The connections among the criminal justice and behavioral health systems can be complex, in part because there is no single entity responsible for caring for individuals with emotional and mental health crises. Intervention from various groups throughout a community – those with different cultures, different attitudes, and different behaviors – is even more crucial. In this episode, Dr. Anne Prisco speaks with Dr. Patricia Griffin, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Holy Family University, about her transformational work within the criminal justice system in the communities surrounding Holy Family University in Northeast Philadelphia.
To learn more about Dr. Griffin's work and Holy Family University please visit www.holyfamily.edu
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Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
Hi,
I'm dr am frisco president of Holy Family University and you're listening to asked and answered our shared humanity and collective responsibility to each other and our neighbors and community is at the core of who we are at Holy Family University and asked and answered.
(00:25):
I talked with influential leaders in philadelphia and beyond,
including faculty members and alumni who are making a major impact in the community.
I'm excited to launch this podcast series with three special guests in this episode.
I'm thrilled to introduce you to Dr Patricia Griffin,
assistant professor of Criminal justice at Holy Family University who was doing some transformational work within the criminal justice system in the community,
(00:55):
Working that work that has national implications.
Dr Griffin,
we are so lucky to have you at Holy Family and I'm so glad to feature you here today.
Thank you Dr frisco,
I couldn't be more honored to be here on your inaugural podcast,
asked and answered and also to welcome you to Holy Family University and to the city of philadelphia.
(01:18):
We're very honored to have you here with us again.
Thank you.
I'll do my best to share a bit about my experiences here at Holy Family and anything you want to know about philadelphia.
I'm born and raised here and I'll be happy to share my opinion anyway.
Well said and as a brooklynite,
I could very much appreciate that I'd like to hear your opinions and I'm honored to be here and what a grace for me to get to learn about faculty such as yourself.
(01:46):
I'm gonna kick off and ask a question,
especially criminal justice.
I love that at faith based institution.
We teach criminal justice because people would sometimes think that's not the right fit and what I will usually help them understand is,
you know,
catholic social teachings are catholic intellectual tradition,
teach us to think about ways we manage social justice and that we live that in our communities and part of that is restorative justice and I think that's very much about the work you're doing.
(02:19):
So I'd love to start with a quote by you if you don't mind quote,
the criminal justice behavioral health network is large and complex.
The effort to divert those in crisis does not fall solely in the domain of a single entity,
but rather a confluence of different organizations with different cultures,
(02:41):
attitudes and behaviors united in a common goal that I could not agree with you more.
And I know a big part of that lies in the responsibility of the community.
I would love to start by asking you what does this community mean to you as it relates to your work.
Thanks dr fresco and I appreciate also that you grounded this conversation in thinking about catholic social teaching and thoughts about criminal justice and justice.
(03:11):
The formation of the american criminal justice system is really in our catholic social teaching and the enlightenment with fraternity and freedom.
So inequality and these kind of core principles are really how I think about community.
So I think about community really as being that in a relationship between people,
(03:33):
whether or not we live in that same family domicile or neighborhood philadelphia is a city of neighborhoods,
but community is the inner relationship between individuals and you know,
sometimes that's place based,
sometimes that is based upon our ethnic or racial commonalities,
(03:55):
faith as you mentioned,
but also our academic.
Right?
So right now we are in the community of fully family university so our community can change.
But I think what it really is grounded in our,
those relationships.
You know,
I started my career coming out of a Jesuit University as a criminal intelligence analyst.
(04:16):
I worked in the federal criminal justice system with the federal organized crime strike force.
Then I became a special agent doing organized crime investigations in atlantic city,
Newark,
New Jersey Manhattan,
you must have great stories,
you know what I do.
I worked with such great people and I think that's where I really started to get this desire to tell the story of the great people who not only our agents working in the justice system.
(04:50):
So our police,
our law enforcement myself,
a special agent,
the prosecutors,
but also those people who have to use the justice system whether they are witnesses or victims and then those who are brought into the justice system for having committed an offense.
So yeah,
(05:11):
I do have some great stories are all people based.
I'll be happy to share them with you.
Yes,
well we know we're going to have lots of times to talk about this in the future right now.
You know when we think about community,
we know that the Holy Family University has a footprint in tours dale northeast Philly for many,
many years and we also have a presence up in Bucks County in Newtown,
(05:35):
The work you're doing up there,
I would love to hear a little bit more.
I think everyone would be really interested about it because it actually builds upon this notion of community and how did you imagine?
We could,
you could and use the resources of Holy Family to reach out to Bucks County and see how we could maybe be in partnership with them in whatever way they needed us to be.
(05:59):
And I'm so grateful for my dean for the support of my faculty,
my fellow colleagues helping to support me in advancing that,
who's responsible for community safety and community well being.
My dissertation research,
I came into academia more recently probably than many,
but my dissertation research was on the use of opioids by police officers and what I learned,
(06:25):
just like the opioid epidemic was hitting the United States and the global environment in general is also hitting our law enforcement officers and that caused me to really make the connection between community safety,
public safety and community well being,
community health and so I'm on the board of directors for an international association called the Law enforcement Public Health Association.
(06:51):
So my scholarship really was formed About five years ago with this connectivity between law enforcement,
community safety,
public health community well being so fast forward.
I joined totally families community four years ago and my initial appointment was as director of the graduate Criminal justice program.
(07:13):
And for the first time in my life I was placed in Bucks County and I did not know much about Bucks County.
One of the first things I did was to kind of reach out to our students who were in the graduate program and I learned that a few of them we're working in the criminal justice field in Bucks County.
So that was a great charlie to get in and start to introduce myself to the leaders and I think that you know what we offered Holy Family University is leadership in many ways and we're also a neutral spot.
(07:51):
Unfortunately,
the justice system is made up of different competing pieces.
Right?
As you said in my,
in that introductory quote,
we'd like to think that the system works synergistically like a closed environment.
But unlike my colleagues in the environmental sciences or the Natural sciences,
(08:13):
ours is not a closed system.
It's a very open system and there are often competing tensions.
And so one of the first opportunities.
And again,
I give,
you know,
I'm so grateful to the leadership of Holy family that we opened up our campus up there in Bucks County to the commissioners meeting and we hosted the commissioner's meeting,
(08:34):
They meet once a month and we had close to 90 people from the community come to our Bucks County campus.
And one of the first things I heard was,
I didn't know Holy family was in Bucks County.
Right?
So I was like,
wow,
we are a hidden gem.
And I think from that time these relationships have started to flourish and you know,
(08:58):
I'm really very proud of the work that we started to build through the graduate program.
But now it's filtering into the undergraduate program and I'll tell you now about those couple of projects if you can or it stopped me because I tend to go on and on.
I'm just so thrilled with it.
Well,
I certainly,
I do want to hear and I think it's important for you to speak a little bit about what you consider as an important aspect of even an undergraduate educational experience and one that you're now purposefully nurturing for undergraduate students,
(09:33):
but also about the work itself.
I mean,
you've got these big grants going,
it's a lot of moving parts.
So tell us a little bit about that.
And to your point,
if you hadn't reached out to them to begin with,
this whole thing might not have happened.
So ultimately it's all about the relationship you established from the beginning.
Oh,
that trust,
that sense of yeah,
(09:54):
we could we have,
we,
she gets us,
we can do this together.
We can have the shared responsibility.
Sure.
And I think that reciprocity is something that I hope to continue to nurture.
So as a,
as a university,
we have certain resources that I think we can really bring to the community.
But what's really important,
(10:16):
I've always worked in the margins.
I've always worked at that place where many people don't.
So our programs that Holy family and what attracted me to Holy Family is we have like our part time graduate formal justice program and then even our undergraduate students,
most of them are working like they're not full time students.
So we're working at the margins,
(10:37):
you know,
so so really trying to hear what the community needs as opposed to coming in and saying this is what we have.
But nonetheless,
okay,
fast forward working with our part time graduate students and now with our undergraduate students,
one of the first projects that we became involved in resulting from that first meeting the forward thinking leadership of the Bucks County office of Adult probation and I have to give lots of credit to the leadership in Bucks County.
(11:09):
These are individuals who are focusing on that evidence based outcomes too often in the criminal justice system.
We were just winging it right because there are,
there are grave problems these,
these movements to defund the police like this is real.
These are people's lives.
We don't want to just wing it when it comes to a response.
So about three years ago there was a kind of an opportunity through the office of adult probation and parole To become involved with an evaluation of their drug work.
(11:41):
They are entering into the 10th year of their adult probation and parole drug work and they received federal funds and the federal government through SaMSA offers the opportunity to do evaluation research and knowing that that's my area of kind of expertise and it builds upon that criminal intelligence.
(12:02):
You know,
I'm a mixed methods evaluation researcher and I keep pushing to all of our students at the graduate and undergraduate level that where the justice system needs us at Holy Family University where we can contribute most positively is that we can develop a set of tools for our toolbox about how to carry out research using G.
(12:27):
I.
S.
Mapping or whether it's Excel or some other statistical package.
But we can bring ethically informed applied research to these environments and we can help those stakeholders in the community to make better decisions.
It's not that we as the university are making decisions for these stakeholders but we're working collaboratively.
(12:50):
So going back to your first question that collaboration,
community relationships has been important.
So to fast forward I guess it was in 2019 Bucks County received this beautiful grant from the federal government.
They were looking for a partner,
an academic partner to carry out evaluation research.
And we were awarded that Granted,
(13:12):
it's a four year,
you know,
multi year grant to carry out mixed methods evaluation research.
So for the past 18 months I've been doing weekly observational research.
I've had two students that I helped to train with qualitative data analysis of the treatment reports.
And we have made the end of the year evaluations to the federal government This year.
(13:35):
I'm really excited about it,
knock on wood that,
you know,
with the covid social distancing requirements.
It's a bit more challenging.
But we've started the interview process.
This is a randomized controlled experiment.
We have randomly recruited 50 participants from the drug court And then 50 from the traditional probation and we're going to follow them over a period of 18 months to see if that saturation of drug court supervision will have a positive impact on criminal recidivism.
(14:07):
So that's a long way of saying,
we're really actively engaged not only with the judicial system in Bucks County,
but the office of probation and parole.
The students are getting involved there helping to carry out that research.
We're doing data analysis,
but from that,
if you don't mind,
I'll just tell you the truth through the I think involvement we've had through drug court,
(14:33):
Bucks County was one of the first midsize counties to pilot a co responder program.
I don't think there are any of us who haven't been impacted by the death of Mr George Floyd and the calls to defund police and trying to uncover ways to use resources that are really better directed towards the mental and behavioral health side of the community was just policing.
(15:06):
So tell us what a co responder means.
Sure.
So there are multiple models.
They may look differently across the country,
but in a general sense,
it would involve having a human service provider,
whether that's a clinical social worker or a psychologist or someone who is specially trained drug and alcohol to accompany a police officer into a setting where a community member has some type of behavioral or mental health disorder.
(15:38):
Part of what I love about this work is the recognition that at a time where,
as you said,
our police are under great strain,
some really obvious reasons,
but we still know that they're there to support and protect our communities.
So how do we help them so that they can do the work they need to do to help us and keep us safe.
(16:04):
Right.
I mean,
just the last few days,
we've seen all the articles about how,
you know,
funding has to be restored and communities now are recognizing when they don't have active police presence crimes go up.
But the other recognition I've always felt is we ask our police to be too many different things,
right?
We want them to be therapists and understand people who are in various stages of chronic mental health drug issues.
(16:31):
So what is it?
And if I asked you,
what's your north star besides all of the learning that's going to happen from the process,
you know,
what would you hope would be some takeaways for Bucks County?
I can point to something really positive.
This has been underway now for nine months.
So we have nine months worth of data that we've been collecting.
So it's the diversion of those who have a chronic,
(16:55):
Not just a cute,
so a chronic and acute behavioral mental health issue from the criminal justice system into appropriate human services.
So,
for example,
when we first started collecting this data,
we found that 26 of the calls that were coming in were made by three people.
Right?
So for behavioral health.
(17:16):
So what we've been able to do or what the correspondents have been able to do is to really reduce that to almost nothing because they have been diverted,
Those individuals have been diverted to the specific human services,
whether it's homelessness,
whether it is drug and alcohol,
(17:36):
substance use,
food insecurity.
So there are different ways in which 91 that call to 911,
which we talked about the use of force continuum.
You know,
these deaths at the hands of police officers is really what's opened this conversation about should the police be the appropriate responders.
(17:57):
But the police,
the lowest level of force is a very loud commanding screen.
But if you are someone in a home or if you are just an average citizen on the street and someone screams at you,
you take that as being quite in the front.
Right?
So partnering up a behavioral specialist,
(18:20):
like a social worker or a clinical psychologist with the police.
Those individuals have de escalation skills and they also have sort of the broader maybe understanding of the social service resources.
So we're really seeing some positive changes at this pilot program.
So much so and we've been piloting it in Bensalem,
(18:44):
which is one of the largest policing departments in Bucks County.
It's going to be widened across the county into at least four more in the next year.
Wow,
that's wonderful.
Could you have predicted this?
I mean,
if you had to predict the impact that this work would do what the research would do.
(19:04):
You know what I think in such a short period of time,
I would not have expected it to be such a positive impact.
You know,
I think we hope,
but these various models are springing up and I think what's really important is what Ben Salem has created for their model works in Bensalem.
(19:24):
We can't apply that necessarily to the city of philadelphia.
The city of philadelphia is denser population.
It's a larger area and so on and so forth,
but that then Sale model,
what we're learning is that works and now the network of human services that were again,
I think our students are learning the value of mapping an asset happening,
(19:47):
right?
You know that from your own work,
right?
The importance of assets and they're starting to learn that,
you know,
that's not to be taken for granted because then that takes some of the pressure off the police.
So,
you know,
the more that we can,
as you mentioned,
we ask our police to do so many things and the students are mapping the resources in the community,
(20:09):
this is huge,
and what wonderful experience I appreciate,
you really care about engaging our students in.
So this isn't a project you took on individually,
this is a project you took on knowing this is a learning experience for our students as well.
How prescient right now that this is the last four years you've been doing this work.
(20:29):
So major,
major impact.
Thank you.
I look forward to having these ongoing conversations about what you're learning and what maybe are you learning that surprises you,
but in the meantime,
how wonderful for our students and to reinforce our Holy Family University mission of service that you know,
we're here to help inform the community,
(20:50):
right?
Not just being our little ivory towers and sort of,
you know,
proselytizing or theorizing,
but rather applying the work in real life situations,
which we know is what our students ultimately want to do.
They're out there from these areas and they want to come back and work in the area and contribute.
So thank you,
I thought we'd end up with something a little fun because as you know,
(21:14):
I'm new to Philly.
My husband and I are new Yorkers and we're really having a good time learning about the city,
but I do know I have a lot to learn.
So I'm gonna ask you a lightning round of your personal Philly favorite since I know you spend your life here in Philly,
so ready because I'm not even sure I know what these references are.
Okay,
here we go,
cheesecakes,
(21:35):
cheesesteaks,
cheesecakes.
There you go.
Now.
You know from new york cheesesteaks or soft pretzels,
cheesesteaks,
Pat's or Geno's Oh,
that's a whiz question.
I'm gonna have to go off script here and say Della Sanders,
I'm from Roxborough and some people will know about that.
So,
Della Sanders.
But with whiz at Pat.
(21:56):
All right,
Betsy Ross or Ben franklin.
If you're talking about the bridge,
then I'm going with Betsy Ross.
If you're talking about the people,
then I'm probably gonna go with Ben franklin.
Yeah,
I know there are two bridges named that in Philly.
I've been over both of them.
Not necessarily intentionally,
but yeah,
I'd have to agree with you,
the Man or the Academy of Music.
(22:18):
Ah The man,
Defin.
That's such a cool place.
I've gotten six a couple of concerts there this summer.
Really beautiful,
beautiful setting.
The whole Fairmont park area is Rocky or sixth sense.
Yeah.
Ed Gritty or the fanatics.
The fanatic.
(22:39):
I mean,
I'm coming to like gritty,
but it's the fanatic is iconic.
So I'm gonna go with the with the fanatics.
Okay.
As long as the fanatic is second place to our very own Holy Family University Tiger.
Oh yes,
absolutely.
And we had homecoming and that was a beautiful event.
So I hope you enjoyed homecoming this past weekend.
(23:00):
I did.
And how lucky am I that we get to bless and cut the ribbon on a new turf field and watch our women's soccer team win yet again.
So it's pretty cool.
Thank you for being part of this wonderful community of Holy Family University.
People like you really reinforced why it was a good decision for me to be here.
So thank you.
Thank you dr christo and welcome.
(23:22):
I'm grateful to have you here on your leadership as well.
Thank you.
Take care of the well to learn more about dr griffin's work and Holy Family University,
please visit Holy Family.
H O L Y F A M I L Y dot E D U.
I'm dr ANne Prisco.
Thank you for listening.
Hi,
I'm dr am frisco president of Holy Family University and you're listening to asked and answered our shared humanity and collective responsibility to each other and our neighbors and community is at the core of who we are at Holy Family University and asked and answered.
(00:25):
I talked with influential leaders in philadelphia and beyond,
including faculty members and alumni who are making a major impact in the community.
I'm excited to launch this podcast series with three special guests in this episode.
I'm thrilled to introduce you to Dr Patricia Griffin,
assistant professor of Criminal justice at Holy Family University who was doing some transformational work within the criminal justice system in the community,
(00:55):
Working that work that has national implications.
Dr Griffin,
we are so lucky to have you at Holy Family and I'm so glad to feature you here today.
Thank you Dr frisco,
I couldn't be more honored to be here on your inaugural podcast,
asked and answered and also to welcome you to Holy Family University and to the city of philadelphia.
(01:18):
We're very honored to have you here with us again.
Thank you.
I'll do my best to share a bit about my experiences here at Holy Family and anything you want to know about philadelphia.
I'm born and raised here and I'll be happy to share my opinion anyway.
Well said and as a brooklynite,
I could very much appreciate that I'd like to hear your opinions and I'm honored to be here and what a grace for me to get to learn about faculty such as yourself.
(01:46):
I'm gonna kick off and ask a question,
especially criminal justice.
I love that at faith based institution.
We teach criminal justice because people would sometimes think that's not the right fit and what I will usually help them understand is,
you know,
catholic social teachings are catholic intellectual tradition,
teach us to think about ways we manage social justice and that we live that in our communities and part of that is restorative justice and I think that's very much about the work you're doing.
(02:19):
So I'd love to start with a quote by you if you don't mind quote,
the criminal justice behavioral health network is large and complex.
The effort to divert those in crisis does not fall solely in the domain of a single entity,
but rather a confluence of different organizations with different cultures,
(02:41):
attitudes and behaviors united in a common goal that I could not agree with you more.
And I know a big part of that lies in the responsibility of the community.
I would love to start by asking you what does this community mean to you as it relates to your work.
Thanks dr fresco and I appreciate also that you grounded this conversation in thinking about catholic social teaching and thoughts about criminal justice and justice.
(03:11):
The formation of the american criminal justice system is really in our catholic social teaching and the enlightenment with fraternity and freedom.
So inequality and these kind of core principles are really how I think about community.
So I think about community really as being that in a relationship between people,
(03:33):
whether or not we live in that same family domicile or neighborhood philadelphia is a city of neighborhoods,
but community is the inner relationship between individuals and you know,
sometimes that's place based,
sometimes that is based upon our ethnic or racial commonalities,
(03:55):
faith as you mentioned,
but also our academic.
Right?
So right now we are in the community of fully family university so our community can change.
But I think what it really is grounded in our,
those relationships.
You know,
I started my career coming out of a Jesuit University as a criminal intelligence analyst.
(04:16):
I worked in the federal criminal justice system with the federal organized crime strike force.
Then I became a special agent doing organized crime investigations in atlantic city,
Newark,
New Jersey Manhattan,
you must have great stories,
you know what I do.
I worked with such great people and I think that's where I really started to get this desire to tell the story of the great people who not only our agents working in the justice system.
(04:50):
So our police,
our law enforcement myself,
a special agent,
the prosecutors,
but also those people who have to use the justice system whether they are witnesses or victims and then those who are brought into the justice system for having committed an offense.
So yeah,
(05:11):
I do have some great stories are all people based.
I'll be happy to share them with you.
Yes,
well we know we're going to have lots of times to talk about this in the future right now.
You know when we think about community,
we know that the Holy Family University has a footprint in tours dale northeast Philly for many,
many years and we also have a presence up in Bucks County in Newtown,
(05:35):
The work you're doing up there,
I would love to hear a little bit more.
I think everyone would be really interested about it because it actually builds upon this notion of community and how did you imagine?
We could,
you could and use the resources of Holy Family to reach out to Bucks County and see how we could maybe be in partnership with them in whatever way they needed us to be.
(05:59):
And I'm so grateful for my dean for the support of my faculty,
my fellow colleagues helping to support me in advancing that,
who's responsible for community safety and community well being.
My dissertation research,
I came into academia more recently probably than many,
but my dissertation research was on the use of opioids by police officers and what I learned,
(06:25):
just like the opioid epidemic was hitting the United States and the global environment in general is also hitting our law enforcement officers and that caused me to really make the connection between community safety,
public safety and community well being,
community health and so I'm on the board of directors for an international association called the Law enforcement Public Health Association.
(06:51):
So my scholarship really was formed About five years ago with this connectivity between law enforcement,
community safety,
public health community well being so fast forward.
I joined totally families community four years ago and my initial appointment was as director of the graduate Criminal justice program.
(07:13):
And for the first time in my life I was placed in Bucks County and I did not know much about Bucks County.
One of the first things I did was to kind of reach out to our students who were in the graduate program and I learned that a few of them we're working in the criminal justice field in Bucks County.
So that was a great charlie to get in and start to introduce myself to the leaders and I think that you know what we offered Holy Family University is leadership in many ways and we're also a neutral spot.
(07:51):
Unfortunately,
the justice system is made up of different competing pieces.
Right?
As you said in my,
in that introductory quote,
we'd like to think that the system works synergistically like a closed environment.
But unlike my colleagues in the environmental sciences or the Natural sciences,
(08:13):
ours is not a closed system.
It's a very open system and there are often competing tensions.
And so one of the first opportunities.
And again,
I give,
you know,
I'm so grateful to the leadership of Holy family that we opened up our campus up there in Bucks County to the commissioners meeting and we hosted the commissioner's meeting,
(08:34):
They meet once a month and we had close to 90 people from the community come to our Bucks County campus.
And one of the first things I heard was,
I didn't know Holy family was in Bucks County.
Right?
So I was like,
wow,
we are a hidden gem.
And I think from that time these relationships have started to flourish and you know,
(08:58):
I'm really very proud of the work that we started to build through the graduate program.
But now it's filtering into the undergraduate program and I'll tell you now about those couple of projects if you can or it stopped me because I tend to go on and on.
I'm just so thrilled with it.
Well,
I certainly,
I do want to hear and I think it's important for you to speak a little bit about what you consider as an important aspect of even an undergraduate educational experience and one that you're now purposefully nurturing for undergraduate students,
(09:33):
but also about the work itself.
I mean,
you've got these big grants going,
it's a lot of moving parts.
So tell us a little bit about that.
And to your point,
if you hadn't reached out to them to begin with,
this whole thing might not have happened.
So ultimately it's all about the relationship you established from the beginning.
Oh,
that trust,
that sense of yeah,
(09:54):
we could we have,
we,
she gets us,
we can do this together.
We can have the shared responsibility.
Sure.
And I think that reciprocity is something that I hope to continue to nurture.
So as a,
as a university,
we have certain resources that I think we can really bring to the community.
But what's really important,
(10:16):
I've always worked in the margins.
I've always worked at that place where many people don't.
So our programs that Holy family and what attracted me to Holy Family is we have like our part time graduate formal justice program and then even our undergraduate students,
most of them are working like they're not full time students.
So we're working at the margins,
(10:37):
you know,
so so really trying to hear what the community needs as opposed to coming in and saying this is what we have.
But nonetheless,
okay,
fast forward working with our part time graduate students and now with our undergraduate students,
one of the first projects that we became involved in resulting from that first meeting the forward thinking leadership of the Bucks County office of Adult probation and I have to give lots of credit to the leadership in Bucks County.
(11:09):
These are individuals who are focusing on that evidence based outcomes too often in the criminal justice system.
We were just winging it right because there are,
there are grave problems these,
these movements to defund the police like this is real.
These are people's lives.
We don't want to just wing it when it comes to a response.
So about three years ago there was a kind of an opportunity through the office of adult probation and parole To become involved with an evaluation of their drug work.
(11:41):
They are entering into the 10th year of their adult probation and parole drug work and they received federal funds and the federal government through SaMSA offers the opportunity to do evaluation research and knowing that that's my area of kind of expertise and it builds upon that criminal intelligence.
(12:02):
You know,
I'm a mixed methods evaluation researcher and I keep pushing to all of our students at the graduate and undergraduate level that where the justice system needs us at Holy Family University where we can contribute most positively is that we can develop a set of tools for our toolbox about how to carry out research using G.
(12:27):
I.
S.
Mapping or whether it's Excel or some other statistical package.
But we can bring ethically informed applied research to these environments and we can help those stakeholders in the community to make better decisions.
It's not that we as the university are making decisions for these stakeholders but we're working collaboratively.
(12:50):
So going back to your first question that collaboration,
community relationships has been important.
So to fast forward I guess it was in 2019 Bucks County received this beautiful grant from the federal government.
They were looking for a partner,
an academic partner to carry out evaluation research.
And we were awarded that Granted,
(13:12):
it's a four year,
you know,
multi year grant to carry out mixed methods evaluation research.
So for the past 18 months I've been doing weekly observational research.
I've had two students that I helped to train with qualitative data analysis of the treatment reports.
And we have made the end of the year evaluations to the federal government This year.
(13:35):
I'm really excited about it,
knock on wood that,
you know,
with the covid social distancing requirements.
It's a bit more challenging.
But we've started the interview process.
This is a randomized controlled experiment.
We have randomly recruited 50 participants from the drug court And then 50 from the traditional probation and we're going to follow them over a period of 18 months to see if that saturation of drug court supervision will have a positive impact on criminal recidivism.
(14:07):
So that's a long way of saying,
we're really actively engaged not only with the judicial system in Bucks County,
but the office of probation and parole.
The students are getting involved there helping to carry out that research.
We're doing data analysis,
but from that,
if you don't mind,
I'll just tell you the truth through the I think involvement we've had through drug court,
(14:33):
Bucks County was one of the first midsize counties to pilot a co responder program.
I don't think there are any of us who haven't been impacted by the death of Mr George Floyd and the calls to defund police and trying to uncover ways to use resources that are really better directed towards the mental and behavioral health side of the community was just policing.
(15:06):
So tell us what a co responder means.
Sure.
So there are multiple models.
They may look differently across the country,
but in a general sense,
it would involve having a human service provider,
whether that's a clinical social worker or a psychologist or someone who is specially trained drug and alcohol to accompany a police officer into a setting where a community member has some type of behavioral or mental health disorder.
(15:38):
Part of what I love about this work is the recognition that at a time where,
as you said,
our police are under great strain,
some really obvious reasons,
but we still know that they're there to support and protect our communities.
So how do we help them so that they can do the work they need to do to help us and keep us safe.
(16:04):
Right.
I mean,
just the last few days,
we've seen all the articles about how,
you know,
funding has to be restored and communities now are recognizing when they don't have active police presence crimes go up.
But the other recognition I've always felt is we ask our police to be too many different things,
right?
We want them to be therapists and understand people who are in various stages of chronic mental health drug issues.
(16:31):
So what is it?
And if I asked you,
what's your north star besides all of the learning that's going to happen from the process,
you know,
what would you hope would be some takeaways for Bucks County?
I can point to something really positive.
This has been underway now for nine months.
So we have nine months worth of data that we've been collecting.
So it's the diversion of those who have a chronic,
(16:55):
Not just a cute,
so a chronic and acute behavioral mental health issue from the criminal justice system into appropriate human services.
So,
for example,
when we first started collecting this data,
we found that 26 of the calls that were coming in were made by three people.
Right?
So for behavioral health.
(17:16):
So what we've been able to do or what the correspondents have been able to do is to really reduce that to almost nothing because they have been diverted,
Those individuals have been diverted to the specific human services,
whether it's homelessness,
whether it is drug and alcohol,
(17:36):
substance use,
food insecurity.
So there are different ways in which 91 that call to 911,
which we talked about the use of force continuum.
You know,
these deaths at the hands of police officers is really what's opened this conversation about should the police be the appropriate responders.
(17:57):
But the police,
the lowest level of force is a very loud commanding screen.
But if you are someone in a home or if you are just an average citizen on the street and someone screams at you,
you take that as being quite in the front.
Right?
So partnering up a behavioral specialist,
(18:20):
like a social worker or a clinical psychologist with the police.
Those individuals have de escalation skills and they also have sort of the broader maybe understanding of the social service resources.
So we're really seeing some positive changes at this pilot program.
So much so and we've been piloting it in Bensalem,
(18:44):
which is one of the largest policing departments in Bucks County.
It's going to be widened across the county into at least four more in the next year.
Wow,
that's wonderful.
Could you have predicted this?
I mean,
if you had to predict the impact that this work would do what the research would do.
(19:04):
You know what I think in such a short period of time,
I would not have expected it to be such a positive impact.
You know,
I think we hope,
but these various models are springing up and I think what's really important is what Ben Salem has created for their model works in Bensalem.
(19:24):
We can't apply that necessarily to the city of philadelphia.
The city of philadelphia is denser population.
It's a larger area and so on and so forth,
but that then Sale model,
what we're learning is that works and now the network of human services that were again,
I think our students are learning the value of mapping an asset happening,
(19:47):
right?
You know that from your own work,
right?
The importance of assets and they're starting to learn that,
you know,
that's not to be taken for granted because then that takes some of the pressure off the police.
So,
you know,
the more that we can,
as you mentioned,
we ask our police to do so many things and the students are mapping the resources in the community,
(20:09):
this is huge,
and what wonderful experience I appreciate,
you really care about engaging our students in.
So this isn't a project you took on individually,
this is a project you took on knowing this is a learning experience for our students as well.
How prescient right now that this is the last four years you've been doing this work.
(20:29):
So major,
major impact.
Thank you.
I look forward to having these ongoing conversations about what you're learning and what maybe are you learning that surprises you,
but in the meantime,
how wonderful for our students and to reinforce our Holy Family University mission of service that you know,
we're here to help inform the community,
(20:50):
right?
Not just being our little ivory towers and sort of,
you know,
proselytizing or theorizing,
but rather applying the work in real life situations,
which we know is what our students ultimately want to do.
They're out there from these areas and they want to come back and work in the area and contribute.
So thank you,
I thought we'd end up with something a little fun because as you know,
(21:14):
I'm new to Philly.
My husband and I are new Yorkers and we're really having a good time learning about the city,
but I do know I have a lot to learn.
So I'm gonna ask you a lightning round of your personal Philly favorite since I know you spend your life here in Philly,
so ready because I'm not even sure I know what these references are.
Okay,
here we go,
cheesecakes,
(21:35):
cheesesteaks,
cheesecakes.
There you go.
Now.
You know from new york cheesesteaks or soft pretzels,
cheesesteaks,
Pat's or Geno's Oh,
that's a whiz question.
I'm gonna have to go off script here and say Della Sanders,
I'm from Roxborough and some people will know about that.
So,
Della Sanders.
But with whiz at Pat.
(21:56):
All right,
Betsy Ross or Ben franklin.
If you're talking about the bridge,
then I'm going with Betsy Ross.
If you're talking about the people,
then I'm probably gonna go with Ben franklin.
Yeah,
I know there are two bridges named that in Philly.
I've been over both of them.
Not necessarily intentionally,
but yeah,
I'd have to agree with you,
the Man or the Academy of Music.
(22:18):
Ah The man,
Defin.
That's such a cool place.
I've gotten six a couple of concerts there this summer.
Really beautiful,
beautiful setting.
The whole Fairmont park area is Rocky or sixth sense.
Yeah.
Ed Gritty or the fanatics.
The fanatic.
(22:39):
I mean,
I'm coming to like gritty,
but it's the fanatic is iconic.
So I'm gonna go with the with the fanatics.
Okay.
As long as the fanatic is second place to our very own Holy Family University Tiger.
Oh yes,
absolutely.
And we had homecoming and that was a beautiful event.
So I hope you enjoyed homecoming this past weekend.
(23:00):
I did.
And how lucky am I that we get to bless and cut the ribbon on a new turf field and watch our women's soccer team win yet again.
So it's pretty cool.
Thank you for being part of this wonderful community of Holy Family University.
People like you really reinforced why it was a good decision for me to be here.
So thank you.
Thank you dr christo and welcome.
(23:22):
I'm grateful to have you here on your leadership as well.
Thank you.
Take care of the well to learn more about dr griffin's work and Holy Family University,
please visit Holy Family.
H O L Y F A M I L Y dot E D U.
I'm dr ANne Prisco.
Thank you for listening.
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