Speaker 1: Bushkin, this is solvable. On Jacob Weisberg, We're back interviewing
Speaker 1: leaders and change makers about how to solve the world's
Speaker 1: biggest problems, and sometimes it starts with looking back at
Speaker 1: our own history. When, if ever did were we like
Speaker 1: other countries back in nineteen seventy we incarcerated at the
Speaker 1: same rate as other countries in this world. The killing
Speaker 1: of George Floyd has brought calls for transforming policing into
Speaker 1: the national spotlight, with so many people taking to the
Speaker 1: streets demanding action. Now, we have to maintain our confidence
Speaker 1: that even the hardest problems related to racial justice can
Speaker 1: be solved. How do you break this problem down into
Speaker 1: solvable pieces. Decide to prosecuting and charging low level crimes,
Speaker 1: don't criminalize those behaviors. Justice isn't blind. We have to
Speaker 1: be far more critical and thoughtful and have that lens up.
Speaker 1: Today we're going to talk about how to solve mass incarceration.
Speaker 1: This is such a solvable problem. Inscho Rockman used to
Speaker 1: work as a public defender in the Bronx. That job
Speaker 1: illuminated for her the variety of state, national level problems
Speaker 1: with the criminal justice system. The US has five percent
Speaker 1: of the world's population, but currently holds twenty five percent
Speaker 1: of the world's incarcerated people. Rockman is a director of
Speaker 1: Strategy and New Initiatives at the Vera Institute, an organization
Speaker 1: devoted to improving the criminal justice system in the United States.
Speaker 1: Rockman thinks those extremely disproportionate numbers represent a problem we
Speaker 1: can solve. Inch I'm so excited to talk to you
Speaker 1: today about this because mass incarceration is something I think
Speaker 1: a lot about it, and I know a lot of
Speaker 1: our listeners are super interested in. I wonder how you
Speaker 1: define the problem as something we can solve. Yep, we
Speaker 1: have two point three million people behind bars today. That's
Speaker 1: seven hundred and fifty thousand people in jails and another
Speaker 1: one point five million in prisons, and it's actually solvable.
Speaker 1: So what's your plausible goal to get it down from
Speaker 1: two point three million you said in jails in prison
Speaker 1: to what number? If we just look at the average
Speaker 1: incarceration rate across the rest of the world, and if
Speaker 1: America were to incarcerate at that rate, we would get
Speaker 1: down from two point three million to three hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty thousand. That's something like doing the math my head.
Speaker 1: A factor of seven. Yep. That's a remarkable number when
Speaker 1: you think about it, and that's what we could and
Speaker 1: should and can actually do if we decide to do
Speaker 1: business differently from the beginning of the system to the end.
Speaker 1: Just since George Floyd's killing, we've been in the midst
Speaker 1: of a national even international movement against police violence and
Speaker 1: for racial justice. Does that change the opportunity around the incarceration?
Speaker 1: It does, but only if we make enough of this moment.
Speaker 1: And one thing that I want to point out is
Speaker 1: that for many of us it feels like a moment
Speaker 1: of opportunity to make sure that the path we walk
Speaker 1: to get here with the criminal justice system that we have,
Speaker 1: the path moving forward isn't the same. But we have
Speaker 1: to also stop and acknowledge the moment of incredible pain
Speaker 1: and hurt and harm that has happened. That it took
Speaker 1: the senseless and ruthless killing of a black man by
Speaker 1: a police officer with his need to his neck for
Speaker 1: the country to actually realize what actually happens with impunity
Speaker 1: each and every day in this country. And it's not
Speaker 1: just a crisis of now, but it's a crisis that's
Speaker 1: been here literally since slavery. So yes, there is opportunity,
Speaker 1: but we actually won't make enough of the opportunity if
Speaker 1: we don't recognize the long history and roots that got
Speaker 1: us to this place where we all feel like it's
Speaker 1: not only crisis but a moment of hope. But it
Speaker 1: really is a moment of crisis, and we have to
Speaker 1: lean into that first before we think about the opportunity
Speaker 1: in the moment. These two issues of police violence and
Speaker 1: mass incarspiration are obviously so closely related. They're two sides
Speaker 1: of the same coin. They're part of the same system.
Speaker 1: Are you concerned that we may be pointed towards improving
Speaker 1: the one without addressing the other. What we have seen
Speaker 1: since the video went viral of George Floyd's murder is states,
Speaker 1: in cities and even the federal government has moved to
Speaker 1: ban chokeholds, to spend less money on policing and more
Speaker 1: in communities, and all of that is a great start.
Speaker 1: But if that's where we start and that's where we end, yes,
Speaker 1: we've missed the larger opportunity to say, what do we
Speaker 1: do about two point three million and behind bars? Two
Speaker 1: points three million people behind bars, It's just shocking number.
Speaker 1: It's one of those numbers you almost don't process. You
Speaker 1: just you hear it. It's so many, it's got so
Speaker 1: many digits. Has the United States ever had a normal
Speaker 1: level of incarceration? When were we ever like other countries?
Speaker 1: If we were ever like other countries, we weren't always
Speaker 1: this way. In the nineteen seventies, we actually had the
Speaker 1: same rate of incarceration as other countries that we think
Speaker 1: of as our peers, as England and France and Germany.
Speaker 1: But what changed is that in the nineteen seventies and
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, as the whole world went through a crisis
Speaker 1: of recession economic setbacks, countries like Western European countries invested
Speaker 1: in the social services that they invested in responses that
Speaker 1: weren't just punitive. And what America did was take a
Speaker 1: different trajectory. We went to truth and sentencing, tough on crime,
Speaker 1: the war on drugs, and that led us to the
Speaker 1: outlier that we are today. Of course, for anyone who
Speaker 1: hasn't seen at the Avadverney documentary, Thirteenth gives an amazing
Speaker 1: sense of the continuity between slavery, policing and mass incarceration.
Speaker 1: This is a four hundred year history, but it also
Speaker 1: does have these big landmarks. One of them that comes
Speaker 1: up a lot is the Crime Bill in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: four that Congress passed and Bill Clinton signed, which was
Speaker 1: kind of a consensus bill, was supported by Republicans and Democrats,
Speaker 1: and there were billions of dollars in that bill for
Speaker 1: building jails in prison as well as for increasing police
Speaker 1: and arming police. I mean, do you think of that
Speaker 1: as the real modern watershed in mass incarceration. It was
Speaker 1: certainly the accelerant on a system that was already on fire.
Speaker 1: In The nineteen ninety four Crime Bill, by the way,
Speaker 1: enjoyed broad support from Democrats and Republicans, including many black
Speaker 1: members of Congress at the time, because that was all
Speaker 1: that was on offer to in theory, help communities from
Speaker 1: crime and from violence. What the difference has been from
Speaker 1: now twenty five years on from when the Crime Bill
Speaker 1: was passed, was we recognize that there are other options,
Speaker 1: and there are cheaper options. There are options that don't
Speaker 1: result in the wanton killing of black and brown people
Speaker 1: in this country that we can invest in and that
Speaker 1: will actually deliver true public safety. I mean, there seems
Speaker 1: to be a certain kind of consensus now about some
Speaker 1: kinds of reform. There was the First Step Act that
Speaker 1: Donald Trump signed, and even now post George Floyd, you
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is supported a bill that would ban I
Speaker 1: guess some but not all, chokeholds. But I mean, first
Speaker 1: of all, you see the opportunity for real reform at
Speaker 1: the moment, and are you worried that when you do
Speaker 1: have these moments of consensus like in ninety four, you
Speaker 1: sort of go with the lowest common denominator and don't
Speaker 1: think through the potential consequences of what you're doing. When
Speaker 1: the First Step Act passed a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: for some it was hailed as a remarkable watershed moment
Speaker 1: and that it was the first time in decades that
Speaker 1: the federal government had really stepped in on a criminal
Speaker 1: justice issue, and that was led by a Republican administration,
Speaker 1: no less. But if you actually look at what the
Speaker 1: First Step Act did, which it released a couple thousand
Speaker 1: people from prison, which actually touches only a fraction of
Speaker 1: our overall one point five million people in prison and
Speaker 1: doesn't even touch people in state prisons, you really sort
Speaker 1: of get a sense of just how much of a
Speaker 1: first step, and a tiny first step at that it was.
Speaker 1: Here's the fascinating thing about this moment, Jacob, is that
Speaker 1: the calls right now, in the wake of George Floyd's
Speaker 1: murder and the murder of so many other black people
Speaker 1: at the hands of the police, it's not just for
Speaker 1: things that are a minuscule first step. It's actually calls
Speaker 1: like defund the police and to dismantle the police, as
Speaker 1: we saw the Minneapolis City Council vote to do. And
Speaker 1: so that's the opportunity of now, is that where consensus
Speaker 1: is is so much further I would say, it's not
Speaker 1: even so much further to the left, it's so much
Speaker 1: further towards looking for a real transformative solution and not
Speaker 1: just tinkering around the edges. And so there's so many
Speaker 1: different components to this problem, from bail reform to sentencing reform,
Speaker 1: to police reform to what happens to prisoners post release.
Speaker 1: How do you break this problem down into solvable pieces
Speaker 1: and how do you prioritize which are the most important pieces. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think if this problem as having three components,
Speaker 1: and you know, how do we get from the two
Speaker 1: point three million to three hundred and sixty thousand. The
Speaker 1: first is the reckoning an acknowledgement of the racial disparities
Speaker 1: and making policy choices and practice choices differently. So one
Speaker 1: concrete example is I was once sitting in a prosecutor's
Speaker 1: office and I saw on his desk a map of
Speaker 1: the city and he actually had literally circles around neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: And I asked, what are those and he said, well,
Speaker 1: those are the neighborhoods where they're predominantly black and brown
Speaker 1: communities that live there. And so when we get a
Speaker 1: case that comes from the police from those neighborhoods, we
Speaker 1: actually sort of double check it, triple check it to
Speaker 1: make sure that we are thinking carefully about whether or
Speaker 1: not to prosecute this traffic stop or this drug arrest.
Speaker 1: We know that these are the communities where the vast
Speaker 1: majority of cases in the city are coming from, and
Speaker 1: so we're making an active decision to look carefully and
Speaker 1: make a choice of whether we're going to move forward
Speaker 1: or not. It's basically saying justice isn't blind. We have
Speaker 1: to be far more critical and thoughtful and have that
Speaker 1: lens on. The second part is to do everything we
Speaker 1: can do to choose not to put people in jail,
Speaker 1: in prison to quote unquote decarsorate and so bail reform
Speaker 1: is a really obvious way to limit the number of
Speaker 1: people who go to jail. Moreover, we can make different
Speaker 1: decisions on sentencing actually addressing the underlying harms that led
Speaker 1: to that person doing that harmful act in the first place,
Speaker 1: or addressing what can change the circumstances of your life
Speaker 1: so that actually never happens again. And then the third
Speaker 1: part is for when we do incarcerate, we need to
Speaker 1: do it radically differently than how we currently do it.
Speaker 1: And what that looks like is my organization VIA partnered
Speaker 1: with the Department of Correction in Connecticut to actually transform
Speaker 1: some of the prison units there are maximum security units.
Speaker 1: They look much more like life on the outside. The
Speaker 1: young men who are there go to school or they
Speaker 1: work every day. They are quote unquote paid in sort
Speaker 1: of rewards and points where they get more privileges and
Speaker 1: free time and things like that. If they are able
Speaker 1: to be more productive members of that community, and they
Speaker 1: actually talk through conflict in what are called restorative circles,
Speaker 1: where you talk it through as opposed to using punishment
Speaker 1: and discipline as the first reaction. And what we've seen
Speaker 1: is that radically different way of actually doing incarceration has
Speaker 1: tremendous impact officers who work They say, this is the
Speaker 1: most relaxed place in prison I have ever been. It
Speaker 1: feels comfortable. I actually feel safe. And so let's talk
Speaker 1: about COVID nineteen for a minute. The pandemic is creating
Speaker 1: a kind of natural experiment in decarceration. People are being
Speaker 1: let out. A lot of people have a visceral reaction
Speaker 1: that there's going to be more crime if you let
Speaker 1: more people out of prison. The decline in crime did
Speaker 1: correlate with mass incarceration. Why are people wrong to think
Speaker 1: that de incarceration will lead to an increasing crime. That's
Speaker 1: actually not true. It's not statistically true from the research,
Speaker 1: and it's also not true what we've seen in concrete
Speaker 1: examples around the country today. In New York City, our
Speaker 1: jail population is down to less than four thousand people
Speaker 1: in jail from a high of twenty two thousand back
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen nineties. Back then in the city
Speaker 1: we had over three thousand homicides a year, and last
Speaker 1: year we had about three hundred homicides. That's a radical
Speaker 1: change in the level of crime and public safety. And
Speaker 1: that's actually the statistics that are true when we incarcerate less.
Speaker 1: Who are the people we really shouldn't let out? Even
Speaker 1: if we let out six out of seven, who's the
Speaker 1: one out of seven? And I hear even reform advocates
Speaker 1: making a lot of exceptions. We shouldn't let people out
Speaker 1: who are convicted of domestic violence, We shouldn't let out
Speaker 1: violent offenders, we shouldn't let out sex offenders, we shouldn't
Speaker 1: let out white collar criminals. You know, should we let
Speaker 1: Bernie Madoff out of prison? Who are the people that
Speaker 1: you think, in the end we shouldn't let out of prison?
Speaker 1: So I think that framing of the question is the
Speaker 1: wrong one, and so I'm going to push back on it.
Speaker 1: The question is who can we let out? And the
Speaker 1: answer is folks who are safe and ready to walk
Speaker 1: among us, who are actually the vast majority of people
Speaker 1: who are currently behind bars? And how do we know
Speaker 1: that it's not based on the crime that you are
Speaker 1: accused or convicted. Of those folks who were convicted of
Speaker 1: a murder when they were eighteen or nineteen and they've
Speaker 1: been behind bars for twenty years, they are no longer
Speaker 1: that same person who committed a violent act twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: and how do we know that superintendence and wardens saying
Speaker 1: I would have this guy's my neighbor, I would have
Speaker 1: this person as my family member. There are because it
Speaker 1: is mass incarceration. There are a huge number of people
Speaker 1: whose jobs and livelihoods are working in prisons. Right, how
Speaker 1: do you get prison guards to support the incarceration workforce development?
Speaker 1: Where we've seen prisons is often in more rural parts
Speaker 1: of the country or more rural parts of a state,
Speaker 1: where they are the biggest employer in many of these
Speaker 1: small towns and cities that they're in. And so that
Speaker 1: is the key way to get them on quote unquote
Speaker 1: our side, because I actually don't know that it's a
Speaker 1: matter of sides. Give them skills that you put us
Speaker 1: in the twenty first century that aren't necessarily factory work. Likewise,
Speaker 1: we have to get out of the twentieth century mentality
Speaker 1: of a prison guard job, which has passed down from
Speaker 1: generation to generation in a prison town, and the pandemic
Speaker 1: has really brought together I would say strange bedfellows, because
Speaker 1: who else really suffers when we don't decarceerate our jails
Speaker 1: and prisons and they are tinder boxes for this pandemic.
Speaker 1: The staff, the corrections officers, and other medical staff and
Speaker 1: workers who work in jails and prisons, and not only
Speaker 1: are there and as susceptible to getting the virus as
Speaker 1: the people who are incarcerated there, but they go home
Speaker 1: to their families and to their communities and therefore are
Speaker 1: a much higher risk of transmitting the virus and spreading
Speaker 1: it in those local towns where the prisons and the
Speaker 1: jails are. And so in this moment, we've actually seen
Speaker 1: prisons staff and corrections unions call for the same things
Speaker 1: that we are calling for, which is decarceration, making sure
Speaker 1: that we are letting out as many people as we
Speaker 1: can to manage the pandemic, and then for those who
Speaker 1: remain incarcerated to make sure that they have personal protective
Speaker 1: equipment that they have access to hand sanitizer. And Congress,
Speaker 1: in this moment of stimulus bills can actually pass a
Speaker 1: Reverse mass Incarceration Act to give billions of dollars to
Speaker 1: cities and to states to actually reverse mass incarceration, to
Speaker 1: invest in workforce development, and to actually close jails and
Speaker 1: prisons and invest in the alternatives that actually will overall
Speaker 1: over time as new York City has shown us make
Speaker 1: us safer. I always like to ask our guests on
Speaker 1: the show what listeners can do if they care about
Speaker 1: this problem. What are a couple of things that people
Speaker 1: can do to accelerate the decline of mass incarceration. There
Speaker 1: are some great books out there right now, more books
Speaker 1: than we've ever seen about mass incarceration. James Foreman's Locking
Speaker 1: Up Our Own, which is he's a former public defender
Speaker 1: and now professor at Yale writing about Washington, DC. Great
Speaker 1: sort of inside look into the politics of law and
Speaker 1: order that sort of gave rise to what we have.
Speaker 1: Another great book that I recommend is Albert wood Fox,
Speaker 1: who spent many, many years behind bars. His book called Solitary,
Speaker 1: which is a terrific and gripping read. And you mentioned
Speaker 1: Ava DuVernay's Thirteenth, which is an excellent documentary about the
Speaker 1: rise of mass incarceration, and I highly suggest for folks
Speaker 1: to have a movie night and watch Thirteenth with your friends,
Speaker 1: your family and have a conversation about it. Second, you
Speaker 1: can get involved in very concrete ways, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: require you giving up your day job and becoming a
Speaker 1: full time advocate or activist in November, there will be
Speaker 1: hundreds of prosecutor races that are on the ballot, and
Speaker 1: get to know your prosecutor, get to know what their
Speaker 1: policies are, What are you going to do about charging,
Speaker 1: What are you going to do about bail? How are
Speaker 1: you going to handle plea bargaining? And to make sure
Speaker 1: that when they say that they are progressive, because that
Speaker 1: is a moniker that many people are using when it
Speaker 1: comes to criminal justice reform right now, make sure that
Speaker 1: actually has meaning. Are they willing to make their data
Speaker 1: transparent of how they make decisions about charging? Are they
Speaker 1: willing to come to town halls and meet with community
Speaker 1: members and hear what do they want to see from
Speaker 1: their local prosecutor. Those are all very concrete ways in
Speaker 1: which you, as a person can change the face of
Speaker 1: your local criminal justice system. For listeners who don't think
Speaker 1: of themselves as progressive, I think we might even have
Speaker 1: a few conservative listeners to the show. Is there something
Speaker 1: different that you would encourage them to do? Yes, absolutely so.
Speaker 1: I would encourage them to think about what conservative means
Speaker 1: when it comes to the criminal justice system, because there's
Speaker 1: actually many conservative organizations and elected officials who agree with
Speaker 1: me and I am most definitely not somebody of the
Speaker 1: conservative ilk, but who agree with me that mass incarceration
Speaker 1: as we know it should change, and they agree that
Speaker 1: prosecutors should rely on incarceration less and consider alternatives to incarceration.
Speaker 1: One other concrete thing that people can do, if they
Speaker 1: have the ability to do so, is you can contribute
Speaker 1: very concretely to getting people out of jail. There are
Speaker 1: community bail funds all across the country. There's over fifty
Speaker 1: of them, and people are raising money to bail people
Speaker 1: out of jail because oftentimes people are there on two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollars five hundred dollars and they just
Speaker 1: can't afford the price of their freedom. And especially in
Speaker 1: this moment where we have seen increased immigration detention and
Speaker 1: immigration enforcement despite the pandemic, there are several immigration bond
Speaker 1: funds across the country that are helping to bail people
Speaker 1: out of immigration detention. It's not necessarily systemic change, but
Speaker 1: it is a very obvious way to make a difference
Speaker 1: and to help in this moment to actually get us
Speaker 1: down from two point three million. And Ja, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for joining us Unsolvable. Thanks so much for having
Speaker 1: me Jacob. Solvable is brought to you by Pushkin Industries,
Speaker 1: and as a reminder, we always include links to the
Speaker 1: suggestions our guests make about how you can get involved
Speaker 1: in the episode notes listed in your podcast player. Solvable
Speaker 1: is produced by Camille Baptista, Jocelyn Frank, and Catherine Girardo.
Speaker 1: Mia Lobell is our executive producer. We'll be back next
Speaker 1: week with another episode in our series about racial justice,
Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell. We'll talk with Chirog Baines about how police
Speaker 1: impunity is solvable without compromising public safety. I hope you'll
Speaker 1: join us