Some people mistakenly think that when teenagers experience intimate partner violence, it’s less serious
than when adults experience it, explains Andrew Sta. Ana,  supervising attorney of Day One, which seeks to end teen dating violence. “There’s this
idea, ‘Oh, teen DV. That must mean domestic violence or intimate-partner violence ‘lite’… I think
that what’s important to recognize about teen dating violence, particularly as it affects young women, is that
[the age group of 18 to 24 has] the highest rates of dating violence” among any group, Sta. Ana says in this
New Thinking podcast. He also explains what services Day One offers clients and how it works with the Brooklyn Youthful Offender Domestic Violence Court, and he discusses some
of the factors that distinguish cases of teen intimate-partner violence from adult cases, including differences in
law, the use of technology, and adolescent brain development.

The
following is a transcript: 

Intro
clip: “When I started doing this work, one of the most important lessons I learned was people said the opposite of
domestic violence isn’t safety. The opposite of domestic violence is self determination.”

ROB WOLF: I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications
at the Center for Court Innovation. Today I am in the office of Andrew Santa Ana, who is the supervising attorney
at Day One, which is a legal services program that works with teenagers and young people who are experiencing or
are survivors of intimate partner violence. Welcome to the podcast.

ANDREW
SANTA ANA: Thank you so much for having me. I’m glad we’re able to do this.

WOLF: Your work involves many things. I thought maybe we could
start with a program that the Center for Court Innovation has been involved in and helped develop, the Youth Offender
Domestic Violence Court in Brooklyn, which works with young people ages 16 to 19 who have been involved in intimate
partner domestic violence, misdemeanor criminal cases. Now, your role is representing the victims in civil cases.
Is that correct?

SANTA ANA: Yeah, when there’s
a case going on in the YODVC, many of the young people who are victims in that case have questions about family court,
custody of their kids, or orders of protection in the civil process. We have a pretty close relationship with the
Brooklyn district attorney’s office. They make referrals to us and we see how we can help.

WOLF:
Let’s talk about your clients and being a teenager in an intimate partner violence situation. Are there different
characteristics? Are there different issues and concerns that teenagers have and that you have representing teenagers
than an adult might have?

SANTA ANA: Sure. Young
people are obviously a different population with respect to their age. That plays out in a few different ways. There
are things about it that are similar to cases involving adults and things about it that are significantly different.
When I think about the differences, I break them into a few different categories. First and foremost is the law,
right? When we talk about working with young people, the law treats young people and minors differently, right? A
young person under the age of 18 is considered an infant of the laws, considered a minor or someone with diminished
capacity. From the get go you have someone for whom the standard is a little bit different and that requires more
from an attorney and from the court to think about where that young person is. There’s definitely the legal
aspect of that.

Then, secondly, there’s the culture aspect of that, which
means that young people who are teenagers in the 2014 time are different in some ways because of their access to
technology than young people even just 10 years ago. We’re talking about manifestations of intimate partner
violence or ways that power and control manifest. They’re taking along on a huge technological component. Then,
I would say the last piece about this is that as studies and research develops, we know that we’re interacting
with young people at a certain developmental stage in their lives. Whether it be normal teenage brain development
to hormones to relationships with their parents, we know more information about how young people are processing information.
That helps inform what services they need, what they seek, and what remedies are appropriate.

WOLF:
The Youth Offender Domestic Violence Court takes care of or works with the criminal side of things. Then, what happens
if you get a referral from the court? What are some of the issues that, some of the civil remedies or issues that
you’re dealing with when you represent the young victims in a civil setting?

SANTA
ANA: Sure. When people contact Day One, they might have questions about a civil case. We work with
a lot of teen mothers who have questions about whether it be paternity or child support or custody and visitation,
the clients we work with also have a right to file for an order of protection from the civil process. Those are often
some pretty typical questions but also because of the lives of our clients are complicated and they have many different
identities. Sometimes there’s questions about benefits, about young people and teenagers accessing public benefits.
There’s sometimes immigration questions. If we’re talking about young people in violent relationships,
there’s also the need for them to just to connect with someone and to talk to someone.

We
have legal services, but we also have one-on-one and group counseling services. We also have a survivors group that
does advocacy. Thinking about where that young person is and being responsible for that is where we come from because
while it’s great and I can talk to someone about their legal options, sometimes they just want to talk to someone
about this relationship where it might have been their first time they were in love or the parent to their child
with whom they might have a complicated relationship. It’s important for young people to have people that they
can talk to and reach out.

WOLF: Let’s put
this in a little bit maybe in historical context. Domestic violence itself has been an issue that has taken historically
many years for advocates to bring to the attention of the justice system and take it as seriously as any violence
and also look at the complexities that are involved when it involves intimate partners. Now for teenagers, is that
taking another level of awareness and more time to bring attention to the fact that teenagers too can experience
this kind of …

SANTA ANA: Yeah. Thank you for
asking that question because that in some ways gets to the real heart of it. Part of this is talking about young
people and teenagers as people who have intimate relationships, as young people who will be having sex, as young
people that will be engaged in a lot of behaviors that their parents or adults would rather not touch, right? We’re
talking about domestic violence. We are certainly working with young people who are parents or young people that
are having sex and unprotected sex or sex that’s coerced.

We’re
also talking about young people who wouldn’t necessarily talk about these things with their parents. As I was
saying before, there are developmental things going on with young people, so maybe they don’t want to talk to
their parents or their counselors or their teachers or people that they trust about what’s going on in their
lives or at least adults because they’re developing a sense of themselves. That’s one piece of it. A second
piece of it is a cultural misconception about young people in intimate relationships. There’s this idea, oh,
teen TV. That must mean domestic violence or intimate partner violence light or it’s not as serious. This is
maybe slapping or some constant phone calls.

What’s important to recognize
about teen dating violence particularly as it affects young women, is that these are actually the highest rates of
intimate partner violence, young women between ages say 18 and 24, right? There’s the highest rate. There’s
also a lot of physical violence. With thinking about these relationships, it’s important to recognize what exists
culturally, which is a minimization of this experience but also recognizing that these young people at a particularly
high amount of risk in this age group.

WOLF:
Do the teenagers themselves sometimes have trouble as anyone perhaps does recognizing that they’re in a situation
that’s perhaps becoming dangerous or abusive because when someone’s been in a relationship for a long time,
that’s when those patterns maybe become the most unmanageable and the most evident, sometimes even to the victim.
If someone’s very young and less experienced in the world and perhaps being told that this is normal or this
is what they’re to expect, is that a challenge?

SANTA ANA:
Sure. That challenge comes from all sides. On one hand, you have someone who’s navigating their first intimate
relationships. Constant phone calls, checking in, stalking, possessiveness might feel like it means that they really
care about me, but if you’re looking at it objectively, in some cases that might mean stalking. There’s
definitely that piece. Of course, there’s a lot of, whether it be hormonal or cultural influences in which young
people are thought to be in these really amazing, romantic relationships by the age of 16, there’s also not
necessarily the healthiest images out there in our culture about what young people in relationships are supposed
to be like. It’s really complicated.

WOLF:
What are your goals as an attorney representing the victim? I assume obviously the safety of the victim’s paramount,
but considering your clients have a lifetime of relationships ahead of them, do you have goals also related to helping
them learn how to navigate or change something in their lives so that they have healthy relationships?

SANTA ANA: Sure. Thank you for saying that. What I think
we’re driven by at Day One,is the desire to support that young person’s development and their safety but
most importantly their self determination. When I started doing this work, one of the most important lessons I learned
was people said the opposite of domestic violence isn’t safety. The opposite of domestic violence is self determination.
When I understood that, I took it to mean that safety is important, but when you have a pattern of someone exercising
power and control, stalking them, manipulating them, battering them, abusing them, you’re taking away that person’s
agency, right?

When we talk about the opposite of domestic violence, it’s
empowering a young person, giving that person information, allowing them to make choices for themselves. Now, as
someone who’s not a teenager anymore, some of those choices may be choices I agree with and some of them might
be things that I’m a little bit more concerned about. My role as an attorney is to advise them of the consequences
of those choices but ultimately support them in their own growth about where that’s going, right? When we talk
about with adults or whoever are living abusive relationships they say it takes, what is that? The stat is 7 to 10
times for someone to leave an abusive relationship.

At Day One, we recognize
that young people in abusive relationships, we’re going to meet them whether it be that first time, that third
time, that fifth time, or that seventh time when they’re ready to leave or they might not be ready to leave
and they want to switch something up. Our role is to give them legal advice, represent them where we can and just
support their self determination. Part of that means safety and safety planning. Sometimes that means getting access
to immigration remedies. That means talking to their teachers. That means talking to them about their home. Sometimes
that involves litigation but really having that person’s experience centered and affirming their choices is
where we come from.

WOLF: Tell me a little bit
about yourself, how you ended up in this role and doing this work.

SANTA
ANA: Yeah. As a supervising attorney, I oversee our programs. I’ve been here for a couple of
years. I found myself in this role because I was interested in working with young people and trying to figure out,
for me it was thinking about what the end of domestic violence looked like, right? The end of domestic violence is
a community and a legal system in a society where this isn’t happening. For me, it happens from a young age.
There are lessons that you learn from a young age. I’m excited to be a part of this work because I’m doing
really interesting legal advocacy, but it’s combined with prevention work and counseling in a way that isn’t
just isn’t only interventionist, doesn’t only intersect or intervene or become a part of this process when
something is done wrong.

I’m a part of team that people that try to address
it before. In the past I worked at an organization and worked specifically with LGBTQ clients. In that work, it was
also working with a marginalized or historically under represented community at least in this arena. Working with
marginalized communities and those contacts really think about me provide a lens on how our system needs to have
nuanced responses to individuals and have these blanket statements on how we address this work cannot be seen outside
of the lens or talking about age and gender and sexual orientation and race and poverty and ability and education
and all of these other things.

For me, I got into this work because I like
being in that complexity. Sometimes it’s messy, but it’s more authentic that way. Does that make sense?

WOLF: Sure. It sounds like you feel maybe you can have
more of an impact if you work with a younger population. You’re sort of …

SANTA
ANA: Yeah. I’m always learning things from the young people I work with. I did a workshop last
week at a high school here in New York City. Whether it be young people’s vocabulary to understanding what apps
they’re using to how they talk about their relationships, there’s obviously very serious and intensive
litigation that happens, but there’s also can be a lighter side when we get to connect with young people who
are exploring relationships and love.

WOLF: Let
me ask you one more thing because you mentioned technology before. How does that play a role in your young people’s
lives in terms of making them perhaps more open to being victims? I don’t know, in terms of your being working
as an attorney, maybe gathering evidence and such.

SANTA ANA:
Yeah. When we work with young people, their access to technology and communication through social media, through
apps, through cell phones, through online interactions are so embedded in how they have relationships that it’s
a double edged sword because on one hand there can be a lot of documentation about text messages and emails and Facebook
messages and tweets and Instagrams, but at the same time, what’s challenging about it is that there are a lot
of risks when you put that information out there. A lot of young people experience technology abuse. There’s
a lot of things that are going on with, say, sexting where the exchange of sexually explicit or intimate messages
amongst young people.

What happens is is that young people, because they’re
so connected, have a sense of privacy or intimacy in exchanges with other people online. I would say that those exchanges
and that intimacy is entirely real because those connections are real. However, that sense of privacy is entirely
false. While you can create these intimate connections, those messages can be sent to your partner’s friends,
their friends, your teachers, your parents and can be put on the internet. We’re in this stage where while these
connections are real, that privacy is entirely fake and runs into a bunch of risks around that.

The
only other thing that I would say around that is that as an attorney it can be hard to litigate these things because
in some cases the technology is a couple of steps ahead of the law. Many of these apps are based out of Canada or
it’s not so easy to get information from them. Litigation around this stuff can be also really difficult.

WOLF: It doesn’t make it easier necessarily that you
have evidence recorded somewhere.

SANTA ANA:
I would love to talk to someone who’s doing this work 20 years ago because I bet they probably have a different
set of challenges. While there is an opportunity for evidence I would just say there’s other challenges. One
other things that I would say is that I recently worked with a young person who told me that they didn’t have
voice mail. The only way to contact them was through text. Again, it’s like flipping modifying understanding
of how people interact in order to meet where a young person’s at. That’s probably going to change in another
5 years. It might be some, I don’t know, more immediate way to connect with someone other than text.

WOLF: Through implants in our heads.

SANTA
ANA: Right, exactly.

WOLF: Listen,
thank you so much. This has been fascinating. Good luck with your continued work.

SANTA
ANA: Thanks, anytime.

WOLF: I’ve
been speaking with SANTA ANA Santa Ana, who is the supervising attorney at Day One based here in Manhattan. To find
out more about Day One, you can visit their website which is …

SANTA
ANA: www.Dayoneny.org.

WOLF: To
find out more about the Youth Offender Domestic Violence Court, you can visit www.courtinnovation.org. You can also
visit that website to hear more podcasts. You can also subscribe to our podcast on iTunes. You can also leave a review
there. You can also visit Court Innovation on our Facebook page. Thank you very much for listening. I am Rob Wolf.
Stay tuned for more podcasts in the future.

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David Marshall, editor of The
International Rule of Law Movement: A Crisis of Legitimacy and the Way Forward, discusses the
international rule of law as an industry–one that has been promoted as offering solutions in post-conflict and fragile
states and that too often fails. Marshall discusses some of the reasons for these failures and outlines some alternative
approaches to interventions in fragile states. (September 2014)

The following is a transcript

SARAH SCHWEIG:
Hi, I’m Sarah Schweig of the Center for Court Innovation and today I’m
speaking with David Marshall, who has just edited and released a new book called “The International Rule of Law Movement:
A Crisis of Legitimacy and the Way Forward.” David Marshall is a senior law and policy advisor at the U.N. Office
for Human Rights. His background is in trial work, mainly in criminal defense and death penalty cases. He has extensive
field experience in post-conflict states including Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Nepal, and South Sudan. Thanks for
speaking with me today, David.

DAVID MARSHALL:
Great, thank you for the invitation.

SCHWEIG:
Rule of law, very, very basically, as I understand it means that individuals, institutions, and even the government
itself agree to be held accountable to a code of rules, correct?

MARSHALL:
That’s about right. There’s a equality of arms. There’s equity in the process however the process
is defined, non-discrimination. There are some sort of core principles: supremacy of law is one of them. But one
thing, which we’ll get to, which is–why the book–is, the content of the Rule of Law was much discussed in
2012 by the global community when all member states of the U.N., as the world countries, got together to discuss
the rule of law and its content.

SCHWEIG: The new
book is on the International rule of law movement, so maybe you could talk about what this movement really means,
sort of what you just mentioned, and why, as your title says, it’s currently in a crisis of legitimacy.

MARSHALL: Just to make clear on the outset that obviously these are my views.
These views may or not represent the organization I work for, the U.N. as a whole. The rule of law movement has been
around forever and thus. It has probably been around for 60 years. It’s an attempt initiated by the West to
help emerging states, those states moving away from communism, those states coming out of former Yugoslavia in the
80s, in the 90s, fragile states:  Congo, Afghanistan.

The
last 40 or 50 years has been a huge endeavor to help states reform, repair, rebuild justice systems; it’s been predominately
focused on criminal justice reform and it’s been an endeavor that has had modest success, at best. The movement has
become an industry. Up until 2003, there was some efforts by some countries. This country, the U.S., is a major player
in this movement, but 2003 and beyond, which is sort of one of the reasons for the book, is this being an explosion
of activity. The consequence is you have thousands of NGOs. You have thousands of guidance materials. Thousands of
experts, all mainly from English-speaking countries.

We
have all of this information about the rule of law, but we really understand so little. I wanted to explore in 2013
or 2014, given this being such modest success and this being a mini-industry–exploring why it’s been a failure.
 I wanted to explore, why, not the standing the modest success, why has there been this explosion, which
is that coupled with the 2012 declaration by the world’s countries as to the rule of law was sort of the catalyst
for the book.

SCHWEIG: You’ve had experience
on the ground in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, and other more moratoria countries. What were some of the things that
you observed, maybe on the ground, that led you to compile this book?

MARSHALL:
I learned that the international community
has a profound deficit of knowledge, of where it works, where it doesn’t: Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Liberia;
I mean choose your fragile state. Our knowledge around the language, the culture of justice means the deficits are
profound around who we are, and why we’re there, what we’re doing, what we know about what we’re doing.
And that hasn’t changed. That has dogged the industry for decades, the knowledge deficit, and secondly, that
obsession with institutions. We have a lot of rhetoric around supporting national ownership, nationally driven processes,
but generally the international community tends to focus on institutions and persons working therein, as opposed
to the individual. The consequence is that we are focused on institutions, institutions generally around criminal
justice, so an addition to a deficit of knowledge, that  is, I would suggest, profound. The other problem
is that our theory of this work, the rule of law, it’s more of a law-and-order narrative.

We generally, the international community, sees the rule of law through
a law-and-order prism, and that is basically supporting police, supporting prison reform. But that’s usually
building prisons and supplying batons to police officers. I’m not suggesting that there isn’t a need in
some stage for security apparatuses and supportive to coercive institutions is clearly needed. But we seem to get
stuck in that for decades. I also think that one thing I’ve learned is that rule of law is, and it’s a bit of
a cliche, but it’s truly indigenous. We have this sense that we arrive with this model called the Rule of the
Law: “If you please build your institutions that look like ours, you are good to go.” The evidence, I suggest, is
in and that’s been a failure. That’s one thing in the book that I think it’s important to recognize,
is that it’s okay to say, “It’s been a comprehensive failure.”

The
international community has an aversion to failure, so we can better understand when we spend $4 billion dollars
in Afghanistan, of American taxpayer money over 12 years on justice reform, and the inspector general says basically
this can come to naught, within a year, we need to sort of really stop and think about why we’re doing this.

SCHWEIG: Obviously, throughout the book there’s some agreement and
some disagreement, some tension in perspective. Can you tell us a bit about the ideas that you think harmonize in
the book and then some of the ideas that conflict across the different essays?

MARSHALL:
I think one of the major ideas I think where there’s a consensus is the deepening of knowledge. I mean it’s
a bit of cliche–it’s been identified as a problem for years, but there’s a great piece on when the rule of
law movement meets Iraq. We meets context where the Islamic law is applied.  An increasing issue for the
world community is we’re building the rule of law in Somalia, Mali, and Afghanistan. We don’t really talk enough
about when the movement hits an Islamic state and that chapter by Haider Hamoudi from Pittsburgh is terrific and
also the piece on South Sudan. Sometimes these often indigenous processes, customary processes, are okay. They are
delivering some semblance of justice and have been for decades, so rather than trying to suppress and replace these
customary processes, tribal chiefs or religious shuras in Afghanistan and Iraq, why don’t we learn about them?

The other thing is that we’re a little tired of the rule of law. It
has such baggage–the evidence doesn’t support that rule of law will lead to economic empowerment, more or greater
human rights promotion or protection. So if we can all just lower the rhetoric a bit. Stop the rhetoric around comprehensive
approaches to rule of law reform because modest goals are honestly more achievable. Modesty, humility would be helpful
and Deborah Isser talks starting by identifying injustices and insecurities the population are suffering. Let’s
start there, well that’s the conversation sort of. What’s the major injustice in that country and often
it has nothing to do with criminal justice.

I think
there’s a little bit of tension mainly with Jim Goldston’s piece, which is that the endeavor is a good
faith endeavor by the international community. There have been some modest success and the rhetoric is to some extent
a runaway train, but all it basically needs is a bit of adjusting, more investment, and knowledge, and skills and
capacity of the internationals. That’s not my view for what it’s worth.

The
piece that was done by Todd Foglesong at Harvard is interesting because it’s just a small project with reforming
the prosecutor’s office in Lagos, Nigeria. And I’m coming back to the issue of modesty. Where you have
a concrete example of where there’s a small modest project. The success was about both modesty and about relationships
and how they built over four years a relationship with the prosecutor’s office. That really helped them stress
the issue of arbitrary detention, prolonged detention in Lagos. That’s a really fascinating piece. The question
is whether the international community, which goes big, right, is looking for the Big Bang of success in the rule
of law. It doesn’t exist, stop looking. I don’t know whether the international community can accept modesty
and humility. Time will tell. I mean $4 billion dollars in Afghanistan of taxpayers’ money is a lot of money. And
I’m wondering when our people will say enough?

SCHWEIG:
What do you think the way forward now would be?

MARSHALL:
The way forward is radical change. The way forward is basically stop. The best we can, however improbable that suggestion
is, to stop and digest who this community is, what they’re trying to achieve, so that the objectives of this
endeavor–what the key objectives? Because I say in my chapter that surely the objectives are basically human rights
objectives. We need to sort of stop, take stock of what we’ve done, what we’re learning. I’m suggesting
for the U.N. that we play a more strategic role, helping states think through the strategic direction of a new justice
system and that’s more than law, more than the human rights law. That’s, in my view, the only really leverage
tool we have in our tool box.

I think it’s okay
to ask these deep questions. It’s whether or not the international has the maturity and the patience to do so.

SCHWEIG: Thanks so much for speaking with me today. I’m Sarah Schweig
of the Center for Court Innovation. I’ve been speaking with David Marshall of the U.N. about his work in post-conflict
states and his new book, “The International Rule of Law Movement: A Crisis of Legitimacy and the Way Forward” from
Harvard University Press. To learn more about the Center for Court Innovation, please visit us at www.courtinnovation.org.
Thanks for listening.

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Long Beach Police Chief Jim McDonnell discusses how law enforcement leadership can promote new “smart”
strategies–including community engagement and prevention-oriented diversion approaches–that can effectively and efficiently
keep communities safe, address the symptoms and causes of criminal activity, and alleviate prison overcrowding.
(August 2014)

SARAH SCHWEIG: Hi, I’m Sarah Schweig
of the Center for Court Innovation and today I’m speaking with Long Beach Police Chief Jim McDonnell. Chief McDonnell
was appointed to the U.S. Attorney General’s national task force on children exposed to violence, and has served
in executive sessions on law enforcement and public health, and police legitimacy and racial reconciliation. We’re
currently at an executive session in Los Angeles, California, sponsored by the California Endowment, Community Oriented
Policing Services (the COPS Office), and the Center for Court Innovation. We’ve brought together public health
experts and law enforcement representatives for a conversation about public health approaches to public safety. Thanks
for speaking with me today.

JIM MCDONNELL: Thanks for having me.

SCHWEIG: So
just to start off, you know we’re in an environment where crime is relatively low and yet resources are pretty
tight across the country, as well as in California. And community policing, involves as engaging residents to keep
neighborhoods safe. How can police in this sort of climate engage residents to help keep crime low in this kind of
tight budget atmosphere?

MCDONNELL: I think a big part of it is an educational process—it kind
of drove the point home to me last night. I spoke at a public park in Long Beach and there were hundreds of kids
in that park playing every different kind of sport. And I think back, I was impressed with that because I think back
to the late 80’s and early 90’s when you could drive back that park and it would be empty because people were afraid
to go into the park, and a generation of kids missed the opportunity to grow up and exercise in that fashion. And
that’s a giant missing piece, I think. It’s looking at how far we’ve come. I don’t think we give
ourselves enough credit as a society and celebrate where we are today. We finished out the last year, really, in
Los Angeles County with the lowest violent crime numbers in 40 years. We’re down dramatically this year from
last year, and all of us together were able to achieve something that I think was seen as unachievable just a few
short years ago, but yet we’re not taking advantage of that. By that, I mean we’re not reengaging, we’re
not taking back the streets and, and you know the parks public spaces in a way that we should be. We are seeing what
I saw last night, people back in the parks, but we’re not doing it consciously. And I think we really need to
do that and talk to each other about that in our communities, and encourage people to get out and take full advantage
of the cities that we live in. We’re very fortunate to live in this country and be able to have the freedom
that we have. We kind of limit ourselves, I think, by not being aware of what the threat levels actually are versus
what they are perceived to be. So education is a big part of that—creating a dialogue and talking openly about where
we are and what we can do to make it even safer.

SCHWEIG: So how can law enforcement take an active
role in new thinking around how we can make communities safer?

MCDONNELL: Well you know you look
at just basic crime control tips that sound so common sense that we too often, I think, don’t talk about them
because we don’t want to insult people by giving them something so basic. But yet we look at our property crime
in Los Angeles County and when you look at the property crime reports, over and over again, people left iPads, iPods,
computers, laptops, whatever, in an unlocked car because they were only going into a store for a couple of minutes
and they figured that it’s safe there. And over and over again the themes are the same. My house was burglarized.
Was the door left open? Well, yeah because I never lock the door—or the windows were left open because I didn’t
feel there was a threat. And it sounds very basic, but we have the ability to protect ourselves by using the basic
tools that we don’t take advantage of. And so I think we become complacent and, as a result, we become victims.
So by just creating a dialogue around this, those are the little things that don’t cost a dime but really can
change the outcome of what we’re doing. So I think education is a tremendous piece that I think we undervalue.
And just the opportunity to be able to get out in front of a group and be able to talk about, you know, how do you
keep your family safer, is priceless.

SCHWEIG: Speak a bit about prison overcrowding in California
and what you think, from a law enforcement perspective, can be done towards solving this problem.

MCDONNELL:
Right. I’ll talk about both prisons and jails, but I look at the issues that we’ve studied very closely
here in Los Angeles County. In the L.A. County jail, the population is estimated to be between 15 and 20 percent
of the people incarcerated are there because of mental illness, their behavior, not taking their meds or whatever
the issue is that caused them to find themselves in custody. If we have an ability to be able to re-evaluate the
way we treat people in this regard, and to be able to develop community-based mental health clinics, community-based
mental health courts, so an assessment is done and rather than using incarceration as a default treatment plan, we
have options that keep the person in the community where they are more likely to be monitored, and hopefully helped,
and treated as a medical issue as opposed to a criminal issue, I think we’d be in a different position. In addition,
to look at the jail environment, who’s in custody awaiting trial, that could have been bailed out if they only
had the money. And what we find is often times the jail system is not based on a risk assessment, but rather if they
can come up with whatever the prescribed bail is. And we have people sitting in custody at great expense to society,
that would be less of a threat, potentially, back in their community, than somebody who was able to make bail and
is now back out in the community. So in looking at some of, just the different ways we have taken things to just
the way it is, and reevaluate those and say what other opportunities are there to reduce the population of jails
and prison, holding people accountable for their behavior, but at the same time doing it in a way that is least harmful
to society and a more efficient and smarter way of doing the same job we’ve been trying to do for a long time.

SCHWEIG: As you know, crime prevention can start in many different arenas and agencies. What advice would
you give to police departments who may want to reach out to partner with their local public health departments, or
school systems or other agencies to sort of help in, you know, maybe education efforts or you know, innovative initiatives.

MCDONNELL: Yeah. I think that we have to reach out to our partners in different disciplines, to be able
to bring them, the various sectors, into play, to have a tremendous outcome on what the end game will be. It’s
easier to do that where there’s an education piece, where there’s minimal investment, where you just get
in and you work together, and you’re able to put together something for a presentation or so forth. The harder
part is to get people to come together on a daily basis to address the issues that we face, and to see what role
each of us can play in that. And in order to affect that in a positive way, we need to look at it—bring in the various
players at the city level, the county level, the state level, and maybe even the federal level, depending on the
issues we’re dealing with. And that takes a lot of work because everybody’s got their own goals, everybody’s
held accountable for different standards, and what might be a police goal at the end of the day isn’t in alignment
with the health department’s goals or and other of our partner agencies. So we need, as heads of agencies, to
be able to take the initiative and meet—to come up with an alignment as to—we’re dealing with the same audience
over and over again, but we’re not doing it in a way where we each bring some strength to the table to be able
to address their needs. Rather, we’re looking at it through our own lens to see what’s our responsibility
in this? And then moving on. Rather than, in the medical model, to be able to say, this person is our patient. Did
we put them on the road to cure, or did we just address the symptom and send them back on the street. So to be able
to look at it in a more comprehensive, which will ultimately be a smarter, more efficient, and more effective way
of dealing with the problem. I think we need a re-engineering of the way we’ve been doing business, and you
know, when it comes right down to it, I think it will be a more efficient way because when you look at the population
that we’re dealing with in this county, there’s a relatively small number of people coming into contact
with all of the various agencies on a routine basis for care. So if we can triage those individuals and identify
what their needs are, and rather than just symptoms, look at the causes and put together, as a medical model would,
a diagnosis and a plan for getting better, I think we’re on a much better track.

SCHWEIG:
I’m Sarah Schweig and I’ve been speaking with Long Beach Police Chief Jim McDonnell, and we’re currently
at a roundtable session on public health approaches to violence prevention, looking at ways that public health and
law enforcement can partner up to fight crime. To learn more about the Center for Court Innovation please visit www.courtinnovation.org.

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Simon Fulford, chief executive of Khulisa
U.K., explains how and why his not-for-profit brought a successful South African prisoner reentry program
to the United Kingdom.

SIMON FULFORD: You walk into an
English prison, you’ve got a group of 10 young offenders. If you hand them anything more than one piece of paper,
they would probably throw it back in your face.

ROBERT V. WOLF: Hi, I’m Rob Wolf, director of
communications at the Center for Court Innovation. Today I’m with Simon Fulford, who is the chief executive
of Khulisa U.K., a non-profit started in South Africa and dedicated to breaking the cycle of crime and violence.
Welcome to New York – or maybe I should say welcome back, because I know you used to live here.

FULFORD:
I did. So, I lived in New York from ’92 to the end of 2004 and loved it, it was brilliant.

WOLF:
I was really interested to see that you were also an award winning photographer and that you’ve used your work
as a photographer to engage the disabled community, and that you co-founded and directed a non-profit in New York
called Art Start, that received a president service award from President Clinton in 1997.

FULFORD:
That’s right.

WOLF: I wonder if you could explain how you see art as a way to empower underserved
and disadvantaged communities.

FULFORD: I guess it’s empowering, I guess on multiple levels.
On a personal level, often being given and having the opportunity to express hopes, fears, challenges, needs, in
a way that is creative as opposed to verbal, that feels a bit more accessible, sometimes it’s less personally
challenging, and often kind of from that, it can be very empowering for them to be able to then say – and now I’ve
told you, or now I’ve shared this with you as an organization or you as a policy maker, you as a government
service provider, and this is the – I’ve now expressed my needs, and hopefully you can help meet my needs.

WOLF: So it’s a blend of personal growth and advocacy.

FULFORD: Correct.

WOLF: In your current endeavor at Khulisa, you know its mission is to break the cycle of crime and violence.
That’s a tall order.

FULFORD: It is.

WOLF: How does Khulisa work? And
maybe you could start by explaining the South African connection, or its origin in South Africa.

FULFORD:
So, Khulisa is a Zulu word which means “to nurture”. You know, the freedom had come to South Africa and
the multi-racial elections. There was a huge increase and explosion in violent crime and my understanding from my
colleagues there, is a lot of it sort of took society by surprise, that in a sense, a lot of the black community,
and what they call colored community, kind of almost turned on themselves. So our founder, Leslie Ann van Selm, she
founded the organization and the first program they ran was using traditional African storytelling techniques so
it creates a rehabilitative tool and vehicle, sort of helping violent offenders reconnect with their cultural roots.
A lot of this community has been totally decimated by apartheid and trying to use that as a tool to kind of have
them see themselves as positive contributors to their communities.

WOLF: So these are people who
are currently in prison, or they were returning from prison?

FULFORD: Well, they were currently
in prison. It was part of their sort of pre-release and hopefully re-integration, as they call it in South Africa,
re-integration into their communities. Fast forward 16 years. Colleagues in South Africa in one of the leading crime
prevention NGOs – so they do a lot of work with young people, with children from their late teens to early 30s, gang
diversion programs, getting young people to stay in education, helping them develop community projects. We then brought
one of their program models, Silence the Violence, from South Africa to the U.K. in 2009 and we began to pilot test
that in English prisons, in English schools, and in the community.

WOLF: So you brought one specific
program of many that they have.

FULFORD: Yes, they have a whole raft of different programs and
interventions that they run in various different settings, in schools, in community. When Khulisa was coming to England
and talking about South Africa society, that has 20 times the U.K.s violent crime rate, has communities with 80 percent
unemployment, it’s a very, very extreme – and extreme poverty and depravation. So there was a question posed.
You’ve been very successful in South Africa in quite an extreme environment, a very fragile sort of social economic
environment. Could your success be translated to a more modern, Western, developed society? And with many more resources.

WOLF: That’s an interesting question too, that I don’t think many people ask. because usually
when you think of exporting an idea from one country to another, there seems to be a tendency to think that it would
go from a more developed, supposedly – I don’t know what the proper word to describe it would be – but a country
with more resources, or a so-called first world country, to perhaps a country that in many areas was less developed.
So it’s interesting.

FULFORD: It is an interesting model and I wouldn’t say we’re
unique in that, there are some other examples of it, but it is a new way of looking at it. I think it’s quite
subversive in some way, because the traditional development model is very much the west – America, western Europe,
Japan, whatever, the more “developed” countries, exporting their models of social development to, you know,
the less developed “third world countries”, and saying we’ve developed all the right solutions and
you now go through them. And of course, interestingly, if not ironically, a lot of less developed countries struggle
to implement some of the systems and processes that more developed countries can do. A lot of it has to do with resourcing.
They are very under-resourced environments.

WOLF: So tell me, what is the program and how has
it been working?

FULFORD: So the program is Silence the Violence. We have a youth version that
we call Face It. It’s a very intensive, motivational, behavior change program. It focuses on violent behavior,
but in many ways it’s about motivating participants to really understand themselves, to understand the triggers
to their violent and criminal behavior, to understanding – in a sense – the excuses and the value systems and belief
systems – belief with a small b – that allow them to behave in certain ways or propel them to behave in certain ways,
and beginning to try to challenge those or unpick them, so that they can make better choices for themselves, better
choices for family or community, and certainly better choices for their future. We work on a theory of violence developed
by, actually, an American forensic psychologist, Dr. James Gilligan. His approach is that violence is a learned behavior
for the majority of individuals who don’t have a mental health problem or challenge, or psychosis. If it’s
a learned behavior, then it can be unlearned. It doesn’t mean it can be unlearned overnight, but you have to
star that process and our program is a very intense, short duration, high intensity program to trigger the beginning
of that change process.

WOLF: Is it therapy group? Counseling? Classes?

FULFORD:
That’s a very good question. It’s a group-led process. We use a lot of therapeutic techniques, and so we
use a lot of drama therapy, creative art therapy. It is based on cognitive behavior therapy techniques, and very
much the group, the participants actually, they provide the content. Their stories, their lives, their experiences
become the content that either the group works through as a group and individually, and by doing role play, by making
masks, and making hats that represent violent signs themselves, and making kind of the original self that they would
like to be through those kind of different creative techniques, sharing and having a dialogue around it that moves
them to a place that they would very much understand more of who they are, more of the connection of themselves and
having been victims of abuse and neglect in their own lives, or witnesses of abuse and neglect and violence.

WOLF: So how’s it been going? How’s the implementation, and what have the results been so far?

FULFORD: So, it’s been a really fun journey of meeting, you know, a healthy level of sort of interest
and certainly a healthy level of skepticism. And I would say it’s been a resounding positive opinion of how
it works. In that the participants themselves say it is one of the most profoundly impactful programs they’ve
ever been in, we’ve had academics evaluate and assess, certainly the short term impact on behavior change that
it can have a – when it works well, when the group dynamics work – that it can have a profound impact on propensity
for violence and reducing aggressive tendencies, and improving emotional well-being, that can be built on for individuals
thinking positively about their lives, and engaging in other rehabilitation programs – job training, drug and alcohol,
substance use programs, etc. We haven’t had the ability to do the long-term tracking on recidivism. Mostly we
just haven’t had the resources to do that. We’ve received some high profile grants for innovation in the
justice center, and we’re implementing one of those current projects now.

WOLF: Oh, a new
project.

FULFORD: Yeah, it’s a combination of our Silence the Violence work with Through
the Gate mentoring to hopefully really embed behavior changes and learning of an offender once they’ve been
released into the community.

WOLF: I see. So – because it does sound like Silence the Violence
is sort of laying a foundation that would, perhaps, require continued engagement around other issues and job training
or whatever. So it sounds like that’s what you’re moving – you’re developing now.

FULFORD:
Yes. So we’re adding in a rigorous process of referral from our program onto other service provision, or bringing
in a volunteer mentor who can support that individual, on a more personal way – meeting them once a week, talking
to them on the phone, you know, encouraging them to have goals and sticking to their goals about applying for jobs.

WOLF: And have you encountered any challenges related to translating the model from South Africa? Perhaps
cultural differences? Or have you had to make particular tweaks?

FULFORD: At its core, the program
content and the curriculum design was wholly transferrable. And a lot of that is because it’s not a South Africa
program, it’s universal therapeutic techniques, it’s cognitive behavior therapy, it’s drama therapy,
it’s kind of creative art therapy techniques. What is unique about the program is the way we’ve sequenced
it and our approach with this sort of high intensity, short duration, and then using what are a few more traditional,
indigenous tools such as the mask making, you know? I mean I know in ancient England they wore painted faces and
things like that, but they haven’t done it for about 2,000 years. Whereas in Africa, masks are still very much part
of the culture in rituals and ceremonies. So the mask making is potentially something that came more from South Africa,
but it’s therefore very interesting and novel in England. We use a hat making, which again is a slightly different
approach, and then we have what we call the wisdom circle, which is again a more African tradition of sitting in
a circle at the community, resolving an issue and having a talking piece that they pass around the circle. What we
did remove from the program in its adaptation was obviously a lot of the cultural references. A poem about South
Africa doesn’t translate to London, I have to say, and even less so to Manchester – if anyone knows their English
geography. What was also quite interesting is in South Africa, the prison system is so under-resourced that their
approach to running the program is often quite didactic. So they can go in, there are 20 guys in the program, they
can hand them a program manual to the offenders that was as thick as a phone book, and they would cherish it and
hold it, and they were thankful that someone was coming to do anything. You walk into an English prison, you’ve
got a group of 10 young offenders. If you hand them anything more than one piece of paper, they would probably throw
it back in your face. It was a very different approach.

WOLF: So you have to prove yourself?

FULFORD: You really have to prove yourself. You’ve got to really build and gain the trust of the group,
and it has to be earned, whereas in South Africa there’s more generosity with the group giving you the trust
from the outset, and it’s kind of yours to lose, whereas in England it’s – you’ve got to gain it.
And so we work on gaining it as quickly as possible.

WOLF: Well thank you so much for explaining
your programming at Khulisa U.K. and good luck with your future endeavors.

FULFORD: Thank you
very much.

WOLF: I’ve been speaking with Simon Fulford, who is the chief executive of Khulisa
U.K. I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation. You’ve been listening
to one of our New Thinking podcasts and you can listen to more at www.courtinnovation.org. You can also listen to
us on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. Thanks for listening.

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In this New Thinking podcast, Los
Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer discusses his plans for community-based solutions to problems like truancy,
gun violence, and prison overcrowding. (July 2014)

MIKE FEUER: For leaders and for elected officials, speaking skills are highly overvalued relative to listening
skills, which are frequently under-valued.

ROBERT V. WOLF: Hi, I’m Rob Wolf, director of communication
at the Center for Court Innovation. Welcome to another New Thinking Podcast. Today I’m speaking with Los Angeles
City Attorney Mike Feuer, who is here today at the Center for Court Innovation, and he’s visited some of our
projects and met with some of our staff. Welcome to New Thinking.

FEUER: Oh, it’s great to
be here and I really appreciate the work of the center.

WOLF: That’s great to hear. Let me
ask a little bit about your role as the city attorney. A lot of municipalities have a City Attorney but usually their
role is a little different in each jurisdiction. So why don’t you tell me what your responsibilities are as
the Los Angeles City Attorney.

FEUER: Sure. In Los Angeles there are three city wide elected officials:
the mayor, the city attorney, and the controller. So I’ve held office since July of last year. Prior to that time,
I’d been a member of the state legislature, a city council member, I used to run a public interest law firm.
The city attorney’s job is very expansive. In addition to writing every law in the city, the City Attorney advises
the mayor, the council, the city’s departments and commissions on every legal issue that has any relationship
to public policy. The City Attorney defends litigation when the city is sued. The City Attorney uses civil litigation
as a sword on behalf of the city or the people of the state of California on a wide array of issues. Environmental
justice, issues of sub-housing or elder abuse, consumer fraud. My role also is a prosecutorial role. The City Attorney
prosecutes every misdemeanor in the city of Los Angeles, tens of thousands of such matters each year. And they might
include issues from drunk driving to domestic violence, to assault and sexual abuse, to vandalism and levels of quality
of life crime in communities that have a significant impact on whether a business chooses to site in a neighborhood
or whether kids can walk safely to school. The City Attorney also can initiate legislation in Los Angeles, and at
the state and federal levels also.

WOLF: Sounds like there’s a huge opportunity to bring
new ideas to the table, to make changes. So I wonder, as somebody who’s relatively newly elected, not even a
year in office, what your vision is for possible reforms.

FEUER: Sure. I view our offices role,
be it on the civil side or the criminal side, or the course of giving advice or counsel to other officials in government,
to the core being the same. And that is, we’re here to solve a problem. I view misdemeanor crimes that way.
Have we found a way to demonstrate to the community that the intervention of the justice system has made a tangible
difference in their quality of life? And through that lens, I view a whole array of potential innovations that I’m
here to explore at the center. It’s important to find ways to divert low level offenders from the traditional
justice system, which formerly—and in fact, in many cases still—

relies on incarceration. But
in real life in California and in Los Angeles, to potential for incarceration is rather nominal. There is a mandate
to diminish prison overcrowding. It’s also true that there’s been a dramatic diminution in resources for
the state court system, and that’s been pronounced in Los Angeles where we’ve seen the closing, not just
of courtrooms, but of courthouses as well. So what I want to find are innovations that include community based justice.
A neighborhood court system is something that I’m hoping to put in place in Los Angeles, under which low level offenders
go through a process where a panel of community mediators, residents who volunteer to participate under the supervision
of experienced staff members, sit with an offender who’s agreed to circumvent the traditional process, and identify
for that offender the sorts of services that offender ought to perform in the neighborhood to help rectify the problems
that he or she has caused, and also to prescribe for that offender the intervention of social services that are likely
to reduce the possibility that the offender is going to repeat the crime, or the crimes later on. I’m concerned
about particular classes of problems. I’ve assigned somebody to be in charge of school safety-related issues
in my office, and I’m looking for the best ideas around the country for how we can create, in Los Angeles, a robust
sense of safety in and around school sites. It’s essential because, among other reasons, we want to encourage
kids to go to school. We have a truancy issue in every major jurisdiction in the country. It’s true in Los Angeles.
I have in mind to pursue a truancy-based court, a truancy court system where we involve peers of the truant child,
along with his or her parents, and perhaps other community adults, all of whom would come together to try to find
solutions to what, traditionally, has been treated with punishment, as opposed to a constructive approach to have
that child return to school. I’m also here to look at preventative approaches. The justice system is a blunt
instrument frequently, and many of us would benefit tremendously if we could prevent crimes in the first place. I’m
very focused on gun violence prevention, dealing with gang activity in neighborhoods in ways that transcend the usual
supression-based model, which is an essential component, but not a sustainable way to deal with the activity in a
neighborhood.

WOLF: What’s your strategy for enlisting all the different partners that you’ll
need, whether it’s police or the court system itself, or the schools, or I can imagine there’s quite a
vast range in each of these areas that you’ve described—whether it’s misdemeanor offending, or around schools,
or it’s addressing prevention of gun violence. Do you have a way in mind to begin to bring about what sounds
like kind of systemic change?

FEUER: Yes, you’ve hit it on the head. It’s important
for us to engage stakeholders at every level in this process. I’m a very neighborhood-based official and I have
had, in my prior jobs, a very strong affinity for working closely with people at the community level to view life
through the lens of their experience, listen carefully to what their priorities are, and try to effectuate those.
And that’s certainly going to be necessary in this process what I’m working on now. So I’ve been present
at multiple community meetings, I’ve held well over a hundred such sessions in neighborhoods throughout the
city of Los Angeles in just the first nine months or so of being in office, in audiences large and small, most of
which were devoted to trying to find what matters most to constituents and match those issues up with the resources
of my office. There are institutional partner needs as well. The mayor’s office, the city council, the police
department, the court system are just a few among the many partnerships that are necessary for us to effectuate the
goals that I’ve articulated here. There are also different levels of government besides the local level. I’m
working with state officials on some of these issues. I can see the prospect for engaging at the federal level because
there’s an interest in being a catalyst for innovation at the justice department level, and I’m hoping that
we can try to find some resources that (Inaudible) that can be helpful to us. Private foundations can be instrumental
to affecting some of the change we’re looking to implement here.

WOLF: Is there a possibility
of legislative responses to some of these issues, as opposed to just implementing programmatic response?

FEUER: There sometimes can be. I will say that the innovations that we’re talking about here, neighborhood
courts, focuses on truancy and gun violence prevention, and so forth. One is unlikely to need much new legislation
to accomplish these goals. What we need is a can-do attitude, a spirit of innovation, a sense of creativity and imagination,
a very practical event because ideas are only as good as implementation if you’re in public service, and we
need to be sure that we’re taking advantage of the best of what each of our partners has to offer. I often have
said, you know, for lawyers and for elected officials, speaking skills are highly overvalued relative to listening
skills, which are frequently under-valued. Much of the effectiveness of our exercise is going to be contingent on
our capacity to listen carefully to other stakeholders, to good ideas that emanate from others.

WOLF:
Thank you very much for taking the time out of your visit. I know you’ve had a very tight schedule, so I appreciate
your taking a little time to speak with me.

FEUER: It’s always a pleasure to work with you,
and I hope to be invited back.

WOLF: I’m sure you will be. I’ve been speaking with the
Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer, who has been visiting our programs in New York, learning about what we’re
doing here, getting ideas to bring back to California. I’m Rob Wolf, director of communication for at the Center
for Court Innovation. To hear more New Thinking podcasts, please visit our website at www.courtinnovation.org or
you can also listen to us on iTunes, and subscribe, and write a review if you want, actually. Thank you very much
for listening.

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Miguel Samper Strouss, the vice-minister of criminal policy and restorative justice in the Colombian Ministry
of Justice and Law, discusses the challenge of returning law and order–and trust in justice and government–to the
rural regions of his country that have been devastated by 50 years of guerrilla fighting. (June
2014)

MIGUEL SAMPER STROUSS: The only law enforcement
agency that they know is the FARC, the guerilla groups or the former paramilitary groups, so right now what we have
to do is show them that the government exists, that the government has a human shape, and that the services provided
by the state are trustworthy.

ROBERT V. WOLF: Hi, I’m Rob Wolf, director of communication
at the Center for Court Innovation with a special guest, Miguel Samper Strouss, the Vice Minister of Criminal Policy
and Restorative Justice at the Ministry of Justice and Law in Columbia, who spent the week in the United States meeting
with justice officials including Attorney General Eric Holder, and talking with experts and visiting programs here
at the Center for Court Innovation’s Midtown Community Court. So I want to welcome you to New Thinking, our
podcast series, where we speak to justice innovators around the U.S. and around the world.

STROUSS:
Well thank you very much for having us here. It has been a very, very interesting and insightful visit.

WOLF: Why don’t I start out by asking you a little bit about some of the challenges that you’re
facing in Columbia regarding the justice system.

STROUSS: Well right now is a very, very curious
moment to ask that because we’re facing the possibility of reaching a peace agreement right now in Columbia,
after 50 years or more of conflict, of armed conflict. We now are facing the greatest opportunity to reach a peace
agreement with the guerilla groups, with the FARC movement. And, well, if we want this peace to be an endurable peace
and a sustainable peace in the future, then we have to build this peace process on three pillars: truth—seeking truth,
finding reparation for victims, and of course the most important one, justice. Justice can ensure that in the future
the conflict will not re-emerge, and the country will see an exit outside of this conflict. So what we now face,
in justice terms, is a big challenge of how to get justice to the regions outside the main cities, the far-reaching
regions of the country, how to get security there through the justice system, and how the state or the government
will regain legitimacy by building trust in the communities through the justice system. It is very important to have
justice present in every single region of the country if you want the state or the government to gain legitimacy
from the citizens. And the armed conflict, what has cost, in many regions in our country, people don’t trust
the government, don’t trust the state. They don’t know the state. The only law enforcement agency that
they know is the FARC, the guerilla groups or the former paramilitary groups, so now what we have to do is show them
that the government exists, that the government has a human shape, and that the services provided by the state are
trustworthy. So we have to get justice to every corner of our country, and to provide good services, reliable services.

WOLF: Well it sounds like a tall order. You’ve got a lot to do, but also an exciting time and a real
opportunity to make long-standing and important changes. Tell me, what have you seen on your visit here that you
think might help you achieve some of the goals you just described?

STROUSS: Well most people know
Columbia, unfortunately, because of the drug production problem. So within having interviews and knowing all the
models, like the drug courts, for example, we visit the drug courts back in Washington, here in New York, the community
court, Columbia is becoming more and more a consumption—a drug consuming country, rather than a drug production country.
So we’re facing there, a huge obstacle for peace if our youth and the new generations are starting to consume
and abuse illegal substances. And we’re trying to evaluate all the models we can find, and the mechanisms, to
treat—not only our peasants because jail is not the answer for them—but also the consumers that are growing in numbers
again, in our country. So right now we are evaluating models in which we, by giving them positive incentives, that
they won’t be in prison, how to handle crimes related to drug abuse. And with that we can improve the security
in the communities, in the cities, but also we can reduce abusing of these illegal substances.

WOLF:
Have you implemented anything like a drug court yet or were you here to see what it’s like when you have a court
that is linking offenders to drug treatment under judicial supervision?

STROUSS: Right. We don’t
have that model in Columbia. We don’t have the mechanisms. I think that our first thoughts when we encounter
this mechanism is that we’re going to need a legal reform because right now those low impact crimes related
to drug abuse, those criminals have to be in prison. So right now we’re running a diagnosis on which model we
should implement in Columbia to tackle the problems I just mentioned.

WOLF: Part of your mission
here is to gather as many options as you can and start thinking through what might work best in your situation.  

STROUSS: Exactly.

WOLF: Maybe you could share with me, if there are any innovations or
reforms that you have started to implement, that you think might be of interest to people here in the United States
or in other countries, who might be listening to this podcast.

STROUSS: Yeah, we have a very,
very nice and beautiful program that is called Casas de Justicia, the houses of justice, in which we get the different
alternative justice mechanisms closer to people in the far reaching regions of the country—not in the cities but
in the municipalities that are far away from the cities—so we can get those justice services closer to people, and
also to take the Kafka away, this author that wrote about the judicial system—

WOLF: The surreal
system where you don’t understand what’s going on or how anything works?

STROUSS: Exactly,
and everything is dark, and you don’t understand what’s happening there, and you see the judge—well, you
don’t see the judge. It’s like an anonymous people, person around.

WOLF: Is that a result
of the fears of retribution from drug cartels? That the judges were anonymous?

STROUSS: Well we
implemented that model, but right now I think, even—not only in criminal justice but in civil justice—there’s
a commonly believed idea that justice is very far away from people. So we have to take out the Kafka from our justice.
And this program, Casas de Justicia, is trying to do so by getting alternative mechanisms, not the ordinary judge
sits in Casas de Justicia. What we sit there is referees and mediators and also we have inspectors that try to work
with the community and construct the whole concept of justice and community justice with the community. They work
together to create those bonds that would allow the state to gain legitimacy, and also to provide justice services
in all the regions. We have implemented the program in 82 municipalities right now, and we have provided justice
services for over five million cases in the past 15 or 16 years have been resolved, even better. If you provide justice
services where people haven’t had any contact with the government, then you can ensure that in those regions,
they are not going to make justice by their own hands. They are not going to apply that saying of an eye for an eye
and—

WOLF: —a tooth for a tooth.

STROUSS: Exactly. So what we want is to reduce
and de-escalate the conflict in those regions with this Casas de Justicia.

WOLF: And prior to
the Casas de Justicia, it was kind of a vigilante justice? Or these kinds of crimes or disputes were just resolved
person to person, without any—

STROUSS: Well person to person, but this is the perfect ground
for these guerilla groups or the paramilitary to take place. If you don’t have a government, if you don’t
have a state, if you don’t have institutions or authorities, then any armed group can supply that need. And
that’s what we’re hoping to achieve with this Casas de Justicia, to create safe environments and safe communities
in which the presence of these groups is not going to be needed anymore.

WOLF: I wonder what you
saw at the Midtown Community Court today, because that shares the principle with the Casas de Justicia, of trying
to bring justice into a neighborhood. It’s very different, we’re still in an urban environment, it’s
not the countryside, but I wonder if there was something in what you observed there that you see as similar, or any
ideas that you think might be applicable?

STROUSS: Well, the very interesting part of the community
court is that first it changes the whole way that people interact with justice. because if you think about the ordinary
model in which people interact with justice it’s just through lawyers, in very complex ways, and legal procedures,
legal complications. But this is very close to people. This justice is very close to them, that the justice becomes
not a friend, but a person that is close to the community and one of them, that works with them and not against them,
to try to solve the day by day problems—problems that arise every day. So it’s very interesting to see how it
works and how it handles the drug abuse problems in the community. Because that could trigger a lot of other problems,
persecution, alcohol related crimes. We got a lot of ideas so we can start seeing the way that this will fit according
to Columbian needs.

WOLF: It sounds like you’re taking real advantage of this opportunity
to do a thoughtful job to rebuild the justice system.

STROUSS: Well that’s the idea. That’s
why I’m getting paid. So—

WOLF: Well I want to thank you very much for taking the time to
talk with me. I know you’ve had a busy week.

STROUSS: Well thank you, Rob. It’s been
a very interesting and insightful visit, and of course I enjoyed very much this talk.

WOLF: I’ve
been speaking with Miguel Samper Strouss, the Vice Minister of Criminal Policy and Restorative Justice in Columbia,
who’s been visiting with justice officials and observing programming in the United States. You can listen to
this and other New Thinking podcasts on our website and on iTunes. I’m Rob Wolf, thanks for listening.

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In this New Thinking podcast, Tracey
L. Meares, the Walton Hale Hamilton Professor at Yale Law School, outlines the four components of procedural justice and their power
to enhance perceptions of government legitimacy. She also discusses how procedural justice is incorporated into Chicago
Offender Notification Forums, an anti-violence intervention that she helped design. (June 2014)

TRACEY MEARES: Our forums were organized around legitimacy and the idea is this—is that if legitimacy works,
then you’re going to comply with the law because you believe that government has the right to dictate proper
behavior.

ROBERT V. WOLF: Hi, I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for
Court Innovation and I am in San Francisco at Community Justice 2014 International Summit, meeting and speaking with
a number of leaders in the field of community justice and criminal justice. Right now, I have the pleasure of speaking
with Tracey Meares, who is a professor at Yale Law School. She is a theorist and a social scientist and I want to
thank you for taking the time to speak with me.

MEARES: Thank you.

WOLF: You
will be speaking this afternoon about procedural justice, which is an issue you have been very involved in and done
research on, and written a lot about. So what is procedural justice? I’ve also hear the word legitimacy as well.
Maybe you can help parse those out.

MEARES: So, I think the way to explain how they fit together
is to start with legitimacy first. And the way I like to explain it is to ask people to think about why they, or
other people, obey the law. Do they obey the law because they fear the consequences of failing to do so? Do they
obey the law because they think it’s the right thing to do? Do they obey the law because they think government
has the right to dictate to them proper behavior? The concept of legitimacy encompasses the last idea, that is people
complying voluntarily because they think government has the right to tell them what to do. And it’s a very powerful
when you think about it because unlike the first one—I’m obeying because I fear the consequences of failing to do
so—that’s only gonna work if people perceive there to be someone to carry out a threat. That’s deterrence,
right? That’s often the way criminal justice systems are organized. The second idea, that you’ll obey because
you think it’s the right thing to do, that’s morality. You know, people think about inculcating that idea
through religion and other things, what you teach your children. And that’s a really, really powerful way to
get people—that’s probably the most powerful, that people mostly obey the law because they think it’s the
right thing to do. But every once in awhile there are gonna be laws that you actually don’t think are the right
thing to do. I think historically—registering for the draft, or drug laws, or certain things.
And why is it that people obey those laws? Often it’s because they think that government has the right to dictate
to them proper behavior. And so where does procedural justice fit in? Well, social science research has shown that
procedural justice supports this idea that people will obey because they think government has the right to dictate
to them proper behavior, legitimacy. Procedural justices are the components of government behavior that people tend
to focus on when evaluating legal authorities and finding them fair. There are four factors that people really focus
on. One factor is voice, a second is decision-making neutrality, a third is respectful treatment, and then a fourth
is trust and benevolence. And I’ll explain all four of them in greater detail. So by voice I mean people like
to have an opportunity to tell their side of the story. In a court context, people like to say, well this is what
happened to me. And it’s very important that they have a chance to tell their side of the story, even when it
turns out that it has no impact at all on the outcome. Second, decision-making neutrality. People look for, in interactions
with legal authorities, and they look for indications that the decision that that person is making is neutral and
fair. And one of the best indications is that the person in legal authority gives a reason for what they’re
doing. So the violence reduction strategies that I’ve been involved in, we bring people together who have violent
crimes or gun offenses in their history and, you know, we explain to them the consequences of their behavior, and
we provide them an example of someone who’s changed their life around. And we offer them services. And we say
look, going forward, if you have a gun these are going to be the consequences for you. The reason why that’s
important is so that if that happens, or when that happens, they’ll know exactly why it’s happening and
they’re not singled out because they’re from—well I’m in San Francisco now—they’re
from the tenderloin, or because they’re African-American, or because they’re a young Latino, you know?
They have been given a reason and they know what the reason is. The third factor that’s really, really important
for people is treatment with dignity and respect. And that has often been translated in some other contexts by people
who don’t really understand the theory as just being nice. Like basically you can do whatever you want to people
as long as you’re nice. And I think that it is true that it is possible for police to violate constitutional
dictates and treat people with respect, and have people be relatively satisfied with the encounter after. But you
know, over time obviously that will run into the other factors that I was talking about, clearly. But treatment with
dignity and respect is really key, and research shows that different ethnic groups and racial groups care about these
factors to a greater extent. So Latinos, in particular, really care about this factor.

WOLF: Before
you go on, you mentioned, research has shown. Has it shown for the treating people with dignity and respect produces
a more positive feeling from the litigant or the defender, whoever’s detained, is that true also, has research
of all these aspects of procedural justice voice, decision neutrality—I know you’re going to go on to speak
about trust—have they been all researched in similarly rigorous ways?

MEARES: Yes. Well, because
when you look at the, when you look at the research on procedural justice it’s not as if the research singles
out each individual factor. It’s the bundle of the factors that go together and most of this is done through
survey work, and you can ask people particular questions, and we create scales that capture the different aspects.
And so the last aspect is the one that’s the most amorphous, but basically it’s a more general category
that tries to capture the idea that a person expects to be treated benevolently in the future by the person in legal
authority.

WOLF: Well that’s very interesting. Thank you for the primer on procedural justice
and what it is, and the four components that define it. Let’s talk a little bit about the violence reduction
strategies that you referred to, you were associated with the Chicago forums of the Project Safe Neighborhoods Initiative,
federal initiative, and I know that those are adaptations or related to what are sometimes referred to as call-ins.
There are different names for them that David Kennedy and others developed in Boston, I know in High Point North
Carolina as well. So maybe you could tell me a little bit about the Chicago model, how they work and what is different
about what was developed in Chicago.

MEARES: Well we owe, obviously, a huge debt to the work in
Boston that David and his colleagues have done. That work focused on groups of kids, youth, reciprocating in violence
because of beefs. And so they map that out and they talk to them about the consequences of being involved in violence,
and—

WOLF: And this was really murders and gang violence, right?

MEARES: Yeah. So the first thing we did was structural because mapping that out takes a long time, and we
didn’t have the time or the resources to do it when we started. So we decided to use an individual level intervention,
rather than a group-based intervention. And we selected people based on their criminal history status. So in order
to attend a Chicago forum, you had to have a gun crime in your history or a violent crime. So basically as you got
out of prison, we called people in in groups of 20. And we would have call-ins every three weeks.

WOLF:
Did they follow a similar model where you had people who are giving both a positive message and a message of, if
you—here are resources for you to get your life on track, and here are the consequences
if you don’t, and they could be very serious consequences.

MEARES: So, we were definitely
inspired by that model. Our forums were organized around legitimacy, and the idea was this —is
that if legitimacy works then you’re going to comply with the law because you believe that government has the
right to dictate to you proper behavior. And if it doesn’t then, you know, we have deterrents and we have these
other things, but our overall goal was that. And so the design of the people who were speaking, where we had it,
the structure of the room, everything was all about enhancing legitimacy. So there’s a law enforcement message,
a key part of that law enforcement message is the local police commander saying to the participants, I am your police
chief. It is my job to keep everybody in our community safe. You’re a part of this community and it is my job
to keep you safe. So right there it’s an identification of the participants of members of the community with
value. The ex-offender who tells the story about changing his or her life is really important. I tell that person
to say that this is really hard work. And the service providers are there too, to provide information about an option
because the key to legitimacy is activation of agency, right? It’s internalized. So the constant message is,
this is up to you. No one can make you do it. I’m not gonna make you do it. All I’m gonna do is give you information
about the consequences, but this choice is yours. And then finally architecturally we set up the room in a very particular
way to signal that we’re all in this together. And the tables are in a circle like this, and there’s no
podium.

WOLF: Right, so there’s no podium and not an audience all facing one way. It’s
a circle.

MEARES: It’s a circle and that’s really important. And I also, I never have
the forums in law enforcement location. So we have them in places of what we call civic importance. So in New York
we have it in the Adam Clayton Powell building, and in the Bronx they have it in a beautiful museum, and in Brownsville
they have it in the library. And these are places that citizens go to and, you know, these are folks who should be
welcome there too. And that’s also part of the signal.

WOLF: Well thank you very much. It’s
been very interesting and I really appreciate your taking the time to speak with me. I’ve been talking with
Tracy Meares, who is a law professor at Yale Law School. She’s a social scientist and she is an expert on legitimacy
and procedural justice, so thank you so much.

MEARES:  You’re welcome. I had fun.

WOLF: I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation. To listen to more
podcasts and to learn more about procedural justice and community justice you can visit our website at www.courtinnovation.org.
Thank you for listening.

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Timothy C. Evans, chief judge of the Circuit
Court of Cook County in Illinois, explains how courts can help mitigate the collateral consequences of
justice system involvement. Among other things, courts can reach out to those affected to educate them about their
rights and options, Evans says in this New Thinking podcast.

Chief
Judge Timothy C. Evans of Cook County, Illinois, participates in a panel on “Minimizing the Collateral Consequences
of Justice Involvement” at Community Justice 2014.

JUDGE
TIMOTHY C. EVANS: We’ve had instances where people were locked up pending trial, asking—well let me just enter
a plea of guilty so I can get out. They want to get out of jail and don’t realize, hey, that conviction is going
to follow you wherever you’re gonna go.

ROBERT V. WOLF: Hi, I’m Rob Wolf,
director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation. I’m in San Francisco at Community Justice 2014.
Today I’m speaking with Timothy C. Evans, the Chief Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County in Chicago, Illinois.
Welcome to our New Thinking podcast series.

JUDGE EVANS: Well thank you, Rob, for inviting me.
It’s a pleasure to be here with you.

WOLF: You participated in a plenary session this morning
that was titled Minimizing the Collateral Consequences of Justice Involvement. So I thought that’s what we would
spend these next few minutes focusing on, and maybe we could start off just by you sharing a little bit or explaining
when we talk about collateral consequences of justice involvement, what exactly does that mean?

JUDGE
EVANS: All right, most people would realize that if, in the criminal justice system, someone is arrested and is charged
with a given offense, let’s say some kind of drug-oriented offense, that if a person is going to enter a plea
of guilty, or goes to trial on an issue like that, probably the direct consequence is going to be some kind of time
in jail, some kind of a conviction that might result in someone losing his or her freedom for a period of time. That’s
a direct consequence. But the collateral consequence would be, using this example but going a step further, that
in addition to the person being convicted and locked up for a time, that person might also find himself deported,
lose his right to stay in the country. So that’s a collateral consequence. An additional one might be that the
person could no longer be in a profession that requires a license. Let’s say barbers, for example, can’t
be convicted of certain offenses, and so that would be a collateral consequence in addition to a plea of guilty for
this particular problem with the drug, they end up losing the right to have that license. Housing is another collateral
consequence. There may be some division where a person is living that says that if you’re convicted of a certain
offense you can’t live there any longer. Scholarships and educational opportunities, if you are convicted of
certain things, you don’t qualify for that. Or you might go into a career like public transportation, driving
a bus—they might say, no, you can’t do that if you’re convicted of this kind of offense. So these are the
kinds of collateral consequences that we’re talking about.

WOLF: So it sounds like someone
could be convicted of one thing and receive a sentence that is proportionate to—hopefully proportionate to the crime,
the offense, but then these collateral consequences could go on for many years to come and affect employment, housing—I
mean it sounds like you could end up homeless if you get kicked out of public housing because of rules against having,
you know, certain kinds of convictions. So it’s very expansive, in a sense. You have a discreet sentence, but
then it affects your life.

JUDGE EVANS: It truly does affect your life in many ways, and the focus
today in the session that we alluded to earlier gave us a chance to concentrate on who has the responsibility of
ameliorating some of these collateral consequences. The Supreme Court case, the Padilla case that was the subject
of that particular discussion, said that at the very least, the lawyer representing the defendant who has been charged
has a responsibility, yes discussing the direct consequences, but also the collateral consequences in a particular
case. A person didn’t have that kind of advice and there was a question whether the sixth amendment applied,
to have effective counsel. But my point of view is that it permeates throughout a system of fairness that should
be committed to justice, that it shouldn’t just be on the shoulder of the defense attorney. But the prosecutorial
segment of our society has to be interested in justice, and certainly the judge hearing that case has a responsibility
too, and I shared that in the state of Illinois, in Cook County, we certainly put that burden on the judge as well.
We want the judge to tell the defendant appearing before the judge—are you aware that if you’re not a citizen,
these are the consequences that may flow from this plea of guilty. So I think it’s a commitment, and we have
to make the fairness, no matter what. And we have to assume that people who are going through that particular phase
of their lives, that they’re not focusing on anything like that. We’ve had instances where people were
locked up pending trial, asking—well let me just enter a plea of guilty so I can get out. They want to get out of
jail and don’t realize, hey, that conviction is going to follow you wherever you’re gonna go. And that
gets back to your question. It absolutely does transcend this time period that they might otherwise be thinking about.

WOLF: You talked about how judges in Cook County will explain the collateral consequence vis-à-vis immigration
status. Are there other ways that the justice system in Cook County is trying to minimize collateral consequences?

JUDGE EVANS: Yes, we have several. One would be a commitment to sealed records so that they couldn’t
be used in an inappropriate way. We have several other kinds of activities I discussed, for example certificates
of relief, certificates of good character, certificates of innocence, that make it possible for the person who has
been rehabilitated to obviate some of the collateral consequences that we talked about. For example, the licensing.
If a person wants to resume being a licensed barber, even though he’d been convicted of something that would
normally take that licensing capability away, under this certificate of relief that we talked about, we could have
that hearing, enter that order, the person receive that certificate, then we would tell the employer you won’t
be charged with any particular problem if you hire this person. They are rehabilitated and they now qualify for the
license that had been taken away from them. So we have all kinds of programs like that and we are pleased to see
them work.

WOLF: And are those programs that are initiated through the judiciary, or are they
legislatively enacted?

JUDGE EVANS: They are carried out by the judiciary, but they are statutorily
in effect. The state legislature has worked closely with the judiciary in trying to make these opportunities available.
But we have to be proactive as members of the judiciary or members of the legal community to make these opportunities
available to people who are not comfortable in our setting. Most people don’t know that they’ve got the
right to petition to expunge a certain record. They don’t know what they have to do to qualify for that, so
they don’t know how to seal a background, they don’t know about these certificates of relief unless we
be proactive in making sure they’re given access to these kinds of activities. I discussed one particular thing
that I thought was particularly helpful in this pending before the legislature right now, and that is the expungement
of juvenile records. Certainly if adults don’t know what it is that I’m talking about, children certainly would
not know and under the legislation that is pending in the legislature in Springfield, Illinois now, that expungement
would be automatic. When a child reaches the age of 18, his or her record would automatically be expunged and they
would then be given a new chance, a second chance to apply for that scholarship to go on to college, or to apply
for the first job they’re gonna get, or to apply for housing for the first time they’ll have access to.

WOLF: And let me just ask you one last question, because you mentioned the fact that although you have these
different ways that people can mitigate the collateral consequences through expungement or these different certificates,
they don’t always take advantage of it. And you alluded to a little of that before as well. What are the strategies?
How do you engage people so that they do come in or they do find out that these things are possible and they do clear
up some of these collateral consequences?

JUDGE EVANS: Well, we try to provide this information
on the circumstances that are beyond the traditional circumstances. For example, if a person had to come to court
to find out about these, chances are they wouldn’t come to court. They think about what is facing them right
then, they’re not looking for other opportunities. So what we do is we provide these opportunities, let’s
say on weekends, Saturdays and Sundays we go to the YMCA, we go to other places where people gather. We go to churches,
we go to civic groupings where we can bring the court, and bring the forms, and bring the lawyers who can help them
fill out those forms at no expense to them. And I think when people see what we have to show them, under those informal
circumstances, then they can ask a question. They’re not embarrassed, they’re not ashamed, they realize
that others have similar problems to the problems they have. So that’s how we try to do it. We ask for free
time on the radio, or on television. We make it kind of a public service, you know, things of that kind.

WOLF: Well thank you very much for explaining, you know, some of these great ideas and the way you’re
carrying it out. Addressing this clearly difficult and important issue. I’ve been speaking with Chief Judge
Timothy C. Evans, he’s the Chief Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County in Chicago, Illinois, and we’ve
been talking about how to mitigate collateral consequences of justice system involvement. Thank you so much.

JUDGE EVANS: You’re quite welcome, Rob, and I claim you and I have your family back in Chicago. I’m
going to tell them, if I can, what a great job you’re doing in New York and how much you are very effective.
But I’m telling them we need that kind of talent back in Illinois, back in Chicago.

WOLF: Well
thank you very much. I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation. To learn more
about community justice and the Center for Court Innovation, please visit our website at www.courtinnovation.org.
You can also listen to our podcast there, and you can also find us on iTunes. Thanks.

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Courts need to assess offenders for traumatic exposures so they can match them to effective services and improve
treatment outcomes, says Kathleen West, an expert on trauma-informed care and lecturer at the University of California.
In this New Thinking podcast, West discusses what we know about the impact of trauma on litigants and the justice
system. (April 2014)

Kathleen West participates in a panel on linking defendants
to services at Community Justice 2014.

KATHLEEN WEST: Trauma exposure is not equally distributed across our population, so some communities have
a lot, a lot of risk, just certain zip codes have, you know, great risk for being exposed to trauma.

ROBERT
V. WOLF: Hi, I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation, and I am at the Community
Justice 2014 International Summit in sf. I’m speaking with one of the presenters right now, Kathleen West, who
is a researcher. She lectures at UCLA and the University of Southern California, and today she was here speaking
about linking defendants to services, with an emphasis on trauma informed care, and the role trauma has played in
the lives of many people who find themselves in the criminal justice system, and how the justice system can start
considering the effects of trauma when working with these clients and offenders. Thank you very much for taking the
time to speak with me.

WEST: Thanks.

WOLF: So let’s talk a little bit
about trauma-informed care. What is it, exactly?

WEST: Well, basically it means to consider the
traumatic exposures that your clients have had, or your defendants have had, and that you need to be assessing for
trauma exposures, making sure that you are aware of what the background traumatic exposure might be, and that your
system of care is not traumatogenic, that you are not exacerbating the problems, that you’re also not putting
clients in programs where they’re not likely to succeed. You don’t want to set them up to fail if the structure
or ambiance of the program, or the jail or correctional facility is going to induce more trauma, because we know
that folks that are in traumatized states that may have a PTSD diagnosis—

WOLF: Post traumatic—

WEST: Post traumatic stress disorder, or if you really actually have a full blown diagnosis with a disorder
there where you’ve moved into a state of pathology in managing your traumatic stress, then you may not be able
to receive treatment in a way that it’s designed, if you’re not really considering the traumatic effect.
Also we’ve found that a lot of our courts, while not intending to do harm, can do harm both to the practitioners
in the court systems by vicarious trauma, where a lot of our practitioners are clerks or attorneys, are exposed to
a lot of trauma and then we’re traumatogenic in sharing that across our system so that we’re actually—it’s
not just our clients that are suffering, perhaps, but some secondary traumatization can happen as well.

WOLF: So when we speak of the effect on clients, one thing I’m hearing you say is that if you don’t
assess or evaluate the level of trauma they may have experienced in their life, you might not be able to match them
effectively to treatment.

WEST: That’s right, absolutely. So it’s really matching the
treatment issues. So we had a lot of discussions here around risk assessment and that is one element of assessment
that you certainly, obviously, have to do, but traumatic exposure assessment has been rarely done. I think the reason
why this has become a bigger public health awareness issue is really with the average childhood experiences study,
which is a massive longitudinal study, it’s called the ASA study, and it was a very big, ongoing still, longitudinal
study done by the Kaiser Health System. And what they identified was that exposure to what they called adverse childhood
experiences—and that’s an assessment tool that looked at 10 different kinds of exposures that included things
like having a parent in jail, or being abused physically oneself—ended up with a lot of negative health consequences
later on as an adult, including, some of this included traumatic exposures. And now we’re aware that we really
ought to be assessing for those factors as well, that are not criminogenic factors, that we don’t necessarily
think of as risk factors in the same way, but that actually can be a, can make a big difference whether people can
succeed or cannot comply with a program. So, making the distinction between inability to comply and non-compliance
is a really important distinction we’d like to make here, I think. They might look the same, but I think our
ethical obligation to respond to them is different. If somebody is unable to comply because of various exposures
or inability to do things that they have, that’s one thing. But if they are none compliant, that’s something
else. So we need to tease out that difference and try to match our programming appropriately.

WOLF:
And is there the capacity to do that? Do we have the tools to differentiate between those who are unable to comply
and those who are, I guess, who aren’t complying for some sort of willfulness?

WEST: I think
there are the tools available and we’re getting to that place. I’m not gonna be able to name a specific
tool at the moment because I think it really does vary, actually, on the population you’re looking at. But yes,
we are getting to the place where there are those resources available. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration, SAMSA, has an entire website devoted to trauma-informed care, there’s a national clearinghouse,
national center on trauma-informed practices, trauma-informed care. The National Center for Child Traumatic Stress,
NCTSN, has a lot of resources available. Where understanding and evaluating trauma, and then matching what kind of
programs might be available is very important. Also medication management should be influenced by a trauma exposure
assessment as well.

WOLF: And before we started, you referred to the issue of including trauma-informed
care and just the epidemic nature of trauma on certain populations as a public health problem. And I wonder if you
could elaborate on that because I think a lot of people are also interested in the nexus between the justice system
and public health.

WEST: I’m delighted to hear that. I mean I know that that’s really
why I’m here, is the community courts, community justice movement. I do see this as a public health issue. I think
a lot of public health practitioners are increasingly aware that all of our highest risk patients, clients, are also
in the criminal justice system, often times, and when they are not in the criminal justice system, they are recycling
in and out, you know, on the streets, homelessness, domestic violence, problems with the ability to maintain jobs,
employment, certainly health issues, mental health issues, traumatic brain injury, and all sorts of things that are
challenges. So I think many of us certainly look at this as an intergenerational situation as well, that we really
want to get in there and provide early intervention and prevention, and a place where we can deal with this. In some
populations this is endemic. Trauma exposure is not equally distributed across our population, so some communities
have a lot, a lot of risk, just certain zip codes have, you know, great risk for being exposed to trauma, and what
we know for the most part is that the more you’re exposed, it doesn’t mean that you get better at managing
it, actually it’s additive and intensity, duration, and frequency all make a difference in whether or not you’re
able to be resilient. We really want to be looking at resiliency and how our courts can help people do that, so we’re
looking, trying strength-based, how we find pro-social kinds of things, how can we make sure that we’re not
asking people to do things that they can’t comply with and can’t do, just from even a physiological perspective,
and making sure that we give people the time to heal. We want to emphasize that even with a diagnosis of PTSD, this
is not a death now, but a long shot. There is treatment that’s effective and that people can manage and live
with that their whole lives. That’s really important to understand. But if it’s not taken into account
then you can’t treat it, and you may be misdiagnosing or missing something. And that’s just where I think
our courts, especially community courts, are so therapeutic in their approach, that this is just something they ought
not be missing in their assessment.

WOLF: When you talk about a public health approach, or a public
health problem, does it mean not only looking at trauma as a health problem, but applying some of the tools that
come from public health? I mean you refer to prevention and the criminal justice system is increasingly thinking
about prevention and thinking about recidivism. Does that have parallels in the public health system, like preventing
an illness, preventing a return of an illness?

WEST: Absolutely, and it also quite concretely
has a lot to do with good use of scarce resources, right? And the Affordable Care Act is really making people aware
that it makes so much more sense to do really good up front diagnosis, get in that preventative healthcare services,
and you won’t be seeing people in your emergency room, which is not a good place to deliver primary care. I
think there’s a real parallel there, where we ought to be doing better work in our community justice programming,
really identifying clearly at the beginning who we’ve got as high risk populations, screening out our low risk,
make sure we’re maintaining them well and addressing their needs right away, which can be really low cost. Early
intervention, not waiting until you have a frank pathology or a frank perpetrator, you know serious offender on your
hands. We ought to be investing more in our preschool programming, for example, or even in our courts we really need
to be looking at that whole family constellation, which is still our core of our socialization or social norms as
a family. So even when you’ve got a criminal court and we’re working with the defendant as a lone wolf,
they’re not a lone wolf. They’re somewhere embedded in a community with a family and somebody else. And
if we don’t, you know, pay attention to that community and try to support them, they’re gonna be a problem.
And I also think that as we’re looking at our higher risk folks, we need to provide that right dose of care,
identify what the problems are, and really intensively serve them so that we don’t see them, you know, coming
back in and out again of our system. It is an analogy to our healthcare system.

WOLF: Well I know
you have a plane to catch and I really appreciate your taking the time to talk to me.

WEST: Thank
you for your interest. I’m so glad you’re working on this, and I’m so glad to hear that you know, there might
be more opportunities for public health and our court systems to interact, so thank you.

WOLF:
I’ve been speaking Kathleen West, who is a researcher, a lecturer, at University of Southern California and
UCLA, and an expert on trauma-informed care. To find out more about the Center for Court Innovation, about this conference,
Community Justice 2014, or even about the nexus between public health and the justice system, you can visit our website
at www.courtinnovation.org. You can also listen to our New Thinking podcast on iTunes. I’m Rob Wolf, thanks
for listening.

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Drug addiction is fundamentally a public health issue, says Michael Botticelli, acting director of National Drug Control Policy, in this New Thinking podcast. Botticelli explains
why law enforcement must work in tandem with public health to address addiction and how his own personal experience
with addiction informs his work.

In keynote remarks at Community Justice 2014, Michael Botticelli discusses the
importance of public health strategies in addressing drug addiction.

(April 2014)

MICHAEL BOTTICELLI: You know I say I’m not unique in the sense that I’m one of 23 million Americans who
are in recovery. What makes it unique is I get to sit at the White House and kind of do this work.

ROBERT
V. WOLF: Hi, this is Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation. I am in San Francisco
at the Community Justice 2014 and I have the pleasure of sitting down right now with Michael Botticelli, who is the
acting director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Thank you so much for taking the time
to speak with me.

BOTTICELLI: It’s great to be here, Rob.

WOLF: I wanted
to ask you a few questions about your role as what is sometimes referred to, and has been over the years, as drug
czar. And I thought a great way to segue into this conversation is really to ask you if that term really captures
your work, and what you think about it. Perhaps there’s been an evolution in thinking about the role of the
office.

BOTTICELLI: I actually really hate the term drug czar, only because I think it, you know,
the term czar actually means something that kind of coordinates things, which is really what we do, but I think it’s
been associated with previous administration’s policy about the war on drugs, which is clearly not what this
administration is all about, so I don’t like the term because I think it raises, for people, this kind of very
law enforcement-centric, arrest people for addiction. So I really, I don’t like the term drug czar. You know,
and the other piece for me is I have a very atypical background in terms of someone who’s leading our agency.
So, I don’t come from a law enforcement background, I come from a public health background, I’m in recovery
myself. Maybe some of it is I don’t associate myself with the drug czar, so that’s probably why I don’t
like the term.

WOLF: You’re talking about your public health background and I wonder if you
think people see illegal drugs as an either/or situation, as either a law enforcement problem or if they’re
coming from your perspective, as a public health problems, and it just depends on the orientation that a police chief
might think of it as a law enforcement problem and a treatment provider thinks of it as public health.

BOTTICELLI: I actually think things are dramatically changing in terms of that kind of focus, and you know,
part of my job I get to talk to a tremendous amount of local law enforcement officers who will say, you can’t
arrest our way out of the problem, and understanding that this is a public health issue. So I just participated in
a conference in Washington with over 200 local law enforcement across the country, and it’s really interesting
for me to hear things like, we can’t arrest our way out of the problem, that we have to partner with public
health in terms of the work that we do. And quite honestly, I think that that’s the function of our office,
in terms of how do we continue to bridge—you know, law enforcement does play a crucial role in terms of the public
safety consequences, and making sure we have safe communities, and trying to minimize the impact that drugs have
on our community. But I think there’s a growing understanding that this is fundamentally a public health related
issue. And so part of our job, at our office, is how do we continue to bridge that gap between public health and
law enforcement, in terms of the strategies. I think a lot of the work that we’ve done on overdose prevention,
I think has moved that conversation dramatically and we’ve seen the dramatic uptake of the use of naloxone,
which was a highly effective, highly safe overdose prevention medication by local law enforcement. And I think that’s
dramatically changed the conversation. So, so I don’t—I think people are understanding that we actually do need
this balanced approach between law enforcement and public safety, and that we can’t just you know, I always
say we can’t incarcerate addiction out of people. And so, you know, I think they understand that we have to
have primarily a public health response, but in partnership with law enforcement.

WOLF: Since
the conference here is a community justice conference, I wonder if you think that problem solving courts like drug
courts or re-entry courts, community courts, can play a role in addressing the problematic use of drugs, and can
they also contribute to reframing the debate about getting law enforcement and public health advocates working more
collaboratively?

BOTTICELLI: So problem-solving courts looking at any opportunity to divert people
away from the criminal justice system has been part of our strategy since the beginning of the administration. And
I would absolutely agree with you that I think these problem-solving courts and drug courts have really shown the
way in terms of well wait a second here, we can have a different kind of approach here, other than just incarcerating
folks. I think we’ve seen the explosion of, particularly, drug courts, not only in the United States but internationally.
And so I think that we have about 2,700 drug courts here in the United States. They are in 22 countries. So I think
there’s a growing understanding that if you partner the criminal justice folks with the public health folks,
that we really can have effective strategies here. I think you know that many, many states across political stripes
have really been engaged in wholesale justice reinvestment. I think they’ve understood that incarceration is
both costly and ineffective in terms of dealing with people with substance use disorders. So, and I think clearly,
you know, you’ve seen the work and the changes that have come out of the attorney general’s office around,
and with, the president, in terms of fairer sentencing laws and really looking at how do we make sure that we’re
not incarcerating folks who really need to be dealt with, in terms of treatment related issues.

WOLF:
And how do you see getting police prosecutors, probation departments, and particularly law enforcement, so police,
to pursue public safety buy also incorporating these lessons of public health, prevention, and treatment, concretely,
rather than just saying—well it’s a public health problem, so let’s bring in some public health advocates—let
them do it. Can law enforcement actively also engage in public health?

BOTTICELLI: I absolutely
think so, and I think that’s a lot of the work that we’ve been doing. And you know, so first and foremost,
we want to make sure that law enforcement, like other people, understand what addiction is, and understand what it
means and how it affects judgment, and how it affects people’s ability to make decisions. And you know, there’s
been models in other areas, particularly in terms of mental health, of how, on the street, can you really not turn
this into an arrest. you know, again, I think I’ve heard from many, many law enforcement folks who’ve seen—and
I think particularly with the prescription drug issue—have seen that they’re arresting the same people over
and over again, and how ineffective that is to be able to do that. And I also, again, think that the overdose situation
has changed dramatically. I think that many of these law enforcement are seeing kids from their own community who
are overdosing, and understanding that we need to have another response to this. So I think it’s been helpful,
and I’m not saying that there are not pockets of resistance or pockets of change, but I do think that there’s
a building momentum around not just a direct kind of local law enforcement response, but a larger criminal justice
response to people with addictive disorders.

WOLF: Let me ask you, and you referred to it yourself
in the beginning of the interview, and your official bio notes that you’re in long term recovery yourself. And
I just wonder how your personal experience informs your work. And do you think recovering addicts can or should play
more active roles in developing drug policies?

BOTTICELLI: So maybe I’ll start with the last first.
You know, obviously being in recovery, I do feel that people who come from affected communities should be part and
parcel of the policy and decision-making. I have a long career in public health and I did a lot of work around HIV
and AIDS, where clearly the consumer voice, you know, needed to be at the table. And there used to be an expression—nothing
about us without us. And I carry that with me in terms of our work that we do on both the national and local levels.
You know, I say I’m not unique in the sense that I’m one of 23 million Americans who are in recovery. What makes
it unique is I get to sit at the White House and kind of do this work. So that’s the really cool piece about
it. But what it says to me is that people who are affected by this disorder really have a unique experience and really
have a unique voice that needs to be heard at every level. And by virtue of the fact that I am in recovery, and am
in this job, I think shows the administration’s commitment to really making sure that folks have a voice at
the table. And it does inform the work that I do in terms of understanding. I think of my own experience and what
were the missed opportunities along the way in terms of identifying this issue with me early on. So it makes us think
about things like screening a brief intervention, of how do we intervene, particularly for folks who we know are
at risk of developing a more significant problem. You know I actually kind of got into treatment because of my own
involvement with the law. I was arrested for drunk driving, I was in a drunk driving car accident, and actually had
the opportunity of being somewhat of a forced opportunity to say, treatment or we can continue down the criminal
justice path. So, you know, part of it for me—and that’s why the significance of being at conferences like this
is to say, you know, 27 years ago I was in handcuffs. And for me, now, to be sitting as the acting Director of the
Office of National Drug Control Policy is, I think, particularly indicative of how we can take those opportunities,
one not let people get involved with the criminal justice system in the first place and second, how do we really
look at those intersections with the criminal justice system? And make sure that people are getting adequate care
and treatment. You know, again, you know we can’t arrest our way out of the problem. You can’t incarcerate
addiction out of people. And we really need to make sure—and I think, again, that’s the exciting part and in
terms of being here at this conference and looking at the agenda, that there is a growing acknowledgment in terms
of that we can have a more effective and, quite honestly, a much more compassionate response in terms of how we deal
with addiction.

WOLF: Well thank you very much for sharing your thoughts with me and good luck
with your mission.

BOTTICELLI: Thanks. 

WOLF:
I’ve been speaking with Michael Botticelli, who’s the acting director of the Office of National Drug Control
Policy, and he is about to take the stage shortly at Community Justice 2014 here in sf. I’m Rob Wolf, Director
of Communications at the Center for Court Innovation. To listen to more podcasts like this you can visit our website
at www.courtinnovation.org. Thanks for listening.

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