April 1, 2026 • 43 mins
Today I am talking with Adam Gelb, President and CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice. Adam started CCJ in 2019 with a vision of bringing together as many different viewpoints as possible from across the political aisle to find common ground and make smart, evidence-backed policy recommendations.
For this conversation, we talk about why murder has fallen so dramatically over the last few years, how you build a sustainable organization that spans the political spectrum, and how CCJ brings together experts on such a wide range of topics covering everything from crime trends to the future of AI in criminal justice.
Adam Gelb has been working for a more just and effective criminal justice system throughout a varied 40-year career. Before founding the Council on Criminal Justice in 2019, Gelb was an award-winning crime reporter at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, staff to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, crime policy director for the lieutenant governor of Maryland, director of the Georgia Sentencing Commission, and led public safety initiatives at the Pew Charitable Trusts. Gelb speaks frequently with the media about national trends and state innovations and advises policy makers on strategies that are grounded in facts, evidence, and fundamental principles of justice.
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
My name is Jeff Asher, and this is the Jeff
Analytics Podcast.
Criminal justice doesn't have anatural center.
It has advocates, agencies,researchers, activists, and
politicians all pulling indifferent directions.
So what happens when you try toactually build one?
In this episode, I'm joined byAdam Gill, president and CEO of
the Council on Criminal Justice.
(00:21):
Adam didn't just launch anotherthink tank.
He built an organizationdesigned to convene people who
disagree, narrow hundreds ofcompeting ideas into a handful
of policy priorities, andproduce research that both the
Republican and Democraticadministrations are willing to
cite.
We talked about how CCJA wasintentionally structured, how
its work on crime trends emergedduring the uncertainty of 2020,
and the limits of the whyquestion on crime.
(00:44):
This episode is about what itlooks like to try and build
durable infrastructure in afragmented system, and how to
get the right experts in theroom to make that happen.
Let's dive in.
Adam, thanks for joining me.
SPEAKER_01 (00:55):
Great to be with you, Jeff.
SPEAKER_00 (00:58):
So, Adam, you're coming here from the Council on
Criminal Justice.
I'm very excited to talk to you.
Certainly a fellow traveler inthe world of crime and crime
data and criminal justicepolicy.
So, can you walk us throughwhat's your background?
How did you get here?
SPEAKER_01 (01:14):
Yeah, thanks.
It's great to have a chance totalk with you about this.
And before I uh start talkingabout myself at all, I do want
to just uh uh give youappreciation for what you're
contributing to this field.
Uh it's really, it's reallyfantastic.
You're doing a tremendous publicservice and uh not just in the
criminal justice world, but youare helping people in the
(01:34):
criminal justice world andbeyond understand just how
important facts and data are.
And maybe that's a segue into mystory a little bit.
I did not set out to become ajournalist, but that's where my
career uh took me.
Uh, when I was uh at undergrad,I started working on the school
newspaper at UVA.
(01:54):
And the thing I actually reallyhated doing that the editors
would make me do is call thepolice department and and see if
there was any crime to reportworth uh putting in the Cavalier
Daily.
Really hated doing it, but overtime I started making more sense
to me and started becoming moreinterest.
And when I graduated, I got ajob uh here in Atlanta at the
(02:17):
Atlanta Journal Constitution,and there was a note on my desk
at my first day at work from myeditor saying, sorry, I can't be
with you, but welcome, andyou're on the night cops beat.
And so from 1987 to 1991, I waschasing the Atlanta Police
Department around.
And you recall that that's theheight of the drug war.
(02:38):
So things were things were uhwere just crazy uh here.
And I had a chance to uh sitdown in the basement at the
Atlanta Police Department withthe the crime data uh reporters.
All those police reports wouldcome in, and they're all these
people on these terminals uhinputting the crime data and and
supposedly doing it in a waythat conformed with the uniform
crime reporting rules fordefining offenses and so on.
(03:01):
And I just took to it.
You know, most reporters who getstuck on the police beat as
their first job.
They want to get off it as soonas possible and move on to city
hall or recover education orwhatever it is, uh, because
that's just generally seen asthe low, low job on the totem
pole.
But I really did gravitate toit.
And here I am almost 40 yearslater, having worked on Capitol
(03:23):
Hill twice, uh, worked in stategovernment in Maryland and
Georgia, worked at a smallnonprofit uh here in Georgia,
the Georgia Council on SubstanceAbuse, doing youth uh meth
prevention and other kinds of uhlocal programs.
And then 12 years at the PewCharitable Trusts running the
public safety work there,working with uh governors'
(03:44):
legislatures all over thecountry, helping them figure out
how they could safely bend theirincarceration rates down.
And all of that sort ofaccumulated uh experience in
press politics, public policy,uh research kind of led me to
this notion of a council oncriminal justice.
SPEAKER_00 (04:04):
Well, that yeah, that is the mouthful of a
background.
That's incredible.
The the breadth of experience.
And again, I just want to say Iappreciate the kind words very
much.
Maybe we'll have a start asegment where every guest has to
say something nice about me atthe start of the show because
that's a great way to kickthings off.
Well, I actually expected thatthat was mandatory, so I just
went ahead and it is from hereon out.
So thank you.
So you you mentioned CCJ, whatis the Council on Criminal
(04:26):
Justice for those that don'tknow?
SPEAKER_01 (04:28):
Yeah.
Uh a Council on Criminal Justiceis uh a two-part organization.
We're an invitational membershiporganization and a nonpartisan
think tank.
So think about those twodifferent components.
On the invitational membershipside, we are electing two
council membership, people whoare considered top thinkers and
(04:49):
doers in the field, reallycreating a network and a forum
among people across alldifferent sectors of the field:
police, courts, directions,communities, researchers,
activists, advocates, andcreating a forum for people to
share knowledge and informationand ideas amongst each other.
We are also, in terms of anonpartisan think tank, an
(05:09):
organization that calls ballsand strikes.
I think you could tell from mymy background on the jobs I've
had.
I've had some that are moreadvocacy-related.
I've worked for a number ofelected officials, but my
grounding is really injournalism.
And I'm still these days morecomfortable asking questions
often than I am giving answers.
And that's a lot what we dohere.
We we call balls and strikes,and we wrestle honestly with the
(05:33):
pros and cons and trade-offs ofpolicy choices facing the
nation.
So that's our mission is toadvance the understanding of
policy choices facing thecountry on criminal justice
issues and to build consensusfor solutions that enhance
safety and justice for all.
So we we help establish factsand we uh and we build
(05:56):
consensus.
Let me say that the core of whatwe do is to pull those two
pieces together, the membershipand the think tank, and form
subgroups, task forces orcommissions, and ask them to
make findings andrecommendations on particular
issues.
And we bring all kinds ofdiverse perspectives to the
table for those conversations.
(06:17):
Former attorneys general, formerdefense secretaries, along with
formerly incarcerated people anduh police chiefs and corrections
directors, program providers,and uh ask them to create
strategic policy roadmaps.
Uh, where should where shouldenergy flow and focus?
We know in each of these areasthat we have tackled from police
(06:40):
reform to veterans justice, thatthere are 932 things that need
to be done.
And what we ask these groups todo is focus in on what are the
five, the seven, the ten mostimportant things that need to be
done?
What would make the biggestdifference in terms of improving
safety and enhancing justice?
SPEAKER_00 (06:59):
And do you have either when you started this
project or now sort of an idealoutcome of what is the criminal
justice world you want tocreate?
Or is it we're just going to geta bunch of smart people together
in a room and push towardsbetter outcomes?
SPEAKER_01 (07:14):
Yeah.
I don't know if that's not alittle bit of a false choice in
that you you know very well,certainly having served on one
of these groups, our crime transuh crime trans working group,
uh, that we call it a criminaljustice system, but it's not
really a system.
It is a fragmented, disjointedset of processes.
(07:34):
And not not only that, in termsof different locuses of control,
in terms of local, state, andfederal government, in terms of
the executive branch andjudicial, often it's it's
designed to be adversarial andnot work together, but actually
work against each other, uh, uh,particularly, of course,
prosecution and defense.
And so when you think about itthat way, and you recognize how
(07:58):
interconnected things are, buthow they don't control uh uh one
thing doesn't control another,that it's very much like
squeezing a balloon.
You can you can push down onepart of the system, for
instance, reduce the number ofpeople who are going into
prison, spanning drug courts andother front-end alternatives to
incarceration.
But then the parole board, backend, is gonna see more prison
(08:21):
beds available and is likely tothen say, oh, we've got more
beds available, so we're gonnakeep these robbers in for maybe
eight years instead of sevenyears on average now.
So uh what we've done is to betry to try to be very strategic
about the pieces of this processor system that we've bitten off
(08:42):
and tried to improve.
When we first got off theground, uh which was in 2019,
the First Step Act had just beenpassed into law.
And the question on everybody'sminds was okay, the federal
government has uh taken takenthese steps around sentencing
and corrections.
What would the next steps be?
And so we formed a task forcethat was chaired by Governor
(09:06):
Nathan Deal, who just left thegovernor's mansion here in
Georgia, and included Sally uhYates, the former Deputy
Attorney General, included MarkHolden of the Koch uh World and
Stand Together, and otherterrific people to come up with
a list of their uh strategicpriorities for what should be
next.
(09:26):
Uh then COVID hit and we formeda National Commission on COVID
and criminal justice that wasco-chaired by former attorneys
general Loretta Lynch andAlberto Gonzalez.
And that, Jeff, I think as youwell know, was where our crime
trends work got started.
You know, when I got CJ uh CCJoff the ground, uh, tracking
crime trends was not on theagenda, not something that uh we
(09:49):
thought we would be doing as anorganization.
But when things started to gohaywire in the summer of 2020,
Lynch and Gonzalez, the otherterrific people we had on our
COVID commission, and of courseour team wanted to know in real
time what the heck was actuallyhappening with crime.
We had uh some sense that it wasgoing through the roof.
Uh, they're saying, well, it'sit's not that bad.
(10:10):
And so that's when we startedwith the late great Richard
Rosenfeld and my colleagueErnesto Lopez to start pulling
data from the city and policedepartment data uh portals that
has now turned into, I believe,this most recent year-end
release we had was our 16th inour in our crime trends uh
series now.
I'll just run through the othersquickly.
(10:32):
Then so we started to see thatviolence wasn't in fact spiking.
So we we had a task force onviolence.
We had the George Floyd killingand and the others, and we
formed a task force on policingreform.
So, in terms of how we'vetackled this, most of the issues
that we have uh focused ourattention on are those the world
has presented to us.
(10:53):
Like the national agenda was setin such a way that it suggested
a thoughtful analysis by adiverse group of well-respected
people saying where they thinkthe priority uh initiatives
ought to be could really helpmove the needle.
And that's what we've uh that'swhat we mostly done recently
with the task force on AI and agroup that we have together
(11:16):
chaired by the uh former SupremeCourt uh Chief Justice in Texas.
How do we uh most effectivelystrike a balance between the uh
dramatic benefits that AI canbring along with the substantial
risks and harms as well?
SPEAKER_00 (11:32):
You mentioned Crime Trends Working Group that I was
on was chaired by Rick Rosenfeldand then John Roman after after
his his passing.
And you know, we put out areport, and then the Biden
administration did an executiveorder that in part took some of
those ideas, and then the Trumpadministration later had, I
think, an executive order thattook some of those ideas.
(11:54):
So it it feels like at leastit's pushing the ball forward.
Are there other areas, at leastthat's the one I've been on?
Are there other areas that youfeel like have been really
impactful that you guys have putout reports and really seen a
serious policy change related tothose?
SPEAKER_01 (12:10):
Sure.
Yeah, and I'll give you twolevels.
In this business, we are alwayslooking for, and that is that
the people, people in thecriminal justice policy arena
are always looking for okay,what bills did you pass?
What what uh specific concretelegislative action was there?
But there there are so manyeffects.
So I want to talk about ourimpact on a couple different
levels.
(12:30):
One, on that that key level oflegislative impact, I think
there are two things that reallystand out amongst all others.
And it it would be the adoptionby the Justice Department of the
10 Essential Actions Roadmapthat our violent crime working
group produced.
It was uh 10 steps that uhcities should take to reduce uh
(12:55):
violent crime, not necessarilyspecific programs, but a
framework for how a city needsto organize itself in order to
uh to maximize violencereduction.
Things like there has to besomeone in charge, and that
person has to be the mayor.
Um, there has to be a citywideplan that is a whole of
government plan.
(13:16):
There has to be a specificpercentage reduction target for
the year, and so on.
And so it was a it was reallywonderful to see the Justice
Department say, we want to giveguidance to uh state and local
governments about how to reduceviolence.
This was in in 22, and the CCJviolent crime working group has
(13:37):
done the work.
This is the plan.
We don't need to recreate thewheel here.
They actually adopted uh thatthat plan's official DOJ policy
and in addition, created a lineof technical assistance that the
police executive research forumwas funded to deliver to provide
assistance to jurisdictions thatwere looking to implement the 10
essential actions or parts ofthat, uh, and then did a whole
(14:00):
crosswalk of all of DOJ'sresources, training, technical
assistance, uh, uh grants, andothers by the different
divisions of OJP would supportaction step one, action step
two, and so on.
So that's one.
And then then uh uh the otherone I think to mention is one
that just happened.
You know, Congress just passed auh a budget for the first time
(14:23):
in quite some time, and a newbudget for the Department of
Justice that was not acontinuing resolution.
And it included$4 million forthe establishment of a National
Center for Veterans Justice,which was a key recommendation
of our Veterans JusticeCommission.
And we're extremely excitedabout that.
Obviously, it needs it needs toactually happen by this Justice
(14:46):
Department.
Congress clearly understood theneed for a clearinghouse for
identification and disseminationof best practices around how do
we improve outcomes for veteranswho have become involved in the
justice system.
So those two things are thosebig picture outcomes.
But I just I just want to noteas well that similar to what
(15:08):
you're doing with real-timecrime index, Jeff, is that
overall we're we are supplyingthe field with facts and data
and information.
And one of the things that I'mmost proud of as the uh as the
founder and leader of theorganization is that our stuff,
like yours, is seen as credibleacross the political spectrum.
(15:30):
And it's very rare and it's veryspecial, and these days it's
very, very, very important forelected officials across the
aisle, for media outlets, fromthe New York Times, the Fox
News, the Daily Caller, andothers to treat the information
and the ideas that come out ofan organization as credible and
as authoritative.
(15:52):
And that that function is in andof itself, I think, terribly
important, separate and apartfrom any particular policy wins.
SPEAKER_00 (16:05):
Yeah, I I noted in my year wrap-up that how many
other people had been quoted orcited by the Trump White House
in December and the Biden WhiteHouse in January of the same
year.
And I think that it's probablyjust the two our two of our
organizations together are theonly two that have sort of hit
that.
SPEAKER_01 (16:21):
I think that may be right.
I mean both of us are probablypretty avid consumers of news
and not just crime and criminaljustice news, but because uh I
think we understand the the theimplications of of what we're
doing, or we have an eye out forother examples of of this kind
of credibility, and it is it israre indeed.
SPEAKER_00 (16:46):
So turning turning to kind of the the current
moment and crime, and I had a aCNN had a is working on some
piece and they were interviewingme today, and it's all about the
why question.
Why does this happen?
And as I'm sure you know, youget asked this question all of
the time, not necessarilygetting into like why do you
(17:08):
think murder is falling, but howdo you approach that question
and the question in general whenwhenever you're asked something
about the criminal justicesystem, where it's a big
question, and as you mentioned,it's a dysfunctional system, and
we don't often have the answers.
SPEAKER_01 (17:22):
Yeah.
I love having this conversationwith you.
And um so I will I will say thatvery much like you, I feel like
the more confident somebody isin their answer to this
question, the more skeptical Iam of it.
And and that's despite having atremendous amount of respect for
people out there who areoffering uh very confident uh uh
(17:45):
uh answers right now.
Let me let me try to tackle itthis way.
You could, in uh in analyzingsomething like this, you could
look at motive, means, andopportunity and how they change,
right?
Those are the three fundamentalelements of a crime.
You need motive, you need means,you need opportunity.
I really think the pandemic gaveus a masterclass in criminology.
(18:08):
There were changes in inmotives, there were changes in
means, and particularly duringthe uh the pandemic and the
height of the pandemic, therewere changes in opportunity,
right?
Businesses were closed, and soshoplifting, for instance, go
down at the start of thepandemic, and people, everybody
was at home.
So you saw burglaries go waydown because it was uh uh right
(18:29):
much harder to break intosomebody's home when it was
assumed everybody was there.
You could also look at this bybreaking down the elements of
deterrence.
There's certainty, swiftness,and severity, right, are the
three fundamental elements ofdeterrence.
And you could analyze it bywell, what was happening in the
system over these past fiveyears or so that uh either
(18:52):
reduced the certainty that you'dbe detected for committing a
crime and the swiftness withwhich you would be brought to
justice, and so on.
You can look at this from sortof short-term things and
longer-term things.
The way that I've tried to getmy hands and my head around all
these different things is to putthem in three buckets, and I'll
go through them real quicklyhere.
(19:14):
The first is what's actuallyhappening in the criminal
justice system with criminaljustice policies, programs, and
operations.
The second is what's happeningwith technology.
And the third bucket is what'shappening with broader society
and culture.
And I think if this was a movie,we would be, we'd be calling it
sort of everything, everywhere,all at once, uh, like the movie
(19:36):
title, because there's just somuch going on.
We had a webinar about this acouple of weeks ago and actually
put up on the screen 41different potential contributors
about evenly distributed betweenthose three buckets.
So, you know, in those three,you have things like more
aggressive and targeted andprecision policing.
(19:59):
Police are talking a lot aboutenhanced gun enforcement and
taking more guns off the street,particularly ghost guns.
You have shutdown and then thereboot of the court system that
occurred over the past fiveyears, uh, where it seems to be
in most places back up andrunning at sort of pre-pandemic
uh throughput levels.
Of course, you have everythingthat's going on with
(20:20):
immigration, enforcement anddeployment of the National
Guard, which some folks thinkare uh deterring would be
offenders, and then communityviolence intervention scaling
up.
There's so much more that's uhhappening in the criminal
justice bucket, but you can seethere's a lot there.
Then with technology, there isthis profusion and proliferation
(20:42):
of surveillance cameras,people's personal cameras, their
ring doorbell cameras, policecameras, uh, and and businesses.
And law enforcement isincreasingly networking those uh
cameras together in real-timecrime centers.
And, you know, there's some, Ithink there's some reason to
believe uh that between that andlicense plate readers, that that
(21:03):
may be making it more likely,including with homicide, that
people are are being caught.
Their third bucket is ishumongous and there's overlap
here.
There's certainly the argumentthat our friend and colleague
John Roman makes about themassive investments in in social
programs and not just uhcriminal justice programs, but
education and other publicservices.
(21:26):
There's certainly the easing ofthe pandemic stresses, economic
and emotional, and thedisruptions and the return of
people to more normal routinesand lifestyles, the cresting of
the opioid epidemic, whatappears to have crested, and
probably the stabilization ofdrug markets, like everything
else that illicit drug marketswent haywire uh during the
(21:47):
pandemic and probably haveseemed to have settled down.
And then let me just close,Jeff, with something that that
uh I'm eager to talk with youabout when we get a chance,
which is this movement towardwhat some research.
Are calling youth independence.
And that is basically kids arespending a lot more time at home
alone scrolling their phones.
(22:09):
And what may be over time veryclearly bad for mental health
and isolation and have some realdownsides across a number of
outcomes, not the least of whichis suicide, may turn out to be
good for crime in that in thatyouth are uh if they're home uh
alone uh and not out carousingwith their friends and getting
(22:33):
in trouble and doing uh sillythings that that young people
do, uh that could be a sort of abroad social, cultural,
technological thing happeninghere too.
So boy, when you spin up allthat together, um it is.
SPEAKER_00 (22:47):
I'm sorry, I stopped paying attention.
Could you go through that listone more time?
SPEAKER_01 (22:52):
My goodness.
SPEAKER_00 (22:54):
The youth thing, I think the youth thing is really
interesting because you look atsomething that should be totally
unrelated, a crime, thecarjackings, which I know you
guys measure in your yoursemi-annual reports, and you've
seen carjackings.
I mean, you guys have coveredfrom carjackings being at sort
of their base level,skyrocketing in the immediate
aftermath of the pandemic, andthen fallen like a rock in the
(23:16):
last year or two, and or threeyears even.
And that that is something thatrelates to youth culture because
it's when you track who getsarrested, it's almost always
significantly younger.
And we don't, in the places thatwe have it, we don't see a real
change in the adults gettingarrested for carjackings, but we
see teenagers, people in theirearly 20s getting arrested far
(23:40):
less frequently.
I I don't have an answer forthat, but I think it points to
just something in youth culturehas changed, and it this is an
extreme output of that change.
SPEAKER_01 (23:52):
It's hard to escape that conclusion.
Uh I there is some data outthere.
I don't want to say that it'sdefinitive, but and and let me
uh let me nod to my colleagueErnesto Lopez on on the
observation that perhaps whatwe're seeing is a collision of
these long-term and short-termuh forces happening at the same
time.
(24:13):
Let me try to explain.
If you crime really peaked inthe early 1990s, and you could
look, it's not a straight line,but you could look at what's
been happening since then as aprolonged decline, marked at
times by uh uh by some spikes in05, 06, and then again in 15,
(24:34):
16, and 17, and then of coursein 2021 and 22 with the
pandemic.
But if you if you drew a lineall the way across the past
three decades, you you couldsee, particularly with murder,
um uh a long-term downwardtrend.
And and that it's very likelythat some of these cultural and
(24:56):
social things that we're talkingabout undergird that that longer
trend.
And then things, certain thingshappen at certain points in time
that will cause spikes and anduh diversion from that long-term
trend.
Um, certainly there are theoriesabout why that happened in uh in
the aftermath of Michael Brown,Michael Brown and uh Freddie
(25:18):
Gray killings in Ferguson andBaltimore in in 2015, and the
loss of legitimacy and trust inpolice and and the effects that
that can have in communities.
And then again, of course, uhthe pandemic disruptions that
we've described.
So it just definitely seems tobe some interaction between the
long-term trends in society andshorter-term shocks of the
(25:40):
system.
You mentioned carjacking, soI'll just uh just jump in there
again, both with carjacking andmotor vehicle, and you did a
terrific job uh uh as well interms of highlighting the the
Kia Challenge TikTok video thatwent viral that that all this
that contributed substantiallyto this massive spike in motor
vehicle theft.
(26:00):
So you can say that alsoinvolved a lot of kids.
So you can also say that thatthere is this long-term decline
in juvenile crime, and there is.
I think it's down about 76% frompeak overall, then you see these
spikes that that that may beprovoked by uh by things that
are not so structural but aremore situational.
SPEAKER_00 (26:19):
And I want to sort of change gears just a little
bit and talk about sort of thecommunication element of all of
this.
And I'll I guess I'll just diveright into sort of the most
pressing question that I have ishow do you handle communicating
your very neutral middle, we'regonna just report the facts,
call balls and strikes uhfindings when they're skewed on
(26:40):
either the left or right bypolitical actors.
SPEAKER_01 (26:48):
I didn't expect you to I didn't expect you to frame
that question quite that way.
SPEAKER_00 (26:53):
I could frame it differently.
SPEAKER_01 (26:55):
No, I I'm just trying to just give me a just
give me a minute to like Ididn't know how do we I'm just
trying to figure out how to giveyou an answer that's not just
sort of the obvious answer, butbut maybe that's the only way to
answer it is we call balls andstrikes.
That's what we do.
And and we've made it very clearsince day one that that's what
we're doing.
And I think the reputation thatI have, the grounding I have in
(27:20):
in journalism and across thefield, I I think helps that.
The reputation of our staff, ourboard members being as diverse
as they are.
If you were to come to ourwebsite and poke around, I think
you would very quickly see thatwe are a very nonpartisan
organization that is trying tobe a proper think tank and not
(27:43):
an ideological think tank.
We are we're an advocacyorganization.
We don't cherry pick the data.
I'm pretty good at cherrypicking the data, just to be
clear.
I've had a lot of jobs over timeas we started out uh uh talking
about in how to frame anargument and and manipulate
numbers to show the or make thecase for the argument uh and the
(28:04):
policy that that you'readvancing.
That's not what we're doinghere.
It's just not.
And we are relentless about itand uh and are very uh careful
and clear in the way that we wechoose what topics we're we're
gonna focus on, the people webring to the table to discuss
them, and then the way that wepackage and frame them uh at the
(28:26):
end of the day is is very clearand should be, and I think it is
to people that we're not pushinga preset agenda.
Uh we are bringing together uhgroups and researchers uh and
having honest conversationswhere we wrestle uh genuinely
and authentically with the prosand cons of uh the myriad
(28:47):
trade-offs.
SPEAKER_00 (28:50):
And how do you guys bring together this sort of
bipartisan group?
Is there a uh magic to doingthat?
SPEAKER_01 (28:57):
I don't know if it's magic, it's a lot of work, and
we do call it a Ruby's Cubeexercise because uh each of the
groups we formed, and I namedsome of them before, but between
COVID and policing and violenceand health and re-entry and the
Women's Justice Commission andthe AI and the Veterans Justice
Commission, we've done 10 groupsnow, and each of them uh is
(29:18):
about 15 plus or minus peoplefrom different sectors of the
field.
And we think very carefullyabout who are the uh who are the
right voices to represent thecritical perspectives part of
those uh as part of thosegroups.
And we've often found ourselvesdigging in deeper into
particular areas and having tobroaden that out because we
(29:40):
don't have the necessaryexpertise uh amongst that 15 or
so people and in and involve amuch broader group.
Our Veterans Justice Commissionhad somewhere between 70 and 80
people involved in uh in comingup with those findings and
recommendations because wefocused deeply on uh the
front-end police diversion aswell as re-entry on the back end
(30:01):
and the whole separate issue ofhow do you help DOD be more
effective at helping servicemembers transition from active
military duty to civilian life.
SPEAKER_00 (30:12):
Can we can we talk about AI for a second?
Because I was you brought thatup.
I hadn't I hadn't initiallyintended to, but I'm really
curious because I've beenspending the last couple of
weeks just sort of playing withclaud and cloud code and wanted
to get your thoughts.
One, I was curious what yourcommission has found.
And two, how do you see thefuture of AI in criminal
justice?
(30:33):
Do you see, I mean, I we cancertainly see the negatives.
I know that ring ad has gotten alot of people talking about this
issue.
Is there a positive way thatthis technology can be
implemented that doesn't alsoscare the bejesus out of
everybody from a surveillanceperspective?
SPEAKER_01 (30:50):
Yeah, that's the primary mission of the task
force is how to how does thesystem maximize the benefits and
minimize the harms of what AIcan bring to criminal justice.
And I think there are a coupleexamples of things that
hopefully your listeners willhave heard of before, but if
they haven't, might help themthink differently about this and
(31:12):
realize that uh there are somethere's some really significant
potential upsides.
If you're interested in inpolice reform and police
treating people with dignity andrespect, um uh what about an AI
application which uh processesthe audio from body body cams
(31:37):
and captures it all and thenanalyzes it with respect to the
tone and the word choice andprovides an overall score as to
whether the officer uh escalatedthe situation unnecessarily or
handled it in uh a way befittingthe uniform and a way that would
build trust between the uhcitizens and and police.
(32:00):
Um if you if you wanted to dothat kind of uh performance
management and review policeofficer interactions with
citizens and ask yoursupervisors to review body cam
audio, they could only handlethe tiniest fraction of that and
take the smallest sample and andand miss right uh practically
(32:21):
almost everything else thathappened.
There's just not enough, there'sjust not enough time to do it.
If you roll that through AI, youcan get 100% of it and get
almost complete coverage of whatyour officers are doing out in
the field and and whether theyare in conformance with
policies.
And so that's just that that'sone example.
(32:41):
Another one I've heard ofrecently that's come up through
our our task force is in courts,sometimes you have huge
prosecution files and complexcases with all sorts of
different players and actors andtimelines that need to be
constructed.
Would you would you rather havea low-level lawyer that you're
paying for weeks and maybemonths to put all this together
(33:02):
in terms of a coherent pictureof that case, or run it through
AI and have it uh generate alist of characters and a
timeline and how everything fitstogether?
So those are just a couple ofexamples that come quickly to
mind of ways that that peopleshould be seeing potential
opportunities.
And the task force, uh to yourquestion, has issued a set of
(33:27):
principles for what they wouldconsider to be uh responsible
and ethical implementation of AIand criminal justice settings.
And we are just a couple weeksout from releasing the next
piece that will operationalizethose principles and actually
provide police departments,corrections departments, court
(33:48):
agencies, and communityorganizations with some very
criminal justice-specific adviceabout what steps they should
take to assess whether or not aparticular AI application has
implications for rights andliberties and should be uh
therefore treated and to certainguardrails and so on.
(34:09):
So we're really excited about uhabout that uh that piece of work
and think agencies across thecountry are gonna now have for
the first time a criminaljustice specific framework to
guide their decision makingabout how they weigh these pros
and cons and the risks and thepotential benefits.
SPEAKER_00 (34:27):
Do you have a sense from sort of obviously you don't
have to go through every pieceof feedback you've gotten, but
do you generally feel likeagencies are gun ho, we want to
do as much as we can, or arethey sort of you know
appropriate, cautious optimism,or you know, they've seen the AI
slop and they don't want to doit?
Do you have a sense of wheresort of the organizations you've
(34:47):
worked with fit on thatspectrum?
SPEAKER_01 (34:50):
Yeah, I think it's actually different for the for
the different sectors.
I think the police are way outfront in terms of their
enthusiasm and how quickly theyhave started to adopt various
applications.
Uh corrections is probably uh uhnext behind and and and courts
not far behind them andcommunity organizations uh uh
(35:10):
lagging further.
But I I think as this stuffcontinues to bubble uh and
people play around with it,there are going to be uh much
more rapid adoption of thingsthat relate to operations and
administrative tasks like thecase file piece that we were
talking about before and policeaudio reviews, which exists, by
(35:31):
the way.
Both of those, both of thoseapplications exist.
They're not just ideas.
SPEAKER_00 (35:34):
We had Ian Adams on a couple of weeks ago, who does
a lot of AI from University ofSouth Carolina.
He talked through the bodycamera and that one sort of
famous incident where the frog,the princess and the frog, was
playing in the background, andthe body camera app picked up
that and thought that the personhad like transitioned into a
frog.
And so it's completelytechnology.
It's not foolproof.
(35:55):
No, it's certainly not.
That's and that's that'sobviously an extreme example.
Um You know, Ian is on ourdashboard already on Tiscord.
Oh, is he?
Yeah.
That's that's great, and andcertainly a smart person.
So you know, you might thinkalike as far as involving him.
So what is taking stock ofeverything, like befitting your
background?
We've talked about a ton oftopics.
(36:17):
What is your biggest challengemoving forward?
SPEAKER_01 (36:22):
I think, Jeff, the challenge for us, particular uh
uh your organization and and thecouncil on criminal justice, but
for everybody in the field is totry to get smarter about
perception versus reality.
We are we're in an era right nowwhere uh people don't trust
(36:45):
information very very well.
As we as we discussed earlier,we're we're we're in the lucky
place where people are trustingour organizations to to be
straightforward uh about whatthese data show.
But uh in the politicalenvironment, things are
obviously being spun as theyhave been and always always will
be.
But uh I would say this, thatthere seems to be a notion that
(37:09):
people's perception of crimeshould track in an exact mirror
image kind of way the trendsthat we are reporting.
And that's just not right orrealistic.
People do not determine theirlevels of fear about crime or
almost anything else by lookingat charts or graphs and
(37:30):
spreadsheets and saying, oh, ifsomething went up by 10%, I'm
gonna be 10% more concernedabout it.
Or if it went down by 10%, I'mnow 10% less afraid to walk
alone at night.
That's not how it works.
People's people's are uhconcerns and levels of fear are
driven by other things.
And that includes not just thethe quantity of crime and the
(37:53):
level of crime that we aretracking, but importantly the
quality of crime, right?
That is uh the the nature of it,not just the number here.
When you have crimes that areparticularly brazen, uh when you
have crimes that areparticularly brutal, that are
particularly random, these arethese are the things that uh
(38:13):
that happen that that that shapewhether or not somebody is is
particularly concerned about it.
A crime that's committed by a14-year-old is the same in our
statistics as one that'scommitted by a 34-year-old.
But if it's a brutal murder thatis committed by a 14-year-old,
that lands very differently withpeople and and suggests you know
(38:35):
something is more wrong withsociety.
And we process it just very,very differently.
And so I think a main challengefor for all of us is to help
people better understand thatwhen people are concerned about
crime, even if crime is goingdown, they're not dem just
demagoguing.
(38:55):
They're not just necessarilypanicking, they have their own
set of uh own set of inputs andand sources of information and
their own tolerance for forwhat's an appropriate or or at
least an acceptable level ofcrime in our society.
SPEAKER_00 (39:12):
Absolutely.
And you know, I think that thework that I've done and the work
that you guys have done makingthe perceptions it's never gonna
perfectly match, but if you canput the data out there in a way
that we couldn't five years ago,even when murder was spiking,
you can closer conform theconversation around what's
(39:33):
actually happening.
And, you know, people are gonnahave their fears of crime, but
most people you can at leasthopefully match that too.
So I agree that that's such animportant conversation.
And and so, you know, that's thepoint of the podcast and
everything that we're doing.
So glad that you guys are onboard with that challenge as
well.
My last question is what policyconversation do you think is
(39:53):
just either missing or notcovered in the national debate
that probably should be gettingsome visibility?
SPEAKER_01 (40:01):
I think states are getting off scot-free in the
discussion about violence.
Most of the conversations aboutwhat's happening with murder and
violence in cities focuses onthe cities as it properly
should, but then it leapfrogsover the governors, state
government, and to Washington.
(40:23):
And uh what Washington is orisn't doing with respect to gun
safety and gun control, how muchmoney Washington is or isn't
sending for uh for variousprograms.
State governments have enormousmachinery to bring to bear on
these issues, and too oftenthey're left out of the
conversation.
They have parole and probationis almost almost always,
(40:47):
certainly parole is probation,is often a state function.
They have the Rolodex of peoplewho are, or more likely
offenders, and are very seldombrought into the conversation.
Sometimes they're they'reworking operationally at the
local level, but there's no heaton the state uh practically for
doing a better job with thepeople they are supervising are
(41:07):
in the community.
A little bit on on correctionsand re-entry, but but not much
past that.
Uh states have educationdepartments, health departments
that can prioritize and focustheir resources on uh the
neighborhoods that uh where theline share of violence occurs.
There's no reason why uh wecontinue to hear about this
(41:30):
mismatch, uh spatial mismatch,as often called, between where
the problems are and where theservices are.
States run transportationdepartments that uh often have
lighting funds.
And we talk a lot in the in theviolence reduction business
about cleaning and greening andmaking sure that spaces are
welcome and are well lit andwell tended.
And there is a comprehensivewhole of government response
(41:55):
that states should be bringingto bear.
And that's I think one of thebiggest missing parts of the
conversation about what can behappening to keep these historic
reductions in murder that we'reseeing uh headed even lower.
SPEAKER_00 (42:09):
Absolutely very interesting.
So, last last question.
What's next for you and CCJ?
SPEAKER_01 (42:17):
What's next?
What's next for us?
SPEAKER_00 (42:19):
Any this is your space for any newsbreaking
announcements you'd like to makeor or just what what's in the
store?
SPEAKER_01 (42:25):
Be on the lookout for the framework for
implementing AI in criminaljustice agencies.
That's coming up soon.
Be on the lookout uh a littlebit later this year for
recommendations uh from ourWomen's Justice Commission.
Be on the lookout, as I know youwill, Jeff, for our mid-year
crime trends report, which willuh be in July.
(42:49):
Uh just overall for us tocontinue to try to be a center
of gravity for the field, thatplace that people from all
different sectors of the field,different uh ideologies,
different disciplines can trustto convene thoughtful, serious
conversations about what'shappening with crime and
criminal justice in thiscountry.
SPEAKER_00 (43:09):
That's great.
The Adam Gelb, thank you so muchfor joining me.
I appreciate it and all thegreat work you guys do.
You too, Jeff.
Thanks so much.
Thanks for listening to theJeffalytics Podcast.
Be sure to subscribe and tolearn more, head on over to a
datalytics.com for moreinformation and previous
episodes.
If you like what you heard,please leave a glowing review,
which will help others todiscover the show.
(43:30):
Until next time, I'm Jeff Asher.
My name is Jeff Asher, and this is the Jeff
Analytics Podcast.
Criminal justice doesn't have anatural center.
It has advocates, agencies,researchers, activists, and
politicians all pulling indifferent directions.
So what happens when you try toactually build one?
In this episode, I'm joined byAdam Gill, president and CEO of
the Council on Criminal Justice.
(00:21):
Adam didn't just launch anotherthink tank.
He built an organizationdesigned to convene people who
disagree, narrow hundreds ofcompeting ideas into a handful
of policy priorities, andproduce research that both the
Republican and Democraticadministrations are willing to
cite.
We talked about how CCJA wasintentionally structured, how
its work on crime trends emergedduring the uncertainty of 2020,
and the limits of the whyquestion on crime.
(00:44):
This episode is about what itlooks like to try and build
durable infrastructure in afragmented system, and how to
get the right experts in theroom to make that happen.
Let's dive in.
Adam, thanks for joining me.
SPEAKER_01 (00:55):
Great to be with you, Jeff.
SPEAKER_00 (00:58):
So, Adam, you're coming here from the Council on
Criminal Justice.
I'm very excited to talk to you.
Certainly a fellow traveler inthe world of crime and crime
data and criminal justicepolicy.
So, can you walk us throughwhat's your background?
How did you get here?
SPEAKER_01 (01:14):
Yeah, thanks.
It's great to have a chance totalk with you about this.
And before I uh start talkingabout myself at all, I do want
to just uh uh give youappreciation for what you're
contributing to this field.
Uh it's really, it's reallyfantastic.
You're doing a tremendous publicservice and uh not just in the
criminal justice world, but youare helping people in the
(01:34):
criminal justice world andbeyond understand just how
important facts and data are.
And maybe that's a segue into mystory a little bit.
I did not set out to become ajournalist, but that's where my
career uh took me.
Uh, when I was uh at undergrad,I started working on the school
newspaper at UVA.
(01:54):
And the thing I actually reallyhated doing that the editors
would make me do is call thepolice department and and see if
there was any crime to reportworth uh putting in the Cavalier
Daily.
Really hated doing it, but overtime I started making more sense
to me and started becoming moreinterest.
And when I graduated, I got ajob uh here in Atlanta at the
(02:17):
Atlanta Journal Constitution,and there was a note on my desk
at my first day at work from myeditor saying, sorry, I can't be
with you, but welcome, andyou're on the night cops beat.
And so from 1987 to 1991, I waschasing the Atlanta Police
Department around.
And you recall that that's theheight of the drug war.
(02:38):
So things were things were uhwere just crazy uh here.
And I had a chance to uh sitdown in the basement at the
Atlanta Police Department withthe the crime data uh reporters.
All those police reports wouldcome in, and they're all these
people on these terminals uhinputting the crime data and and
supposedly doing it in a waythat conformed with the uniform
crime reporting rules fordefining offenses and so on.
(03:01):
And I just took to it.
You know, most reporters who getstuck on the police beat as
their first job.
They want to get off it as soonas possible and move on to city
hall or recover education orwhatever it is, uh, because
that's just generally seen asthe low, low job on the totem
pole.
But I really did gravitate toit.
And here I am almost 40 yearslater, having worked on Capitol
(03:23):
Hill twice, uh, worked in stategovernment in Maryland and
Georgia, worked at a smallnonprofit uh here in Georgia,
the Georgia Council on SubstanceAbuse, doing youth uh meth
prevention and other kinds of uhlocal programs.
And then 12 years at the PewCharitable Trusts running the
public safety work there,working with uh governors'
(03:44):
legislatures all over thecountry, helping them figure out
how they could safely bend theirincarceration rates down.
And all of that sort ofaccumulated uh experience in
press politics, public policy,uh research kind of led me to
this notion of a council oncriminal justice.
SPEAKER_00 (04:04):
Well, that yeah, that is the mouthful of a
background.
That's incredible.
The the breadth of experience.
And again, I just want to say Iappreciate the kind words very
much.
Maybe we'll have a start asegment where every guest has to
say something nice about me atthe start of the show because
that's a great way to kickthings off.
Well, I actually expected thatthat was mandatory, so I just
went ahead and it is from hereon out.
So thank you.
So you you mentioned CCJ, whatis the Council on Criminal
(04:26):
Justice for those that don'tknow?
SPEAKER_01 (04:28):
Yeah.
Uh a Council on Criminal Justiceis uh a two-part organization.
We're an invitational membershiporganization and a nonpartisan
think tank.
So think about those twodifferent components.
On the invitational membershipside, we are electing two
council membership, people whoare considered top thinkers and
(04:49):
doers in the field, reallycreating a network and a forum
among people across alldifferent sectors of the field:
police, courts, directions,communities, researchers,
activists, advocates, andcreating a forum for people to
share knowledge and informationand ideas amongst each other.
We are also, in terms of anonpartisan think tank, an
(05:09):
organization that calls ballsand strikes.
I think you could tell from mymy background on the jobs I've
had.
I've had some that are moreadvocacy-related.
I've worked for a number ofelected officials, but my
grounding is really injournalism.
And I'm still these days morecomfortable asking questions
often than I am giving answers.
And that's a lot what we dohere.
We we call balls and strikes,and we wrestle honestly with the
(05:33):
pros and cons and trade-offs ofpolicy choices facing the
nation.
So that's our mission is toadvance the understanding of
policy choices facing thecountry on criminal justice
issues and to build consensusfor solutions that enhance
safety and justice for all.
So we we help establish factsand we uh and we build
(05:56):
consensus.
Let me say that the core of whatwe do is to pull those two
pieces together, the membershipand the think tank, and form
subgroups, task forces orcommissions, and ask them to
make findings andrecommendations on particular
issues.
And we bring all kinds ofdiverse perspectives to the
table for those conversations.
(06:17):
Former attorneys general, formerdefense secretaries, along with
formerly incarcerated people anduh police chiefs and corrections
directors, program providers,and uh ask them to create
strategic policy roadmaps.
Uh, where should where shouldenergy flow and focus?
We know in each of these areasthat we have tackled from police
(06:40):
reform to veterans justice, thatthere are 932 things that need
to be done.
And what we ask these groups todo is focus in on what are the
five, the seven, the ten mostimportant things that need to be
done?
What would make the biggestdifference in terms of improving
safety and enhancing justice?
SPEAKER_00 (06:59):
And do you have either when you started this
project or now sort of an idealoutcome of what is the criminal
justice world you want tocreate?
Or is it we're just going to geta bunch of smart people together
in a room and push towardsbetter outcomes?
SPEAKER_01 (07:14):
Yeah.
I don't know if that's not alittle bit of a false choice in
that you you know very well,certainly having served on one
of these groups, our crime transuh crime trans working group,
uh, that we call it a criminaljustice system, but it's not
really a system.
It is a fragmented, disjointedset of processes.
(07:34):
And not not only that, in termsof different locuses of control,
in terms of local, state, andfederal government, in terms of
the executive branch andjudicial, often it's it's
designed to be adversarial andnot work together, but actually
work against each other, uh, uh,particularly, of course,
prosecution and defense.
And so when you think about itthat way, and you recognize how
(07:58):
interconnected things are, buthow they don't control uh uh one
thing doesn't control another,that it's very much like
squeezing a balloon.
You can you can push down onepart of the system, for
instance, reduce the number ofpeople who are going into
prison, spanning drug courts andother front-end alternatives to
incarceration.
But then the parole board, backend, is gonna see more prison
(08:21):
beds available and is likely tothen say, oh, we've got more
beds available, so we're gonnakeep these robbers in for maybe
eight years instead of sevenyears on average now.
So uh what we've done is to betry to try to be very strategic
about the pieces of this processor system that we've bitten off
(08:42):
and tried to improve.
When we first got off theground, uh which was in 2019,
the First Step Act had just beenpassed into law.
And the question on everybody'sminds was okay, the federal
government has uh taken takenthese steps around sentencing
and corrections.
What would the next steps be?
And so we formed a task forcethat was chaired by Governor
(09:06):
Nathan Deal, who just left thegovernor's mansion here in
Georgia, and included Sally uhYates, the former Deputy
Attorney General, included MarkHolden of the Koch uh World and
Stand Together, and otherterrific people to come up with
a list of their uh strategicpriorities for what should be
next.
(09:26):
Uh then COVID hit and we formeda National Commission on COVID
and criminal justice that wasco-chaired by former attorneys
general Loretta Lynch andAlberto Gonzalez.
And that, Jeff, I think as youwell know, was where our crime
trends work got started.
You know, when I got CJ uh CCJoff the ground, uh, tracking
crime trends was not on theagenda, not something that uh we
(09:49):
thought we would be doing as anorganization.
But when things started to gohaywire in the summer of 2020,
Lynch and Gonzalez, the otherterrific people we had on our
COVID commission, and of courseour team wanted to know in real
time what the heck was actuallyhappening with crime.
We had uh some sense that it wasgoing through the roof.
Uh, they're saying, well, it'sit's not that bad.
(10:10):
And so that's when we startedwith the late great Richard
Rosenfeld and my colleagueErnesto Lopez to start pulling
data from the city and policedepartment data uh portals that
has now turned into, I believe,this most recent year-end
release we had was our 16th inour in our crime trends uh
series now.
I'll just run through the othersquickly.
(10:32):
Then so we started to see thatviolence wasn't in fact spiking.
So we we had a task force onviolence.
We had the George Floyd killingand and the others, and we
formed a task force on policingreform.
So, in terms of how we'vetackled this, most of the issues
that we have uh focused ourattention on are those the world
has presented to us.
(10:53):
Like the national agenda was setin such a way that it suggested
a thoughtful analysis by adiverse group of well-respected
people saying where they thinkthe priority uh initiatives
ought to be could really helpmove the needle.
And that's what we've uh that'swhat we mostly done recently
with the task force on AI and agroup that we have together
(11:16):
chaired by the uh former SupremeCourt uh Chief Justice in Texas.
How do we uh most effectivelystrike a balance between the uh
dramatic benefits that AI canbring along with the substantial
risks and harms as well?
SPEAKER_00 (11:32):
You mentioned Crime Trends Working Group that I was
on was chaired by Rick Rosenfeldand then John Roman after after
his his passing.
And you know, we put out areport, and then the Biden
administration did an executiveorder that in part took some of
those ideas, and then the Trumpadministration later had, I
think, an executive order thattook some of those ideas.
(11:54):
So it it feels like at leastit's pushing the ball forward.
Are there other areas, at leastthat's the one I've been on?
Are there other areas that youfeel like have been really
impactful that you guys have putout reports and really seen a
serious policy change related tothose?
SPEAKER_01 (12:10):
Sure.
Yeah, and I'll give you twolevels.
In this business, we are alwayslooking for, and that is that
the people, people in thecriminal justice policy arena
are always looking for okay,what bills did you pass?
What what uh specific concretelegislative action was there?
But there there are so manyeffects.
So I want to talk about ourimpact on a couple different
levels.
(12:30):
One, on that that key level oflegislative impact, I think
there are two things that reallystand out amongst all others.
And it it would be the adoptionby the Justice Department of the
10 Essential Actions Roadmapthat our violent crime working
group produced.
It was uh 10 steps that uhcities should take to reduce uh
(12:55):
violent crime, not necessarilyspecific programs, but a
framework for how a city needsto organize itself in order to
uh to maximize violencereduction.
Things like there has to besomeone in charge, and that
person has to be the mayor.
Um, there has to be a citywideplan that is a whole of
government plan.
(13:16):
There has to be a specificpercentage reduction target for
the year, and so on.
And so it was a it was reallywonderful to see the Justice
Department say, we want to giveguidance to uh state and local
governments about how to reduceviolence.
This was in in 22, and the CCJviolent crime working group has
(13:37):
done the work.
This is the plan.
We don't need to recreate thewheel here.
They actually adopted uh thatthat plan's official DOJ policy
and in addition, created a lineof technical assistance that the
police executive research forumwas funded to deliver to provide
assistance to jurisdictions thatwere looking to implement the 10
essential actions or parts ofthat, uh, and then did a whole
(14:00):
crosswalk of all of DOJ'sresources, training, technical
assistance, uh, uh grants, andothers by the different
divisions of OJP would supportaction step one, action step
two, and so on.
So that's one.
And then then uh uh the otherone I think to mention is one
that just happened.
You know, Congress just passed auh a budget for the first time
(14:23):
in quite some time, and a newbudget for the Department of
Justice that was not acontinuing resolution.
And it included$4 million forthe establishment of a National
Center for Veterans Justice,which was a key recommendation
of our Veterans JusticeCommission.
And we're extremely excitedabout that.
Obviously, it needs it needs toactually happen by this Justice
(14:46):
Department.
Congress clearly understood theneed for a clearinghouse for
identification and disseminationof best practices around how do
we improve outcomes for veteranswho have become involved in the
justice system.
So those two things are thosebig picture outcomes.
But I just I just want to noteas well that similar to what
(15:08):
you're doing with real-timecrime index, Jeff, is that
overall we're we are supplyingthe field with facts and data
and information.
And one of the things that I'mmost proud of as the uh as the
founder and leader of theorganization is that our stuff,
like yours, is seen as credibleacross the political spectrum.
(15:30):
And it's very rare and it's veryspecial, and these days it's
very, very, very important forelected officials across the
aisle, for media outlets, fromthe New York Times, the Fox
News, the Daily Caller, andothers to treat the information
and the ideas that come out ofan organization as credible and
as authoritative.
(15:52):
And that that function is in andof itself, I think, terribly
important, separate and apartfrom any particular policy wins.
SPEAKER_00 (16:05):
Yeah, I I noted in my year wrap-up that how many
other people had been quoted orcited by the Trump White House
in December and the Biden WhiteHouse in January of the same
year.
And I think that it's probablyjust the two our two of our
organizations together are theonly two that have sort of hit
that.
SPEAKER_01 (16:21):
I think that may be right.
I mean both of us are probablypretty avid consumers of news
and not just crime and criminaljustice news, but because uh I
think we understand the the theimplications of of what we're
doing, or we have an eye out forother examples of of this kind
of credibility, and it is it israre indeed.
SPEAKER_00 (16:46):
So turning turning to kind of the the current
moment and crime, and I had a aCNN had a is working on some
piece and they were interviewingme today, and it's all about the
why question.
Why does this happen?
And as I'm sure you know, youget asked this question all of
the time, not necessarilygetting into like why do you
(17:08):
think murder is falling, but howdo you approach that question
and the question in general whenwhenever you're asked something
about the criminal justicesystem, where it's a big
question, and as you mentioned,it's a dysfunctional system, and
we don't often have the answers.
SPEAKER_01 (17:22):
Yeah.
I love having this conversationwith you.
And um so I will I will say thatvery much like you, I feel like
the more confident somebody isin their answer to this
question, the more skeptical Iam of it.
And and that's despite having atremendous amount of respect for
people out there who areoffering uh very confident uh uh
(17:45):
uh answers right now.
Let me let me try to tackle itthis way.
You could, in uh in analyzingsomething like this, you could
look at motive, means, andopportunity and how they change,
right?
Those are the three fundamentalelements of a crime.
You need motive, you need means,you need opportunity.
I really think the pandemic gaveus a masterclass in criminology.
(18:08):
There were changes in inmotives, there were changes in
means, and particularly duringthe uh the pandemic and the
height of the pandemic, therewere changes in opportunity,
right?
Businesses were closed, and soshoplifting, for instance, go
down at the start of thepandemic, and people, everybody
was at home.
So you saw burglaries go waydown because it was uh uh right
(18:29):
much harder to break intosomebody's home when it was
assumed everybody was there.
You could also look at this bybreaking down the elements of
deterrence.
There's certainty, swiftness,and severity, right, are the
three fundamental elements ofdeterrence.
And you could analyze it bywell, what was happening in the
system over these past fiveyears or so that uh either
(18:52):
reduced the certainty that you'dbe detected for committing a
crime and the swiftness withwhich you would be brought to
justice, and so on.
You can look at this from sortof short-term things and
longer-term things.
The way that I've tried to getmy hands and my head around all
these different things is to putthem in three buckets, and I'll
go through them real quicklyhere.
(19:14):
The first is what's actuallyhappening in the criminal
justice system with criminaljustice policies, programs, and
operations.
The second is what's happeningwith technology.
And the third bucket is what'shappening with broader society
and culture.
And I think if this was a movie,we would be, we'd be calling it
sort of everything, everywhere,all at once, uh, like the movie
(19:36):
title, because there's just somuch going on.
We had a webinar about this acouple of weeks ago and actually
put up on the screen 41different potential contributors
about evenly distributed betweenthose three buckets.
So, you know, in those three,you have things like more
aggressive and targeted andprecision policing.
(19:59):
Police are talking a lot aboutenhanced gun enforcement and
taking more guns off the street,particularly ghost guns.
You have shutdown and then thereboot of the court system that
occurred over the past fiveyears, uh, where it seems to be
in most places back up andrunning at sort of pre-pandemic
uh throughput levels.
Of course, you have everythingthat's going on with
(20:20):
immigration, enforcement anddeployment of the National
Guard, which some folks thinkare uh deterring would be
offenders, and then communityviolence intervention scaling
up.
There's so much more that's uhhappening in the criminal
justice bucket, but you can seethere's a lot there.
Then with technology, there isthis profusion and proliferation
(20:42):
of surveillance cameras,people's personal cameras, their
ring doorbell cameras, policecameras, uh, and and businesses.
And law enforcement isincreasingly networking those uh
cameras together in real-timecrime centers.
And, you know, there's some, Ithink there's some reason to
believe uh that between that andlicense plate readers, that that
(21:03):
may be making it more likely,including with homicide, that
people are are being caught.
Their third bucket is ishumongous and there's overlap
here.
There's certainly the argumentthat our friend and colleague
John Roman makes about themassive investments in in social
programs and not just uhcriminal justice programs, but
education and other publicservices.
(21:26):
There's certainly the easing ofthe pandemic stresses, economic
and emotional, and thedisruptions and the return of
people to more normal routinesand lifestyles, the cresting of
the opioid epidemic, whatappears to have crested, and
probably the stabilization ofdrug markets, like everything
else that illicit drug marketswent haywire uh during the
(21:47):
pandemic and probably haveseemed to have settled down.
And then let me just close,Jeff, with something that that
uh I'm eager to talk with youabout when we get a chance,
which is this movement towardwhat some research.
Are calling youth independence.
And that is basically kids arespending a lot more time at home
alone scrolling their phones.
(22:09):
And what may be over time veryclearly bad for mental health
and isolation and have some realdownsides across a number of
outcomes, not the least of whichis suicide, may turn out to be
good for crime in that in thatyouth are uh if they're home uh
alone uh and not out carousingwith their friends and getting
(22:33):
in trouble and doing uh sillythings that that young people
do, uh that could be a sort of abroad social, cultural,
technological thing happeninghere too.
So boy, when you spin up allthat together, um it is.
SPEAKER_00 (22:47):
I'm sorry, I stopped paying attention.
Could you go through that listone more time?
SPEAKER_01 (22:52):
My goodness.
SPEAKER_00 (22:54):
The youth thing, I think the youth thing is really
interesting because you look atsomething that should be totally
unrelated, a crime, thecarjackings, which I know you
guys measure in your yoursemi-annual reports, and you've
seen carjackings.
I mean, you guys have coveredfrom carjackings being at sort
of their base level,skyrocketing in the immediate
aftermath of the pandemic, andthen fallen like a rock in the
(23:16):
last year or two, and or threeyears even.
And that that is something thatrelates to youth culture because
it's when you track who getsarrested, it's almost always
significantly younger.
And we don't, in the places thatwe have it, we don't see a real
change in the adults gettingarrested for carjackings, but we
see teenagers, people in theirearly 20s getting arrested far
(23:40):
less frequently.
I I don't have an answer forthat, but I think it points to
just something in youth culturehas changed, and it this is an
extreme output of that change.
SPEAKER_01 (23:52):
It's hard to escape that conclusion.
Uh I there is some data outthere.
I don't want to say that it'sdefinitive, but and and let me
uh let me nod to my colleagueErnesto Lopez on on the
observation that perhaps whatwe're seeing is a collision of
these long-term and short-termuh forces happening at the same
time.
(24:13):
Let me try to explain.
If you crime really peaked inthe early 1990s, and you could
look, it's not a straight line,but you could look at what's
been happening since then as aprolonged decline, marked at
times by uh uh by some spikes in05, 06, and then again in 15,
(24:34):
16, and 17, and then of coursein 2021 and 22 with the
pandemic.
But if you if you drew a lineall the way across the past
three decades, you you couldsee, particularly with murder,
um uh a long-term downwardtrend.
And and that it's very likelythat some of these cultural and
(24:56):
social things that we're talkingabout undergird that that longer
trend.
And then things, certain thingshappen at certain points in time
that will cause spikes and anduh diversion from that long-term
trend.
Um, certainly there are theoriesabout why that happened in uh in
the aftermath of Michael Brown,Michael Brown and uh Freddie
(25:18):
Gray killings in Ferguson andBaltimore in in 2015, and the
loss of legitimacy and trust inpolice and and the effects that
that can have in communities.
And then again, of course, uhthe pandemic disruptions that
we've described.
So it just definitely seems tobe some interaction between the
long-term trends in society andshorter-term shocks of the
(25:40):
system.
You mentioned carjacking, soI'll just uh just jump in there
again, both with carjacking andmotor vehicle, and you did a
terrific job uh uh as well interms of highlighting the the
Kia Challenge TikTok video thatwent viral that that all this
that contributed substantiallyto this massive spike in motor
vehicle theft.
(26:00):
So you can say that alsoinvolved a lot of kids.
So you can also say that thatthere is this long-term decline
in juvenile crime, and there is.
I think it's down about 76% frompeak overall, then you see these
spikes that that that may beprovoked by uh by things that
are not so structural but aremore situational.
SPEAKER_00 (26:19):
And I want to sort of change gears just a little
bit and talk about sort of thecommunication element of all of
this.
And I'll I guess I'll just diveright into sort of the most
pressing question that I have ishow do you handle communicating
your very neutral middle, we'regonna just report the facts,
call balls and strikes uhfindings when they're skewed on
(26:40):
either the left or right bypolitical actors.
SPEAKER_01 (26:48):
I didn't expect you to I didn't expect you to frame
that question quite that way.
SPEAKER_00 (26:53):
I could frame it differently.
SPEAKER_01 (26:55):
No, I I'm just trying to just give me a just
give me a minute to like Ididn't know how do we I'm just
trying to figure out how to giveyou an answer that's not just
sort of the obvious answer, butbut maybe that's the only way to
answer it is we call balls andstrikes.
That's what we do.
And and we've made it very clearsince day one that that's what
we're doing.
And I think the reputation thatI have, the grounding I have in
(27:20):
in journalism and across thefield, I I think helps that.
The reputation of our staff, ourboard members being as diverse
as they are.
If you were to come to ourwebsite and poke around, I think
you would very quickly see thatwe are a very nonpartisan
organization that is trying tobe a proper think tank and not
(27:43):
an ideological think tank.
We are we're an advocacyorganization.
We don't cherry pick the data.
I'm pretty good at cherrypicking the data, just to be
clear.
I've had a lot of jobs over timeas we started out uh uh talking
about in how to frame anargument and and manipulate
numbers to show the or make thecase for the argument uh and the
(28:04):
policy that that you'readvancing.
That's not what we're doinghere.
It's just not.
And we are relentless about itand uh and are very uh careful
and clear in the way that we wechoose what topics we're we're
gonna focus on, the people webring to the table to discuss
them, and then the way that wepackage and frame them uh at the
(28:26):
end of the day is is very clearand should be, and I think it is
to people that we're not pushinga preset agenda.
Uh we are bringing together uhgroups and researchers uh and
having honest conversationswhere we wrestle uh genuinely
and authentically with the prosand cons of uh the myriad
(28:47):
trade-offs.
SPEAKER_00 (28:50):
And how do you guys bring together this sort of
bipartisan group?
Is there a uh magic to doingthat?
SPEAKER_01 (28:57):
I don't know if it's magic, it's a lot of work, and
we do call it a Ruby's Cubeexercise because uh each of the
groups we formed, and I namedsome of them before, but between
COVID and policing and violenceand health and re-entry and the
Women's Justice Commission andthe AI and the Veterans Justice
Commission, we've done 10 groupsnow, and each of them uh is
(29:18):
about 15 plus or minus peoplefrom different sectors of the
field.
And we think very carefullyabout who are the uh who are the
right voices to represent thecritical perspectives part of
those uh as part of thosegroups.
And we've often found ourselvesdigging in deeper into
particular areas and having tobroaden that out because we
(29:40):
don't have the necessaryexpertise uh amongst that 15 or
so people and in and involve amuch broader group.
Our Veterans Justice Commissionhad somewhere between 70 and 80
people involved in uh in comingup with those findings and
recommendations because wefocused deeply on uh the
front-end police diversion aswell as re-entry on the back end
(30:01):
and the whole separate issue ofhow do you help DOD be more
effective at helping servicemembers transition from active
military duty to civilian life.
SPEAKER_00 (30:12):
Can we can we talk about AI for a second?
Because I was you brought thatup.
I hadn't I hadn't initiallyintended to, but I'm really
curious because I've beenspending the last couple of
weeks just sort of playing withclaud and cloud code and wanted
to get your thoughts.
One, I was curious what yourcommission has found.
And two, how do you see thefuture of AI in criminal
justice?
(30:33):
Do you see, I mean, I we cancertainly see the negatives.
I know that ring ad has gotten alot of people talking about this
issue.
Is there a positive way thatthis technology can be
implemented that doesn't alsoscare the bejesus out of
everybody from a surveillanceperspective?
SPEAKER_01 (30:50):
Yeah, that's the primary mission of the task
force is how to how does thesystem maximize the benefits and
minimize the harms of what AIcan bring to criminal justice.
And I think there are a coupleexamples of things that
hopefully your listeners willhave heard of before, but if
they haven't, might help themthink differently about this and
(31:12):
realize that uh there are somethere's some really significant
potential upsides.
If you're interested in inpolice reform and police
treating people with dignity andrespect, um uh what about an AI
application which uh processesthe audio from body body cams
(31:37):
and captures it all and thenanalyzes it with respect to the
tone and the word choice andprovides an overall score as to
whether the officer uh escalatedthe situation unnecessarily or
handled it in uh a way befittingthe uniform and a way that would
build trust between the uhcitizens and and police.
(32:00):
Um if you if you wanted to dothat kind of uh performance
management and review policeofficer interactions with
citizens and ask yoursupervisors to review body cam
audio, they could only handlethe tiniest fraction of that and
take the smallest sample and andand miss right uh practically
(32:21):
almost everything else thathappened.
There's just not enough, there'sjust not enough time to do it.
If you roll that through AI, youcan get 100% of it and get
almost complete coverage of whatyour officers are doing out in
the field and and whether theyare in conformance with
policies.
And so that's just that that'sone example.
(32:41):
Another one I've heard ofrecently that's come up through
our our task force is in courts,sometimes you have huge
prosecution files and complexcases with all sorts of
different players and actors andtimelines that need to be
constructed.
Would you would you rather havea low-level lawyer that you're
paying for weeks and maybemonths to put all this together
(33:02):
in terms of a coherent pictureof that case, or run it through
AI and have it uh generate alist of characters and a
timeline and how everything fitstogether?
So those are just a couple ofexamples that come quickly to
mind of ways that that peopleshould be seeing potential
opportunities.
And the task force, uh to yourquestion, has issued a set of
(33:27):
principles for what they wouldconsider to be uh responsible
and ethical implementation of AIand criminal justice settings.
And we are just a couple weeksout from releasing the next
piece that will operationalizethose principles and actually
provide police departments,corrections departments, court
(33:48):
agencies, and communityorganizations with some very
criminal justice-specific adviceabout what steps they should
take to assess whether or not aparticular AI application has
implications for rights andliberties and should be uh
therefore treated and to certainguardrails and so on.
(34:09):
So we're really excited about uhabout that uh that piece of work
and think agencies across thecountry are gonna now have for
the first time a criminaljustice specific framework to
guide their decision makingabout how they weigh these pros
and cons and the risks and thepotential benefits.
SPEAKER_00 (34:27):
Do you have a sense from sort of obviously you don't
have to go through every pieceof feedback you've gotten, but
do you generally feel likeagencies are gun ho, we want to
do as much as we can, or arethey sort of you know
appropriate, cautious optimism,or you know, they've seen the AI
slop and they don't want to doit?
Do you have a sense of wheresort of the organizations you've
(34:47):
worked with fit on thatspectrum?
SPEAKER_01 (34:50):
Yeah, I think it's actually different for the for
the different sectors.
I think the police are way outfront in terms of their
enthusiasm and how quickly theyhave started to adopt various
applications.
Uh corrections is probably uh uhnext behind and and and courts
not far behind them andcommunity organizations uh uh
(35:10):
lagging further.
But I I think as this stuffcontinues to bubble uh and
people play around with it,there are going to be uh much
more rapid adoption of thingsthat relate to operations and
administrative tasks like thecase file piece that we were
talking about before and policeaudio reviews, which exists, by
(35:31):
the way.
Both of those, both of thoseapplications exist.
They're not just ideas.
SPEAKER_00 (35:34):
We had Ian Adams on a couple of weeks ago, who does
a lot of AI from University ofSouth Carolina.
He talked through the bodycamera and that one sort of
famous incident where the frog,the princess and the frog, was
playing in the background, andthe body camera app picked up
that and thought that the personhad like transitioned into a
frog.
And so it's completelytechnology.
It's not foolproof.
(35:55):
No, it's certainly not.
That's and that's that'sobviously an extreme example.
Um You know, Ian is on ourdashboard already on Tiscord.
Oh, is he?
Yeah.
That's that's great, and andcertainly a smart person.
So you know, you might thinkalike as far as involving him.
So what is taking stock ofeverything, like befitting your
background?
We've talked about a ton oftopics.
(36:17):
What is your biggest challengemoving forward?
SPEAKER_01 (36:22):
I think, Jeff, the challenge for us, particular uh
uh your organization and and thecouncil on criminal justice, but
for everybody in the field is totry to get smarter about
perception versus reality.
We are we're in an era right nowwhere uh people don't trust
(36:45):
information very very well.
As we as we discussed earlier,we're we're we're in the lucky
place where people are trustingour organizations to to be
straightforward uh about whatthese data show.
But uh in the politicalenvironment, things are
obviously being spun as theyhave been and always always will
be.
But uh I would say this, thatthere seems to be a notion that
(37:09):
people's perception of crimeshould track in an exact mirror
image kind of way the trendsthat we are reporting.
And that's just not right orrealistic.
People do not determine theirlevels of fear about crime or
almost anything else by lookingat charts or graphs and
(37:30):
spreadsheets and saying, oh, ifsomething went up by 10%, I'm
gonna be 10% more concernedabout it.
Or if it went down by 10%, I'mnow 10% less afraid to walk
alone at night.
That's not how it works.
People's people's are uhconcerns and levels of fear are
driven by other things.
And that includes not just thethe quantity of crime and the
(37:53):
level of crime that we aretracking, but importantly the
quality of crime, right?
That is uh the the nature of it,not just the number here.
When you have crimes that areparticularly brazen, uh when you
have crimes that areparticularly brutal, that are
particularly random, these arethese are the things that uh
(38:13):
that happen that that that shapewhether or not somebody is is
particularly concerned about it.
A crime that's committed by a14-year-old is the same in our
statistics as one that'scommitted by a 34-year-old.
But if it's a brutal murder thatis committed by a 14-year-old,
that lands very differently withpeople and and suggests you know
(38:35):
something is more wrong withsociety.
And we process it just very,very differently.
And so I think a main challengefor for all of us is to help
people better understand thatwhen people are concerned about
crime, even if crime is goingdown, they're not dem just
demagoguing.
(38:55):
They're not just necessarilypanicking, they have their own
set of uh own set of inputs andand sources of information and
their own tolerance for forwhat's an appropriate or or at
least an acceptable level ofcrime in our society.
SPEAKER_00 (39:12):
Absolutely.
And you know, I think that thework that I've done and the work
that you guys have done makingthe perceptions it's never gonna
perfectly match, but if you canput the data out there in a way
that we couldn't five years ago,even when murder was spiking,
you can closer conform theconversation around what's
(39:33):
actually happening.
And, you know, people are gonnahave their fears of crime, but
most people you can at leasthopefully match that too.
So I agree that that's such animportant conversation.
And and so, you know, that's thepoint of the podcast and
everything that we're doing.
So glad that you guys are onboard with that challenge as
well.
My last question is what policyconversation do you think is
(39:53):
just either missing or notcovered in the national debate
that probably should be gettingsome visibility?
SPEAKER_01 (40:01):
I think states are getting off scot-free in the
discussion about violence.
Most of the conversations aboutwhat's happening with murder and
violence in cities focuses onthe cities as it properly
should, but then it leapfrogsover the governors, state
government, and to Washington.
(40:23):
And uh what Washington is orisn't doing with respect to gun
safety and gun control, how muchmoney Washington is or isn't
sending for uh for variousprograms.
State governments have enormousmachinery to bring to bear on
these issues, and too oftenthey're left out of the
conversation.
They have parole and probationis almost almost always,
(40:47):
certainly parole is probation,is often a state function.
They have the Rolodex of peoplewho are, or more likely
offenders, and are very seldombrought into the conversation.
Sometimes they're they'reworking operationally at the
local level, but there's no heaton the state uh practically for
doing a better job with thepeople they are supervising are
(41:07):
in the community.
A little bit on on correctionsand re-entry, but but not much
past that.
Uh states have educationdepartments, health departments
that can prioritize and focustheir resources on uh the
neighborhoods that uh where theline share of violence occurs.
There's no reason why uh wecontinue to hear about this
(41:30):
mismatch, uh spatial mismatch,as often called, between where
the problems are and where theservices are.
States run transportationdepartments that uh often have
lighting funds.
And we talk a lot in the in theviolence reduction business
about cleaning and greening andmaking sure that spaces are
welcome and are well lit andwell tended.
And there is a comprehensivewhole of government response
(41:55):
that states should be bringingto bear.
And that's I think one of thebiggest missing parts of the
conversation about what can behappening to keep these historic
reductions in murder that we'reseeing uh headed even lower.
SPEAKER_00 (42:09):
Absolutely very interesting.
So, last last question.
What's next for you and CCJ?
SPEAKER_01 (42:17):
What's next?
What's next for us?
SPEAKER_00 (42:19):
Any this is your space for any newsbreaking
announcements you'd like to makeor or just what what's in the
store?
SPEAKER_01 (42:25):
Be on the lookout for the framework for
implementing AI in criminaljustice agencies.
That's coming up soon.
Be on the lookout uh a littlebit later this year for
recommendations uh from ourWomen's Justice Commission.
Be on the lookout, as I know youwill, Jeff, for our mid-year
crime trends report, which willuh be in July.
(42:49):
Uh just overall for us tocontinue to try to be a center
of gravity for the field, thatplace that people from all
different sectors of the field,different uh ideologies,
different disciplines can trustto convene thoughtful, serious
conversations about what'shappening with crime and
criminal justice in thiscountry.
SPEAKER_00 (43:09):
That's great.
The Adam Gelb, thank you so muchfor joining me.
I appreciate it and all thegreat work you guys do.
You too, Jeff.
Thanks so much.
Thanks for listening to theJeffalytics Podcast.
Be sure to subscribe and tolearn more, head on over to a
datalytics.com for moreinformation and previous
episodes.
If you like what you heard,please leave a glowing review,
which will help others todiscover the show.
(43:30):
Until next time, I'm Jeff Asher.
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