January 7, 2022 • 41 mins
Lenore Anderson is the co-founder and President of the Alliance for Safety and Justice, one of the largest justice and public safety reform advocacy organizations in the country, and founder of Californians for Safety and Justice–the nation’s largest network of crime survivors.
Today’s conversation illuminates how we arrived at the various crises we face with a punitive approach to criminal justice, the progress we’ve made over the past two decades, and how we can continue to make the policy changes needed to reduce prison populations, help survivors heal, and make our communities safer.
This conversation covers a lot of ground, from the role of trauma in our carceral system to the advent of Three Strikes, as well as addressing the responsibility of white women to carry their weight in the movement for change.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
(soft music)
Hello, and welcome to A New Legacy
where we are speaking tocommunity leaders and organizers
about building a new vision of justice.
We are Jess and Annie Nichol.
And today we will be speakingto Lenore Anderson who has
been tremendously supportivein our advocacy journey,
(00:22):
both as a mentor and a modelof the kind of deep thinking
and deep feeling activismwe both hope to embody.
- A lot of us are aware of the injustices
that are endemic to mass incarceration,
but this conversation withLenore really illuminates how
deeply embedded these injusticesare within the system,
(00:42):
and contextualizes howwe got to where we are
and where we can go from here.
- Yeah.
One of the things Lenorehas helped us navigate
is how to be advocates in afield where there's a lot of
potential to do harm evenwhen we have good intentions.
And we'll talk a bit more about that,
particularly the responsibilitywe have as white women
to carry our weight in this movement.
(01:04):
- So if you're someone who isinterested in learning more
of the historical contextof laws like three-strikes
and how they came to be,
or how meeting the needs ofsurvivors can actually reduce
prison populations andmake our community safer,
then this conversation is for you.
So before we dive in,
I'll share a bit moreabout Lenore's background.
(01:27):
Lenore Anderson is theco-founder and president
of Alliance for Safety and Justice, ASJ,
one of the largest justiceand public safety reform
advocacy organizations in the country,
and founder of Californiansfor Safety and Justice,
the nation's largestnetwork of crime survivors.
She has contributed tonumerous highly impactful
reform ballot initiativesand has served in
(01:48):
various government leadership capacities,
including as chief of policyand chief of the alternative
programs division at theSan Francisco DA's Office,
director of public safetyfor the Oakland mayor,
and as director of the SanFrancisco Mayor's Office
of Criminal Justice.
She holds a JD from NYU School of Law
and a BA from UC Berkeley.
(02:08):
(ambient music)
- Hey, Lenore.
- Hi.
- We have had so manyconversations with you already
that we wish we had recordedbecause you are a wellspring
of knowledge and it's beena real privilege to get
to hear your perspectives and experience,
and you've been a hugeresource for us in beginning
(02:32):
this whole journey of educating ourselves.
And to the degree thatpeople are interested
in hearing these conversations
that we're educating ourselves with,
we want others to get tofamiliarize themselves with some of
the frameworks andknowledge that you have.
So, Annie, I thinkyou're gonna kick us off
with the first question.
(02:52):
- The first time we ever spoke, Lenore,
Jess and I asked you foradvice in how we might go about
supporting changing publicpolicy around criminal justice.
The thing I was so struck byin that conversation was that
your initial advice to uswas really centered around
our trauma and our capacityto support the cause
(03:13):
without burning out.
And you encouraged usto protect our energy,
to take care of ourselveswhile we were exploring
this kind of advocacy.
And I just remember thinking like, wow,
this is somebody who reallyunderstands the toll that trauma
takes in daily life, and whatcan happen when you don't have
the resources or the supportto take care of yourself.
(03:33):
So I've also heard you talk about
the need for a more trauma informed policy
around safety and justice,
and I wonder if you couldjust speak to why that is
so needed in our criminal justice system.
- It's so great to talkto you both as always.
And I remember that conversation,
and one of the reasonsthat trauma and addressing
(03:56):
the impacts of trauma comes to my mind
so quickly when I think about,
not just what the criminaljustice system needs,
but what we as reformand change agents need,
is because in many waysit's kind of the elephant
in the room.
We've had 30 plus years of
(04:17):
a tough on crime response
to violence that has actually worsened
the experience for manypeople when it comes
to recovering from trauma.
And we tend to, as a society, think,
well, when bad things happenwe just need to get tough.
(04:40):
We just need to respondwith severe punishment
and lifetime surveillanceand big investments
into a criminal justicesystem that can do that.
We found out through ourwork that what most survivors
of crime need in many waysis the opposite of that.
(05:02):
Most survivors of crime willtell you that addressing trauma
is not only what's needed fortheir own healing journey,
but it's actually what's needed
to improve public safety overall.
The cycle of violence,
the cycle of crime that wetalk about a lot in criminal
justice could also becalled a cycle of trauma.
(05:23):
And then that cycle of traumaresults in criminal justice
system responses that exaggerate trauma
that actually make trauma worse.
So there's this sort ofhuge elephant in the room
when it comes to safety,
which is what does itlook like to alleviate,
to acknowledge and alleviate trauma?
(05:45):
How would that better set up survivors?
How would it better set up communities?
How would it better improvepublic safety overall?
- Well, what does it look like?
- When we first started our work,
we created Crime Survivors forSafety and Justice in 2013.
And we got together agroup of survivor leaders,
(06:08):
advocates, and expertswho'd also recovered
from violence and crime,
but advocates and expertsin everything from violence
prevention to restorativejustice, to victims rights.
And we sat in a room andwe asked the question,
what do we want instead
of what the criminaljustice system is doing?
And just about everybodypretty quickly came
(06:32):
to this issue of trauma recovery.
And it reminded me when I was in
the District Attorney's Officein San Francisco years before
I had been introduced to something called
a trauma recovery center.
And it stood out to me asthis really unique program
that I had never seen before,
which is comprehensivelong-term support for people
(06:53):
who have experienced trauma,
and it's support that'sincludes mental health,
but isn't just mental health.
It's also all the basicways that people need
to get back on their feet,
from help recovering financially
to help figuring out a new way to live
if you've lost someone, to helpfiguring out how to support
(07:15):
children who have also beenexposed to violence and harm.
So we've been advocating forcommunity-based comprehensive
sort of one-stop trauma recoverycenters in the communities
that experience the mostconcentrated crime and violence
with the least amount of help.
We've been advocating forthis model across the country
and it's starting to take shape.
(07:37):
And it's very excitingto see when we bring
this solution to the table,
it's a bridge builder.
We have law enforcementsupport the solution,
survivors of crime,
people who've been in thecriminal justice system
as people who have been convicted,
everybody gets an agrees that, hey,
if we could actuallyaddress folks' as trauma
(07:57):
on the front end, we couldreally get to this cycle.
But to your question, Jess,
why this model is so unique, right?
Is because so much of whathappens when people interact
with the criminal justicesystem is triggering.
Recovering from traumacan take a lifetime.
You have to have support around you
and people who understandwhat sleeplessness looks like,
(08:19):
understand what smallnoises can remind you of,
understand what it looks liketo feel like no one around
you has experienced whatyou just experienced, right?
Systems don't respond to people
from that knowledge generally.
Systems are trying to process cases
and don't super get intothe weeds of the details
(08:40):
or really wrap folks around with support.
And so that trauma recoverycenter model in many ways
is a total opposite ofwhat happens every day
in the criminal justice system,
and why it's something thatcould be really beneficial.
(ambient music)
(09:02):
- Our criminal justice system,
it really does prioritize punishment
over prevention and support.
Can you speak a little bit more to that?
What happens when we'reprioritizing punishment
over prevention and support?
- The United States, I think,
spends about $80 billiona year at this point,
(09:22):
$80 billion a year on thecriminal justice system,
from imprisonment to county jails,
to enormous bureaucraciesthat run correction systems,
probation parole systems,prosecutor offices.
This has been a massive investment,
and that investment
(09:44):
has not stopped the cycle of crime.
And it means that wehave less overall money,
fewer public dollars availableto invest in communities
in the ways that would helpadvance violence prevention
and trauma recovery.
When you look at the science,
(10:04):
it's not overwhelmingly mysterious
who's vulnerable in our communities.
We know when young people losesomeone in their life that,
that is traumatic andhas lifetime impacts,
but we don't have trauma informed services
in the schools thatcould help link children
up with the kind of support that's needed.
(10:26):
We know that whenfamilies are experiencing
substantial economics instability,
or homelessness combinedwith substance abuse,
that those families areat great vulnerability
of being impacted by crime and violence.
Yet we don't invest heavilyin housing programs,
(10:48):
in substance abuse andmental health programs
at the community level, familycrisis assistance centers,
mental health crisis response,
all of those building blocks for safety.
So when we talk about the negative impacts
of extreme punishment,
it's not just that it doesn't work,
(11:10):
which it doesn't to stop recidivism,
but it's also that it depletesextremely valuable public
dollars that could gotowards a more coherent
and effective approach to public safety.
- This seems like suchan obvious question,
but it still seems worth asking.
Why doesn't it stop the cycle of crime?
(11:33):
- A couple of important things to note.
First, the majority of crimeand violence does not enter
the criminal justicesystem in the first place.
So less than half ofviolent crime is reported,
and then of the violentcrime that is reported,
less than half of thatresults in a prosecution
and a conviction.
(11:53):
Then for individuals who areconvicted and incarcerated,
we're placing people into an environment
that worsens people's mental health.
There's a lot of institutionalization,
it's often referred to,
that happens when we incarcerate people
in these warehouse style prisons
(12:15):
where there's a lot of violence inside,
where there's a lot of hyper control,
where people are distancedfrom relationships
or connections that arepositive in the community
and the family level.
It's an environment thatmany people experience
as deteriorating and depleting.
And then when people comeout of that environment,
(12:36):
we limit their abilityto get jobs and housing
because they have convictions.
We say, well, you have a conviction,
so you're not eligible for this job,
you're not eligible for that housing,
you can't get that loan.
So then people are in additionto having been incarcerated,
they're now excluded from re-integration.
(12:57):
And so we are fundamentallysetting people up for failure.
So it should come as nosurprise that people struggle
to overcome that experience,
and many times get rightback into the cycle of crime
and right back into incarceration.
(ambient music)
(13:23):
- It feels like thething to ask right now is
around three-strikes,
and Jess and I havethis painful connection
to the tough on crime policies of the 90s,
which I think it's fair to saywas significantly marked by
the passage of three-strikes after
our sister, Polly, was killed.
(13:43):
And can you tell us a bitabout why that period is so
significant in terms of massincarceration in California?
- Absolutely.
So California for many years
was the first state
to enact the kind of policies
(14:04):
that then got replicated allacross the country, right?
So this was the statethat passed the first gang
enhancement laws in the country,
and those are lengthy sentences
for people affiliated with gangs.
That got replicated.
It was one of the first statesto pass transfer of juveniles
into adult prisons
(14:24):
or into the adult criminal justice system.
This gets replicated.
And so similarly,
three-strikes and you're out was a law
that had a three strikes andyou're out type of policy.
California passed this bothin the state legislature
and at the ballot in 1994,
and it swept the nation.
(14:46):
Public officials in statesall across the country
started pointing to California saying
we need to be tough like California.
We need to take people off the streets
and we need to make surepeople get life sentences
if they're engaging in violence.
And it was very much apolitical movement that emerged
in the 80s and 90s thatdrastically changed penal codes
(15:09):
that ratcheted up sentencing of all kinds.
And it was that politicians engaged in it
was really this whole ideaof this is what it looks like
to stand up for victims,
and this is how we needto get tough on crime.
(ambient music)
(15:30):
- Why was it so popular withthis whole tough on crime era?
What was happening at that time
such that it did sweep the nation?
- I think essentiallywhat we're talking about
is a 70s tremendous socialunrest in the United States.
There was a move fromconservatives to put forward
a law and order frameworkto try and win votes,
(15:53):
and much of that law andorder framework was really
based on racialized notionsof crime and violence.
There was a lot of racializedhysteria, and embedded in that
was this notion that we'regonna take back our communities
and we're going to passall these tough laws,
(16:14):
and we're gonna be ableto win votes in that way.
Embedded in that wasfundamentally consistent with how
the criminal justicesystem has been operating
from the outset.
This isn't a system that hassought to actually protect
everyone and it never hassought to protect everyone.
And that fed into whatwas happening politically
(16:36):
at that time.
- As someone who caresdeeply about criminal justice
and mass incarceration in this country,
my understanding is thatCalifornia is an important state
to pay attention to.
Is it fair to say thatCalifornia tends to kind of pave
the way for national policy?
- Yeah, absolutely.
California has been a standout state.
(16:58):
It was a standout state inbuilding mass incarceration,
and it's been a standoutstate in reversing course.
There's still an immense amount of work
that needs to happen for sure.
But this has been a statethat has probably enacted more
change at this point than anyother part of the country.
Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan,these are Californians.
They took the national stageto put forward very tough
(17:22):
on crime law and order ideas
sparking a nationalmovement around conservatism
that helped propel their leadership,
and so that's where it came from.
This is the state that grewthe amount of money spent on
prisons by 1,500% in a 30-year period.
This is the state that built 22 prisons
(17:43):
in a 25-year time period, 22 prisons.
Despite all that prison building,
still had so muchovercrowding that gymnasiums
had to be shut down
and triple bunking washappening inside the prisons.
And all of that was because of this
ever ratcheting up of sentencing.
Who's impacted by this?
This was Californiacommunities of color that bore
(18:05):
the brunt of these devastating policies.
Incarceration for blackCalifornians is seven times higher
than it is for white Californians,
twice as high for Latino Californians
than white Californians.
And it was being replicatedacross the country
with the same impact for the same purpose
and with the same impact.
Then came a pretty unprecedented crisis,
(18:25):
which was the state didn'thave money to be able
to build its way out of the problem,
and the prisons became socrowded that literally one person
was dying per week as aresult of medical neglect
in California's prisons.
They were so overcrowded thatthere was not enough medical
staff to respond to otherwiseroutine and preventative
(18:46):
illnesses that would pop upin a population of that size.
The lack of mental health careand the lack of medical care
became lawsuits that made it all the way
to the Supreme Court.
The United States SupremeCourt ordered California
to reduce its prison system.
That's never happened inthe history of this country
that the US Supreme Courtwould say to a state,
(19:10):
you got to reduce the overcrowding,
just to give you a flavorfor how bad it was.
That was 2011. Not that long ago, right?
So when the US SupremeCourt orders California
to reduce its prisons population,
that's when we start to see an opening,
and that's when we start toreally see the decades upon
(19:30):
decades of work that hadbeen happening calling
for a new approach to public safety
start to actually get someresonance and get some attention.
And then we saw a seriesof ballot initiatives
to reduce incarceration in California.
It was the first state inthe nation to have voters say
we want to reduce incarceration.
(19:51):
And now we're startingto see that reversal
happen in other states.
- Can we talk about these propositions?
You've actively actuallyworked on two of them,
47 and 57 in the last decade.
There's also Proposition36 and these were all
addressing three-strikes, right?
Can you explain someof these propositions?
(20:12):
You probably know thembetter than anybody.
- Well, the first ballotinitiative in 2012
was a ballot initiative toexplicitly reform three-strikes,
and require that the thirdconviction be of a violent
or serious crime to reducethe number of people
(20:32):
convicted of very low-level crimes
that ended up getting life sentences.
That passed overwhelminglyby voters in 2012.
One of the stories that peoplein California were aware
of was the person who had stolen a pizza
and ended up serving a life sentence.
The kind of low-levelcrimes that were resulting
(20:56):
in life sentences was so out of whack
with what the public thought was going on,
that once those storiesgot into the media,
the amount of support forreform became overwhelming
because that's not whatanyone would have ever thought
was actually going on.
When Proposition 36 passed
(21:16):
it was great because it wasclarity that you can talk to
voters about criminal justice reform.
Recall a lot of the regressive policies
in criminal justicecame from voters, right?
It was enacted by voters.
So common wisdom at the timewas that you can't actually
(21:38):
go to voters and say, "Hey, wewanna reduce incarceration."
Well, three-strikes reformin 2012 started to challenge
that notion as to whether or not you could
actually tell voters,
"Hey, do you wanna reduce incarceration?"
Proposition 47 was even bigger, right?
I mean, this was a ballot initiative
(21:59):
that took six low-level crimes
and changed them from felonycrimes to misdemeanor crimes,
and then required the state of California
to annually reduce the amountof money in the prison's
budget by what was saved,and put it into communities.
So this was a mandatoryreallocation prison spending
(22:22):
to trauma recovery for survivors of crime,
violence prevention,mental health treatment.
When we crafted Proposition 47,
what we can knew experientiallywas that everyday people
were really tired of seeingthis much money wasted
on prisons while oureducation system faltered,
(22:45):
while people couldn'tget mental health help.
There was a real world impactthat was happening at a much
bigger scale than Ithink a lot of skeptics
or political observers thought.
So winning Proposition 47,
this very bold reform has really helped
open the flood gates for so much more
(23:05):
reform across the country.
What was so great about 57,
it was basically proposing to the public
do you want people to be warehoused
or do you want people to be rehabilitated
while people are incarcerated,
and voters chose rehabilitation.
This idea that all voterswanna do is just wash
their hands and look theother way, it's just not true.
(23:27):
What voters want is forthe cycle of crime to stop
and for their money tobe used effectively.
We've still got a long way to go,
but those were breakthrough initiatives
that have helped change the country.
(ambient music)
- So we're just talking about reforms,
what happened with 47, 57.
(23:50):
And, Lenore, you had saidthat there's a lot more
work to do,
and I'd be curious to geta bit more of a picture of
what does that look like?
What kind of progress doyou think we can make?
- Sure.
Well, despite the groundswellof popular support
for criminal justice reform
that's growing across the country,
(24:10):
and despite substantial policy reforms
that have been achieved in multiple states
and even at the federal level,
the United States stillincarcerates per capita
more than any nation in the world,
and that comes at great costfinancially and morally.
So what needs to happenis a real rethinking of,
(24:32):
one, how we invest in crimeprevention in the first place,
how we prioritize that.
The second is how we address trauma
when people experience trauma,
and the third is how werespond to crime and violence.
How do we hold peopleaccountable and sentence people
(24:52):
in a way that stops the cycle of crime.
We're really far away from achieving that,
but there's a lot of promising examples
of what could happen thatwould look different.
First, we need to really invest
in community-based crime prevention.
That's everything frompeacemakers who engage in street
(25:13):
outreach to help youngpeople who are vulnerable
get out of harm's way,
to violence preventionprograms in the school,
afterschool programs,things that help young,
vulnerable people stay engaged.
And then we also need toinvest in mental health
and substance abuse treatment
(25:33):
so that we can on the front end,
make sure those programsare scaled up to really meet
the need at the community level.
- You know, one of thethings that I remember
kind of standing out, Lenore,
this is a little bit of a tangent,
but when we first spokeyou were saying that
our voices really mattered,
and it took me a while to hear that
and to actually understandthat that was true.
(25:54):
I kind of thought peoplewere just being nice
when they said that,
and I think I didn't feel thetruth of it until you said it
because it honestly never occurred to me
that our voices would matter.
And I imagine that there area lot of other crime survivors
out there who might feel similarly.
Can you tell us why our voicesmatter and what resources
exist to support people injoining the conversation
(26:16):
and supporting a lot of the causes
that we've been talking about?
- I have two answers.
The first is people whohave been unsafe deserve
the opportunity to weighin on public policy
related to safety.
People who have experiencedtrauma firsthand,
who have experienced alack of safety and violence
(26:38):
are not the voices thatare always at the table,
but absolutely should be.
You and Jess and survivors likeyou know better than anyone
what recovery from trauma looks like,
what your needs are andwhat matters the most
in response to traumatic loss.
(26:58):
My second answer is whenwe're looking at where
this mass incarceration problem came from,
it came from a myth.
And the myth that was sold was a myth that
what crime victims want and need
is more prisons and more incarceration.
(27:22):
That myth was on behalfof victims of crime,
but not engaging withsurvivors and victims of crime.
So when we think aboutthe continued barriers
to reform criminal justice,
one of the continued barriers
(27:43):
is this common understandingin popular culture,
in state houses across the country,
that, well, we have tobe careful with that
criminal justice reform,
because really all of thisis about protecting victims
and protecting public safety.
And that common wisdomis just not accurate.
(28:06):
It's not accurate atthe neighborhood level.
It's not accurate for thevast majority of people
who've suffered traumatic loss.
In order to get to amore enlightened approach
to public safety and a public policy
that's not based on rhetoric,that's not based on hyperbole,
but is actually truly based on what people
who have been unsafeneed to get to safety,
(28:29):
we have to put your voicesand the voices of other people
who have been victimsof crime at the center.
(ambient music)
- You've said before inconversations with us,
that you're particularlyinterested in having conversations
(28:49):
around changing thecriminal justice system
with white women,
and I was just wonderingif you would speak
to that a little bit.
- When we look at the lawand order tough on crime era
in the 80s and 90s,
heavy emphasis has been placedrhetorically on this notion
that the victims that we seek to protect
often through thesepolicies are white victims,
(29:13):
white women and white girls.
We can't kind of get awayfrom race when it comes to
thinking about how Americanculture has promoted
very racist ideas aboutwho the typical victim is,
who the typical person is
that's committing a crime.
And I feel a greatamount of responsibility
(29:36):
to break through those myths and to break
through those stereotypes,
and to talk openly and honestly
about who in our society reallydoes face vulnerabilities
more commonly, and to talkopenly and honestly about who
really experiences the majority
of the lack of safety that exists.
(29:58):
And as it turns out,
when we can be open and honest about it,
we are faced with the truth,
which is that low-income communities,
communities of color in particular,
young people of color in particular
are much more likely toface great vulnerabilities
than middle-class white women
(30:21):
for whom a lot of attention has been paid.
And so I think it's verycritical that we as white women
own that knowledge and act on it.
And act on it in a way thatsays, don't do this in our name.
Let's actually invest intrue safety for our community
(30:42):
members that have not had the opportunity
to experience safety in the first place.
- Yeah, I mean, I can saythat that really speaks to me
and largely to the reason why we're here
and why we're doing this.
So thank you for that.
That feels like a really important part
of this conversation.
Something that I would liketo know about you, Lenore,
(31:04):
is I was doing a little bitof research about you before
we did our interview with you,
and I came across thisline that described you as
a punk drummer turned prosecutor.
There was sort of like a recordscratching sound in my head
because that's just not normally a pairing
that you see in someone's bio.
So will you tell us a littlebit about your background
(31:24):
and how you came to be doing this work?
- Well, so I spent my teen
and early adult years in California,
and frankly, I was growingup at the height of the era
that produced mass incarceration
in the home state of mass incarceration.
I was a troublemaker when I was kid,
but being white and being middle class,
(31:47):
even in the moment ofthe greatest attention
being paid to being tough on crime
never landed me in trouble with the police
in any serious way and neverlanded me in juvenile hall.
And I don't know that at that time
I understood exactly thebenefit that I was receiving
(32:07):
and the privileges that whitechildren were experiencing
in this time of substantial increases
in incarceration foryoung people of color.
But I ended up in lawschool and my first job
coming out of law school,
working with young peoplewho are behind bars,
who are kids who have beenarrested and are being prosecuted
for having committed crimes.
(32:28):
And I was faced with the truth,
which is that they'reno different than I was.
But for race and class,
I made some of the same mistakesand some of the same silly
choices that kids often make.
And so for me, advocatingfor criminal justice reform
is fundamentally about advocating
for racial justice and racial equality.
And I think that that isone of the main reasons
(32:50):
I started doing the work.
I ended up working on juvenilejustice reform for a number
of years and kept kind ofcoming into this reality
that so many of the peoplethat we were organizing
were not just people whoexperienced over-incarceration,
but were also people wholost loved ones to harm,
(33:11):
had experienced traumatic violence,
and had received no help.
And so I went into localgovernment from being
an advocate after law school,
I put on a very different hat
and I went inside local government.
I worked as the public safety director
in my home city of Oakland,
and then in the Mayor'sOffice of Criminal Justice
and then the Prosecutor'sOffice in San Francisco.
(33:32):
And I'm so grateful for thattime that I spent inside
government and inside thecriminal justice system,
because it really solidified my commitment
to not just talk aboutor focus on how we need
to reduce incarceration,
but to have as the exact same goal,
a goal of advancing a newapproach to public safety.
(33:53):
The number of survivors thatI encountered in my time
in the prosecutor's office,
for whom there was no conviction,
there was no investigation,
there was no trauma recovery help.
Survivors experiencingthat were oftentimes
from communities of color,
from communities for whomthere was also over arrest
(34:13):
and over incarceration.
And the way that we builtthe work through alliance
for safety and justice is where reflection
of having seen the sameissue from both sides.
(ambient music)
- Within all of that,
was there a specific turningpoint moment or 'aha'?
(34:38):
What makes a person devote their life
to changing the system for the better?
And I'm curious for you personally,
if you had a moment or ifit was kind of like a series
of moments or what had you
devote your professionalattention to this?
- Well, there've beenso many humbling moments
(35:02):
where I got a deeper sense of just
how deeply harmful thecriminal justice system
has been in worsening racial inequality
in the United States,
and basically contributingto racial trauma
and racial oppression.
We brought a group of parents,
(35:22):
all of whom parents of color
who had children who were incarcerated
in the California Youth Authority,
and California Youth Authority used to be
the largest youth prisonsystem in the country
with thousands upon thousandsof kids incarcerated,
experiencing 23 hours a dayof solitary confinement,
being set up by guards for fights.
(35:43):
It was a horrific juvenile prison system.
So we brought a group offive parents to sit down
with a leader in the PrisonGuards Union at the time
to ask that leader totake a different position,
to stop opposing reforms tothe juvenile prison system
that would treat thesechildren with more dignity.
(36:06):
And one of the parents said to the leader
that we were speaking to,"Do you have children?"
And then he said, "Yeah, I have four."
And the parent that we were with said,
"Which one of them, if theygot in trouble with the law,
which one of them wouldyou allow to go into
(36:27):
the California Youth Authority?"
And the deputy guards unionrepresentative stopped.
And he said, "Not a single one.
I would fight like hellto keep my children
from ever having to go into this system."
And when he said that,I thought to myself,
(36:50):
what if these were all your children?
What would you do if you reallythought that every single
person who was in the systemwas your family member,
was your son, was your daughter,
how would you then advocate for change?
How committed would you be to build
a new justice system?
(37:11):
Moments like that I feel likeI had to just take that on
as my own mission then.
It certainly wasn't his.
Holding out hope that we can
actually care for people whoare in the justice system
in the same way we wouldour own family members
and demand better is partof what motivates me.
(37:31):
- I was just thinking, Lenore,
about the people that you work with
who are accomplishingthese incredible things,
and that you also must heara lot of really heartbreaking
stories of people who havebeen failed by the system
and trauma that they've endured.
And so I'm asking partly for myself
and also for other aspiringactivists out there,
how do you not get taken out by carrying
(37:54):
those stories with you?
How do you stay resourcedenough to keep doing this work?
- Yeah. I love that question.
There's an increasing amount of attention
that's being paid to,
what's sometimes referredto as vicarious trauma.
We've done a lot of workin our organization to try
and figure out how to be,
what we call trauma informed,
and how to care for eachother inside the organization.
(38:16):
We look for ways to slow down and evaluate
how are we affecting people,
are we carrying too muchof the experiences with us,
do folks need time off?
So as an organizationwe really look for ways
to make sure we're hearingand seeing the toll
and the impact of the work on people
(38:37):
so we can create the kind of space
that people need to be healthy.
Pretty much my whole career,
most of everything has been experiential
and a lot of learning while doing,
and a lot of making mistakes.
For me, the thing that I've discovered
that I need to do to stay healthy
is I just need to move my body.
I need to exercise as much as I can
and turn off the phoneand turn off social media
(39:00):
and put a limit on how much I take in.
I really had to figure outwhat are the healthy ways
to be sustainable in this work.
You got to come up with that on your own.
Our broader culture iscertainly not always very good
at promoting it.
- Wonderful. I love that.
Lenore, you're in themidst of writing a book,
which I believe is basically being written
(39:20):
for me and Annie.
It's like that is thebook that I wanna read.
It's the book I've wantedto read the last six months.
So I wanna offer a plug for that book.
You're gonna go into a lotmore detail about all of this.
And is there anything you'dlike to say about that book?
- I am excited to read it too,
because then it means I will be done.
(39:40):
Once I'm reading it, it has been written.
I appreciate you bringing it up,
and I'm really excited about this project.
I've never written a book before,
but the work that we've beendoing through Californians
for Safety and Justice andAlliance for Safety and Justice
is a story that is ready to be told.
And it's a story aboutshifting the focal point of our
(40:01):
attention from this sort ofone-size-fits-all punishment
approach to looking at how dowe actually alleviate trauma
and put trauma recovery at the center
of our approach to public safety.
So my hope is that it's acontribution that is valuable
in this time of greatopportunity for change.
And I really can't waitto lift up the leaders
(40:24):
and the people that I'mtalking to, such as you two,
in the process of writing the book.
(ambient music)
- It's just so wonderfulto have you in our lives
as a resource, as a guide.
I mean, I don't know whatwe would be doing right
now if we didn't have yousupporting us in our process.
And I know you have such a wide reach
(40:46):
of influence and allies.
Thank you for doing whatyou're doing, truly.
It's so wonderful to talk to you.
- Well, it's a total honor
and I'm so, so gratefulthat the two of you are
in my life and a part of our organization
and a part of what we're building.
(41:07):
And I have no doubt thatthe impact that you're gonna
have is gonna be transformative,
and to be able to be a part of that
is just extremely meaningful.
And I just have the deepestappreciation for you both.
So thank you.
- Thank you so much.
- Thank you for joiningus for another episode
(41:28):
of a New Legacy.
If you'd like to support Lenore's work,
please visitallianceforsafetyandjustice.org,
where you can learn more aboutsome incredible campaigns
like Survivor Speak and Time Done.
You can also visit ourwebsite at anewlegacy.com
for updates and future episodes.
(soft music)
(soft music)
Hello, and welcome to A New Legacy
where we are speaking tocommunity leaders and organizers
about building a new vision of justice.
We are Jess and Annie Nichol.
And today we will be speakingto Lenore Anderson who has
been tremendously supportivein our advocacy journey,
(00:22):
both as a mentor and a modelof the kind of deep thinking
and deep feeling activismwe both hope to embody.
- A lot of us are aware of the injustices
that are endemic to mass incarceration,
but this conversation withLenore really illuminates how
deeply embedded these injusticesare within the system,
(00:42):
and contextualizes howwe got to where we are
and where we can go from here.
- Yeah.
One of the things Lenorehas helped us navigate
is how to be advocates in afield where there's a lot of
potential to do harm evenwhen we have good intentions.
And we'll talk a bit more about that,
particularly the responsibilitywe have as white women
to carry our weight in this movement.
(01:04):
- So if you're someone who isinterested in learning more
of the historical contextof laws like three-strikes
and how they came to be,
or how meeting the needs ofsurvivors can actually reduce
prison populations andmake our community safer,
then this conversation is for you.
So before we dive in,
I'll share a bit moreabout Lenore's background.
(01:27):
Lenore Anderson is theco-founder and president
of Alliance for Safety and Justice, ASJ,
one of the largest justiceand public safety reform
advocacy organizations in the country,
and founder of Californiansfor Safety and Justice,
the nation's largestnetwork of crime survivors.
She has contributed tonumerous highly impactful
reform ballot initiativesand has served in
(01:48):
various government leadership capacities,
including as chief of policyand chief of the alternative
programs division at theSan Francisco DA's Office,
director of public safetyfor the Oakland mayor,
and as director of the SanFrancisco Mayor's Office
of Criminal Justice.
She holds a JD from NYU School of Law
and a BA from UC Berkeley.
(02:08):
(ambient music)
- Hey, Lenore.
- Hi.
- We have had so manyconversations with you already
that we wish we had recordedbecause you are a wellspring
of knowledge and it's beena real privilege to get
to hear your perspectives and experience,
and you've been a hugeresource for us in beginning
(02:32):
this whole journey of educating ourselves.
And to the degree thatpeople are interested
in hearing these conversations
that we're educating ourselves with,
we want others to get tofamiliarize themselves with some of
the frameworks andknowledge that you have.
So, Annie, I thinkyou're gonna kick us off
with the first question.
(02:52):
- The first time we ever spoke, Lenore,
Jess and I asked you foradvice in how we might go about
supporting changing publicpolicy around criminal justice.
The thing I was so struck byin that conversation was that
your initial advice to uswas really centered around
our trauma and our capacityto support the cause
(03:13):
without burning out.
And you encouraged usto protect our energy,
to take care of ourselveswhile we were exploring
this kind of advocacy.
And I just remember thinking like, wow,
this is somebody who reallyunderstands the toll that trauma
takes in daily life, and whatcan happen when you don't have
the resources or the supportto take care of yourself.
(03:33):
So I've also heard you talk about
the need for a more trauma informed policy
around safety and justice,
and I wonder if you couldjust speak to why that is
so needed in our criminal justice system.
- It's so great to talkto you both as always.
And I remember that conversation,
and one of the reasonsthat trauma and addressing
(03:56):
the impacts of trauma comes to my mind
so quickly when I think about,
not just what the criminaljustice system needs,
but what we as reformand change agents need,
is because in many waysit's kind of the elephant
in the room.
We've had 30 plus years of
(04:17):
a tough on crime response
to violence that has actually worsened
the experience for manypeople when it comes
to recovering from trauma.
And we tend to, as a society, think,
well, when bad things happenwe just need to get tough.
(04:40):
We just need to respondwith severe punishment
and lifetime surveillanceand big investments
into a criminal justicesystem that can do that.
We found out through ourwork that what most survivors
of crime need in many waysis the opposite of that.
(05:02):
Most survivors of crime willtell you that addressing trauma
is not only what's needed fortheir own healing journey,
but it's actually what's needed
to improve public safety overall.
The cycle of violence,
the cycle of crime that wetalk about a lot in criminal
justice could also becalled a cycle of trauma.
(05:23):
And then that cycle of traumaresults in criminal justice
system responses that exaggerate trauma
that actually make trauma worse.
So there's this sort ofhuge elephant in the room
when it comes to safety,
which is what does itlook like to alleviate,
to acknowledge and alleviate trauma?
(05:45):
How would that better set up survivors?
How would it better set up communities?
How would it better improvepublic safety overall?
- Well, what does it look like?
- When we first started our work,
we created Crime Survivors forSafety and Justice in 2013.
And we got together agroup of survivor leaders,
(06:08):
advocates, and expertswho'd also recovered
from violence and crime,
but advocates and expertsin everything from violence
prevention to restorativejustice, to victims rights.
And we sat in a room andwe asked the question,
what do we want instead
of what the criminaljustice system is doing?
And just about everybodypretty quickly came
(06:32):
to this issue of trauma recovery.
And it reminded me when I was in
the District Attorney's Officein San Francisco years before
I had been introduced to something called
a trauma recovery center.
And it stood out to me asthis really unique program
that I had never seen before,
which is comprehensivelong-term support for people
(06:53):
who have experienced trauma,
and it's support that'sincludes mental health,
but isn't just mental health.
It's also all the basicways that people need
to get back on their feet,
from help recovering financially
to help figuring out a new way to live
if you've lost someone, to helpfiguring out how to support
(07:15):
children who have also beenexposed to violence and harm.
So we've been advocating forcommunity-based comprehensive
sort of one-stop trauma recoverycenters in the communities
that experience the mostconcentrated crime and violence
with the least amount of help.
We've been advocating forthis model across the country
and it's starting to take shape.
(07:37):
And it's very excitingto see when we bring
this solution to the table,
it's a bridge builder.
We have law enforcementsupport the solution,
survivors of crime,
people who've been in thecriminal justice system
as people who have been convicted,
everybody gets an agrees that, hey,
if we could actuallyaddress folks' as trauma
(07:57):
on the front end, we couldreally get to this cycle.
But to your question, Jess,
why this model is so unique, right?
Is because so much of whathappens when people interact
with the criminal justicesystem is triggering.
Recovering from traumacan take a lifetime.
You have to have support around you
and people who understandwhat sleeplessness looks like,
(08:19):
understand what smallnoises can remind you of,
understand what it looks liketo feel like no one around
you has experienced whatyou just experienced, right?
Systems don't respond to people
from that knowledge generally.
Systems are trying to process cases
and don't super get intothe weeds of the details
(08:40):
or really wrap folks around with support.
And so that trauma recoverycenter model in many ways
is a total opposite ofwhat happens every day
in the criminal justice system,
and why it's something thatcould be really beneficial.
(ambient music)
(09:02):
- Our criminal justice system,
it really does prioritize punishment
over prevention and support.
Can you speak a little bit more to that?
What happens when we'reprioritizing punishment
over prevention and support?
- The United States, I think,
spends about $80 billiona year at this point,
(09:22):
$80 billion a year on thecriminal justice system,
from imprisonment to county jails,
to enormous bureaucraciesthat run correction systems,
probation parole systems,prosecutor offices.
This has been a massive investment,
and that investment
(09:44):
has not stopped the cycle of crime.
And it means that wehave less overall money,
fewer public dollars availableto invest in communities
in the ways that would helpadvance violence prevention
and trauma recovery.
When you look at the science,
(10:04):
it's not overwhelmingly mysterious
who's vulnerable in our communities.
We know when young people losesomeone in their life that,
that is traumatic andhas lifetime impacts,
but we don't have trauma informed services
in the schools thatcould help link children
up with the kind of support that's needed.
(10:26):
We know that whenfamilies are experiencing
substantial economics instability,
or homelessness combinedwith substance abuse,
that those families areat great vulnerability
of being impacted by crime and violence.
Yet we don't invest heavilyin housing programs,
(10:48):
in substance abuse andmental health programs
at the community level, familycrisis assistance centers,
mental health crisis response,
all of those building blocks for safety.
So when we talk about the negative impacts
of extreme punishment,
it's not just that it doesn't work,
(11:10):
which it doesn't to stop recidivism,
but it's also that it depletesextremely valuable public
dollars that could gotowards a more coherent
and effective approach to public safety.
- This seems like suchan obvious question,
but it still seems worth asking.
Why doesn't it stop the cycle of crime?
(11:33):
- A couple of important things to note.
First, the majority of crimeand violence does not enter
the criminal justicesystem in the first place.
So less than half ofviolent crime is reported,
and then of the violentcrime that is reported,
less than half of thatresults in a prosecution
and a conviction.
(11:53):
Then for individuals who areconvicted and incarcerated,
we're placing people into an environment
that worsens people's mental health.
There's a lot of institutionalization,
it's often referred to,
that happens when we incarcerate people
in these warehouse style prisons
(12:15):
where there's a lot of violence inside,
where there's a lot of hyper control,
where people are distancedfrom relationships
or connections that arepositive in the community
and the family level.
It's an environment thatmany people experience
as deteriorating and depleting.
And then when people comeout of that environment,
(12:36):
we limit their abilityto get jobs and housing
because they have convictions.
We say, well, you have a conviction,
so you're not eligible for this job,
you're not eligible for that housing,
you can't get that loan.
So then people are in additionto having been incarcerated,
they're now excluded from re-integration.
(12:57):
And so we are fundamentallysetting people up for failure.
So it should come as nosurprise that people struggle
to overcome that experience,
and many times get rightback into the cycle of crime
and right back into incarceration.
(ambient music)
(13:23):
- It feels like thething to ask right now is
around three-strikes,
and Jess and I havethis painful connection
to the tough on crime policies of the 90s,
which I think it's fair to saywas significantly marked by
the passage of three-strikes after
our sister, Polly, was killed.
(13:43):
And can you tell us a bitabout why that period is so
significant in terms of massincarceration in California?
- Absolutely.
So California for many years
was the first state
to enact the kind of policies
(14:04):
that then got replicated allacross the country, right?
So this was the statethat passed the first gang
enhancement laws in the country,
and those are lengthy sentences
for people affiliated with gangs.
That got replicated.
It was one of the first statesto pass transfer of juveniles
into adult prisons
(14:24):
or into the adult criminal justice system.
This gets replicated.
And so similarly,
three-strikes and you're out was a law
that had a three strikes andyou're out type of policy.
California passed this bothin the state legislature
and at the ballot in 1994,
and it swept the nation.
(14:46):
Public officials in statesall across the country
started pointing to California saying
we need to be tough like California.
We need to take people off the streets
and we need to make surepeople get life sentences
if they're engaging in violence.
And it was very much apolitical movement that emerged
in the 80s and 90s thatdrastically changed penal codes
(15:09):
that ratcheted up sentencing of all kinds.
And it was that politicians engaged in it
was really this whole ideaof this is what it looks like
to stand up for victims,
and this is how we needto get tough on crime.
(ambient music)
(15:30):
- Why was it so popular withthis whole tough on crime era?
What was happening at that time
such that it did sweep the nation?
- I think essentiallywhat we're talking about
is a 70s tremendous socialunrest in the United States.
There was a move fromconservatives to put forward
a law and order frameworkto try and win votes,
(15:53):
and much of that law andorder framework was really
based on racialized notionsof crime and violence.
There was a lot of racializedhysteria, and embedded in that
was this notion that we'regonna take back our communities
and we're going to passall these tough laws,
(16:14):
and we're gonna be ableto win votes in that way.
Embedded in that wasfundamentally consistent with how
the criminal justicesystem has been operating
from the outset.
This isn't a system that hassought to actually protect
everyone and it never hassought to protect everyone.
And that fed into whatwas happening politically
(16:36):
at that time.
- As someone who caresdeeply about criminal justice
and mass incarceration in this country,
my understanding is thatCalifornia is an important state
to pay attention to.
Is it fair to say thatCalifornia tends to kind of pave
the way for national policy?
- Yeah, absolutely.
California has been a standout state.
(16:58):
It was a standout state inbuilding mass incarceration,
and it's been a standoutstate in reversing course.
There's still an immense amount of work
that needs to happen for sure.
But this has been a statethat has probably enacted more
change at this point than anyother part of the country.
Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan,these are Californians.
They took the national stageto put forward very tough
(17:22):
on crime law and order ideas
sparking a nationalmovement around conservatism
that helped propel their leadership,
and so that's where it came from.
This is the state that grewthe amount of money spent on
prisons by 1,500% in a 30-year period.
This is the state that built 22 prisons
(17:43):
in a 25-year time period, 22 prisons.
Despite all that prison building,
still had so muchovercrowding that gymnasiums
had to be shut down
and triple bunking washappening inside the prisons.
And all of that was because of this
ever ratcheting up of sentencing.
Who's impacted by this?
This was Californiacommunities of color that bore
(18:05):
the brunt of these devastating policies.
Incarceration for blackCalifornians is seven times higher
than it is for white Californians,
twice as high for Latino Californians
than white Californians.
And it was being replicatedacross the country
with the same impact for the same purpose
and with the same impact.
Then came a pretty unprecedented crisis,
(18:25):
which was the state didn'thave money to be able
to build its way out of the problem,
and the prisons became socrowded that literally one person
was dying per week as aresult of medical neglect
in California's prisons.
They were so overcrowded thatthere was not enough medical
staff to respond to otherwiseroutine and preventative
(18:46):
illnesses that would pop upin a population of that size.
The lack of mental health careand the lack of medical care
became lawsuits that made it all the way
to the Supreme Court.
The United States SupremeCourt ordered California
to reduce its prison system.
That's never happened inthe history of this country
that the US Supreme Courtwould say to a state,
(19:10):
you got to reduce the overcrowding,
just to give you a flavorfor how bad it was.
That was 2011. Not that long ago, right?
So when the US SupremeCourt orders California
to reduce its prisons population,
that's when we start to see an opening,
and that's when we start toreally see the decades upon
(19:30):
decades of work that hadbeen happening calling
for a new approach to public safety
start to actually get someresonance and get some attention.
And then we saw a seriesof ballot initiatives
to reduce incarceration in California.
It was the first state inthe nation to have voters say
we want to reduce incarceration.
(19:51):
And now we're startingto see that reversal
happen in other states.
- Can we talk about these propositions?
You've actively actuallyworked on two of them,
47 and 57 in the last decade.
There's also Proposition36 and these were all
addressing three-strikes, right?
Can you explain someof these propositions?
(20:12):
You probably know thembetter than anybody.
- Well, the first ballotinitiative in 2012
was a ballot initiative toexplicitly reform three-strikes,
and require that the thirdconviction be of a violent
or serious crime to reducethe number of people
(20:32):
convicted of very low-level crimes
that ended up getting life sentences.
That passed overwhelminglyby voters in 2012.
One of the stories that peoplein California were aware
of was the person who had stolen a pizza
and ended up serving a life sentence.
The kind of low-levelcrimes that were resulting
(20:56):
in life sentences was so out of whack
with what the public thought was going on,
that once those storiesgot into the media,
the amount of support forreform became overwhelming
because that's not whatanyone would have ever thought
was actually going on.
When Proposition 36 passed
(21:16):
it was great because it wasclarity that you can talk to
voters about criminal justice reform.
Recall a lot of the regressive policies
in criminal justicecame from voters, right?
It was enacted by voters.
So common wisdom at the timewas that you can't actually
(21:38):
go to voters and say, "Hey, wewanna reduce incarceration."
Well, three-strikes reformin 2012 started to challenge
that notion as to whether or not you could
actually tell voters,
"Hey, do you wanna reduce incarceration?"
Proposition 47 was even bigger, right?
I mean, this was a ballot initiative
(21:59):
that took six low-level crimes
and changed them from felonycrimes to misdemeanor crimes,
and then required the state of California
to annually reduce the amountof money in the prison's
budget by what was saved,and put it into communities.
So this was a mandatoryreallocation prison spending
(22:22):
to trauma recovery for survivors of crime,
violence prevention,mental health treatment.
When we crafted Proposition 47,
what we can knew experientiallywas that everyday people
were really tired of seeingthis much money wasted
on prisons while oureducation system faltered,
(22:45):
while people couldn'tget mental health help.
There was a real world impactthat was happening at a much
bigger scale than Ithink a lot of skeptics
or political observers thought.
So winning Proposition 47,
this very bold reform has really helped
open the flood gates for so much more
(23:05):
reform across the country.
What was so great about 57,
it was basically proposing to the public
do you want people to be warehoused
or do you want people to be rehabilitated
while people are incarcerated,
and voters chose rehabilitation.
This idea that all voterswanna do is just wash
their hands and look theother way, it's just not true.
(23:27):
What voters want is forthe cycle of crime to stop
and for their money tobe used effectively.
We've still got a long way to go,
but those were breakthrough initiatives
that have helped change the country.
(ambient music)
- So we're just talking about reforms,
what happened with 47, 57.
(23:50):
And, Lenore, you had saidthat there's a lot more
work to do,
and I'd be curious to geta bit more of a picture of
what does that look like?
What kind of progress doyou think we can make?
- Sure.
Well, despite the groundswellof popular support
for criminal justice reform
that's growing across the country,
(24:10):
and despite substantial policy reforms
that have been achieved in multiple states
and even at the federal level,
the United States stillincarcerates per capita
more than any nation in the world,
and that comes at great costfinancially and morally.
So what needs to happenis a real rethinking of,
(24:32):
one, how we invest in crimeprevention in the first place,
how we prioritize that.
The second is how we address trauma
when people experience trauma,
and the third is how werespond to crime and violence.
How do we hold peopleaccountable and sentence people
(24:52):
in a way that stops the cycle of crime.
We're really far away from achieving that,
but there's a lot of promising examples
of what could happen thatwould look different.
First, we need to really invest
in community-based crime prevention.
That's everything frompeacemakers who engage in street
(25:13):
outreach to help youngpeople who are vulnerable
get out of harm's way,
to violence preventionprograms in the school,
afterschool programs,things that help young,
vulnerable people stay engaged.
And then we also need toinvest in mental health
and substance abuse treatment
(25:33):
so that we can on the front end,
make sure those programsare scaled up to really meet
the need at the community level.
- You know, one of thethings that I remember
kind of standing out, Lenore,
this is a little bit of a tangent,
but when we first spokeyou were saying that
our voices really mattered,
and it took me a while to hear that
and to actually understandthat that was true.
(25:54):
I kind of thought peoplewere just being nice
when they said that,
and I think I didn't feel thetruth of it until you said it
because it honestly never occurred to me
that our voices would matter.
And I imagine that there area lot of other crime survivors
out there who might feel similarly.
Can you tell us why our voicesmatter and what resources
exist to support people injoining the conversation
(26:16):
and supporting a lot of the causes
that we've been talking about?
- I have two answers.
The first is people whohave been unsafe deserve
the opportunity to weighin on public policy
related to safety.
People who have experiencedtrauma firsthand,
who have experienced alack of safety and violence
(26:38):
are not the voices thatare always at the table,
but absolutely should be.
You and Jess and survivors likeyou know better than anyone
what recovery from trauma looks like,
what your needs are andwhat matters the most
in response to traumatic loss.
(26:58):
My second answer is whenwe're looking at where
this mass incarceration problem came from,
it came from a myth.
And the myth that was sold was a myth that
what crime victims want and need
is more prisons and more incarceration.
(27:22):
That myth was on behalfof victims of crime,
but not engaging withsurvivors and victims of crime.
So when we think aboutthe continued barriers
to reform criminal justice,
one of the continued barriers
(27:43):
is this common understandingin popular culture,
in state houses across the country,
that, well, we have tobe careful with that
criminal justice reform,
because really all of thisis about protecting victims
and protecting public safety.
And that common wisdomis just not accurate.
(28:06):
It's not accurate atthe neighborhood level.
It's not accurate for thevast majority of people
who've suffered traumatic loss.
In order to get to amore enlightened approach
to public safety and a public policy
that's not based on rhetoric,that's not based on hyperbole,
but is actually truly based on what people
who have been unsafeneed to get to safety,
(28:29):
we have to put your voicesand the voices of other people
who have been victimsof crime at the center.
(ambient music)
- You've said before inconversations with us,
that you're particularlyinterested in having conversations
(28:49):
around changing thecriminal justice system
with white women,
and I was just wonderingif you would speak
to that a little bit.
- When we look at the lawand order tough on crime era
in the 80s and 90s,
heavy emphasis has been placedrhetorically on this notion
that the victims that we seek to protect
often through thesepolicies are white victims,
(29:13):
white women and white girls.
We can't kind of get awayfrom race when it comes to
thinking about how Americanculture has promoted
very racist ideas aboutwho the typical victim is,
who the typical person is
that's committing a crime.
And I feel a greatamount of responsibility
(29:36):
to break through those myths and to break
through those stereotypes,
and to talk openly and honestly
about who in our society reallydoes face vulnerabilities
more commonly, and to talkopenly and honestly about who
really experiences the majority
of the lack of safety that exists.
(29:58):
And as it turns out,
when we can be open and honest about it,
we are faced with the truth,
which is that low-income communities,
communities of color in particular,
young people of color in particular
are much more likely toface great vulnerabilities
than middle-class white women
(30:21):
for whom a lot of attention has been paid.
And so I think it's verycritical that we as white women
own that knowledge and act on it.
And act on it in a way thatsays, don't do this in our name.
Let's actually invest intrue safety for our community
(30:42):
members that have not had the opportunity
to experience safety in the first place.
- Yeah, I mean, I can saythat that really speaks to me
and largely to the reason why we're here
and why we're doing this.
So thank you for that.
That feels like a really important part
of this conversation.
Something that I would liketo know about you, Lenore,
(31:04):
is I was doing a little bitof research about you before
we did our interview with you,
and I came across thisline that described you as
a punk drummer turned prosecutor.
There was sort of like a recordscratching sound in my head
because that's just not normally a pairing
that you see in someone's bio.
So will you tell us a littlebit about your background
(31:24):
and how you came to be doing this work?
- Well, so I spent my teen
and early adult years in California,
and frankly, I was growingup at the height of the era
that produced mass incarceration
in the home state of mass incarceration.
I was a troublemaker when I was kid,
but being white and being middle class,
(31:47):
even in the moment ofthe greatest attention
being paid to being tough on crime
never landed me in trouble with the police
in any serious way and neverlanded me in juvenile hall.
And I don't know that at that time
I understood exactly thebenefit that I was receiving
(32:07):
and the privileges that whitechildren were experiencing
in this time of substantial increases
in incarceration foryoung people of color.
But I ended up in lawschool and my first job
coming out of law school,
working with young peoplewho are behind bars,
who are kids who have beenarrested and are being prosecuted
for having committed crimes.
(32:28):
And I was faced with the truth,
which is that they'reno different than I was.
But for race and class,
I made some of the same mistakesand some of the same silly
choices that kids often make.
And so for me, advocatingfor criminal justice reform
is fundamentally about advocating
for racial justice and racial equality.
And I think that that isone of the main reasons
(32:50):
I started doing the work.
I ended up working on juvenilejustice reform for a number
of years and kept kind ofcoming into this reality
that so many of the peoplethat we were organizing
were not just people whoexperienced over-incarceration,
but were also people wholost loved ones to harm,
(33:11):
had experienced traumatic violence,
and had received no help.
And so I went into localgovernment from being
an advocate after law school,
I put on a very different hat
and I went inside local government.
I worked as the public safety director
in my home city of Oakland,
and then in the Mayor'sOffice of Criminal Justice
and then the Prosecutor'sOffice in San Francisco.
(33:32):
And I'm so grateful for thattime that I spent inside
government and inside thecriminal justice system,
because it really solidified my commitment
to not just talk aboutor focus on how we need
to reduce incarceration,
but to have as the exact same goal,
a goal of advancing a newapproach to public safety.
(33:53):
The number of survivors thatI encountered in my time
in the prosecutor's office,
for whom there was no conviction,
there was no investigation,
there was no trauma recovery help.
Survivors experiencingthat were oftentimes
from communities of color,
from communities for whomthere was also over arrest
(34:13):
and over incarceration.
And the way that we builtthe work through alliance
for safety and justice is where reflection
of having seen the sameissue from both sides.
(ambient music)
- Within all of that,
was there a specific turningpoint moment or 'aha'?
(34:38):
What makes a person devote their life
to changing the system for the better?
And I'm curious for you personally,
if you had a moment or ifit was kind of like a series
of moments or what had you
devote your professionalattention to this?
- Well, there've beenso many humbling moments
(35:02):
where I got a deeper sense of just
how deeply harmful thecriminal justice system
has been in worsening racial inequality
in the United States,
and basically contributingto racial trauma
and racial oppression.
We brought a group of parents,
(35:22):
all of whom parents of color
who had children who were incarcerated
in the California Youth Authority,
and California Youth Authority used to be
the largest youth prisonsystem in the country
with thousands upon thousandsof kids incarcerated,
experiencing 23 hours a dayof solitary confinement,
being set up by guards for fights.
(35:43):
It was a horrific juvenile prison system.
So we brought a group offive parents to sit down
with a leader in the PrisonGuards Union at the time
to ask that leader totake a different position,
to stop opposing reforms tothe juvenile prison system
that would treat thesechildren with more dignity.
(36:06):
And one of the parents said to the leader
that we were speaking to,"Do you have children?"
And then he said, "Yeah, I have four."
And the parent that we were with said,
"Which one of them, if theygot in trouble with the law,
which one of them wouldyou allow to go into
(36:27):
the California Youth Authority?"
And the deputy guards unionrepresentative stopped.
And he said, "Not a single one.
I would fight like hellto keep my children
from ever having to go into this system."
And when he said that,I thought to myself,
(36:50):
what if these were all your children?
What would you do if you reallythought that every single
person who was in the systemwas your family member,
was your son, was your daughter,
how would you then advocate for change?
How committed would you be to build
a new justice system?
(37:11):
Moments like that I feel likeI had to just take that on
as my own mission then.
It certainly wasn't his.
Holding out hope that we can
actually care for people whoare in the justice system
in the same way we wouldour own family members
and demand better is partof what motivates me.
(37:31):
- I was just thinking, Lenore,
about the people that you work with
who are accomplishingthese incredible things,
and that you also must heara lot of really heartbreaking
stories of people who havebeen failed by the system
and trauma that they've endured.
And so I'm asking partly for myself
and also for other aspiringactivists out there,
how do you not get taken out by carrying
(37:54):
those stories with you?
How do you stay resourcedenough to keep doing this work?
- Yeah. I love that question.
There's an increasing amount of attention
that's being paid to,
what's sometimes referredto as vicarious trauma.
We've done a lot of workin our organization to try
and figure out how to be,
what we call trauma informed,
and how to care for eachother inside the organization.
(38:16):
We look for ways to slow down and evaluate
how are we affecting people,
are we carrying too muchof the experiences with us,
do folks need time off?
So as an organizationwe really look for ways
to make sure we're hearingand seeing the toll
and the impact of the work on people
(38:37):
so we can create the kind of space
that people need to be healthy.
Pretty much my whole career,
most of everything has been experiential
and a lot of learning while doing,
and a lot of making mistakes.
For me, the thing that I've discovered
that I need to do to stay healthy
is I just need to move my body.
I need to exercise as much as I can
and turn off the phoneand turn off social media
(39:00):
and put a limit on how much I take in.
I really had to figure outwhat are the healthy ways
to be sustainable in this work.
You got to come up with that on your own.
Our broader culture iscertainly not always very good
at promoting it.
- Wonderful. I love that.
Lenore, you're in themidst of writing a book,
which I believe is basically being written
(39:20):
for me and Annie.
It's like that is thebook that I wanna read.
It's the book I've wantedto read the last six months.
So I wanna offer a plug for that book.
You're gonna go into a lotmore detail about all of this.
And is there anything you'dlike to say about that book?
- I am excited to read it too,
because then it means I will be done.
(39:40):
Once I'm reading it, it has been written.
I appreciate you bringing it up,
and I'm really excited about this project.
I've never written a book before,
but the work that we've beendoing through Californians
for Safety and Justice andAlliance for Safety and Justice
is a story that is ready to be told.
And it's a story aboutshifting the focal point of our
(40:01):
attention from this sort ofone-size-fits-all punishment
approach to looking at how dowe actually alleviate trauma
and put trauma recovery at the center
of our approach to public safety.
So my hope is that it's acontribution that is valuable
in this time of greatopportunity for change.
And I really can't waitto lift up the leaders
(40:24):
and the people that I'mtalking to, such as you two,
in the process of writing the book.
(ambient music)
- It's just so wonderfulto have you in our lives
as a resource, as a guide.
I mean, I don't know whatwe would be doing right
now if we didn't have yousupporting us in our process.
And I know you have such a wide reach
(40:46):
of influence and allies.
Thank you for doing whatyou're doing, truly.
It's so wonderful to talk to you.
- Well, it's a total honor
and I'm so, so gratefulthat the two of you are
in my life and a part of our organization
and a part of what we're building.
(41:07):
And I have no doubt thatthe impact that you're gonna
have is gonna be transformative,
and to be able to be a part of that
is just extremely meaningful.
And I just have the deepestappreciation for you both.
So thank you.
- Thank you so much.
- Thank you for joiningus for another episode
(41:28):
of a New Legacy.
If you'd like to support Lenore's work,
please visitallianceforsafetyandjustice.org,
where you can learn more aboutsome incredible campaigns
like Survivor Speak and Time Done.
You can also visit ourwebsite at anewlegacy.com
for updates and future episodes.
(soft music)
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