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Speaker 1: On this episode of the News World, I'm really pleased

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Speaker 1: to welcome my guest, Gerard Robinson. He's a professor of

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Speaker 1: practice in public policy and law at the Frank Baton

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Speaker 1: School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia.

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Speaker 1: We're discussing his latest peace for the Virginian Pilot, entitled

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Speaker 1: How World War II Became a Fork in the Road

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Speaker 1: on prison policy. We're going to discuss what he's learned

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Speaker 1: from visiting prisons around the world, how World War Two

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Speaker 1: shaped prison policy in places like Norway, and what lessons

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Speaker 1: we can learn here in the United States. Gerard, welcome

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Speaker 1: and thank you for joining me again in the News World.

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Speaker 2: Yes, the speaker, always a pleasure to be with you.

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Speaker 1: You know, you grew up in Los Angeles and you

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Speaker 1: studied philosophy at Howard University, and while there you und

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Speaker 1: local youth and the juvenile justice system. How did your

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Speaker 1: experience as a mentor in the juvenile justice system in

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Speaker 1: DC shape your views on criminal justice reform.

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Speaker 2: The young men that I worked with were between the

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Speaker 2: ages of sixteen and nineteen, mostly African American and now Salvadorian,

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Speaker 2: and they were involved with a lot of trouble with

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Speaker 2: the law, and it was a forward thinking just you said,

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Speaker 2: tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to

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Speaker 2: put you in a diversion program, and if you go

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Speaker 2: through the program, I'll take care of your record. You

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Speaker 2: can move forward. The one thing all of those young

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Speaker 2: men which they would have had in their lives were

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Speaker 2: strong literacy skills. And for me, that was aha to

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Speaker 2: say that if I want to help move us close

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Speaker 2: what we call now in the school to prison pipeline,

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Speaker 2: to open up a school to prosperity pipeline, I've got

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Speaker 2: to focus more on literacy. So that decision maybe become

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Speaker 2: a fifth grade school teacher instead of going into the

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Speaker 2: private sector. But it also shaped really early. If there

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Speaker 2: was a link between the likelihood of finding yourself incarcerated

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Speaker 2: and the link between education.

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Speaker 1: Given your general background and what you were studying at Howard,

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Speaker 1: that's a pretty amazing thing. What was it like to

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Speaker 1: teach fifth grade?

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Speaker 2: It was great for a couple of reasons. Number one,

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Speaker 2: the students were old enough to still be interested in learning,

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Speaker 2: and yet old enough not to be too cool to care,

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Speaker 2: and so they really thought that history was interesting. I

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Speaker 2: loved it. In fact, one of the greatest compliments I

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Speaker 2: ever received as a fifth grade school teacher. One of

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Speaker 2: my fifth grade students invited me, my wife, and two

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Speaker 2: of my three daughters to his home for Thanksgiving a

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Speaker 2: year ago, and his mom came to my wedding, and

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Speaker 2: so it just showed the kind of impact I had

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Speaker 2: on his family but also on mind. But I also know,

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Speaker 2: and you probably know this as well as the speaker,

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Speaker 2: seventy percent of the American students who drop out of

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Speaker 2: high school they drop out in the tenth grade. It's

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Speaker 2: not because there's something magical about the tenth grade. It's

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Speaker 2: because what you didn't master in elementary school, particularly in reading,

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Speaker 2: will catch you. So I was glad to start off

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Speaker 2: as a fifth grade teacher.

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Speaker 1: When you look at the study about Mecklenburg and the

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Speaker 1: students that they had studied for the entire period from

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Speaker 1: ninety eight to twenty eleven, and they tracked twenty six

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Speaker 1: thousand students, and they concluded the young adolescents who attend

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Speaker 1: school with high suspension rates are a lot more likely

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Speaker 1: to be arrested and jailed as adults. In a sense,

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Speaker 1: the school behavior relates pretty directly to what's going to

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Speaker 1: happen to him.

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Speaker 2: Later on, when I would meet with other teachers in

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Speaker 2: Los Angeles, both public and private school, and we had

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Speaker 2: conversations about family, about communities, one thing that would always

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Speaker 2: come up in the conversation is Girard or Karen or

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Speaker 2: Susi or La Kwan missing too many days. And we

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Speaker 2: know from research that if you miss more than five days,

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Speaker 2: there's a trickle effect on you falling behind, particularly in mathematics.

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Speaker 2: But we also know that if you're falling behind in

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Speaker 2: middle school, it's tougher to catch up in high school. Now,

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Speaker 2: we have plenty of examples of people who've been able

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Speaker 2: to overcome, but absenteeism is a major factor that we

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Speaker 2: often do not talk about because it's not something that

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Speaker 2: we think about. What we hear a fight and that

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Speaker 2: leading to out of school suspension, a student not doing

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Speaker 2: well and maybe having to go to summer school. Well,

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Speaker 2: you know what, sometimes absenteeism are being involved or being

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Speaker 2: away from school involved in outside activities can influence it.

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Speaker 2: So I'm not too shocked about it, but it's one

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Speaker 2: reason why we as a nation, particularly we're going to

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Speaker 2: look at NAPE scores, should talk about absenteeism. And it's

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Speaker 2: long term impact on families.

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Speaker 1: So the whole issue. If they're not in the classroom,

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Speaker 1: they're not learning. And yet, if I understand it correctly,

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Speaker 1: back in nineteen seventy four, they're about a million, seven

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Speaker 1: hundred thousand students who are suspended from school. By the

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Speaker 1: early nineties that number had jumped like to three point

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Speaker 1: one million. I don't know what the current number is,

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Speaker 1: but in a sense, it's counterproductive to be kicking them

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Speaker 1: out if the net result is they're more likely to

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Speaker 1: end up in prison.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, and that's why some reformers in the eighties and

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Speaker 2: the nineties created alternative schools. These were more of a

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Speaker 2: halfway spot. We're not going to send you back home.

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Speaker 2: We know you're probably not going to do well there.

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Speaker 2: We can't keep you in school, and so we'll create

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Speaker 2: an alternative school. And that's one way to address some

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Speaker 2: of the challenges you mentioned. But there were some students who,

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Speaker 2: because of the type of crime or infraction, could not

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Speaker 2: go to an alternative school. They had to go to

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Speaker 2: a juvenile justice system. And there are some places like

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Speaker 2: Texas and Georgia, which in fact your state, which in

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Speaker 2: fact has a state wide school district made up of

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Speaker 2: juvenile justice age young men and women with the goal

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Speaker 2: of trying to give them a GED or high school

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Speaker 2: diploma to complete. And so we've got some experience with

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Speaker 2: addressing what we can do with those students. But you're right,

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Speaker 2: if you're not in and you're out, we're going to

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Speaker 2: see you in a caartural system at some point.

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Speaker 1: I was surprised when I was looking at this study.

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Speaker 1: Fifty two percent of people in prison score below level

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Speaker 1: two on a numerousy test, vastly more than the country

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Speaker 1: at large. And also twenty five percent of the people

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Speaker 1: in prisons came from a household where neither parent had

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Speaker 1: gotten a high school diploma. So is there a problem

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Speaker 1: here of people growing up in a household where nobody's

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Speaker 1: been educated. Compounds the problem over time and creates sort

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Speaker 1: of a continuous linkage to you don't learn, so you

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Speaker 1: end up as a criminals who end up in jail.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, you know, we know that one of the top

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Speaker 2: five determinants on how well is do in school is

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Speaker 2: the education of the mother, something that my wife reminds

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Speaker 2: me with greatly. So one is if you're from a

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Speaker 2: home where neither parent finished high school, the chances of

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Speaker 2: you finishing are tough. Again, there are examples of people

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Speaker 2: who are now holders of a PhD from a home

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Speaker 2: without it, but for too many children, it puts you

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Speaker 2: on a school to suspension pipeline or a school to

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Speaker 2: drop out pipeline. And so in a place like Virginia

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Speaker 2: where I am right now, just a year ago, we

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Speaker 2: celebrated awarding more than five hundred GEDs to incarcerated people

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Speaker 2: here in the Commonwealth. Well, the reason I celebrate that

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Speaker 2: is because it's great to see our Virginia Department of

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Speaker 2: Corrections and our leaders Governor Youngkin, Secretary Amy Gudera, and

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Speaker 2: others making a big push to close the achievement gap

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Speaker 2: by providing an education. Some will say a second chance.

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Speaker 2: I will say some of these adults, as high school

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Speaker 2: students or middle school students, they ever had a first chance.

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Speaker 2: So that's a great thing, but it's also a sad

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Speaker 2: reminder that we have to wait for someone to go

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Speaker 2: to prison in order to earn a GED or a

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Speaker 2: high school diploma.

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Speaker 1: So your experience way you've seen so far that the

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Speaker 1: act of earning the GED dramatically increases the likelihood the

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Speaker 1: one they get out of prison, they'll stay out.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a grade two studies one in twenty nineteen,

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Speaker 2: one earlier twenty fifteen from the RAND Corporation, and those

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Speaker 2: scholars identify that if you participate in a correctional education program,

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Speaker 2: that's a dope basic secondary. Well, that's a dope basic education,

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Speaker 2: which many Americans are involved in. Now that's also high

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Speaker 2: school what they call adult secondary education. There's also post

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Speaker 2: secondary education, which is college and career in voke tech.

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Speaker 2: If you participate, there's a thirty two percent less likelihood

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Speaker 2: that you will actually return to prison. Follow Up studies

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Speaker 2: have identified that people who actually earned a certificate for

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Speaker 2: a job, the likelihood of them returning to prison as

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Speaker 2: well has dropped. There's some challenges along the way, but

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Speaker 2: there's definitely at least someone will say was is it

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Speaker 2: causal or was a correlation? While I'll let the economists

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Speaker 2: and the others debate that, I just know, having talked

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Speaker 2: to employers and having talked to college professors and to

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Speaker 2: the incarcerated themselves, when they find a great education program,

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Speaker 2: some may lead to a degree, some may not. It's

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Speaker 2: the whole idea of being enlightened or reawakened and use

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Speaker 2: that education and say, you know what, I'm going to

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Speaker 2: do something differently, particularly for those who become entrepreneurs.

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Speaker 1: Now Texas has taken I think an interestingly different approach

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Speaker 1: and what they call their Prison Entrepreneurship Program, where they

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Speaker 1: actually trained people into the principles of business so that

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Speaker 1: they could become entrepreneurs when they get out, which is

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Speaker 1: I think an interesting approach.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I had actually had an opportunity to see the

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Speaker 2: prison Entrepreneurship program in person several years ago when I

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Speaker 2: was visiting Texas and I happened to arrive at one

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Speaker 2: of the days where I sat as a judge and

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Speaker 2: had an opportunity to hear the job pitch. Well. I

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Speaker 2: was so moved by what I saw that some years

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Speaker 2: after that, when I was full time at the American

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Speaker 2: Enterprise Institute, we partnered with the University of Baltimore doctor

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Speaker 2: Andrea Contoora, and we had a joint conference where we

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Speaker 2: brought in people from the Prison Entrepreneurship Program, the entire panel,

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Speaker 2: and just imagine when the audience learned that here were

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Speaker 2: three men who have been formally incarcerated. One of them

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Speaker 2: was out of prison. Now he had a truck driving

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Speaker 2: business making more than ten thousand a month, and another

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Speaker 2: who had a construction company where he would gross over

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Speaker 2: a million a year. And so it showed people in fact,

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Speaker 2: who had no criminal record, who were in college or

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Speaker 2: law school or a master's program. People were earning more

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Speaker 2: than we would coming out. And it was just like, Aha,

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Speaker 2: people can make a big change. But that's one great program.

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Speaker 2: I also think about programs closer to home. In DC,

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Speaker 2: doctor Stanley Andrews was formerly incarcerated. He has a PhD

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Speaker 2: in an NBA. He's got a nonprofit call from prison

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Speaker 2: sales to PhD where he's taking people to the next

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Speaker 2: level and saying, you know you can do this well.

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Speaker 2: And even here in Charlottesville, we have Resilience Education, which

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Speaker 2: is a nonprofit organization that partners with the Dark School

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Speaker 2: of Business at UVA. We've awarded more than a thousand

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Speaker 2: certificates in business entrepreneurship and people are coming out creating

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Speaker 2: jobs or getting jobs. So those things matter.

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Speaker 1: We've been talking about different projects around the country, but

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Speaker 1: you now teach a course at the University of Virginia

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Speaker 1: entitled Education inside the US and International Prisons. What inspired

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Speaker 1: you to start looking internationally in.

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Speaker 2: Twenty eighteen and Elizabeth Smith where at AEI working with

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Speaker 2: a group of people on the left and the right

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Speaker 2: to try to lift the peil Grant band. And during

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Speaker 2: that bipartisan work a metal gentleman by the name of

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Speaker 2: Author Riser. He at the time was working for a

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Speaker 2: right of center think tank. Well author has since then,

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Speaker 2: he's enrolled in a PhD program at the University of Oxford.

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Speaker 2: He and his wife, who are both Army veterans, they're

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Speaker 2: the founders of the Aero Center for Justice and they're

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Speaker 2: looking at criminal justice in particular. And a good friend

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Speaker 2: of ours named Mark Howard, who's a professor at Georgetown University,

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Speaker 2: runs a exoneration project and the Frederick Douglass Project. The

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Speaker 2: three of us got together and Authors said, listen, I'm

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Speaker 2: taking a group of Americans left right, formerly incarcerated reformers

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Speaker 2: and others to visit prisons in other countries, just so

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Speaker 2: you can see what they're doing. Well, lo and behold.

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Speaker 2: Our group had an opportunity between twenty twenty three to

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Speaker 2: twenty four to go visit prisons in Norway, in Germany,

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Speaker 2: and Brazil. With another organization, had a chance to go

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Speaker 2: to Kenya, but what we learned from There were a

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Speaker 2: couple of things. At number one, there are some great

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Speaker 2: things that other countries are doing that we can adopt here.

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Speaker 2: But number two that there are actually some programs here

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Speaker 2: in the United States that other people like Norway, for example,

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Speaker 2: Norway's drug Court was adopted from the United States, which

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Speaker 2: was created, you know, in the late eighties in Florida.

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Speaker 2: And so that was the first AHA. And then I

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Speaker 2: went to my forward thinking dean at both the law

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Speaker 2: school and Batan School and said, if in fact we

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Speaker 2: want to train or prepare our students for leadership domestically

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Speaker 2: and internationally, we've got to get them on the other

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Speaker 2: side of the Atlantic or the Pacific. And so that

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Speaker 2: started a class where I'm bringing international concepts into our conversation.

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Speaker 1: You know. I was also surprised. I didn't realize that

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Speaker 1: it's been a very long process of Europeans and Americans

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Speaker 1: looking at each other's prison practices, apparently going on all

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Speaker 1: the way back to alex Detoquil in the eighteen thirties.

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Speaker 1: What is it do you think that we're all sort

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Speaker 1: of floundering trying to find answers to similar problems.

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Speaker 2: We are when you think of Norway. The first things

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Speaker 2: that come to mind are, you know, Christine Mountains, the

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Speaker 2: Northern Lights, and Great Salmon. When I told friends of

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Speaker 2: mine that I was taking eighteen UVA students to visit prisons,

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Speaker 2: the response was, wait, what Why would you go to

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Speaker 2: such a beautiful country to see such an ugly thing?

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Speaker 2: The thing the prison that Nathaniel Hawthorn in the Scarlet

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Speaker 2: Letter referred to as the black flower of civilization or

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Speaker 2: civilized society. And I said, because Norway is doing something differently,

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Speaker 2: and the way in which it educates as correctional officers,

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Speaker 2: one example, in the way that it addresses what we

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Speaker 2: call rehabilitation. The Norwegian says, ah, you Americans have the

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Speaker 2: wrong term. I said, well, what do you mean by that?

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Speaker 2: They said, when you use the term rehabilitation, the assumption

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Speaker 2: is one that some thing is innately wrong with the person,

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Speaker 2: and that number two, that your institutions are carcer institutions

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Speaker 2: in and of themselves can change people. In Norway, we

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Speaker 2: have something called the principle of normality, and that says

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Speaker 2: what's that? They said, We want to make your life

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Speaker 2: during incarceration as normal as possible, so that when you

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Speaker 2: leave prison or we call re entry. It's not such

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Speaker 2: a big shock, and so rather being called number seven

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Speaker 2: five six twenty seven eight, they call me Gerard Robinson.

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Speaker 2: I wear my daily clothes. I don't wear an orange jumpsuit.

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Speaker 2: I have my own cell. I have a working relationship

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Speaker 2: with the parole officer as well as the correctional officer.

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Speaker 2: So the principal normality is one. And I think another

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Speaker 2: point is the Norwegians are very clear that your punishment

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Speaker 2: is your loss of liberty. That once you've lost your

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Speaker 2: liberty to have interaction with your family on a daily basis,

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Speaker 2: you know you've lost your job. There's a shame or

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Speaker 2: who wants to aspect that's your punishment once you walk

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Speaker 2: into the prison. The goal isn't to punish you more physically,

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Speaker 2: emotionally and spiritually.

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Speaker 1: From your perspective, given problems like gangs, et cetera. Do

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Speaker 1: you think this kind of approach would work in American prisons?

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Speaker 2: I think it will because I'm looking at principles, not

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Speaker 2: at populations. And here's why I say that. People initially

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Speaker 2: will say, well, what you're talking about can't work in

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Speaker 2: the United States because we're more racially diverse. We have

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Speaker 2: a much larger prison population one point nine million compared

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Speaker 2: to three thousand. They have one to one guard to

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Speaker 2: correctional officer to prisoner ratio in the United States could

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Speaker 2: be one to fourteen, in some places one to thirty,

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Speaker 2: which is why several states have in fact employed the

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Speaker 2: National Guard to serve in prison because there's a staff

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Speaker 2: in shortage. Where those are population dynamics, I'm talking principle.

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Speaker 2: I'm saying that the principal normality in fact can work

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Speaker 2: in the United States because the whole idea of treating

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Speaker 2: people with dignity using this opportunity of incarceration to try

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Speaker 2: to support you isn't a new idea. I mean, when

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Speaker 2: toeuk Deville and Beaumont traveled to the United States in

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Speaker 2: the early eighteen thirties to visit America. When we think

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Speaker 2: about Tolkeville, we naturally go to Democracy in America, which

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Speaker 2: was published in eighteen thirty five, but we often forget

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Speaker 2: that Beaumont and Tolqueville, in fact, they published a book

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Speaker 2: on the American penitentiary and its application to France, and

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Speaker 2: so democracy in many ways had to go through the

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Speaker 2: prison system. They were looking at American prisons because while

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Speaker 2: we didn't call it a principle of normality, we were

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Speaker 2: trying to normalize through education, through religious instruction, through self betterment,

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Speaker 2: and through work how to make this happen. So at

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Speaker 2: one level, this is partly what we're built on. That's

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Speaker 2: number one. Number two, there are places who are actually

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Speaker 2: experimenting with this. Now. When I was at the University

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Speaker 2: of Oslo, I had an opportunity to meet a professor

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Speaker 2: who was part of a coalition supporting a program called

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Speaker 2: Little Scandinavia. And it's the Scandinavian Prison Program Norway, of course,

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Speaker 2: including Sweden, Iceland, others, and they've implemented it in a

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Speaker 2: prison outside of Philadelphia. They had the correctional officers from

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Speaker 2: Pennsylvania traveled to Norway, spend time with their correctional officers,

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Speaker 2: return to the United States and slowly but surely began

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Speaker 2: to implement what they've seen in Norway. Now there's actually

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Speaker 2: a documentary with one of the guards from Pennsylvania said, listen,

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Speaker 2: I just don't believe this. I'm not sure it's going

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Speaker 2: to work, but hey, I'm going to get a great

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Speaker 2: trip to Norway. Well, today, he's one of the biggest

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Speaker 2: proponents of the trip because he said what he realized

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Speaker 2: we had to change in the US wasn't simply the

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Speaker 2: color of a prison or paint on the wall or uniforms.

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Speaker 2: It was a cultural shift. And we know from social

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Speaker 2: anthropology that cultures define as a transmission of hope, ideas,

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Speaker 2: beliefs from one generation to the next. Well, we can

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Speaker 2: inculcate ideas of human dignity, of reform, of betterment through

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Speaker 2: a cultural change. It's not going to be easy, it's

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Speaker 2: not going to be overnight, but you have organizations who

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Speaker 2: are doing that, so it's starting to work. It's already

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Speaker 2: here in the US. But you also have organizations like

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Speaker 2: Prison Fellowship started by Chuck Colson, who've been involved in

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Speaker 2: prison work for over thirty years, who are doing great work.

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Speaker 2: So we have examples. But yes, it could work here.

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Speaker 2: It'll just take a cultural shift. A phrase of often

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Speaker 2: heard you use, we have to get rid of the

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Speaker 2: prison guards of the past.

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Speaker 1: Mentally, that phrase may apply more to this podcast than

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Speaker 1: to most of them. One of the things that you've

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Speaker 1: really mentioned is that we actually ran much much bigger

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Speaker 1: prisoner of war camps in the United States. We had

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Speaker 1: about four hundred thousand prisoners of war, some three hundred

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Speaker 1: and fifty thousand Nazis. But we dealt with them in

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Speaker 1: a context of the Geneva Convention of twenty nine. What

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Speaker 1: was the effect of that? Mean, to what extent were

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Speaker 1: the prisoners dealt with and a humane system that enabled

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Speaker 1: them to return to civilian life afterwards.

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Speaker 2: One of the benefits of my trip to Germany with

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Speaker 2: the cohort from the Aer Center was to actually visit

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Speaker 2: different camps. So we went to Hamburg, which the second

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Speaker 2: largest city in Germany, in May of twenty twenty three.

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Speaker 2: We had a chance to go to the New and

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Speaker 2: Gummen concentration camp, and it was created by the Nazis

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Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty eight. By the time we get to

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Speaker 2: nineteen forty five, forty thousand prisoners had died in the camp.

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Speaker 2: And so we're taking a tour of the camp with

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Speaker 2: a great God who has given us the history. He

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Speaker 2: happened to mention in me to be in passing. He says, well,

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Speaker 2: you know, you Americans had some of our guys or

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Speaker 2: in your and I knew we had some, But to

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Speaker 2: be honest with the speaker, when I returned home from

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Speaker 2: that trip and began to do research. I was shocked

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Speaker 2: to know that at my gut level, I figured we

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Speaker 2: had twenty thousand prisoners of war in the United States.

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Speaker 2: In fact, when I asked friends of mine, both who

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Speaker 2: are university professors and otherwise, no one's gotten over fifty thousand.

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Speaker 2: When I mentioned we had more than four hundred thousand

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Speaker 2: prisoners of war in forty two states between nineteen forty

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Speaker 2: two and forty five, They're like, wait, now, that can't

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Speaker 2: be true. And then I began to send them information

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Speaker 2: and even in Virginia we had seventeen thousand. Now here's

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Speaker 2: what's different. To get to your question, the Geneva Convention

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Speaker 2: of nineteen twenty nine established a playbook for how to

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Speaker 2: treat prisoners of war who were captured. And so, if

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Speaker 2: you were a prisoner of war in the United States,

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Speaker 2: there were a few things you received. Number one, you

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Speaker 2: received nutritious meals per day, not just any meal. There

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Speaker 2: was actually a coleric minimum per day that POW's had received.

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Speaker 2: They had an opportunity to work. Some of them worked

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Speaker 2: on the grounds of the prison camp. Some were actually

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Speaker 2: working outside the prison camp in local businesses in park.

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Speaker 2: Because many men had gone off to war, and some

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Speaker 2: other dynamics. Many of them had an opportunity to enroll

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Speaker 2: into free education classes. Not simply high school, but there

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Speaker 2: were also college classes that they can roll in for free.

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Speaker 2: And they were also able to drink beer. Now, this

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Speaker 2: was primarily the treatment for prisoners of war. If you

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Speaker 2: were a general or higher ranking, you even received better treatment.

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Speaker 2: And so I sat here for a moment and said,

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Speaker 2: wait a minute, you mean at the same time that

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Speaker 2: we were fighting overseas, that when we brought three hundred

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Speaker 2: and fifty Nazis and some Italians and others over to

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Speaker 2: the United States, that they were being treated more humane,

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Speaker 2: with more dignity, receiving an education at a time in

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Speaker 2: American history when many whites in the United States, particularly

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Speaker 2: in the South, could not afford to go to a

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Speaker 2: public or private university. At the same time, you had

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Speaker 2: black soldiers who were fighting overseas only to come back

403
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Speaker 2: home and sit on trains guarding the Nazis, only to

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Speaker 2: find out that once they passed the Mason Dixon line

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Speaker 2: that they told the black soldiers they had to go

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Speaker 2: to the back of the train, while the white soldiers

407
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Speaker 2: sat in the front laughing at them, calling them monkeys

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Speaker 2: and all kinds of names that you and I know about,

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Speaker 2: And so I was like, how is it that this

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Speaker 2: could happen? Well, digging deeper to Geneva Convention of twenty nine,

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Speaker 2: I understand why. But the bigger takeaway for me is

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Speaker 2: we don't need a new experiment on whether or not

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Speaker 2: in America can treat people who are incarcerated with human dignity.

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Speaker 2: We already have an example of doing so. It just

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Speaker 2: happened to be other people's prisoners. Now.

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Speaker 1: One of the points you make, though, is that we

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Speaker 1: actually treated the Nazis better than the one hundred and

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Speaker 1: twenty thousand Japanese Americans who went to the US and

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Speaker 1: tournament camps, even though two thirds of the Japanese were

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Speaker 1: American citizens. Why were we treating our own citizens worse

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Speaker 1: than we were treating the Nazis?

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Speaker 2: Were definitely part of it is cultural. At the time

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Speaker 2: that the Executive Order assigned to round up one hundred

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Speaker 2: and twenty thousand plus Japanese, this was built on over

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Speaker 2: seventy five years of anti Asian laws and policies in

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Speaker 2: the US, all the way from California to Washington, d C.

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Speaker 2: And what's so interesting is that two thirds of them

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Speaker 2: again where Americans g but we also put them in

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Speaker 2: we called them internment camps. We'd call them concentration camps.

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Speaker 2: They were called internament camps because for legal reasons they

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Speaker 2: were technically different. But when you looked at the treatment

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Speaker 2: and the way in which the Japanese Americans were treated

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Speaker 2: compared to the Nazis, culture was definitely dynamic. Number two

434
00:25:20,920 --> 00:25:25,119
Speaker 2: was also international law. We wanted to treat the Germans

435
00:25:25,160 --> 00:25:28,960
Speaker 2: and the Italians and the others well in hope and

436
00:25:29,080 --> 00:25:32,480
Speaker 2: Japanese well in hope that they would treat our prisoners

437
00:25:32,520 --> 00:25:35,000
Speaker 2: of war with the same dignity. Well, we know it

438
00:25:35,000 --> 00:25:37,920
Speaker 2: didn't happen to a lot of POWs in Japan. It

439
00:25:38,040 --> 00:25:40,600
Speaker 2: was a movie several years ago about that story, and

440
00:25:40,640 --> 00:25:44,240
Speaker 2: we know some similar tragedies happened over there. But race

441
00:25:44,560 --> 00:25:47,760
Speaker 2: and class definitely had a role to play in how

442
00:25:47,800 --> 00:25:51,560
Speaker 2: we treated the Japanese. And it was later Ronald Reagan

443
00:25:52,040 --> 00:25:56,520
Speaker 2: signing legislation to provide their descendants reparations for that type

444
00:25:56,560 --> 00:25:57,040
Speaker 2: of tragedy.

445
00:25:57,640 --> 00:26:02,160
Speaker 1: It's one of the grammar parts of twentieth century American history.

446
00:26:02,200 --> 00:26:05,000
Speaker 1: Although the treatment of African Americans and the treatment of

447
00:26:05,080 --> 00:26:10,000
Speaker 1: Native Americans was a continuing problem throughout that entire century.

448
00:26:10,560 --> 00:26:12,760
Speaker 1: Part of this which got us on the wrong track.

449
00:26:12,800 --> 00:26:16,400
Speaker 1: I think you mentioned that there was a eighteen seventy

450
00:26:16,440 --> 00:26:19,919
Speaker 1: one Virginia Supreme Court ruling. Can you explain it?

451
00:26:20,680 --> 00:26:25,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, And so there were a few men who

452
00:26:25,080 --> 00:26:28,199
Speaker 2: had found themselves in trouble with the law, and the

453
00:26:28,280 --> 00:26:31,080
Speaker 2: case ultimately made its way to the Virginia Supreme Court.

454
00:26:31,600 --> 00:26:35,080
Speaker 2: It's the Rough and the Commonwealth case. And when they

455
00:26:35,080 --> 00:26:39,000
Speaker 2: were trying to decide on what to do with the

456
00:26:39,040 --> 00:26:42,600
Speaker 2: men here, there was a phrase that was used to

457
00:26:42,720 --> 00:26:46,720
Speaker 2: determine how to treat them, and it's this term. They

458
00:26:46,760 --> 00:26:52,240
Speaker 2: basically said that prisoners were merely slaves of the state,

459
00:26:53,200 --> 00:26:57,600
Speaker 2: and that phrase helped lay the foundation for what in

460
00:26:57,840 --> 00:27:03,359
Speaker 2: penal practice is called the hands off doctrine, simply meaning that,

461
00:27:03,800 --> 00:27:08,479
Speaker 2: for the most part, prison and incarceration is a state function.

462
00:27:09,040 --> 00:27:12,280
Speaker 2: Of the approximately one point nine million people who are

463
00:27:12,320 --> 00:27:15,919
Speaker 2: incarcerated today, less than two hundred thousand of those are

464
00:27:15,960 --> 00:27:18,199
Speaker 2: in federal prisons. And so they're saying this is a

465
00:27:18,240 --> 00:27:24,520
Speaker 2: state function. And when the incarcerated began to identify indignities

466
00:27:24,840 --> 00:27:29,840
Speaker 2: placed upon them by Wharton's correctional officers, either other incarcerated

467
00:27:29,840 --> 00:27:33,679
Speaker 2: men and women. They said, we need legal relief. And

468
00:27:33,800 --> 00:27:37,360
Speaker 2: from the eighteen seventies up until around the nineteen fifties,

469
00:27:37,359 --> 00:27:41,199
Speaker 2: before the start of the civil rights movement, many judges said, listen,

470
00:27:41,720 --> 00:27:46,359
Speaker 2: we simply can't have the judiciary involving itself in the

471
00:27:46,440 --> 00:27:50,119
Speaker 2: day to day management of prisons as once as just

472
00:27:50,200 --> 00:27:54,480
Speaker 2: as Thomas said, course decades later, these are naturally dangerous places,

473
00:27:55,000 --> 00:27:59,240
Speaker 2: and so the hands off doctrine basically said, listen, prisoners

474
00:27:59,280 --> 00:28:02,520
Speaker 2: are mere slaves of the state, looking at this metaphorically

475
00:28:02,520 --> 00:28:05,280
Speaker 2: and otherwise, and therefore we cannot do much for you.

476
00:28:05,640 --> 00:28:10,000
Speaker 2: And so when the Germans or the POWs from other

477
00:28:10,040 --> 00:28:13,639
Speaker 2: countries are here, they're treated with dignity because they're not

478
00:28:13,800 --> 00:28:18,640
Speaker 2: slaves of the state. They're citizens of another country, citizens

479
00:28:18,640 --> 00:28:21,159
Speaker 2: that were at war with But we've signed on to

480
00:28:21,280 --> 00:28:24,800
Speaker 2: a doctrine and a social compact that says we will

481
00:28:24,880 --> 00:28:29,640
Speaker 2: treat these people differently. And yet in your state of Georgia,

482
00:28:30,080 --> 00:28:33,800
Speaker 2: where there were approximately twelve thousand POWs, some of them

483
00:28:33,840 --> 00:28:36,719
Speaker 2: at Camp Wheeler and Macon and others at Camp Stewart

484
00:28:36,720 --> 00:28:40,560
Speaker 2: and Savannah, they weren't treated with the same dignity, even

485
00:28:40,600 --> 00:28:45,480
Speaker 2: though they were American citizens. In many ways, symbolically and metaphorically,

486
00:28:45,760 --> 00:28:47,720
Speaker 2: they were still slaves of the state.

487
00:28:48,600 --> 00:28:52,520
Speaker 1: The date of this decision, eighteen seventy one, is only

488
00:28:52,600 --> 00:28:56,040
Speaker 1: six years after the Civil War. So the term slave

489
00:28:56,600 --> 00:29:01,959
Speaker 1: in Virginia had a very vivid, complete state of impotence

490
00:29:02,360 --> 00:29:06,040
Speaker 1: and subservience. Wasn't just a rhetorical term. It had a

491
00:29:06,160 --> 00:29:07,400
Speaker 1: very vivid and real meaning.

492
00:29:07,880 --> 00:29:11,520
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah, after the Civil War. Before the Civil War,

493
00:29:11,600 --> 00:29:15,200
Speaker 2: the majority of the people who were incarcerated in state

494
00:29:15,280 --> 00:29:18,920
Speaker 2: prisons and federal to some extent in jails were white.

495
00:29:19,160 --> 00:29:21,760
Speaker 2: And my students are often shocked by that statement, and

496
00:29:21,840 --> 00:29:25,240
Speaker 2: I said, well, it's because the blacks were already in prison.

497
00:29:25,280 --> 00:29:27,440
Speaker 2: It was called slavery. Now, of course there were free

498
00:29:27,440 --> 00:29:31,520
Speaker 2: blacks who found themselves incarcerated, but after the Civil War,

499
00:29:32,040 --> 00:29:35,960
Speaker 2: going up to nineteen hundred, many prisons, particularly in the

500
00:29:35,960 --> 00:29:39,960
Speaker 2: Deep South, became ninety percent black. And so that phrase

501
00:29:40,400 --> 00:29:43,120
Speaker 2: slave of the state, naturally, as you mentioned, was more

502
00:29:43,160 --> 00:29:43,920
Speaker 2: than just symbolic.

503
00:29:44,680 --> 00:29:46,280
Speaker 1: So REMARKA, you know, I always find when I talk

504
00:29:46,360 --> 00:29:48,680
Speaker 1: with you, I learned stuff that I had no notion

505
00:29:48,800 --> 00:29:51,240
Speaker 1: of because of the range of research and the work

506
00:29:51,280 --> 00:29:54,680
Speaker 1: you do. Where can listeners read more of your work

507
00:29:54,880 --> 00:29:56,680
Speaker 1: or follow the projects you're involved in.

508
00:29:57,640 --> 00:30:01,120
Speaker 2: So if you go to my website at the Batin

509
00:30:01,160 --> 00:30:04,800
Speaker 2: School of Leadership and Public Policy at UVA, you could

510
00:30:04,840 --> 00:30:07,720
Speaker 2: find not only my web page, but a link to

511
00:30:08,160 --> 00:30:11,600
Speaker 2: some of the work that I do, both publication wise

512
00:30:11,720 --> 00:30:16,200
Speaker 2: and also presentations. Second is to go to my page

513
00:30:16,240 --> 00:30:20,600
Speaker 2: at the American Enterprise Institute. I've got articles there from

514
00:30:20,680 --> 00:30:24,520
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen moving forward, and also you can purchase a

515
00:30:24,560 --> 00:30:27,680
Speaker 2: book that I had a chance to co author, publishing

516
00:30:27,720 --> 00:30:31,720
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, is called Education for Liberation, The Politics of

517
00:30:31,840 --> 00:30:36,760
Speaker 2: Promise and Reform Inside and Beyond America's Prisons, and the

518
00:30:36,840 --> 00:30:40,200
Speaker 2: forward is written by two people speaking New Gingrich and

519
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:41,040
Speaker 2: Van Jones.

520
00:30:41,480 --> 00:30:44,760
Speaker 1: That was one of our early collaborations, which seems to

521
00:30:44,760 --> 00:30:47,880
Speaker 1: always surprise people. We're going to post those on our

522
00:30:48,240 --> 00:30:51,520
Speaker 1: show page so that people who listen this can find

523
00:30:51,640 --> 00:30:54,280
Speaker 1: all of your points of entry. You're very busy and

524
00:30:54,360 --> 00:30:57,960
Speaker 1: very creative. I'm really grateful that you would take the

525
00:30:58,000 --> 00:31:01,160
Speaker 1: time to join me, particularly since in the next few

526
00:31:01,240 --> 00:31:03,680
Speaker 1: days your daughter is going to get married, so it's

527
00:31:03,760 --> 00:31:05,880
Speaker 1: very cool that you take the time out. Thank you

528
00:31:05,960 --> 00:31:09,160
Speaker 1: for joining me. Your recent op ed piece how World

529
00:31:09,160 --> 00:31:11,640
Speaker 1: War Two became a fork on the road on prison policies.

530
00:31:11,920 --> 00:31:15,240
Speaker 1: It's available now on the Virginian Pilot website at Pilot

531
00:31:15,280 --> 00:31:17,840
Speaker 1: online dot com, and we'll post all of the ways

532
00:31:17,840 --> 00:31:22,080
Speaker 1: of reaching you on our show page. Thank you very much, Gerard.

533
00:31:22,280 --> 00:31:24,760
Speaker 2: Thank you, missus Speaker, for your continued leadership in this

534
00:31:24,920 --> 00:31:27,200
Speaker 2: and so many other areas of social and pullet policy.

535
00:31:30,360 --> 00:31:32,680
Speaker 1: Thank you to my guest Gerard Robinson. You can learn

536
00:31:32,680 --> 00:31:35,760
Speaker 1: more about criminal justice reform on our show page at

537
00:31:35,800 --> 00:31:39,360
Speaker 1: newtsworld dot com. Newtsworld is produced by Ganglish three sixty

538
00:31:39,400 --> 00:31:43,960
Speaker 1: and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsey Sloman. Our researcher

539
00:31:44,000 --> 00:31:47,360
Speaker 1: is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created

540
00:31:47,360 --> 00:31:51,160
Speaker 1: by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team in ganlishtree sixty.

541
00:31:51,600 --> 00:31:53,800
Speaker 1: If you've been enjoying Nutsworld, I hope you'll go to

542
00:31:53,840 --> 00:31:56,880
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts and both rate us with five stars and

543
00:31:56,960 --> 00:31:59,400
Speaker 1: give us a review so others can learn what it's

544
00:31:59,440 --> 00:32:02,800
Speaker 1: all about. Right now, listeners of newts World can sign

545
00:32:02,840 --> 00:32:06,640
Speaker 1: up for my three freeweekly columns at Ginglish three sixty

546
00:32:06,640 --> 00:32:11,000
Speaker 1: dot com slash newsletter. I'm newt Gingrich. This is Newtsworld