Factually! with Adam Conover - What Happened to Criminal Justice Reform? with James Forman Jr.

Episode Date: June 8, 2022

In 2020, America went through a national reckoning about our racist criminal justice system. Just under two years later, has all that progress evaporated? Pulitzer winner, professor, and author of Locking Up Our Own, James Forman Jr., joins Adam to discuss the return of “tough on crime” politics and how building a movement for criminal justice reform locally can lead to progress nationally, as well as how community organizers and “violence interrupters” are a key part of the restorative justice movement. You can purchase James’ book here: http://factuallypod.com/books Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's alright. Yeah, that's okay. I don't know anything. Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you for joining me on the show once again. Before we get going, I just want to remind everyone that I am going on tour this summer. So if you live in or around Phoenix, Boston, Arlington, Virginia, Washington, D.C., Nashville, Spokane, Tacoma, or New York City, come out and see me. You can get tickets at adamconover.net slash tourdates. I'm doing a brand new hour of standup. I will take a selfie with you after the show. I love to see you. Please come out once again, adamconover.net slash tourdates. And of course, if you haven't yet

checked out the G word on Netflix, please do. It's a brand new comedy documentary series all about the United States government. I made it just for you to watch. Check it out. And if you enjoyed it, send an email to factually at adamconover.net and let me know what you thought. Now let's get into this week's episode. This week, we're talking about criminal justice reform, which I have to say is one of the most dispiriting topics that I think about regularly at all. As we have talked about repeatedly on this show, the American criminal justice system is a stain on this country's reputation and its conscience. We're the largest incarcerator on the planet.

Police hurt or kill those whom they're actually sworn to protect with general impunity. And there's a serious number of people behind bars who committed no crime at all. Our criminal justice system causes widespread misery and death, especially for America's black and brown communities and has unjustly ended or constrained the possibilities of countless lives. And if you follow my work at all, you probably know that one of the focuses of my life has been to try to understand why this is the case and what the hell we can do about it. Now, after literal decades of inaction, a couple of years ago, it started to seem like there was actually progress on this issue.

The murder of George Floyd, the activism of Black Lives Matter, and books like Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. All of these brought the issue into the minds of the public in a way they had never been before. It felt like a watershed, like there was finally an awakening in the minds of the American public and that change was coming. We started to see city governments talk about restructuring their police departments and investing in programs that could actually address the root causes of crime. We saw progressive district attorneys be elected across the country,

district attorneys who pledged to stop trying juveniles and adults and to stop throwing people in jail for the rest of their lives just for having an eighth of weed in their pocket. In other words, we started to see real change. But sadly, that progress has begun to be swallowed up by a growing backlash. Although crime overall is down, some of the worst violent crimes have been up somewhat.

And whether that's due to the pandemic or other forces, the media has started to inflate the problem in the minds of the public, telling them that it is an emergency. And politicians of both parties have responded by pivoting to tough on-crime messaging. The idea of fighting over policing by devoting that money towards more constructive programs instead has gone from a plea made by protesters in the street to what's perceived as political poison that every politician in the

country is now running away from. And there's no clearer sign of this shift than in the changing messaging of President Biden, a politician who treasures his connection to the Black community and often speaks of how important it is to him. You know, in his first joint address to Congress, Biden invoked George Floyd's murder and said that the U.S. had, quote, seen the knee of injustice on the neck of black Americans and that, you know, something needed to be done about it. But in his State of the Union just a year later, the issue of racial justice was nowhere to be found. Instead, Biden spent time making it clear that he would not defund the police. He would refund the police. In the span of less than two years, criminal justice reform went from one of the most urgent,

important topics in American politics to one that's seen as so poisonous, the president doesn't even feel that it's politically safe to mention it. And I'll be honest, I find this devastating. I mean, a hundred years from now, Americans of the future are going to look back at mass incarceration and our criminal justice system as right next to climate change on the list of things that our generation fucked up to a historic degree, even though the truth was right in front of our faces. So what do we do now? Well, look, let me admit that everything I just said is how I feel in my most pessimistic moments. I'm not always sure that things are that bad, that we have lost that much progress,

but I do sometimes feel that way and maybe you do too. So in order to help me talk through these issues, I brought back on the show one of my very favorite guests we have ever had. His name is Professor James Foreman, Jr. He's a Yale law professor. He's a reformer, and he's the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Locking Up Our Own, Crime and Punishment in Black America. He is one of the very best thinkers I have ever encountered on these issues, who isn't just steeped in the history of criminal justice reform and its promises and perils, but who is also an activist in his own

right. I can't think of anyone better to help me talk through this. So without further ado, please welcome Professor James Foreman, Jr. James, thank you so much for being on the show again. James, thank you so much for being on the show again. It's great to be here. I've been wanting to talk to you for about the last six months or so. Last time we spoke was in 2019. We talked about criminal justice reform, the reasons for the tough on crime policies of the 90s,

the cultural changes that happened that brought those into effect. And, you know, through my work on Adam Ruins Everything, on my podcast, through my own personal work, I've spent a lot of time thinking about criminal justice reform as one of the most pressing issues in America today. And it felt for many years like we were seeing progress, that the ideas about why reform was so needed and how beneficial it could be were really spreading through, even through folks in both parties in many ways. But now, to me, in the last couple of years, it's been extremely eventful. We had George Floyd's murder. We had the protests that came from that. We had a long national conversation. And now it feels as though, to me, that we're entering a period of backlash,

of sustained backlash against the ideas of criminal justice reform. You see a lot of rhetorical return to tough on crime policies from politicians that are winning elections. And so I'm curious what it looks like to you as someone who studies this topic and thinks about it every day. Where do you think we are? Yeah, it's a great question, and I'm glad we're going to have a chance to talk about it. You know, I think it's some of what you said, although I guess I think it's a little bit more complicated in that. I always think that there is something of a disconnect between some of the public rhetoric and then some of the on the ground practices. And that really goes both ways. So, you know, from let's say 2010 to 2020, the period you were talking about, when there was a lot of public rhetoric around, you know, we're locking up too many people

for too long and we need to do something about it. If you talk to folks that were, you know, for too long and we need to do something about it. If you talk to folks that were, you know, public defenders who are practicing in the local criminal court, they would say, well, I'm not seeing necessarily a change in practice that is as significant as that rhetoric at the national level would suggest. And which isn't to say there was no change, just not that wasn't, it wasn't quite as much. And I think the same thing is true now, in reverse, which is that the public stance of we got to get tougher is one that you're right, I'm hearing from a lot of elected officials. But it's also true that a lot of people that are inside the bureaucracy of the system, whether it's, you know, judges or

parole boards or probation officers, prosecutors, there is also still a constituency of people who believe the things that we were saying over the last decade, right? Who believe that we can't just rely on police and prisons and prosecutors to arrest our way out of crime and that we locked up too many people in the 1990s with incredibly long sentences. And some of those folks are still looking for ways to dial back. So I guess I want to say that I didn't agree with what you're saying, but I think that there are competing sort of trends or competing streams that are both flowing at the same time.

Yeah. That's a really good way to put it. And I've seen that myself from looking at it. Like, look, I'm in the media and I read a lot of media. And I think you're probably right that that makes me tend to overweight the importance of the media in terms of what's actually happening. But I see that conflict happening in the media too.

One trend that has been frankly driving me nuts is that you'll see in major newspapers like the New York Times and the LA Times, I've seen this in both cases, they'll put out editorials that say mass incarceration is terrible. It wastes so much money. It destroys lives. We need to reduce our prison populations. You're already laughing. They'll put it in really stark terms. And I'm like, great, these are mainstream publications that are saying the truth on the ground. This is what's so important for change. But then when it comes to, say, a prosecutor is put in place in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco, who is actually enacting the policies that would reduce mass incarceration. cover those prosecutors like they're under attack. They're about to get thrown out by the voters. Their policies are too lenient. Everyone is angry at them. Can this person's political career

possibly survive when they are saying that they don't want to send juvenile offenders to, you know, maximum security adult prisons, right? Like these reformers are doing very, in all these cases, all these cities are doing very careful reforms that are not extreme, but the same places that say we need those reforms, then when the person is actually enacting them, they attack them for it. And of course, it's different writers writing the editorials from the other articles, but that is a, there's such a blatant contradiction. Sometimes you'll see those articles on the same day, in the same paper. I'm so glad you said that because I am still a, I'm a paper subscriber. Me too.

And so I will sometimes have this experience of, you know, I was like that old person shaking the newspaper, talking to my wife saying, wait, how can both of these things be argued at the same time? And I think the point though, is it's deeper than just that there's two different authors, or of course we want to have different perspectives in our newspaper. I want, I don't want, you know, a party line newspaper. But it goes deeper than all of that. Because really what you're pointing to is a kind of instinct and a dysfunction. And it's one

that has helped to put us where we are now as the world's largest jailer. And it's going to be the thing that's going to make it very hard for us to get out of it, which is people say at the same time, I want to end mass incarceration. And everybody who did something that makes me mad should go to prison for a long time. Right. And you cannot, right. And when I say makes me mad, I don't want to, I don't want to in any way minimize it. So let me state it more strongly. Everybody who does

something that has caused significant harm to our community needs to go to prison for a long time. Right. I want to state, I want to state the argument as fairly as I can and to say, but you cannot have both of those views. If you don't want to be the world's largest jailer, you have to begin to think about ways that we can respond to crime and harm, ways that we can offer account to demand accountability and offer redress to people and communities that have been harmed that lie outside of the prison system or lie outside of long prison sentences. And that when you get to the particulars, right, okay, this offense, this crime, this person, that's where the consensus

that we need to end mass incarceration, right, that's where it ends. And that's where the consensus that we need to end mass incarceration, right? That's where it ends. And that's producing the dueling articles that you and I are reading and finding so frustrating. Yeah. So how did you just describe it as like, there's like an impulse that we have. The head says we need to end mass incarceration. The heart does too when we see the story of someone who is locked up for 60 years for committing some minor crime, that we hear about that sort of case and our heart cries out to end that. But then we also have some sort of feeling that wells up in us as individuals and us as a society that demands that punishment that you're talking about. And that's what I've been shocked to witness over the past few years

is, you know, a rise in crime rates in some places, a moderate rise, or even just the appearance of a rise in some places caused an immediate reaction from people in across, you know, the media, across government in a way that that sort of shocked me. And so what do you think of when you see that sort of reaction? Do you think that's something that's innate in the human heart or in the American heart? Well, I don't I mean, yes, well, I think that there are some – this idea that people that have caused harm should be held to account. I think that is a natural human instinct. have studied this across societies and have shown that, you know, when somebody has violated the social contract and the norms of our community across cultures, people say something has to be

done. It cannot be, you know, that this just goes. However, the part where I think that isn't so innate, where we have been, we've learned, and we've been socialized to demand a particular kind of approach, is the idea that what should happen is prison and not just prison, but a long prison sentence. That's the thing that we have started, we've just taken for, we take for granted in this country. And we have longer maximum, you know, our legislatures authorize longer maximum sentences than, than almost every other country in the world. And we impose longer prison sentences than almost every other country in the world. We are an outlier in that regard, but it doesn't help that much to tell people that they do it differently in another country because part of being American is this idea that we're exceptional, right? And we're the best. And like, well, fine, that's how they do it over there.

But the way we do it here is this. The other thing that I think is caught up in what you were just saying fear of crime is widely dispersed throughout a community. So especially when we're talking about disorder and we're talking about, you know, not violent crimes, but that broader sense of a community that, you know that is out of control. So when you start to see a rise in homelessness and when you start to be a rise in people asking for money on the street, that's felt by everybody. But the problem of over-incarceration is pretty concentrated and it's concentrated on the least politically powerful. So what that means is there's a systemic imbalance, right? Because everyone, or a lot of people anyway, is going to feel the problemsif Browders, the people that, you know, were sitting in Rikers Island pre-trial, no charge, you know, never convicted and end up so and end up being there for so long that later, you know, he tragically would kill himself. That's not a story that every American is going to know. And so those of us that are trying to tell those stories always have this additional systemic kind of imbalance,

if you will. Yeah. Yeah. There's a demand. Everyone in the society feels a little bit of worry, a little bit of discomfort, a little bit of just like, ah, it's a mess out there. And people demand a solution that only affects a small number of people. All those people don't feel the effects of mass incarceration consciously. I mean, we do all feel the effects of mass incarceration. We feel it in less money spent on public services because we're spending them on prison instead. We feel them in having a less vibrant society. We're locking up people who could be out there working jobs and making our economy

work better. And that could be bringing, you know, new things, you know, wonderful light to our lives. Right. And so we do feel the effect, but we don't know that we feel it. We're not walking around every day going like, oh, man, it's really fucking up my day that there's, you know, millions more people in prison than should be. Right. Right. And yeah, that's the that's the fundamental imbalance. Your book, Locking Up Our Own, which you discussed last time you were on, is about how so many of the and please correct me if I'm paraphrasing incorrectly, but it's about the you know, how so many of the tough on crime policies were put in place by folks who were really trying to solve what they saw as problems in their communities. Many in black communities, you had black elected officials supporting these policies. It was really, you know, the tough on crime era, as much as we like to pin it on Clinton and Joe Biden, it was like supported by people of all colors from all walks of life across America. And, you know, when we talked

about it last, that was a history story. But we're now seeing, again, such a reaction, such a push towards tough on crime policies again, and again, from many black elected leaders around the United States and white elected leaders as well. I'm curious if you see any resonances in what's happening now with the time period that you covered in that book. I do see some resonances, although, as I was saying maybe earlier, I think it is also a little bit more complicated because I think today we do have kind of another, you know, if you will, like, you know, kind of another parallel or competing stream. So here's how I think about it. You know, you take a city like Atlanta, which is where I'm from, has had a, you know, established black political class for, you know, at least since the 1970s. I mean,

I was a kid in the late, late 1970s, early 1980s. And, you know, all of the political leadership in the city from the mayor to the city council to the police chief was, you know, African American. And I grew up as a Black kid, mixed race Black kid in that environment. So I'm very familiar with it. And if you look and in the 80s and 90s, during that locking up our own period, some of the most really extreme rhetoric that you saw saying, you know, drug dealers need to be locked up and then spit out on the street with nothing but their underwear came from a black police chief in Atlanta, right? And so that was the real height of this just anger. And they were, as you said, addressing and focusing on real problems. It wasn't made up, the problems that are associated with the crack trade. But for a complicated set of reasons, which if people want to learn more about that, they can go back to that last conversation. This is where we ended up was

with some of this tough on crime response. So what do we see today where some of where crime is rising, although to be clear, nowhere near to the levels that it was in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I think that's important to remind people. The homicide rate this last year is about half of what it was in 1991. So we see some of the But alongside that, we now have a new generation of young 20s, 30s people. I see them as a law professor, as my students who have grown up in an era that was not the 80s and 90s. was not the 80s and 90s. They grew up in an era where they went to middle school and high school and college understanding mass incarceration as a defining civil rights and social justice issue of our time. They read Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. They read that.

That was a signed reading for them in high school and college. That wasn't true for a previous generation. So what does that mean? Well, they're out there and they're mobilized and they are expressing their views. And many of them, crucially, are working to build up some alternative approaches and alternative structures to try to respond to crime and violence in ways that are less punitive and more restorative. And the elected officials that we're talking about, they know that they see them, they hear from them, they know they're out there. And so there's more of a pushback, if you will, right? When that elected official who might be of an older generation, who might be ready to retreat

to their logic of 1991 and 1992 and tough on crime and pretext stops and let's put more people in jail and I'm sorry about this, I don't want to do it necessarily, but we have no other choice. Today, that elected official is confronted by, you know, what the poet and writer Elizabeth Alexander calls, you know, the Trayvon generation. They're confronted by this younger generation that says, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I don't want to. I read about what the 90s did. I don't want to, I read about what the 90s did. I don't want to do that. So I'm not saying that that Trayvon generation, that younger generation

is winning all the arguments, right? They're not, but they're in the conversation. And that's different. That's different from 30 years ago. And that is a, I love that that's a deeply optimistic way to look at it. And also true. I mean, there's, we're out here, you know what I mean? I'm just out here doing a podcast, but you know, I've, the reformers are inside the building, right? I mentioned earlier, the prosecutors like Larry Krasner and George Gascon and Jason Boudin in San Francisco, who are like really trying to, you know, change these policies on a high level. Larry Krasner won a reelection fight when everyone said he was going to lose because, you know, he's soft on crime, et cetera. So that is happening.

But the counterexamples are so vivid. You know, like I think about, you know, Bill de Blasio, right in New York, he ran around the time that I moved away from New York. But, you know, when he was running, he was, hey, I have a black son. And here's the conversation I have to have with my black son, because this is a real issue, right? And then he received a huge backlash from, you know, the New York City Police Department, they famously turned their backs on him. And then the next mayor who was elected, you know, the New York City Police Department. They famously turned their backs on him. And then the next mayor who is elected, Eric Adams, is, you know, very forcefully going back to a clean up the streets, you know, law and order approach. And that's obviously causing a

lot of strife. A lot of people are unhappy about that. And I'm sure he's hearing about it from those people. But it does seem like just it's just one office. But it's hard to not look at that as as a backstep in some ways. No, I agree. I think that it is. And I guess it's it's really the perspective that I'm trying to offer isn't – I'm not self-consciously trying to be optimistic, although I'm like that annoying person who's constantly seeing things from a slightly optimistic perspective. Yeah, but my cynical friends are like, ah, I can't invite you. I can't invite you and your upbeat mood to this party. We're trying to have a bitch session.

Come on. Exactly. But I guess maybe it's just because I spent so much time thinking about and writing about the 70s, 80s, and 90s. And it's also the time that I grew up in. And it's the time that I was a public defender in, in the 90s anyway, that you talked about a step back. And I'm not and I don't disagree. It's just that I think that it's, you know, we've taken three steps forward. You know, it's whatever. We have 100 steps to go. We've taken three or four forward.

So we've taken three or four forward. And yes, this is a step back, but it's not, we aren't where we were in the 1990s. And I think that, again, this just connects back to a point that came up early in our conversation. I think some of the rhetorical shifts may be more powerful than some of the on the ground policy changes. So my view will change, for example, if we get, if the stop and frisk numbers under Eric Adams, under Eric Adams, if the stop and frisk numbers begin to look anything like what they did under Michael Bloomberg. Yeah. Then I would say, okay, this isn't just, right, this is way more than rhetorical. This is a full return to some of the worst policies and practices that we've seen in modern American history.

Another thing that I would keep an eye out for, I talked about these alternatives. So one of the ones that I think is most potentially powerful, certainly not the only one, but one of the ones is investing in community organizers. People call them violence interrupters in some places where you have people who are from particular communities who are respected in those communities. Sometimes some of them have been incarcerated or may have been, in their own words, part of the problem, who now are funded as, again, credible messengers is a term that you sometimes hear in this space. They're going out into the neighborhoods. They're working with young people who are at the greatest risk of both being victimized by violence and committing acts of

violence. And they are helping to diffuse situations, diffuse disputes, because so many of the things that we see as gun violence that shows up in the newspapers is the result of things that started very, very petty. Somebody dissed somebody, somebody called somebody out on social media, somebody said something about somebody's girlfriend. And in a world where people are suffering from a lot of trauma, where our mental health services are terrible, and where guns are everywhere, those things that should be small and petty can lead to people dead. They're trying to intervene in that. Those kinds of things, for example, are well supported in New York.

Not enough, not nearly enough, right? But they have developed over the last 20 years and they are continuing to be supported, as I understand it from the folks that I talked to in the city, even by this administration. So I guess that's what I'm trying to say, right, is some of the stuff that is very granular, it's very, you know, below the radar, but it's the kind of stuff that really makes a difference in communities. Some of those things are still happening and are still being supported, Some of those things are still happening and are still being supported, even in a moment where we are starting to see some rhetorical turn for the worse. So perhaps the tide has not really shifted in terms of whether it's going in or out on criminal justice reform. It might just be the appearance of the rhetorical shift. There still might be enough motion happening underneath, beneath the scenes. Like, I mean, a lot of your points are, yeah. Well, tell you what, let's take this moment, take a quick break. When we come back, I want to ask you about, we haven't even gotten into the social movement since George Floyd's

murder and Black Lives Matter and all the changes we've seen around that conversation. But we have to take a really quick break. We'll be right back with more James Forman Jr. I don't know anything. I don't know anything. We're back with James Forman Jr. So one of the, I've been getting whiplash over the past couple years. You know, going back to 2020, we last spoke in 2019.

The year after we spoke, George Floyd's murder happened. It made, obviously, the biggest news anything could possibly make. Caused protests across the country, caused for almost a full year. You had people suddenly reading works like Locking Up Our Own or Michelle Alexander's book, Ta-Nehisi Coates' work. It felt like the message of our criminal justice system is hurting and killing us, that black Americans were sharing with the rest of the country in no uncertain terms, was actually getting through on a wide scale. People were going, just average white people were going, oh, my God, this is what's happening. This is awful. We got to do something. It felt like we were having that conversation. And as someone who's cared about this issue for a long time, I was like, this is the moment. It's happening. And, you know, we had in his first State of the Union address, you know, Joe Biden made a statement, something

along the lines of we have to protect our black and brown citizens from violence at the hands of the police. He said something along those lines. But then in the years since then, it feels like it was a mirage that just dissipated. That conversation has largely gone by the wayside. And just to take as one indicator, Joe Biden's most recent State of the Union, he said, we must not defund the police, we must refund the police. And he made no statement about police violence whatsoever. There was no follow-up to his previous statement, nor had he put any particular policy in place that I know of. Maybe you know of some that I don't. And so that, I thought, was such a stunning turnaround, criminal justice reform going from one of the marquee issues in American political life that

at least the president from one party was making a priority of to not just not being there, but being seen as political poison that he felt he had to shore up his flank and say, I don't want to defund the police. I want to refund the police and not make any other mention of criminal justice reform whatsoever for fear of perhaps being seen as soft on crime. I found that to be a stunning turnaround. What did you think of it? Short answer to a very difficult subject. A short question. No, I, all right. So, you know, you've, you, we talked before about my being optimistic. And so I feel like you've taken as your mission you're like okay i'm gonna

ask i'm gonna ask a question where i'm gonna get this guy to say that it all it's shitty man it is shitty and i'm sad no i'm not trying to do that and you are and you know and you are a good interviewer so you got me so no in all seriousness all seriousness, Adam, yeah, I was almost like I wanted to cry as you were asking the question. I'm so sorry. So no, but yes, this is one where I am very, very dispirited. I share, I gave many interviews in the summer of 2020, where I talked about this powerful social movement that we were all witnessing. I took my son, you know, New Haven is small, small town, 100,000 people. But I've never seen as many people at a local protest demonstration. And the feeling of just of joy and solidarity

that was in the air on the New Haven Green and the walk to the police station. on the New Haven Green and the walk to the police station. I was very, very hopeful about this being the birth of a new and transformative social movement. And I think that the whiplash and the turnaround and using, you know, President Biden, you know, those conflicting state of the unions, as you did, are all good examples of the way things have not turned out the way that I would have not just hoped, but predicted in that time. And I would have, you know, predicted with caveats and with caution. And there's always backlash. There has been no social movement in the United States, especially not one that was focused around racial justice that has not been met with, you know, immediate and rapid backlash. So, but maybe even knowing with that historical

knowledge, I too got caught up in some of the energy and some of the enthusiasm. So I guess where what I want to complicate that with and layer on top of that is I don't think that understanding that you and I were just talking about, I don't think it's gone away. And I don't think those memories of being part of that protest movement, I don't think that gets eliminated. Just because there's a shift in politics and President Biden decides that he can't mention a certain thing at the State of the Union or Eric Adams runs successfully for mayor or Chesa Boudin faces a very, very tough recall election in San Francisco. All those things are real, but I don't think that that means that the knowledge that people gained, the insight that people had, the passions that were generated, I think those get tamped down for a little bit, but they're there.

I think that people's perspective on policing and on the criminal justice system was forever changed by what happened in 2020, not just to George Floyd, but to all of, but to so many people who were harmed or who lost their lives. And then the protests and the education and the reading groups and the conversations and the book sales and all, and the podcasts and all of that, that followed. So for me, then the question is, okay, when you are in a moment where some of the prevailing political winds are against you, but you still know the issue is as important as it ever was. Yeah. What do you do?

What do you do? And for me, the answer is you organize and you build locally. Yeah. you organize and you build locally. Yeah. Because I, first of all, our criminal justice system or our criminal legal system, as many people have come to call it, challenging the idea that there's enough justice in it to deserve the title. That system is a local system.

Over 80% of people who are incarcerated in this country are in their state, their county, their local jail. Over 80% of law enforcement in this country is local. And that is where we're going to have to fight for a more humane, more restorative, more redemptive system. main, more restorative, more redemptive system. So in New Haven, I'm working, I'm founded a new center called the Yale Law and Racial Justice Center. And one of the things that we're doing is we're launching an initiative in our neighborhood, which abuts the law school our neighborhood, which abuts the law school, that is in support of the local jail. So we have a jail that's less than a mile from Yale Law School. 670 people are incarcerated there. If you were to ask most people in our community, you know, do you have any incarcerated neighbors? They would look at you like, you know, what are you, you know, no. But

of course, they do, we all do. But we don't, we don't think of them in that way. And we don't think of what we can do to try to, to support them, and to try to welcome because again, remember, in a jail, and almost everybody who's in the jail has not gone to trial, they are all pre trial, they're all legally innocent. And many of them are coming out very quickly. So then the question is, okay, what are you coming out to? There's a group in DC, in Washington, DC, called Neighbors for Justice, which is a terrific, terrific organization. And they're organized around the idea that if you live near the DC jail, organized around the idea that if you live near the DC jail, those people who are incarcerated are your neighbors. And so what does it mean to be neighborly towards them? And those are just

a couple of examples that I'm bringing up. But for me, that's where I'm working in putting my energy because that's the place where I think that we can produce the most change. And while we're producing that change at the local level, we're also seeding and we're building and we're changing attitudes and we're having the kinds of conversations so that when we get that next opportunity to move forward nationally, when

conditions change, we'll be ready. We'll have really concrete examples of, hey, we did this in New Haven. We did this in DC. We did this in St. Louis. And it worked. It made a difference. Now let's fund it nationally. So that's how I think about it.

See, look, just 10 minutes later, I'm back to my old self, man. It made a difference. Now let's fund it nationally. So that's how I think about it. See, look, just 10 minutes later, I'm back to my old self, man. You couldn't keep me down. Really, my goal was not to beat you down, but I'm so glad that you were able to talk yourself back up. I mean, no, that's wonderful. And that is the approach that I take as well to solving so many of our difficult problems that like local action is the most important thing that we can do. And, you know, my new Netflix show, The G Word comes out May 19th. If you're if you're hearing this before it comes out, you know, in the final episode of that, we profiled the folks that reclaim Philadelphia, which is one of the partners in a coalition of folks in Philadelphia who helped get Larry Krasner elected, the DA there who is, you know, trying to solve mass incarceration in Philadelphia. And one of the things that's so impressive there

is that they have built such a robust movement that despite, you know, all the mainstream press saying, oh, Larry Krasner is going to get thrown out of office by angry voters. Well, actually, all the voters who vote for that local office in Philadelphia understand the issue and, you know, have like understand that something needs to change and believe that he can do it. And, you know, they're actually all on the same page about it, because the the work that they've done there to talk about the issue locally and spread that awareness is so powerful. So I get that. I guess my question-

Before you go, can I ask you a quick question? Do all the episodes, will they all come on and be available at once? Or how is- I'm so glad you asked because this is, thank you for taking a break from the interview to do promo for my new show. Yes, they're all dropped simultaneously on May 19th.

All right, perfect. I want to check it all out, but I might skip ahead to the last one because I'm so interested in that story about Reclaim Philadelphia. And then I'll go back and I'll watch the rest. Incredible. And it's my favorite segment that we did because the work that they do is so powerful and so effective. They have really transformed politics in their city around the issue of criminal justice reform. And they're going, oh my next question, where how do we build durable support for these changes? Because if you look at something, I agree with you, first of all, that if you read Ta-Nehisi Coates' work, he's such a powerful writer, you carry that around in your heart, you know, for the rest of your life, probably.

There's no way, you inhabit his perspective while you're reading it and you carry that with you. And there's so many, so many people have had conversations like that. But when it comes to putting the policies in place, it seems we get support to put them in and then just as much support to take them out. You can look at bail reform in New York, which took many years to have that put in place.

And I believe the governor there has just, you know, reverted back, reverted bail reform back. But only partially. Only partially. Oh, okay. So, I mean, again, it's a step backwards, but to be clear, it was a two-step forward,

one-step back situation. Yes. So, anyway, I didn't mean I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to. No, no. That's actually a great answer to that question. But, you know, it seems to be the case that we have these moments where everyone is focused and a moment for change is possible right here in Los Angeles.

We got a new D.A. We we threw out the voters, threw out the old D.A. who was incarcerating people and never prosecuting, you know, cops who were violent towards folks they shouldn't have been violent towards. And we, you know, brought in a new DA. But since then, that DA has been under fire for every single policy change. These are all policy changes he ran on. He said he was going to do this stuff. The voters said, we want you to do it. And now that he's doing it, seemingly a different set of voters, or maybe the same people changed their mind, it's hard to tell, are going, hold on a second, we don't want you to do that. Or at least that's what the press would have you believe. And so it's, that seems to be the more difficult

project is building that larger consensus around what the change is. I mean, it's a very hard question to answer, but I'm curious if you have any thoughts. I mean, I know starting locally is a great place. Right. So starting locally, one, But to build on that, I would say, and I think that the Reclaim Philadelphia episode that you're doing is probably also going to be an example of this. The other piece that I think is just crucial is we have to move from our critique of the old system to our construction of the new one. And so some of the things that we have been focused on are crucial, right? Like bail reform, as an example, of putting people in prison for not as long, if they're going to be sent at all. But the work that I think lies ahead for our movement is, if we're not going to respond with police, what are we going to respond with?

Building up that alternative network of people who respond to 911 calls when someone's in mental health crisis. People who respond when somebody is suffering from addiction. People who I talked about, credible messengers and violence interrupters, right? People who are in neighborhoods trying to resolve disputes before they even become shootings in the first place. where somebody who's been harmed and somebody who has caused harm can come together in an accountability circle. And the person who has been violated and has been harmed can both hear the deep and sincere and real apology from the person that harmed them. And then the person that harmed them can do, as the author Danielle Sered talks about, move from saying sorry to doing sorry, can take specific restorative actions that are aimed at rebuilding that relationship that was torn apart. These kinds of things that

I'm talking about here, these are pieces of the alternative system, whether it's alternatives to police at the front end, alternatives to prison and courts at the back end, like the restorative justice model is. And my argument is, I'm writing an essay about this, and it's not going to be out for a while, but I'll share it with you when it is. But my argument is that these alternative approaches are so right now poorly funded, so piecemeal, so like you can have this program if it's Tuesday between 12 and 3, and you live in this neighborhood or in this city. But they're nothing near the size and scale and scope of the existing system that you and I are critiquing. But until we have something on our side that can rival the police and the prosecutors in the prisons, we're always going to lose the argument because it is not enough to tell people

that the thing that we do now to keep them safe is racist or the thing that we do now to keep them safe is racist, or the thing that we do now to keep them safe is brutal, or is punitive, or is harmful. We are never going to win the argument until we can say to people and show them, and here's what we have to do instead. And here it is. Here's an example. Come check it out. Here's what it looks like. And I'm not going to suggest right for a second that that building up of those alternatives is easy, is hard, hard, grueling work. You have to change the mindset of a social service agency that says currently, well, we operate between nine and five. agency that says currently, well, we operate between nine and five, right? People are mad at,

people get mad at the police, but the social workers aren't on call at 2 a.m. Yeah. Right. They're not, they haven't signed up for that. So the police, you talk to police and they're like, well, I'm the only one that government that's in, that's at work. Yeah. So, so, and I'm not saying that in any way to be clear, to defend some of the terrible illegitimate actions that can, that just get taken just because you're at work doesn't get, doesn't mean you get to mistreat people. But my point is we need to be at work 24 seven. We need to have these alternative models that we've begun to talk about and that, you know, maybe I'll come back and talk more about them in a year or two.

We need to be open all the time. And that is going to be, to me, that's the thing, that when we can do that, then we're going to have something that is this more durable, more sustainable model. I love that vision. And I'm wondering how we get there. me about the protests after George Floyd was we had this very, we had a policy suggestion from the streets, right? Which was that people were saying, we are devoting so much of our money to the police that are killing us, right? And you had published everywhere, hey, here's how much of every city's budget is being put towards the police.

We need to put it towards other things, right? The slogan that arose from the streets was defund the police as the shorthand for that point, right? That slogan immediately, because, oh, it's a terrible slogan. My view was, no, I'm pretty sure this refers to this general policy point, right? But it wasn't in my control. And it began to be rightly or wrongly, depending on me, I'd feel caricatured as being a slogan for police abolition. Now, there's many people who believe in police abolition with good faith, but that's what the slogan became synonymous with. And when I look at Joe Biden saying we don't need to defund the police, we need to refund the police. Right. That's the that's the success of that caricature, because what that slogan should should mean is say, hey, let's let's divert some

funds. Let's take some funds away from the punitive thing and let's put them towards the kind of programs you suggest. Right. But that caricature has so overwhelmed the debate that it is folks like Joe Biden perhaps can't feel that they can even suggest it because they'll be caricatured as abolitionists. That at least looks like the toxic cycle to me. And I'm sorry to keep bringing it back to that question of backlash when you're proposing such wonderful ways forward. But I wonder how you look at that. I mean, was there a mistake made in the framing, as some people claim, or was it a, you know, successful disinformation campaign or is the truth somewhere in between? Is there a framing that we could use that would work better to make this case? information campaign, right? There clearly were people that were trying to manipulate and twist what was being said, because you immediately understood what it was all, you know, what it

was all about. And I'm not the messaging expert, right? I'm a law professor. No one turns to law professors for messaging advice. Fair point. But here's what I do think. Any slogan has to be focused not on what we're taking away, but what we're giving. Yeah. And I get the point that that wasn't really what people mean by defund. It's not what people mean by abolish, right? Most abolitionists are very, very focused on what they're going to do instead. But that's not what the word conveys. The word abolish and the word defund both convey what you're taking away.

So again, non-messaging expert law professor is going to make the argument that if what we really want to talk about is what we're going to do instead and that's what i believe we should we are morally we morally uh have an obligation to be talking about um i also think that politically we have to have a phrase that is focused on the building the construction creation, not the elimination. Yeah. So, and the one other thing that I'll say, again, you said, well, it's so, right, you said it's so hard and you referenced back to Biden. Again, one day we'll all look back and, you know, we'll be, you know, crying about Joe

Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and all of that. But in the Build Back Better legislation, even as Biden was saying, refund, not defund, the largest investment in the history of these violence interrupter programs that I've been talking a little bit about on this show was in the bill. Incredible. $5 billion. I mean, it would have been transformative. The community groups that I have been spending time with in Atlanta were talking about all of the ways in which this would help them do exactly what you and we were talking about a few minutes ago, not just be on call eight hours a day, not be on call in this neighborhood, but that neighborhood, but start to become citywide. And so to me, one of the great, you know, everyone has their tragedy of that piece of legislation. But at least for me, and I don't know it'll ever come back in another form, but even somebody like Joe Biden, and this to me is the point of when I say this movement is strong and it's having an impulse and it's changing the conversation, even as it may be losing some of the messaging battle at a certain level.

And even as it may be losing some of the messaging battle at a certain level, it was advocates who were doing the work on the ground who were responsible for that being in the legislation. Yeah. Now, I know I understand that it didn't get enacted into law. So it's like I'm up here championing a thing that never happened. But I guess I'm saying that to say that I don't think we're that far away from getting some of the things that we need. I mean, we were one vote or two votes in the Senate from, you know, in my space, one of the biggest pieces of legislation that we would have seen in my lifetime. Yeah. For a second when you were telling the story, I was like, oh, Build Back Better didn't happen. That was the one that they didn't pass. I thought you were saying it was in the infrastructure bill that did pass.

And I was like, oh, good. So you've managed to depress me one time. So good job. Yeah, my bad. No, it's all good. And I think you're right. Here's something I've always been curious about, and maybe you have a take on this and maybe you don't. But some of the biggest opponents to criminal justice reform, it's interesting to me that they are the organizations, the unions of the people on the ground who are committing the abuses. uh people on the ground who are you know committing the abuses right correctional officers unions police officers unions prosecutors unions um and the interesting question to me is look i understand

if you're a politician representing people who are all frightened about crime and you might take that punitive approach because that is the what we've been trained to believe as americans and that's you know the know, the thirst for punishment lives within the human heart, right? But if you're the guy who has to go out there and actually crack heads, you know, you're the person who has to, you know, oversee people in abusive conditions in prison,

or you're the person who has to, you know, stop and frisk black people over and over again in a in a poverty stricken neighborhood. Why is that? Why is that something that you would fight to continue? Why is that something that those unions would come together and say, no, we really want to keep doing that? You know what I mean? Why is it that a prosecutor says, no, no, no, I really like the part where I send the person to prison, not the part where I divert them to mental health care or to, you know, some other sort of diversionary program? And is there a way of those groups ever becoming allies in this conversation, in this fight? in this fight? Yeah, it's really, it is such an important question, right? From a both, from a, from just a theoretical, but then also practically politically. So a couple of things. One is that there are, there are minority, if you, you know, there are groups within those organizations. One thing that I

didn't get to write about in Locking Up Our Home, but I wish that I had found more space for, was to write about the Black law enforcement organizations that tried to form in the 1970s when black officers first joined the force. And some of them had a much more sort of radical take on some of these issues and really did want to, again, not radical is probably too strong, but they had a, they saw some of the racism that existed in the police forces, right, because they were victimized by it as law enforcement officers. But they, for lots of reasons, they tended never to get the voice that the dominant unions had. So part of the story is that the people who are representing the unions, and you see this in lots of organizations, right? It's some of the most extreme voices are the ones that decide they're going to devote a big part of their life to working on this issue. And so they then get out there, right?

And then they then push these relatively extreme views. And there's a whole lot of union members that are like, well, I don't know that I put it that way, or I'm not sure that we really need to do it like that. But they see things that the union has fought for that are important to them, right? They see working conditions and pay raises and things and retirement benefits, things that workers do want. And they're like, all right, well, I wish he wasn't, you know, such a jerk about stop and frisk, or bail reform. But he is, you know, he this you or she the union leader, mostly he in these contexts, they did get us a good, they got they got us a raise. Right. So that's part of it yeah um and uh you know the other piece of it

is that even when if you're a member of one of these you know let's say your law enforcement let's say your corrections officer even if you don't necessarily want you know the longest possible sentences or the most draconian approach to prosecution, what you do want is discretion. You don't want anybody else coming in to tell you how to do your job. So that's where a lot of this motivation comes from, right? They fight against legislation that would restrict their discretion. And so even people that want to use that discretion in a more redemptive, more rehabilitative, less violent kind of way, they don't want somebody coming in from the outside and limiting their

discretion they just wish their colleagues weren't using their discretion in such a shitty way um so i know so it's you know it's a kind of a complicated mix but i want so I'm not here's, you know, not to end on on this note, but, but here, this is an area where I'm not especially hopeful. So I'm not especially hopeful that we're going to see a major kind of reformist energy coming out of the unions or the professional associations that are representing some of the people that are in the system. Because one thing they're really, really clear about is that some of these suggestions, over time, if they're successful, they would reduce the need to have your job. Right? Like, we've been talking about this earlier, where I was like, well, build up this alternative world. And, you know, like, well, don't label it defund, don't label it abolish.

But like, nobody, they're not dummies. Like eventually if we reduce crime and we have a new approach to responding to it that don't involve police, eventually aren't we going to need fewer police officers? Yeah. I mean, if you asked me that question, I think the answer is yes. Yeah. And, you know, look, I'm a good union man. You know, I'm a member of two unions myself. And I believe in the, you know, the importance of every worker to have a voice and to come together and say what they need. And, you know, sometimes those interests compete.

But, you know, it puts me in a tough spot thinking about those unions. Because I do think about the police union turning their back on Bill de blasio right that was a very stark moment and when that happened i was like hold on a second there's their fucking boss you know what i mean this is the what if the what if the uh the marines turned their back on you know president biden president trump i don't care which president there's civilian control of the military is like a fundamental, if you don't have that, you don't have a lot of things in your country, you know, you're, you're going in a bad direction. And, uh, so that's, you know, where it really gets worrying is like, okay, we can't have the cart driving the horse here. That's not a real metaphor, but you understand what I mean? We need to, we need to be able to, you know, those, the, you know, yeah, we need to be able to have that level of,

of oversight to some degree. Well, let's, let's, and here, I mean, you said you weren't hopeful about that, but you are very hopeful overall. So, and you've told us why, because we have these reformers, we have had this change in consciousness, and it's not going away. And the reformers are inside the building. So what do you propose for, you know, folks who feel dispirited, who don't know how to, you know, help this issue in their own lives? How do you suggest they get started, you know, pitching in on that local level? Well, you kind of answered it a little bit in the question, which is I think really two things that people have to do. One, they have to work locally. And two, they have to work in community. Because if you try to do anything alone, you're going to get tired and burn out and just your morale is going to fall apart pretty quickly because the obstacles are immense. And so the answer to where to pitch in is going to vary so much, right? Once you say locally, well, now we've lost the

ability to give people, right, one single task or one single organization because of different communities, that local energy is going to be, there's going to be a different set of issues in, you know, Austin versus in Chicago versus in Memphis. And so what I, you know, would suggest to people, one kind of place where folks can start because they do exist in all 50 states is the ACLU has a smart justice campaign and it's national. So there's a smart justice campaign in all 50 states. And it's a good starting point to connect, to find out, well, what's happening where you live. And so you may not end up working on with the ACLU necessarily, right? But they're going to know about, all right, these are the advocacy groups that are on the ground that are making a difference where you live. And so what I would say to people is figure out whether it's via the ACLU or via another

organization. If you live in a city of any size, there's probably a bail fund. And so you could Google your town plus bail fund. And those are another set of organizations that are doing local work typically to reduce the reliance on bail. fewer people just because they're poor while they await for trial. But almost all of those bail funds have a series of initiatives that are associated with them. So between the ACLU, between your local bail fund, I think most people will be able to get connected to some organization. And then the crucial thing for most people is to go to that first meeting. Because if you can get to the first meeting, you'll pick up the energy in the room or you'll pick up the energy on the Zoom and you'll find out that you're not alone. There's a bunch of other people that share this passion. Or there's five other people that share this passion.

There might not be 100 people at the first meeting, but that's okay. And, you know, my optimism, which we've been, has been a theme of our conversation. It comes from the fact that my parents were civil rights workers. You know, my parents met, my dad's black, my mom's white, they were in SNCC. They met when their, when their marriage was illegal in most states. Wow. Right. And their generation, that civil rights generation changed and transformed the future for black people like me in a way so that it's almost hard for me to imagine what it was like to live in the Jim Crow of my father's generation. And so I think the fact that I come out of that history, that I come out of that union, that I come out of that struggle, that I grew up hearing stories about what it was like, is one of the things that propels me,

because they constantly remind me how hard their work was, right? They're always talking about like, you know, the civil rights movement, it looks great in retrospect, it looks great on in movies and on film, but the work was hard. And we often thought we were losing at the time. Yeah. The backlash seems stronger than our movement. But now we look at it and we think, what a world they transformed, right? What a world they produced. We honor them in a way that at the moment, they didn't feel honored. neck to this final point, this is my dad and my mom would always talk about, we didn't have a lot of people at the meeting. You know, now it's like, oh, everyone was at the March on Washington. No, you weren't. No, you weren't. So, you know, enter into the justice space that you want to be a part of by grabbing on and resting on that history? Yeah. Wow. That was an incredible answer to that question. And I do, you know, having had the experience of myself showing up for groups that were actually working on issues I care about,

in my case, homelessness and labor here in LA. But seeing the folks who go to the meeting all the time, becoming friends with them, getting on the email chain and the group chat, getting on the group text with people who are activists about the issue that you care about, that's transformative. When you're just texting each other, oh, hey, we got to do something about this. And then you actually go do it. That is the true antidote to helplessness. And way, way better than donating any amount of money to anywhere is, you know, or showing up to a single protest is meeting that core group of people and becoming one of them. And like you say, I mean, that was the 60s, right? But we're in a time like that right now.

And we can be those people today. There's no difference between that time and now in terms of our ability to make a change in the world. So I really thank you for that message, James. That was beautiful. Where can people follow you and your work? Oh man, is this where I'm now supposed to be like on social media?

I know, I'm sorry supposed to be like on social media? I know. I'm sorry, you're not an influencer. Yeah, I'm like so, I've sent like three tweets in the last year. So they can go onto my Twitter account, but it'll mostly be sad. Well, you had a book, a wonderful book called Locking Up Our Own. You had a recent piece in the New York Times, a wonderful op-ed around some of these issues. You have anything else coming up soon that we can look out for? Nothing that is worth quoting. I'll probably have some stuff in the Times, some longer piece that I'm working on for The Atlantic. And I have a book project,

but that's probably a year or two out before it hits the shelves. So I'll make sure to circle back with you before then and see if we can have another conversation. I would absolutely love that. I love talking to you so much. And thank you so much for being here, James. Well, thank you once again to Professor James Foreman Jr. for coming on the show. If you want to check out his book, Locking Up Our Own, which he won a Pulitzer for, you can get it at our special bookshop, factuallypod.com slash books. That's factuallypod.com slash books. I want to thank our producer, Sam Rodman, and our engineer, Ryan Connor. And of course, everybody who supports this show on Patreon at the $15 a month level. That's Adrian, Allison Lipparato, Alan Liska, Ann Slagle, Antonio LB, Aurelio Jimenez, Beth Brevik,

Brandon Sisko, Camus and Lego, Charles Anderson, Chris Staley, Courtney Henderson, David Conover, Drill Bill, Em, Hillary Wolkin, Jim Shelton, Julia Russell, Kelly Casey, Kelly Lucas, Lacey Of course, thank you to Andrew WK for our theme song. The fine folks at Falcon Northwest for building me the incredible custom gaming PC I'm recording this very episode for you on. You can find me online at Adam Conover wherever you get your social media or at adamconover.net. And I thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week on Factually.