Transcriber:
Whitney Pennington-Rodgers: Hi, Nick,
thanks so much for being here.
Nick Turner: Whitney, thank you.
WPR: For those who aren’t familiar,
could you start by just telling us
a little bit about Vera
and the work you do?
NT: The Vera Institute of Justice
is a leading justice reform organization.
We seek to transform the criminal legal
system and the immigration system.
We call it the criminal legal system
because to call it
a criminal justice system
is a little bit of a misnomer.
It doesn't deliver justice.
And we work to transform
the immigration system
because many of the problems
that we see in the criminal legal system
are just the same
in the immigration system.
And by transform,
what I mean is to shrink
both of those systems
to make sure that they are less brutal
than they are right now
and that there's some modicum
of justice that's provided.
We work on some of the biggest problems
that are facing the country
in these two realms
and try to provide solutions.
So I'll just give you an example of that.
One of the things
that we did over the last years
was to participate in a campaign
that ended up overturning
the congressionally imposed ban
on Pell Grants,
which is federal financial aid
for low-income students.
1994, Congress said that those
were no longer going to be available
to incarcerated students,
and we were able to win that back
at the end of 2020.
And that makes a remarkable difference
to close to 20,000 people right now
who have an opportunity to earn a degree,
find a pathway to employment,
to higher income,
to end intergenerational incarceration,
and for people who are concerned
about it to save money
because there's less recidivism.
WPR: I know you do so much more
than just that, but I mean,
even thinking about the reason we need
this sort of thing in this country
and sort of how our justice system
ended up in this space
where this sort of work is even necessary.
Maybe you could describe
a little bit about that
and how it plays
into the rest of the world.
NT: Well, there's a little bit
of history to tell.
I'm not a historian, but I think
it's probably something
that all of you are familiar with.
This system that we have
and the roots of it,
they go down to our very bones.
I often describe it as being
just as American as apple pie.
The system of mass incarceration
that we have is just the latest iteration,
the modern iteration of a system
of racial subordination in the country.
And it manifests and has manifested
in different ways in America.
But you can go back to slavery,
you can go back to the 13th Amendment,
which outlawed slavery except for people
who were convicted criminally.
You can think about
post-Reconstruction era, 1877 on,
when the South,
which didn't have a work force
because it was deprived
of enslaved people,
passed laws, Black Codes,
that made criminal things
like standing on a corner,
standing on a street, called it loitering.
And then people would be arrested,
and then their bodies would be sold
to private industry
and leased as labor.
So that was our first interaction
with mass incarceration in the country.
And if you flash forward 100 years
and you re-begin the story
in the early 1970s,
that was our second
post-Reconstruction period where,
in response to the gains that were made
in the civil rights movement,
politicians sought to tap
into the frustrations
of many white voters
so that you talk about it sometimes
as the Southern Strategy,
and started responding to disorder
that was seen in cities
and said, "We need to have
a war on drugs."
"We need to have a war on crime."
And generation of tough-on-crime laws,
mandatory minimums were put in place.
And that's what we have now.
And we went on a sort of stratospheric,
700-percent increase
in the prison population
over the course of the 50 years
between the early '70s and the aughts.
And here's the thing that we should know,
is that we did it.
This is a product of democracy.
It did not have to be this way,
but we elected people who promised us
that safety and order could be delivered
by a criminal legal system
that we have today.
WPR: Well, thank you for that.
I think it's interesting in thinking
about this moment right now
where I feel like there's so much
interest in this subject
and thinking about justice reform
and and how we can fix this system.
And I'm curious to know from you,
sort of, your thoughts
about this moment right now,
where it is in some ways kind of trendy
to support issues around criminal justice.
NT: I've been doing this work
for about 25 years,
one way or another,
in direct services at first
and then in the policy work that Vera does
and you know,
I admit that I have seen
in the past five or six years
that this has become
sort of a cause célèbre
and people have gotten excited about it.
I think that that is
a fundamentally good thing.
If you remember
what I said a moment ago,
that this is democracy
that created this monster that we have,
and so the only way that we will undo it
is if people engage.
And so the mere fact
that we have discussions
like the one that we're having tonight,
that you can name a slew of celebrities
from Kim Kardashian to, you know,
to John Legend, and sort of, list goes on
who have elevated this issue
and made people start to think
about it differently,
that we have a generation
of young people who have grown up
with the concept of mass incarceration
and understand it's actually not something
that is necessary to deliver safety,
but in fact that there are all sorts
of profound costs and burdens
that are associated with it.
So it may feel trendy
because for, you know,
up until five or six years ago,
while many people carried
the stigma and the sadness
that one in two Americans
have a family member
who has been incarcerated --
that's massive, one in two.
This is what we've created,
and a lot of people carry that stigma
and so that people
are finally talking about it
and calling attention to it
is absolutely necessary.
So I'm OK if people are on trend.
WPR: And I'm curious if you feel
the pandemic in any way
has impacted your work
or the way that we all should be thinking
about justice reform.
NT: Well, not enough.
I mean, I think one of the things
that happened when the pandemic started
was that we actually saw
a pretty remarkable reaction
on the parts of jail systems and police
where we recognize that, you know,
some of the most profound
vectors of COVID spread
were going to be
in congregate care facilities.
That’s jails and prisons
around the country.
And jail populations dropped
about 15 percent
because sheriffs
were letting go of people,
judges were not imposing bail,
police were issuing tickets
rather than arresting
and sending folks to jail.
And so that was actually a very positive
sort of, general reaction to see.
We've seen those numbers
start to tick back up,
so it didn't quite have the durability
that we would like it to.
But one of the things
that I think we learned
at that moment in time
is that it actually
didn't cost people anything.
Those decisions could be made,
and people stayed safe.
And there was a manifestation
that what mattered was, you know,
public health over public safety.
And people’s humanity mattered.
And so it was a remarkable thing to see,
but we've got a lot more work to do.
WPR: And to that point, I guess,
what is the work that we have to do?
What do you think we do
in this moment to fix this system?
NT: I think the most important
thing that we can do
is to redefine what we think
delivers safety
and safety for whom.
So we have this pretty simplistic
notion in this country.
We grow up talking about bad guys
and good guys, cops and robbers.
We brand people as criminal
for a certain act
that they have committed,
as if that is the sum total
of who they are.
But the formula that we
have basically been fed,
and I think mostly have ingested
and tend to embrace as a people,
is that if you want safety,
you have to have police
and you have to have prosecutors
and you have to put people
in jail and prison.
But the fact of the matter is,
is that we as a country are quite unusual
in that we use this,
this criminal legal system,
to respond to an array of problems
and challenges that people have
that are really non-criminal.
So I'll give you one statistic.
Every year, about 10.5 million people
are arrested in this country.
So that's one every three seconds.
So it just happened again.
And it just happened again.
And some people might be OK with that,
and they think, "Well, you know,
it's a violent country,
there are a lot of guns out there."
But when you look at statistics,
one of the things that we see
is that only five percent
of those arrests are for violent crime.
An 80 percent -- 80 percent --
so we're talking eight million
of those arrests,
which means people going to jail,
getting a record that's going to make it
hard for them to get a job,
are for conduct
that's associated with poverty,
homelessness, mental illness
and substance use.
And so we're investing in this apparatus
that sucks people into the system
that isn't well adapted to address
these complex problems,
because many of these things
are public health problems.
Homelessness -- we should have
supportive housing.
Why would we lock someone up?
If someone is decompensating,
would we rather have two people
with side arms pop out of a car
and address that situation,
or we'd rather have a trained person
who actually knows how to de-escalate
and understands mental illness
and connect that person
to the right kind of system?
So what we need to do
is invest less in this massive apparatus
and invest in the things that we know
will actually provide
the kind of safety and the thriving
and far less harm
than what we currently have.
So it has to be a fundamental, sort of,
reordering of how we think about things.
We have to be deprogrammed.
And then we have to go out
and we have to act
and we have to vote on that
and we have to participate
in local elections
for district attorneys and sheriffs
and demand these kinds of changes.
And demand from mayors and governors
that they invest in public health
and invest in communities
rather than in the systems
that end up harming them.
WPR: So what you're describing
is really this idea of decarceration
and defunding the police,
which has gotten a lot of air time
in the past, you know, year or two.
And I think there are definitely people
who think that this idea feels
either too pie-in-the-sky,
that it’s too far from where we are
right now as a nation to get there.
And other people who maybe just feel
like this just isn't the right way
to go about fixing these issues.
And so I'm curious
what you would say to skeptics.
NT: Well, you know, I mean,
the first thing that I would recognize
is that, you know --
so the language of defund is intentional,
you know, provocation.
And it sort of sharpened the issue.
And I think that in the political context,
Democrats have been very effectively
trolled by Republicans
and have been tagged with the issue.
But if you really stop and you look at it,
if I were to talk to you and I say,
look, we're spending
115 billion dollars a year on policing.
In major cities in this country,
we're spending 30 percent to 40 percent,
sometimes 50 percent on policing
of a city budget.
Not on housing,
not on public health,
not on substance abuse care
and not on mental health care,
on policing.
And by the way,
80 percent of the things
that the police are stopping people for
are for conduct that relates
to poverty and homelessness
and mental illness and substance use.
Does that make sense to you?
Is that how you want to spend dollars?
Is that what you believe is the right
return on investment for societies?
First of all, I think it's important
you have to listen to people.
And if they're fearful about crime,
you've got to acknowledge
that that might be the case.
And certainly in communities
where we've seen a lot of crime,
people do have a right to be fearful.
I come to this work
because of my commitment
to racial justice and equity.
Others on the other side
of the aisle might not.
They might come to it
for civil liberty reasons
that, you know, they want to shrink
the size of government,
they don't like government overreach,
they are concerned about how
government spends its money.
So I think it's important to figure out
how to meet people where they're at
to have the conversation
that obviously requires listening first.
And then the last thing that I'll say
is that I would urge people to do
exactly as we've done tonight,
which is to recognize
the humanity of people
and to, you know, again,
one in two Americans have had
a family member who was incarcerated.
And so I know there are people
in this audience
who have experienced that,
who have maybe stuffed it away
and are challenged by, you know,
coming to terms with that stigma.
But for us to remember what we would like
for our sons and our daughters,
or our brothers or our fathers,
and to start from that perspective.
So I would try to engage people
on a human empathetic level.
WPR: And just, I guess,
as a final thought here.
Do you feel hopeful, I guess,
about this moment?
Do you feel like we're moving
in the right direction?
NT: Most days.
Most days, I feel hopeful.
I mean, I talked about the deep roots
of this system that we have,
and I talked about the fact
that this is something
that democracy chose,
that we all chose,
that we can unchoose it,
and we can act differently.
I think it will take a long time.
I'm very hopeful again that we're having
the kinds of conversations
that we are having tonight,
that people are engaging.
I see movement on the policy level,
but I'm also not tricked into believing
that it will be easy.
And some of the same tools
that we have seen
that have created this apparatus --
the fear mongering,
you know,
sort of the iconography
of gang bangers and, you know,
cities of carnage and Willie Horton
and all of these, sort of, the things
that fueled this movement --
I see that again today.
I see that on headlines.
My mother-in-law visited for a while,
she watched a lot of Fox News,
I saw it 24 hours a day.
And so that's dangerous.
And so that makes me remember
what, you know,
what a task we have ahead of us
and how much we're really going to have
to lean in and to be resilient,
to claim victories when we can.
But to wake up the next day and know
that we're going to have to reach harder
and stronger to get more done.
WPR: Thank you so much, Nick,
you've given us a lot to think about.
Thank you for being here tonight.
NT: Thank you, Whitney, it's a pleasure.
(Applause)