavior against others, oftentimes as retaliation for the initial injury end quote.
So when we talk about caring for the victims, we are, we have just arrived back where we started at the top of the show. we are not just talking about caring for victims, we are talking about preventing victims from becoming violent offenders themselves, because that is what the cycle of violence is.
It is, uh, not rocket science by any stretch. the article says, quote,
one of the single most reliable predictors of committing violence is surviving it. Any public safety strategy must foreground healing as a central tenant. This is critical in and of itself. People are entitled to healing simply because they were hurt.
This work affirms the value of the person harmed and the values of that person's community. End quote. There's just no reason whatsoever to not follow that advice. the idea that people should be punished because it feels like justice and, you know, retribution feels good and bad. People should be.
Punished. Righteously is fantasy. It is just fantasy. Like if it worked, like I always distinguish between my perspective and a lot of people I disagree with. It's like I believe in the stuff I believe in because it works. Not like I don't have a deeper underlying philosophy that I have to adhere to first.
You know, the, the people who have the need for punishment, need for prisons and police to exist as a secondary function of their need and desire to punish people. My need is for society to be like as good and happy and for there to be as little trauma as possible for there to be as little violence as possible, as little trauma as possible to reduce harm.
Like, that's what I want. So how do you do that? And the way we are doing it is clearly not right. The recommendations in articles like these is obviously better, and if it's not perfect, that's fine too. We can, we can make improvements and continue to see where improvements could be made, as we go.
But, the article includes a bunch of example organizations Save our Streets in New York. works on violence prevention. There are hospital prevention programs because people end up hurt from violence and they end up in the hospital. And so that's actually a great point of intervention to help a person who needs help rather than sending them back out onto the street where the people in the hospital know like, well, that person's gonna be back reinjured again, or they're gonna injure someone else, or they're gonna end up in the morgue or whatever.
And, you know, all the while people continue to prefer structural solutions over punitive measures. Like if you ask people where you want your money to go, they say structural solutions. There's an example from, Durham, North Carolina. Like they did a survey asking people like, we got $71 million allocated to build you know, new headquarters to keep the community safe.
Is that what you'd like to have happen? And people are like, no, we want affordable housing, healthcare, good jobs, better public transportation. Thank you very much. So the answers are there, the, the biggest myth to defeat is that we don't know how to do it better. We absolutely do.
We just have to like politicians who will also advocate for the things that we know we wanna invest in.
You just made it sad again, that just makes me so sad.
the whole time we've been talking about this, I've been thinking about when I first became more aware of this issue, when I had my awakening about it, I remember one of the first things I thought about was like, how do I get someone else to care about this? Because I think a lot of people think. Well it's people in prison. They absolutely did something wrong. Like what? Why do I need to spend time thinking about this? And the reason you need to spend time thinking about this and the reason you need to care about this is because it impacts everyone. Like this does not exist in some silo and if you can't bring yourself to have compassion for someone who's locked in a concrete cage and has no agency over themselves and is at the whims of whatever monster is in charge of them, like, then at the very least understand that , tons of money is being spent on this, that it is not working.
That we are all worse off because of it. Like these are the vulnerable people in our society. Yeah, you may have feelings about them or like what they did, but remember that someone who got, you know, brought in on having like a joint is in the same prison sometimes as someone who committed violent murder.
So like you don't get to pick and choose. You don't get to like say, well I only want these people to be treated this way. No, that's not how this works. You have to just see them all as human and then give a shit. 'cause this is a huge, huge problem.
Even if you only give a shit about yourself, it still makes sense to prefer to have a a different system. Okay, so what are we gonna do? We're going to. Pay attention to the victims, not just because it's right, but because doing so is a preventative measure against future harm. We're going to continue the trend of decarceration and prison closings because it's both cheaper and more beneficial to society, to engage other strategies.
We're even going to get conservatives on our side as they're the ones living in rural communities where prisons are being built, turning their towns into, you know, soulless prison towns. For the prisons that do exist, there are a lot of good ideas to align them with actual healing rather than perpetuating trauma.
But that's only in the meantime, until we can completely rethink our cultural approach to what real justice looks like. Did we solve it?
Yeah,
Yeah. You wanted that enthusiasm. Let's bring it
that actually even surprised me coming out.
I had this ready in, in case the, the enthusiasm wasn't, appropriate enough.
great.
Mm-hmm.
super long one. I knew it was gonna be the super
Yeah,
I mean, we solved it Dion.
Yeah.
Oops.
come with like uncomfortable coughing at the end.
Yeah.
Did you not hear? We solved it.
The fade out is what always gets me. Like it goes on just a little too long, and then the fading, we keep listening.
