Speaker 1: On this episode of the News World, I'm really pleased
Speaker 1: to welcome my guest, Gerard Robinson. He's a professor of
Speaker 1: practice in public policy and law at the Frank Baton
Speaker 1: School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia.
Speaker 1: We're discussing his latest peace for the Virginian Pilot, entitled
Speaker 1: How World War II Became a Fork in the Road
Speaker 1: on prison policy. We're going to discuss what he's learned
Speaker 1: from visiting prisons around the world, how World War Two
Speaker 1: shaped prison policy in places like Norway, and what lessons
Speaker 1: we can learn here in the United States. Gerard, welcome
Speaker 1: and thank you for joining me again in the News World.
Speaker 2: Yes, the speaker, always a pleasure to be with you.
Speaker 1: You know, you grew up in Los Angeles and you
Speaker 1: studied philosophy at Howard University, and while there you und
Speaker 1: local youth and the juvenile justice system. How did your
Speaker 1: experience as a mentor in the juvenile justice system in
Speaker 1: DC shape your views on criminal justice reform.
Speaker 2: The young men that I worked with were between the
Speaker 2: ages of sixteen and nineteen, mostly African American and now Salvadorian,
Speaker 2: and they were involved with a lot of trouble with
Speaker 2: the law, and it was a forward thinking just you said,
Speaker 2: tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to
Speaker 2: put you in a diversion program, and if you go
Speaker 2: through the program, I'll take care of your record. You
Speaker 2: can move forward. The one thing all of those young
Speaker 2: men which they would have had in their lives were
Speaker 2: strong literacy skills. And for me, that was aha to
Speaker 2: say that if I want to help move us close
Speaker 2: what we call now in the school to prison pipeline,
Speaker 2: to open up a school to prosperity pipeline, I've got
Speaker 2: to focus more on literacy. So that decision maybe become
Speaker 2: a fifth grade school teacher instead of going into the
Speaker 2: private sector. But it also shaped really early. If there
Speaker 2: was a link between the likelihood of finding yourself incarcerated
Speaker 2: and the link between education.
Speaker 1: Given your general background and what you were studying at Howard,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty amazing thing. What was it like to
Speaker 1: teach fifth grade?
Speaker 2: It was great for a couple of reasons. Number one,
Speaker 2: the students were old enough to still be interested in learning,
Speaker 2: and yet old enough not to be too cool to care,
Speaker 2: and so they really thought that history was interesting. I
Speaker 2: loved it. In fact, one of the greatest compliments I
Speaker 2: ever received as a fifth grade school teacher. One of
Speaker 2: my fifth grade students invited me, my wife, and two
Speaker 2: of my three daughters to his home for Thanksgiving a
Speaker 2: year ago, and his mom came to my wedding, and
Speaker 2: so it just showed the kind of impact I had
Speaker 2: on his family but also on mind. But I also know,
Speaker 2: and you probably know this as well as the speaker,
Speaker 2: seventy percent of the American students who drop out of
Speaker 2: high school they drop out in the tenth grade. It's
Speaker 2: not because there's something magical about the tenth grade. It's
Speaker 2: because what you didn't master in elementary school, particularly in reading,
Speaker 2: will catch you. So I was glad to start off
Speaker 2: as a fifth grade teacher.
Speaker 1: When you look at the study about Mecklenburg and the
Speaker 1: students that they had studied for the entire period from
Speaker 1: ninety eight to twenty eleven, and they tracked twenty six
Speaker 1: thousand students, and they concluded the young adolescents who attend
Speaker 1: school with high suspension rates are a lot more likely
Speaker 1: to be arrested and jailed as adults. In a sense,
Speaker 1: the school behavior relates pretty directly to what's going to
Speaker 1: happen to him.
Speaker 2: Later on, when I would meet with other teachers in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles, both public and private school, and we had
Speaker 2: conversations about family, about communities, one thing that would always
Speaker 2: come up in the conversation is Girard or Karen or
Speaker 2: Susi or La Kwan missing too many days. And we
Speaker 2: know from research that if you miss more than five days,
Speaker 2: there's a trickle effect on you falling behind, particularly in mathematics.
Speaker 2: But we also know that if you're falling behind in
Speaker 2: middle school, it's tougher to catch up in high school. Now,
Speaker 2: we have plenty of examples of people who've been able
Speaker 2: to overcome, but absenteeism is a major factor that we
Speaker 2: often do not talk about because it's not something that
Speaker 2: we think about. What we hear a fight and that
Speaker 2: leading to out of school suspension, a student not doing
Speaker 2: well and maybe having to go to summer school. Well,
Speaker 2: you know what, sometimes absenteeism are being involved or being
Speaker 2: away from school involved in outside activities can influence it.
Speaker 2: So I'm not too shocked about it, but it's one
Speaker 2: reason why we as a nation, particularly we're going to
Speaker 2: look at NAPE scores, should talk about absenteeism. And it's
Speaker 2: long term impact on families.
Speaker 1: So the whole issue. If they're not in the classroom,
Speaker 1: they're not learning. And yet, if I understand it correctly,
Speaker 1: back in nineteen seventy four, they're about a million, seven
Speaker 1: hundred thousand students who are suspended from school. By the
Speaker 1: early nineties that number had jumped like to three point
Speaker 1: one million. I don't know what the current number is,
Speaker 1: but in a sense, it's counterproductive to be kicking them
Speaker 1: out if the net result is they're more likely to
Speaker 1: end up in prison.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and that's why some reformers in the eighties and
Speaker 2: the nineties created alternative schools. These were more of a
Speaker 2: halfway spot. We're not going to send you back home.
Speaker 2: We know you're probably not going to do well there.
Speaker 2: We can't keep you in school, and so we'll create
Speaker 2: an alternative school. And that's one way to address some
Speaker 2: of the challenges you mentioned. But there were some students who,
Speaker 2: because of the type of crime or infraction, could not
Speaker 2: go to an alternative school. They had to go to
Speaker 2: a juvenile justice system. And there are some places like
Speaker 2: Texas and Georgia, which in fact your state, which in
Speaker 2: fact has a state wide school district made up of
Speaker 2: juvenile justice age young men and women with the goal
Speaker 2: of trying to give them a GED or high school
Speaker 2: diploma to complete. And so we've got some experience with
Speaker 2: addressing what we can do with those students. But you're right,
Speaker 2: if you're not in and you're out, we're going to
Speaker 2: see you in a caartural system at some point.
Speaker 1: I was surprised when I was looking at this study.
Speaker 1: Fifty two percent of people in prison score below level
Speaker 1: two on a numerousy test, vastly more than the country
Speaker 1: at large. And also twenty five percent of the people
Speaker 1: in prisons came from a household where neither parent had
Speaker 1: gotten a high school diploma. So is there a problem
Speaker 1: here of people growing up in a household where nobody's
Speaker 1: been educated. Compounds the problem over time and creates sort
Speaker 1: of a continuous linkage to you don't learn, so you
Speaker 1: end up as a criminals who end up in jail.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, you know, we know that one of the top
Speaker 2: five determinants on how well is do in school is
Speaker 2: the education of the mother, something that my wife reminds
Speaker 2: me with greatly. So one is if you're from a
Speaker 2: home where neither parent finished high school, the chances of
Speaker 2: you finishing are tough. Again, there are examples of people
Speaker 2: who are now holders of a PhD from a home
Speaker 2: without it, but for too many children, it puts you
Speaker 2: on a school to suspension pipeline or a school to
Speaker 2: drop out pipeline. And so in a place like Virginia
Speaker 2: where I am right now, just a year ago, we
Speaker 2: celebrated awarding more than five hundred GEDs to incarcerated people
Speaker 2: here in the Commonwealth. Well, the reason I celebrate that
Speaker 2: is because it's great to see our Virginia Department of
Speaker 2: Corrections and our leaders Governor Youngkin, Secretary Amy Gudera, and
Speaker 2: others making a big push to close the achievement gap
Speaker 2: by providing an education. Some will say a second chance.
Speaker 2: I will say some of these adults, as high school
Speaker 2: students or middle school students, they ever had a first chance.
Speaker 2: So that's a great thing, but it's also a sad
Speaker 2: reminder that we have to wait for someone to go
Speaker 2: to prison in order to earn a GED or a
Speaker 2: high school diploma.
Speaker 1: So your experience way you've seen so far that the
Speaker 1: act of earning the GED dramatically increases the likelihood the
Speaker 1: one they get out of prison, they'll stay out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a grade two studies one in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: one earlier twenty fifteen from the RAND Corporation, and those
Speaker 2: scholars identify that if you participate in a correctional education program,
Speaker 2: that's a dope basic secondary. Well, that's a dope basic education,
Speaker 2: which many Americans are involved in. Now that's also high
Speaker 2: school what they call adult secondary education. There's also post
Speaker 2: secondary education, which is college and career in voke tech.
Speaker 2: If you participate, there's a thirty two percent less likelihood
Speaker 2: that you will actually return to prison. Follow Up studies
Speaker 2: have identified that people who actually earned a certificate for
Speaker 2: a job, the likelihood of them returning to prison as
Speaker 2: well has dropped. There's some challenges along the way, but
Speaker 2: there's definitely at least someone will say was is it
Speaker 2: causal or was a correlation? While I'll let the economists
Speaker 2: and the others debate that, I just know, having talked
Speaker 2: to employers and having talked to college professors and to
Speaker 2: the incarcerated themselves, when they find a great education program,
Speaker 2: some may lead to a degree, some may not. It's
Speaker 2: the whole idea of being enlightened or reawakened and use
Speaker 2: that education and say, you know what, I'm going to
Speaker 2: do something differently, particularly for those who become entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1: Now Texas has taken I think an interestingly different approach
Speaker 1: and what they call their Prison Entrepreneurship Program, where they
Speaker 1: actually trained people into the principles of business so that
Speaker 1: they could become entrepreneurs when they get out, which is
Speaker 1: I think an interesting approach.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I had actually had an opportunity to see the
Speaker 2: prison Entrepreneurship program in person several years ago when I
Speaker 2: was visiting Texas and I happened to arrive at one
Speaker 2: of the days where I sat as a judge and
Speaker 2: had an opportunity to hear the job pitch. Well. I
Speaker 2: was so moved by what I saw that some years
Speaker 2: after that, when I was full time at the American
Speaker 2: Enterprise Institute, we partnered with the University of Baltimore doctor
Speaker 2: Andrea Contoora, and we had a joint conference where we
Speaker 2: brought in people from the Prison Entrepreneurship Program, the entire panel,
Speaker 2: and just imagine when the audience learned that here were
Speaker 2: three men who have been formally incarcerated. One of them
Speaker 2: was out of prison. Now he had a truck driving
Speaker 2: business making more than ten thousand a month, and another
Speaker 2: who had a construction company where he would gross over
Speaker 2: a million a year. And so it showed people in fact,
Speaker 2: who had no criminal record, who were in college or
Speaker 2: law school or a master's program. People were earning more
Speaker 2: than we would coming out. And it was just like, Aha,
Speaker 2: people can make a big change. But that's one great program.
Speaker 2: I also think about programs closer to home. In DC,
Speaker 2: doctor Stanley Andrews was formerly incarcerated. He has a PhD
Speaker 2: in an NBA. He's got a nonprofit call from prison
Speaker 2: sales to PhD where he's taking people to the next
Speaker 2: level and saying, you know you can do this well.
Speaker 2: And even here in Charlottesville, we have Resilience Education, which
Speaker 2: is a nonprofit organization that partners with the Dark School
Speaker 2: of Business at UVA. We've awarded more than a thousand
Speaker 2: certificates in business entrepreneurship and people are coming out creating
Speaker 2: jobs or getting jobs. So those things matter.
Speaker 1: We've been talking about different projects around the country, but
Speaker 1: you now teach a course at the University of Virginia
Speaker 1: entitled Education inside the US and International Prisons. What inspired
Speaker 1: you to start looking internationally in.
Speaker 2: Twenty eighteen and Elizabeth Smith where at AEI working with
Speaker 2: a group of people on the left and the right
Speaker 2: to try to lift the peil Grant band. And during
Speaker 2: that bipartisan work a metal gentleman by the name of
Speaker 2: Author Riser. He at the time was working for a
Speaker 2: right of center think tank. Well author has since then,
Speaker 2: he's enrolled in a PhD program at the University of Oxford.
Speaker 2: He and his wife, who are both Army veterans, they're
Speaker 2: the founders of the Aero Center for Justice and they're
Speaker 2: looking at criminal justice in particular. And a good friend
Speaker 2: of ours named Mark Howard, who's a professor at Georgetown University,
Speaker 2: runs a exoneration project and the Frederick Douglass Project. The
Speaker 2: three of us got together and Authors said, listen, I'm
Speaker 2: taking a group of Americans left right, formerly incarcerated reformers
Speaker 2: and others to visit prisons in other countries, just so
Speaker 2: you can see what they're doing. Well, lo and behold.
Speaker 2: Our group had an opportunity between twenty twenty three to
Speaker 2: twenty four to go visit prisons in Norway, in Germany,
Speaker 2: and Brazil. With another organization, had a chance to go
Speaker 2: to Kenya, but what we learned from There were a
Speaker 2: couple of things. At number one, there are some great
Speaker 2: things that other countries are doing that we can adopt here.
Speaker 2: But number two that there are actually some programs here
Speaker 2: in the United States that other people like Norway, for example,
Speaker 2: Norway's drug Court was adopted from the United States, which
Speaker 2: was created, you know, in the late eighties in Florida.
Speaker 2: And so that was the first AHA. And then I
Speaker 2: went to my forward thinking dean at both the law
Speaker 2: school and Batan School and said, if in fact we
Speaker 2: want to train or prepare our students for leadership domestically
Speaker 2: and internationally, we've got to get them on the other
Speaker 2: side of the Atlantic or the Pacific. And so that
Speaker 2: started a class where I'm bringing international concepts into our conversation.
Speaker 1: You know. I was also surprised. I didn't realize that
Speaker 1: it's been a very long process of Europeans and Americans
Speaker 1: looking at each other's prison practices, apparently going on all
Speaker 1: the way back to alex Detoquil in the eighteen thirties.
Speaker 1: What is it do you think that we're all sort
Speaker 1: of floundering trying to find answers to similar problems.
Speaker 2: We are when you think of Norway. The first things
Speaker 2: that come to mind are, you know, Christine Mountains, the
Speaker 2: Northern Lights, and Great Salmon. When I told friends of
Speaker 2: mine that I was taking eighteen UVA students to visit prisons,
Speaker 2: the response was, wait, what Why would you go to
Speaker 2: such a beautiful country to see such an ugly thing?
Speaker 2: The thing the prison that Nathaniel Hawthorn in the Scarlet
Speaker 2: Letter referred to as the black flower of civilization or
Speaker 2: civilized society. And I said, because Norway is doing something differently,
Speaker 2: and the way in which it educates as correctional officers,
Speaker 2: one example, in the way that it addresses what we
Speaker 2: call rehabilitation. The Norwegian says, ah, you Americans have the
Speaker 2: wrong term. I said, well, what do you mean by that?
Speaker 2: They said, when you use the term rehabilitation, the assumption
Speaker 2: is one that some thing is innately wrong with the person,
Speaker 2: and that number two, that your institutions are carcer institutions
Speaker 2: in and of themselves can change people. In Norway, we
Speaker 2: have something called the principle of normality, and that says
Speaker 2: what's that? They said, We want to make your life
Speaker 2: during incarceration as normal as possible, so that when you
Speaker 2: leave prison or we call re entry. It's not such
Speaker 2: a big shock, and so rather being called number seven
Speaker 2: five six twenty seven eight, they call me Gerard Robinson.
Speaker 2: I wear my daily clothes. I don't wear an orange jumpsuit.
Speaker 2: I have my own cell. I have a working relationship
Speaker 2: with the parole officer as well as the correctional officer.
Speaker 2: So the principal normality is one. And I think another
Speaker 2: point is the Norwegians are very clear that your punishment
Speaker 2: is your loss of liberty. That once you've lost your
Speaker 2: liberty to have interaction with your family on a daily basis,
Speaker 2: you know you've lost your job. There's a shame or
Speaker 2: who wants to aspect that's your punishment once you walk
Speaker 2: into the prison. The goal isn't to punish you more physically,
Speaker 2: emotionally and spiritually.
Speaker 1: From your perspective, given problems like gangs, et cetera. Do
Speaker 1: you think this kind of approach would work in American prisons?
Speaker 2: I think it will because I'm looking at principles, not
Speaker 2: at populations. And here's why I say that. People initially
Speaker 2: will say, well, what you're talking about can't work in
Speaker 2: the United States because we're more racially diverse. We have
Speaker 2: a much larger prison population one point nine million compared
Speaker 2: to three thousand. They have one to one guard to
Speaker 2: correctional officer to prisoner ratio in the United States could
Speaker 2: be one to fourteen, in some places one to thirty,
Speaker 2: which is why several states have in fact employed the
Speaker 2: National Guard to serve in prison because there's a staff
Speaker 2: in shortage. Where those are population dynamics, I'm talking principle.
Speaker 2: I'm saying that the principal normality in fact can work
Speaker 2: in the United States because the whole idea of treating
Speaker 2: people with dignity using this opportunity of incarceration to try
Speaker 2: to support you isn't a new idea. I mean, when
Speaker 2: toeuk Deville and Beaumont traveled to the United States in
Speaker 2: the early eighteen thirties to visit America. When we think
Speaker 2: about Tolkeville, we naturally go to Democracy in America, which
Speaker 2: was published in eighteen thirty five, but we often forget
Speaker 2: that Beaumont and Tolqueville, in fact, they published a book
Speaker 2: on the American penitentiary and its application to France, and
Speaker 2: so democracy in many ways had to go through the
Speaker 2: prison system. They were looking at American prisons because while
Speaker 2: we didn't call it a principle of normality, we were
Speaker 2: trying to normalize through education, through religious instruction, through self betterment,
Speaker 2: and through work how to make this happen. So at
Speaker 2: one level, this is partly what we're built on. That's
Speaker 2: number one. Number two, there are places who are actually
Speaker 2: experimenting with this. Now. When I was at the University
Speaker 2: of Oslo, I had an opportunity to meet a professor
Speaker 2: who was part of a coalition supporting a program called
Speaker 2: Little Scandinavia. And it's the Scandinavian Prison Program Norway, of course,
Speaker 2: including Sweden, Iceland, others, and they've implemented it in a
Speaker 2: prison outside of Philadelphia. They had the correctional officers from
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania traveled to Norway, spend time with their correctional officers,
Speaker 2: return to the United States and slowly but surely began
Speaker 2: to implement what they've seen in Norway. Now there's actually
Speaker 2: a documentary with one of the guards from Pennsylvania said, listen,
Speaker 2: I just don't believe this. I'm not sure it's going
Speaker 2: to work, but hey, I'm going to get a great
Speaker 2: trip to Norway. Well, today, he's one of the biggest
Speaker 2: proponents of the trip because he said what he realized
Speaker 2: we had to change in the US wasn't simply the
Speaker 2: color of a prison or paint on the wall or uniforms.
Speaker 2: It was a cultural shift. And we know from social
Speaker 2: anthropology that cultures define as a transmission of hope, ideas,
Speaker 2: beliefs from one generation to the next. Well, we can
Speaker 2: inculcate ideas of human dignity, of reform, of betterment through
Speaker 2: a cultural change. It's not going to be easy, it's
Speaker 2: not going to be overnight, but you have organizations who
Speaker 2: are doing that, so it's starting to work. It's already
Speaker 2: here in the US. But you also have organizations like
Speaker 2: Prison Fellowship started by Chuck Colson, who've been involved in
Speaker 2: prison work for over thirty years, who are doing great work.
Speaker 2: So we have examples. But yes, it could work here.
Speaker 2: It'll just take a cultural shift. A phrase of often
Speaker 2: heard you use, we have to get rid of the
Speaker 2: prison guards of the past.
Speaker 1: Mentally, that phrase may apply more to this podcast than
Speaker 1: to most of them. One of the things that you've
Speaker 1: really mentioned is that we actually ran much much bigger
Speaker 1: prisoner of war camps in the United States. We had
Speaker 1: about four hundred thousand prisoners of war, some three hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand Nazis. But we dealt with them in
Speaker 1: a context of the Geneva Convention of twenty nine. What
Speaker 1: was the effect of that? Mean, to what extent were
Speaker 1: the prisoners dealt with and a humane system that enabled
Speaker 1: them to return to civilian life afterwards.
Speaker 2: One of the benefits of my trip to Germany with
Speaker 2: the cohort from the Aer Center was to actually visit
Speaker 2: different camps. So we went to Hamburg, which the second
Speaker 2: largest city in Germany, in May of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: We had a chance to go to the New and
Speaker 2: Gummen concentration camp, and it was created by the Nazis
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty eight. By the time we get to
Speaker 2: nineteen forty five, forty thousand prisoners had died in the camp.
Speaker 2: And so we're taking a tour of the camp with
Speaker 2: a great God who has given us the history. He
Speaker 2: happened to mention in me to be in passing. He says, well,
Speaker 2: you know, you Americans had some of our guys or
Speaker 2: in your and I knew we had some, But to
Speaker 2: be honest with the speaker, when I returned home from
Speaker 2: that trip and began to do research. I was shocked
Speaker 2: to know that at my gut level, I figured we
Speaker 2: had twenty thousand prisoners of war in the United States.
Speaker 2: In fact, when I asked friends of mine, both who
Speaker 2: are university professors and otherwise, no one's gotten over fifty thousand.
Speaker 2: When I mentioned we had more than four hundred thousand
Speaker 2: prisoners of war in forty two states between nineteen forty
Speaker 2: two and forty five, They're like, wait, now, that can't
Speaker 2: be true. And then I began to send them information
Speaker 2: and even in Virginia we had seventeen thousand. Now here's
Speaker 2: what's different. To get to your question, the Geneva Convention
Speaker 2: of nineteen twenty nine established a playbook for how to
Speaker 2: treat prisoners of war who were captured. And so, if
Speaker 2: you were a prisoner of war in the United States,
Speaker 2: there were a few things you received. Number one, you
Speaker 2: received nutritious meals per day, not just any meal. There
Speaker 2: was actually a coleric minimum per day that POW's had received.
Speaker 2: They had an opportunity to work. Some of them worked
Speaker 2: on the grounds of the prison camp. Some were actually
Speaker 2: working outside the prison camp in local businesses in park.
Speaker 2: Because many men had gone off to war, and some
Speaker 2: other dynamics. Many of them had an opportunity to enroll
Speaker 2: into free education classes. Not simply high school, but there
Speaker 2: were also college classes that they can roll in for free.
Speaker 2: And they were also able to drink beer. Now, this
Speaker 2: was primarily the treatment for prisoners of war. If you
Speaker 2: were a general or higher ranking, you even received better treatment.
Speaker 2: And so I sat here for a moment and said,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, you mean at the same time that
Speaker 2: we were fighting overseas, that when we brought three hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty Nazis and some Italians and others over to
Speaker 2: the United States, that they were being treated more humane,
Speaker 2: with more dignity, receiving an education at a time in
Speaker 2: American history when many whites in the United States, particularly
Speaker 2: in the South, could not afford to go to a
Speaker 2: public or private university. At the same time, you had
Speaker 2: black soldiers who were fighting overseas only to come back
Speaker 2: home and sit on trains guarding the Nazis, only to
Speaker 2: find out that once they passed the Mason Dixon line
Speaker 2: that they told the black soldiers they had to go
Speaker 2: to the back of the train, while the white soldiers
Speaker 2: sat in the front laughing at them, calling them monkeys
Speaker 2: and all kinds of names that you and I know about,
Speaker 2: And so I was like, how is it that this
Speaker 2: could happen? Well, digging deeper to Geneva Convention of twenty nine,
Speaker 2: I understand why. But the bigger takeaway for me is
Speaker 2: we don't need a new experiment on whether or not
Speaker 2: in America can treat people who are incarcerated with human dignity.
Speaker 2: We already have an example of doing so. It just
Speaker 2: happened to be other people's prisoners. Now.
Speaker 1: One of the points you make, though, is that we
Speaker 1: actually treated the Nazis better than the one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty thousand Japanese Americans who went to the US and
Speaker 1: tournament camps, even though two thirds of the Japanese were
Speaker 1: American citizens. Why were we treating our own citizens worse
Speaker 1: than we were treating the Nazis?
Speaker 2: Were definitely part of it is cultural. At the time
Speaker 2: that the Executive Order assigned to round up one hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty thousand plus Japanese, this was built on over
Speaker 2: seventy five years of anti Asian laws and policies in
Speaker 2: the US, all the way from California to Washington, d C.
Speaker 2: And what's so interesting is that two thirds of them
Speaker 2: again where Americans g but we also put them in
Speaker 2: we called them internment camps. We'd call them concentration camps.
Speaker 2: They were called internament camps because for legal reasons they
Speaker 2: were technically different. But when you looked at the treatment
Speaker 2: and the way in which the Japanese Americans were treated
Speaker 2: compared to the Nazis, culture was definitely dynamic. Number two
Speaker 2: was also international law. We wanted to treat the Germans
Speaker 2: and the Italians and the others well in hope and
Speaker 2: Japanese well in hope that they would treat our prisoners
Speaker 2: of war with the same dignity. Well, we know it
Speaker 2: didn't happen to a lot of POWs in Japan. It
Speaker 2: was a movie several years ago about that story, and
Speaker 2: we know some similar tragedies happened over there. But race
Speaker 2: and class definitely had a role to play in how
Speaker 2: we treated the Japanese. And it was later Ronald Reagan
Speaker 2: signing legislation to provide their descendants reparations for that type
Speaker 2: of tragedy.
Speaker 1: It's one of the grammar parts of twentieth century American history.
Speaker 1: Although the treatment of African Americans and the treatment of
Speaker 1: Native Americans was a continuing problem throughout that entire century.
Speaker 1: Part of this which got us on the wrong track.
Speaker 1: I think you mentioned that there was a eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: one Virginia Supreme Court ruling. Can you explain it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, And so there were a few men who
Speaker 2: had found themselves in trouble with the law, and the
Speaker 2: case ultimately made its way to the Virginia Supreme Court.
Speaker 2: It's the Rough and the Commonwealth case. And when they
Speaker 2: were trying to decide on what to do with the
Speaker 2: men here, there was a phrase that was used to
Speaker 2: determine how to treat them, and it's this term. They
Speaker 2: basically said that prisoners were merely slaves of the state,
Speaker 2: and that phrase helped lay the foundation for what in
Speaker 2: penal practice is called the hands off doctrine, simply meaning that,
Speaker 2: for the most part, prison and incarceration is a state function.
Speaker 2: Of the approximately one point nine million people who are
Speaker 2: incarcerated today, less than two hundred thousand of those are
Speaker 2: in federal prisons. And so they're saying this is a
Speaker 2: state function. And when the incarcerated began to identify indignities
Speaker 2: placed upon them by Wharton's correctional officers, either other incarcerated
Speaker 2: men and women. They said, we need legal relief. And
Speaker 2: from the eighteen seventies up until around the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 2: before the start of the civil rights movement, many judges said, listen,
Speaker 2: we simply can't have the judiciary involving itself in the
Speaker 2: day to day management of prisons as once as just
Speaker 2: as Thomas said, course decades later, these are naturally dangerous places,
Speaker 2: and so the hands off doctrine basically said, listen, prisoners
Speaker 2: are mere slaves of the state, looking at this metaphorically
Speaker 2: and otherwise, and therefore we cannot do much for you.
Speaker 2: And so when the Germans or the POWs from other
Speaker 2: countries are here, they're treated with dignity because they're not
Speaker 2: slaves of the state. They're citizens of another country, citizens
Speaker 2: that were at war with But we've signed on to
Speaker 2: a doctrine and a social compact that says we will
Speaker 2: treat these people differently. And yet in your state of Georgia,
Speaker 2: where there were approximately twelve thousand POWs, some of them
Speaker 2: at Camp Wheeler and Macon and others at Camp Stewart
Speaker 2: and Savannah, they weren't treated with the same dignity, even
Speaker 2: though they were American citizens. In many ways, symbolically and metaphorically,
Speaker 2: they were still slaves of the state.
Speaker 1: The date of this decision, eighteen seventy one, is only
Speaker 1: six years after the Civil War. So the term slave
Speaker 1: in Virginia had a very vivid, complete state of impotence
Speaker 1: and subservience. Wasn't just a rhetorical term. It had a
Speaker 1: very vivid and real meaning.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah, after the Civil War. Before the Civil War,
Speaker 2: the majority of the people who were incarcerated in state
Speaker 2: prisons and federal to some extent in jails were white.
Speaker 2: And my students are often shocked by that statement, and
Speaker 2: I said, well, it's because the blacks were already in prison.
Speaker 2: It was called slavery. Now, of course there were free
Speaker 2: blacks who found themselves incarcerated, but after the Civil War,
Speaker 2: going up to nineteen hundred, many prisons, particularly in the
Speaker 2: Deep South, became ninety percent black. And so that phrase
Speaker 2: slave of the state, naturally, as you mentioned, was more
Speaker 2: than just symbolic.
Speaker 1: So REMARKA, you know, I always find when I talk
Speaker 1: with you, I learned stuff that I had no notion
Speaker 1: of because of the range of research and the work
Speaker 1: you do. Where can listeners read more of your work
Speaker 1: or follow the projects you're involved in.
Speaker 2: So if you go to my website at the Batin
Speaker 2: School of Leadership and Public Policy at UVA, you could
Speaker 2: find not only my web page, but a link to
Speaker 2: some of the work that I do, both publication wise
Speaker 2: and also presentations. Second is to go to my page
Speaker 2: at the American Enterprise Institute. I've got articles there from
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen moving forward, and also you can purchase a
Speaker 2: book that I had a chance to co author, publishing
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, is called Education for Liberation, The Politics of
Speaker 2: Promise and Reform Inside and Beyond America's Prisons, and the
Speaker 2: forward is written by two people speaking New Gingrich and
Speaker 2: Van Jones.
Speaker 1: That was one of our early collaborations, which seems to
Speaker 1: always surprise people. We're going to post those on our
Speaker 1: show page so that people who listen this can find
Speaker 1: all of your points of entry. You're very busy and
Speaker 1: very creative. I'm really grateful that you would take the
Speaker 1: time to join me, particularly since in the next few
Speaker 1: days your daughter is going to get married, so it's
Speaker 1: very cool that you take the time out. Thank you
Speaker 1: for joining me. Your recent op ed piece how World
Speaker 1: War Two became a fork on the road on prison policies.
Speaker 1: It's available now on the Virginian Pilot website at Pilot
Speaker 1: online dot com, and we'll post all of the ways
Speaker 1: of reaching you on our show page. Thank you very much, Gerard.
Speaker 2: Thank you, missus Speaker, for your continued leadership in this
Speaker 2: and so many other areas of social and pullet policy.
Speaker 1: Thank you to my guest Gerard Robinson. You can learn
Speaker 1: more about criminal justice reform on our show page at
Speaker 1: newtsworld dot com. Newtsworld is produced by Ganglish three sixty
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Speaker 1: is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created
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