Speaker 1: Dear Governor is a production of I Heart Media and
Speaker 1: three Months Media. If you are moved by Jarvis Masters
Speaker 1: and his thirty years struggle on San Quentin's death throw,
Speaker 1: and you'd like to support his cause, please consider signing
Speaker 1: a petition on his behalf. Visit Free Jarvis dot org
Speaker 1: slash podcast to sign your name to an open letter
Speaker 1: to California Governor Gavin Newsom, Dear Governor Newsom, Dear Mr
Speaker 1: Governor Newsom. This is an open letter to Governor Gavin Newsom,
Speaker 1: Dear Governor Newsom. Public. Craig Haney is a social psychologist
Speaker 1: and a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Speaker 1: Renowned for his work on the front lines of the
Speaker 1: criminal justice system. His groundbreaking research on capital punishment and
Speaker 1: the psychological impact of imprisonment and isolation lends great credence
Speaker 1: to the fact that proactive prevent mention is far more
Speaker 1: effective than reactive punishment when it comes to reducing criminal behavior.
Speaker 1: In what capacity did you work on Jarvis Master's trial
Speaker 1: back in the late eighties. In Jarvis case, I was
Speaker 1: in a position that I'm often in capital cases, which
Speaker 1: is I'm the person whose job it is to try
Speaker 1: to tell the client's life story. It's come to be
Speaker 1: called a social historian in those days. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: whether that term was around. I don't do clinical assessments.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't diagnose people. I'd rather try to
Speaker 1: understand their biographical history as a way of understanding the
Speaker 1: path or the course of their life, to put it
Speaker 1: in context for the drawers, so the drawers can understand
Speaker 1: the various experiences and events and in many instances, traumas
Speaker 1: that affected a capital defendant in the course of his
Speaker 1: or her life, so that they can appreciate it, hopefully
Speaker 1: feel some compassion, gained, some understanding or insight that they
Speaker 1: otherwise wouldn't have without that story being told in as
Speaker 1: much detail as possible. I asked Jarvis about his early
Speaker 1: memories of Professor Haney. He was one of those people
Speaker 1: that initially I thought would not get it. You know.
Speaker 1: He was one of those people that I said earlier,
Speaker 1: who were hired to come here and describe my life story,
Speaker 1: this professor with all these plaques on the wall, and
Speaker 1: you know, I was not who I am today. So
Speaker 1: and I didn't like people with plaques on their wall
Speaker 1: because of my childhood experience. You know, these social workers,
Speaker 1: and they really missed me up. But he did get it.
Speaker 1: And that's what surprised me about him. He did get it.
Speaker 1: You know. He wasn't writing reports to you know, show
Speaker 1: his expertise. He was writing his reports in giving testimony
Speaker 1: to what she believed was the truth about what was
Speaker 1: going on in my life. M hmm. And of course,
Speaker 1: you know, I checked and see every word he ever
Speaker 1: wrote about me, you know, and as I kept reading things,
Speaker 1: you know, I was amazed at this white man can
Speaker 1: talk about things that I never thought he had the
Speaker 1: experience to know about. But he did. He did. My
Speaker 1: conversation with Professor Haney continues, when you first met Jarvis,
Speaker 1: how long did it take for you to garner a
Speaker 1: clear picture of the man himself and his story? Well,
Speaker 1: his story was something that took me a very long
Speaker 1: time to fully grasp or understand, because it required me
Speaker 1: not just to spend a lot of time with Jarvis,
Speaker 1: which I did do, and which which I which I
Speaker 1: benefited from greatly and and and frankly very much enjoyed.
Speaker 1: I I guy got to know him well, although not
Speaker 1: right away. And I'll get to that in a second
Speaker 1: part of the task of understanding the course of someone's
Speaker 1: life is certainly to talk with them as much as
Speaker 1: you can and open them up as much as possible
Speaker 1: about their life, but also to talk to as many
Speaker 1: other people as possible about them. So I traveled to
Speaker 1: Los Angeles a number of times. I met his family,
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time with him. I went
Speaker 1: into the neighborhoods where he grew up. We talked to teachers, neighbors,
Speaker 1: people who knew him, really to try to develop an
Speaker 1: understanding of what his life had been as he was
Speaker 1: growing up, and then also as he had increasing contacts
Speaker 1: with the criminal justice system, um what those places were like,
Speaker 1: what they were like for him. I had already known
Speaker 1: a fair amount about the California prison system. Is part
Speaker 1: of part of how I got into doing this kind
Speaker 1: of work was that I uh, while I was still
Speaker 1: a graduate student at Stanford, I was one of the
Speaker 1: researchers in the Stanford Prison Experiment, and as a young student,
Speaker 1: that experience really re oriented my entire professional life. So
Speaker 1: I began to study the prisons, real prisons, not simulated prisons,
Speaker 1: while I was still in graduate school, and so by
Speaker 1: the time I graduated from Stanford with with a PhD,
Speaker 1: and then I went to law school. I had a
Speaker 1: lot of familiarity with the California prison system. I studied it.
Speaker 1: I'd worked on cases already, some constitutional challenges to conditions
Speaker 1: the confinement in the California prison system, and so I
Speaker 1: had expertise in how people are shaped and affected by
Speaker 1: contact with the criminal justice system. Many people who end
Speaker 1: up in death penalty trials have been in the system
Speaker 1: earlier times in their life, and they've been affected and
Speaker 1: in some sense damaged by that system. Contrary to public opinion,
Speaker 1: the prison system does not, and has not for decades,
Speaker 1: rehabilitated people. It's not been devoted to that, sadly, but
Speaker 1: it does do other things to them, and it can
Speaker 1: make whatever problems they entered the system with worse. And
Speaker 1: in any event, whether they do that or not, whether
Speaker 1: those environments do it or not, they're very difficult places
Speaker 1: in which to live. And I think in cases where
Speaker 1: a death penalty client has had problems in prison or jail,
Speaker 1: and certainly in any case where crime was committed in
Speaker 1: a prison or jail the crime for which they are
Speaker 1: on trial, it's important to be able to explain to
Speaker 1: the joy what it's like to live in that kind
Speaker 1: of an environment, what it does to you, what kind
Speaker 1: of survival strategies you have to adopt, and how people
Speaker 1: in prison find themselves doing things in prison that they
Speaker 1: would not otherwise do under any other circumstances because of
Speaker 1: the contingencies that they faced on a on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: So for me in Jarvis's case, certainly, but in other
Speaker 1: cases as well, that ends up being part of the
Speaker 1: life story. A lot of times our clients lives are
Speaker 1: lived partly in families and neighborhoods, but partly also in
Speaker 1: different parts of the criminal justice system, and so that
Speaker 1: part of the story was important for me to tell.
Speaker 1: In jo Barvis's case, also the cradle to death throw
Speaker 1: pipeline exactly exactly his case was a perfect example of that.
Speaker 1: And Jarvis speaks to the fact that back in the
Speaker 1: eighties as opposed to now, that the prison San Quentin
Speaker 1: was such a such a healthscape back and much more
Speaker 1: violent than it is now, and and that kind of
Speaker 1: did that play into your evaluation of him? It did.
Speaker 1: I had been involved in lawsuits about conditions of confinement
Speaker 1: in San Quentin, about the over crowding in San Quentin,
Speaker 1: the use of what in those days were called lock
Speaker 1: up units or UH management control units. In those days,
Speaker 1: san Quentin had an enormous one. There was a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of violence. I've been in the adjustment center many times,
Speaker 1: and I mean San Quentin today, with the exception of
Speaker 1: death Row, there's no relationship to San Quentin. In those days.
Speaker 1: It was a justifiably notorious maximum security prison in the
Speaker 1: California system did and fulsome were as notorious as any
Speaker 1: prisons in the United States at the time. And so
Speaker 1: part of my job was to try to explain that
Speaker 1: to Jarvis's jury and he he of course, helped me
Speaker 1: do that. But you me earlier. How quickly did I
Speaker 1: come to know him? And and and I understand him?
Speaker 1: And it was eventually I got to know him very well,
Speaker 1: and I felt very close to him, and I think
Speaker 1: we had a good relationship and good report. But it
Speaker 1: didn't start off that way. Uh. Jarvis, in the initial
Speaker 1: stages of my involvement in the case, did not want
Speaker 1: anything to do with psychologists at all. And Michael Satris,
Speaker 1: his attorney, had sent us, Uh, how should I put it,
Speaker 1: a conventional psychologist into evaluate Jarvis before I went to
Speaker 1: see him, and I don't even remember who it was
Speaker 1: he went in to see him, but that person did
Speaker 1: a very kind of conventional work up, and it was
Speaker 1: a kind of superficial analysis of who Jarvis was. He
Speaker 1: looked at his record, he made a lot of assumptions
Speaker 1: of that record meant about Jarvis as a person. He
Speaker 1: reached a number of i questionable conclusions about Jarvis as
Speaker 1: a person. It was obvious that he didn't that he
Speaker 1: didn't understand at all who job Jarvis was was obviously
Speaker 1: even to me and I hadn't yet met Jarvis. So
Speaker 1: Michael gave me a copy of this report before I
Speaker 1: went to see Jervis, and I read it and I
Speaker 1: said to him, Michael, you want me to follow this.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is gonna this is gonna be a
Speaker 1: very difficult second act, because you know, he's not gonna
Speaker 1: be happy to see another person who's coming in with
Speaker 1: the label of psychologists. And Michael said, well, you just,
Speaker 1: you know, explain to him that you're different, you know,
Speaker 1: you're a different kind of psychologist. And I said, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, but it's gonna be it's gonna be awkward
Speaker 1: in the beginning anyway, marched over to San Quentin and
Speaker 1: went went in to see Jarvis, and Jarvis came out
Speaker 1: and sat down across from me with a scowl on
Speaker 1: his face and sized me up and and and I'm
Speaker 1: and I launched into my I'm um, this is the
Speaker 1: kind of psycholog just I am. I'm not here to
Speaker 1: diagnose you. I'm not here to put you in a
Speaker 1: cubby hole. I want to understand you. I want to
Speaker 1: get to know you. And as I was talking to him,
Speaker 1: as I had in the middle of my spiel about
Speaker 1: how he should talk to me because I was different
Speaker 1: from this other person, he very methodically began to tear
Speaker 1: that report little pieces, and he made a very neat,
Speaker 1: fairly good sized little pile of these little pieces of
Speaker 1: that report. And then he pushed the pile across the
Speaker 1: table to me until it was sitting in front of me.
Speaker 1: And I'm still not quite finished with my explanation to
Speaker 1: him about why I'm different from these other folks. And
Speaker 1: he looked at me and he said, stop stop. That
Speaker 1: that he pointed to the pile is what I think
Speaker 1: of you people. And that's how our relationship began. So
Speaker 1: it was. Yeah, it's one of a more dramatic opening
Speaker 1: moments in my relationship with the client. And I laughed.
Speaker 1: I started laughing, and I said, I just want to
Speaker 1: tell you that was the best. I said, I've got
Speaker 1: a lot of clients up to this point, but that right,
Speaker 1: that move right there was the best one I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: We both started laughing, I mean, you know, and I said,
Speaker 1: I don't blame you. If somebody had written that about me,
Speaker 1: I would rip it up like that too. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: not what I'm gonna do. So I just pushed the
Speaker 1: stuff off and said, hey, well, I said, let's start
Speaker 1: from scratch. Okay, it's not going to end with that.
Speaker 1: It's going to end with something different. And I want
Speaker 1: to get to know you the way this person didn't.
Speaker 1: Jarvis Masters on his impression of Professor Craig Haney, he
Speaker 1: did say, so, I don't think you might here, but
Speaker 1: you knew I was in it. Yeah, you know, And
Speaker 1: you know, when someone's in trouble like I was, you
Speaker 1: look for someone to distrust, used to be too in
Speaker 1: their own way, not in my way, but in their
Speaker 1: own way, recognized me being in and he did, you know,
Speaker 1: he did and he wrote in a way that he
Speaker 1: was describing an innocent person. So he became, you know,
Speaker 1: my champion, you know, someone who I knew and understood
Speaker 1: to know the truth. And I gave him major props
Speaker 1: for that, major props. You know, did you sit with
Speaker 1: him a lot? Did you tell him your story from
Speaker 1: your point of view? Yes, what he did was it
Speaker 1: was stack the stuff that he had to investigate and
Speaker 1: read to define who I was to a court room,
Speaker 1: to a jury. And I did trust him when he
Speaker 1: did take you know, when he did testify. But what
Speaker 1: he did was he did he took all that chunk
Speaker 1: and he made me a human being. He made me
Speaker 1: out of a human being that I never had. That.
Speaker 1: Oh that that that person who can do that on
Speaker 1: their own terms? You know, uh what everything make? You know,
Speaker 1: most people, you know, they would come to like me
Speaker 1: because of who I was and blah blah blah. But
Speaker 1: for someone to read all that junk, you know, in
Speaker 1: a lot of the junkless truth. You know, my mother
Speaker 1: was this if my father was that he cave such
Speaker 1: a a a a narrative to that. That really really
Speaker 1: gave me the idea that I know the truth that
Speaker 1: I can trust this man up next. With over four
Speaker 1: decades devoted to the study and enhancement of the criminal
Speaker 1: justice system, having worked tirelessly for the defense of countless
Speaker 1: imprisoned clients, Professor Craig Haney explains why Jarvis case continues
Speaker 1: to haunt him to this day. Since the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: social psychologist Craig Haney has worked on cases of countless
Speaker 1: criminal defendants, constructing the fullness of their life stories in
Speaker 1: order to provide juries with more than just a simple
Speaker 1: snapshot into the violence of their alleged crimes. I asked
Speaker 1: him why, after thirty years, Jarvis Master's case continues to
Speaker 1: haunt him to this day. It haunts me because you know,
Speaker 1: I've worked on many of these cases over the years.
Speaker 1: I've worked on many of them before Jarvis this case,
Speaker 1: and I've worked on many many of them since then.
Speaker 1: And you know, in some cases, no matter what you do,
Speaker 1: the case is overwhelming, and for various reasons, you can't
Speaker 1: come the amount of aggravation that's been presented, and you
Speaker 1: can't quite get through to the jury about the humanity
Speaker 1: of the defendant and how and why the things that
Speaker 1: happened to him in his life changed and affected him
Speaker 1: in ways that helped to account for the things that
Speaker 1: he did, events and experiences, none of none of which
Speaker 1: he chose, but which happened to him, and which he
Speaker 1: reacted to and and reacted to in understandable ways, maybe
Speaker 1: ways that you or I or the jury might not
Speaker 1: have reacted to, but nonetheless that are understandable. You can
Speaker 1: understand why a person in his position and the defendant's
Speaker 1: position would act the way he did, not just in
Speaker 1: the crime for which trial, but in other things that
Speaker 1: they've done in their life. And I really thought that
Speaker 1: in Jarvis's case, there was a really a compelling story
Speaker 1: that needed to be told, and that that if your
Speaker 1: jury heard that story, that they that they would understand
Speaker 1: his life in the same way that I did, and
Speaker 1: and show compassion and reach her life rather than a
Speaker 1: death verdict. We you know, we faced a number of
Speaker 1: obstacles in the case. There was I thought an extraordinarily
Speaker 1: aggressive prosecutor who I frankly thought did things that bordered
Speaker 1: on unethical, threatened at one point in the case to
Speaker 1: arrest me because she said I was practicing psychology without
Speaker 1: a license, and which was a bizarre So the first
Speaker 1: time I've ever heard this, and she sprung with saw
Speaker 1: me when I was on the witness stand in front
Speaker 1: of the judge and so on, not in front of
Speaker 1: the jury, but told the judge that she felt duty
Speaker 1: bound to form the court that if I testified the
Speaker 1: way she thought I was going to testify, that she
Speaker 1: was prepared to arrest me, and then I should get
Speaker 1: legal counsel um because I was going to be in
Speaker 1: custody by the end of the day. In Michael Statris's
Speaker 1: closing statements, he comes to your defense in that regard
Speaker 1: that that you your experiences above and beyond what is necessary. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it was the first time I had ever heard,
Speaker 1: as I recall, and so it was a little unsettling.
Speaker 1: But she, you know, she should have pulled it out
Speaker 1: of her hat, and knowing, I think, in her heart
Speaker 1: of hearts, knowing full well that she could not arrest
Speaker 1: me for this, and I was not violating the law.
Speaker 1: It professors don't have a license anymore than a police
Speaker 1: officer needs a license to make observations about human behavior.
Speaker 1: Was that you know you have wasn't providing treatment for jarvis.
Speaker 1: I wasn't providing a diagnosis. I wasn't doing anything that
Speaker 1: was beyond my area of even by that point fairly
Speaker 1: significant expertise. But that was the kind of that was
Speaker 1: that that's the tenor of that case. I mean that
Speaker 1: just that kind of trick for example, And you know,
Speaker 1: I think it unsettled the judge. Judge Sabbath didn't really
Speaker 1: know what to do with that. Shavisly wasn't gonna let
Speaker 1: me be arrested, but she she wasn't sure what this
Speaker 1: was all about, and so she, you know, frankly handicapped
Speaker 1: my testimony. Um, she she put limits on what it
Speaker 1: was I was allowed to say, limits that I never
Speaker 1: that I had not been subjected to before and that
Speaker 1: I frankly have never been subjected to since. And and
Speaker 1: you know, just really overreached, I thought, in a I
Speaker 1: thought ethically questionable way. And so we were we couldn't
Speaker 1: tell the story the way we wanted, and I think
Speaker 1: it was it haunts me because of the outcome, of course,
Speaker 1: because of the kind of person that I knew that
Speaker 1: I had come to know Jarvis. To be explain that
Speaker 1: person that you came to know. Even in those days,
Speaker 1: there was a stability and a solid center to to
Speaker 1: Jarvis Masters the sheer amount of trauma to which he
Speaker 1: was exposed both outside and inside the prison system. Trauma
Speaker 1: that he experienced even before he got to prison, certainly,
Speaker 1: trauma that he experienced once inside was profound. And most
Speaker 1: people who have been subjected to that manifest kind of
Speaker 1: inner instability around it is perfectly understandable. It's the consequence
Speaker 1: of trauma. Jarvis had had struggled really and managed to
Speaker 1: make coherence out of his life and out of his self.
Speaker 1: You know, in a way that that was just extraordinarily impressive,
Speaker 1: and he was even in those days and obviously very unusual,
Speaker 1: impressive in terms of how he carried himself, Impressive in
Speaker 1: terms of how he dealt with the things that were
Speaker 1: happening to him. There was a kind of inner balance
Speaker 1: and spicism to just a kind of a sense of
Speaker 1: character from him, and had by the end of that case,
Speaker 1: a lot of genuine personal affection for him, you know,
Speaker 1: one human being to another, not just as a as
Speaker 1: a client in a case I mean obviously formed relationships
Speaker 1: with all your clients, but in his case, I mean,
Speaker 1: knowing what he had been through in his life, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's my job to understand those things, and to study
Speaker 1: it really and then to be able to see him
Speaker 1: act with such dignity and equanimity in our day to
Speaker 1: day interactions, and watching how he dealt with the way that,
Speaker 1: you know, the things that were happening in the case
Speaker 1: and the gyrations of the prosecutor and so on. I
Speaker 1: left it with a lot of the case, with a
Speaker 1: lot of respect for him, and was devastated when when
Speaker 1: when the Jewelry returned to death verd and was equally
Speaker 1: devastated when Judge Sabbat refused to set it aside um,
Speaker 1: which I don't you know, I didn't know Beverly Sabbath.
Speaker 1: She you know, she had a decent reputation as a judge.
Speaker 1: She had acted I thought, responsibly in the case that
Speaker 1: had been brought about conditions at San Quentins. She was
Speaker 1: not naive about about that environment. And I really did
Speaker 1: think that she would see as I did, the joyous
Speaker 1: Verdick as a mistake and set it aside. And you know,
Speaker 1: I wrote a letter to her, you know, before the
Speaker 1: actual final sentencing, to try to persuade her, but she
Speaker 1: um she was unmovable or unmoved. I don't know if
Speaker 1: she was unmovable. But she was unmoved in this case,
Speaker 1: and I don't to this day, I don't know why.
Speaker 1: And that was the second really profoundly disappointing outcome in
Speaker 1: the case. I mean, the first one was the joy verdict,
Speaker 1: and then the second one was Judge Sabbath's unwillingness to
Speaker 1: overturn that verdict, which I thought was clearly wrong. When
Speaker 1: the jury came back with the verdict, did you have
Speaker 1: any inclination that it would be death? I was feeling positive,
Speaker 1: guardedly positive, because I thought that even though we had
Speaker 1: been handicapped in terms of what we were able to present,
Speaker 1: that we had presented enough that that that the story
Speaker 1: we had presented was compelling enough that the jury would
Speaker 1: appreciate Jarvis's life and they would weigh it decisively in
Speaker 1: the balance. So I was guardedly optimistic. I mean, I
Speaker 1: you know, I certainly knew how hard the prosecutor was
Speaker 1: pressing for death and the lens to what she went
Speaker 1: in order to achieve that verdict, But I thought, nonetheless,
Speaker 1: we had done enough. I hoped anyway, that we had
Speaker 1: done enough. And then, as I said, I hoped, after
Speaker 1: the jury's verdict that we that the judge saw what
Speaker 1: what we what we saw and what we knew about Jarvis,
Speaker 1: she saw enough of it to know that the jury
Speaker 1: had made a mistake. I was very hopeful, you know, again,
Speaker 1: maybe naively so, but I was hopeful that she would
Speaker 1: do the right thing, and was in I was in
Speaker 1: the courtroom that attended the sentence and hearing, hoping that
Speaker 1: she would rule from the bench that she looked at
Speaker 1: the facts of the case. She was president, of course
Speaker 1: for the entire trial, and that she considered all the evidence,
Speaker 1: who decided that that life was the appropriate sense. Then,
Speaker 1: of course she didn't do that. Do You have a
Speaker 1: new book that's out this year called Criminality in Context
Speaker 1: Psychological Foundations of Criminal Justice Reform and analyzes forty years
Speaker 1: of research um into the root causes of criminal behavior.
Speaker 1: You make the argument that meaningful criminal justice reform depends
Speaker 1: on changing the public narrative about who commits the crimes.
Speaker 1: How do you change a public narrative That seems like
Speaker 1: a big job. Yeah, it is a big job, you know,
Speaker 1: I think you know, I'm a professor, So we write
Speaker 1: books and we accumulate evidence, and so that book is
Speaker 1: h I view it as a kind of a building
Speaker 1: block in the process of changing this narrative. So what
Speaker 1: I try to do in that book is to pull
Speaker 1: together all of the evidence about the issues a lot
Speaker 1: of the issues that we've been talking about. That people
Speaker 1: are changed and affected in early stages in their lives.
Speaker 1: That people who experience trauma, who experience abuse and deprivation,
Speaker 1: who are acted upon negatively by the institutions in our society, schools,
Speaker 1: foster care system, juvenile justice institutions, jails, prisons, all of
Speaker 1: which oftentimes inflict trauma rather than treatment or rehabilitation. That
Speaker 1: people's lives are profoundly changed and affected by those experiences
Speaker 1: in the course of their life. And that and that
Speaker 1: people commit crimes for reasons, and those are the reasons.
Speaker 1: They don't commit crimes because they're inherently defective. They commit
Speaker 1: crimes because their lives have been defective and certain respects,
Speaker 1: they've been mistreated. Oftentimes they've been mistreated by parents who
Speaker 1: themselves are dealing with trauma. So you know much trauma
Speaker 1: in the childhood use literature is intergenerational. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: the parents who mistreat their children have typically themselves been mistreated.
Speaker 1: This doesn't you know this doesn't. This doesn't come out
Speaker 1: in the vacuum, and they live, as Jarvish did, in
Speaker 1: communities that are uncaring, um, where they're exposed to violence
Speaker 1: at very early ages. Um. You know, many of my
Speaker 1: clients are dodging bullets, you know, at the time other
Speaker 1: kids are selling Girl Scout cookies. We tend in the
Speaker 1: legal system to take a kind of simplistic view of
Speaker 1: nature of crime, and we view it as a simple
Speaker 1: choice that people may prosecutors are fond of this this
Speaker 1: particular narrative I call it in in the book. I
Speaker 1: call it the crime master narrative, that people simply make
Speaker 1: a choice, and that all of us are equally autonomous
Speaker 1: and free, and we're all encumbered by our past, and
Speaker 1: we're all therefore equally capable of making one choice or another.
Speaker 1: And if somebody commits a crime, then they're just freely
Speaker 1: choosing to do that, the same way anybody else would
Speaker 1: freely choose to go to the grocery store or get
Speaker 1: a PhD. In psychology. It's just a choice, and it's
Speaker 1: nowhere near that simple. And we know what the science
Speaker 1: knows it. So I filled that book with all the
Speaker 1: science to the contrary that basically lays out in careful
Speaker 1: detail exactly what we know about exactly why people engage
Speaker 1: in crime. There is actually no mystery to it. It
Speaker 1: has to do with the with their life stories. It
Speaker 1: has to do with the lives that they lived, the
Speaker 1: experiences that they've had, many, if not most, of which
Speaker 1: they had no choice over. And we're not giving the
Speaker 1: tools to overcome and and instead we're subjected to institute
Speaker 1: as that made the issues worse, not better, um and
Speaker 1: ultimately including prisons. Uh. And so that's you know, that's
Speaker 1: the story that we that we need to come to
Speaker 1: understand so much better in the society. You have to
Speaker 1: stop demonizing people who engage in crime, and the average
Speaker 1: citizen has to realize that somebody who engages in the
Speaker 1: crime is just like them, except for the life they've lived.
Speaker 1: How do we change the narrative though? Across the country
Speaker 1: it just just engage in conversations like this, is it
Speaker 1: just relative or inch by inch? I'm afraid, I mean
Speaker 1: I had you know you work in whatever, or mean
Speaker 1: you're you're you know, you're privileged enough to work in
Speaker 1: So you have a podcast, I have a classroom. We
Speaker 1: try to write, We try to try to talk to
Speaker 1: as many people as we can. We try to nudge
Speaker 1: the media to tell this story better, um to to
Speaker 1: to try to humanize everybody who goes through the system,
Speaker 1: because they are we all start off in the same place,
Speaker 1: and why we end up in different places because of
Speaker 1: the things that have happened to us along the way.
Speaker 1: We all intuitively understand that about our children, right, so
Speaker 1: we we know that we need to protect our our
Speaker 1: own children from these bad events and traumas because we
Speaker 1: know it can shape their lives in negative ways. Somehow,
Speaker 1: there's a disconnect when we look at other people's children
Speaker 1: and then or other people's children grown up and don't
Speaker 1: understand that those same consequences that we worried might have
Speaker 1: affected our own children, so we protect them from the
Speaker 1: traumas that might lead in that direction. Um have had
Speaker 1: that impact on on on other people who weren't protected.
Speaker 1: Um And I mean, that's just that's a story that
Speaker 1: I think has to be told again and again and again.
Speaker 1: In that book, I wanted to lay out partly for
Speaker 1: the public, but also partly for the legal system, which
Speaker 1: systematically ignores this. It's the you know, it's the legal
Speaker 1: system that acts as though we're all equally autonomous and
Speaker 1: free and are going to judge are going to judge
Speaker 1: jarvis Is life the same way they're going to judge
Speaker 1: my life, when the two lives were fundamentally different through
Speaker 1: no fault or doing of our own right, I mean,
Speaker 1: and that system steadfastly refuses to take into account what
Speaker 1: we know about why people do what they do and
Speaker 1: why they end up in the positions they end up in.
Speaker 1: And so that's another reason why I tried to amass
Speaker 1: as much information and as much data as I could
Speaker 1: about what we know about all aspects of people's lives
Speaker 1: and how all of our lives are. The accumulation of
Speaker 1: the things that have happened to us in these various
Speaker 1: sectors of our life is such a fascinating and wonderful
Speaker 1: story of success. Just that he's maintained that core and
Speaker 1: so he's kind of an ideal archetype and that respect,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, the fact that he's been able
Speaker 1: to publish books and and tell his personal story. And
Speaker 1: did you read David Cheff's book The Buddhist on Death
Speaker 1: row Um just such a beautiful way too show that
Speaker 1: these are real people in there with depths of heart
Speaker 1: and soul and and and in many respects as extraordinary
Speaker 1: as Jarvis is. And he is, he's extraordinary, and I
Speaker 1: recognize him as extraordinary even many years ago. As I
Speaker 1: told you when I when I first got to know him.
Speaker 1: There are wonderful human qualities to all of the people
Speaker 1: in prison, we just don't get to know them. And
Speaker 1: you know, Jarvis is unique gifts. I mean, he is,
Speaker 1: he is extraordinary, and they don't want to suggest that
Speaker 1: there anything at all average about him. But his unique
Speaker 1: gifts is that he's legible. He's so extraordinary that he's
Speaker 1: his uniqueness and his wonderful human traits are legible to
Speaker 1: other people because he as these other talents. But the
Speaker 1: other people in prison have these traits and qualities as well.
Speaker 1: They're just not as legible. They're just not visible to
Speaker 1: other people. But it doesn't mean they're not there, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean if given the opportunity to demonstrate them
Speaker 1: or exercise them, they would not be to be able
Speaker 1: to do so, of course, of course. Well, Craig, Professor Haney,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you, thank you so very much. Um.
Speaker 1: I've been talking with Jarvis. He's doing well, you know,
Speaker 1: he had COVID do. But he's he's on the men,
Speaker 1: and he's in very good spirits and he's really really
Speaker 1: excited about the Kirkland and Lys team. There's seven or
Speaker 1: eight of them, and they've been very vigilant, and he
Speaker 1: feels well represented, and I think he's optimistic about what's
Speaker 1: going to happen in the next year or so. Great, great,
Speaker 1: well by all means given my regards, I will I
Speaker 1: absolutely will. Dave untacted me about the case in and
Speaker 1: I've agreed to work with them. Good, okay, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, I appreciate it next week. The practice of
Speaker 1: solitary confinement goes by many names, including disciplinary confinement, security housing,
Speaker 1: and restricted housing, all our euphemisms to soften the harsh
Speaker 1: and torturous reality of solitary Jarvis shares how he was
Speaker 1: able to survive for twenty two years locked away at
Speaker 1: a nine by four cell twenty three to twenty four
Speaker 1: hours a day. This episode was written and produced by
Speaker 1: Donna Fazzari and myself, Corny Cole. Our theme song sentenced
Speaker 1: is compliments of the band Stick Figure from their album
Speaker 1: Set in Stone. Stu Sternbach composed the original music. Nate
Speaker 1: Defort did the sound design. For more information on Jarvis
Speaker 1: and to find out how you can follow his case
Speaker 1: and support his cause, please visit free Jarvis dot org.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts. For my Heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows. H