Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Robin Steinberg on Humanizing Justice Through Compassion EP 345

Episode Date: September 14, 2023

In this episode of Passionstruck, John R. Miles interviews Robin Steinberg, the founder and CEO of the Bail Project and author of the book The Courage of Compassion. Steinberg has been a public defender for four decades and challenges the narrative of how she can defend those people by asking a thought-provoking question: What if your entire life was defined by the worst mistake that you've ever made? Want to learn the 12 philosophies that the most successful people use to create a limitless life? Pre-order John R. Miles’s new book, Passion Struck, which will be released on February 6, 2024. Full show notes and resources can be found here:  https://passionstruck.com/robin-steinberg-on-justice-through-compassion/  Robin Steinberg's Journey to Humanizing Justice Through Compassion Listeners should tune in to this episode to gain a deeper understanding of the criminal justice system and the importance of compassion within it. Robin Steinberg challenges the narrative surrounding individuals accused of crimes and highlights the inherent worth and deservingness of compassion for all. By listening, we can broaden our perspective, challenge our biases, and recognize the shared humanity in others. This episode encourages us to prioritize human connection over fear, vengeance, or retribution, and to consider the impact of systemic racism within the criminal justice system. Ultimately, it inspires us to cultivate compassion in our own lives and work towards a more just and compassionate society. Brought to you by Netsuite by Oracle. Download NetSuite’s popular KPI Checklist, designed to give you consistently excellent performance at https://www.netsuite.com/passionstruck. Brought to you by Indeed: Claim your SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR CREDIT now at Indeed dot com slash PASSIONSTRUCK. Brought to you by Lifeforce: Join me and thousands of others who have transformed their lives through Lifeforce's proactive and personalized approach to healthcare. Visit MyLifeforce.com today to start your membership and receive an exclusive $200 off. Brought to you by Hello Fresh. Use code passion 50 to get 50% off plus free shipping!  --► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to: https://passionstruck.com/deals/  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally! --► Prefer to watch this interview: https://youtu.be/q90iLtaeV9Y  --► Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel Here: https://youtu.be/QYehiUuX7zs  Want to find your purpose in life? I provide my six simple steps to achieving it - passionstruck.com/5-simple-steps-to-find-your-passion-in-life/ Catch my interview with Dr. Caroline Leaf on Parenting or a Healthy and Confident Mind. Watch the solo episode I did on the topic of Chronic Loneliness: https://youtu.be/aFDRk0kcM40  Want to hear my best interviews from 2023? Check out my interview with Seth Godin on the Song of Significance and my interview with Gretchen Rubin on Life in Five Senses. ===== FOLLOW ON THE SOCIALS ===== * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.c0m  Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/  Passion Struck is now on the Brushwood Media Network every Monday and Friday from 5–6 PM. Step 1: Go to TuneIn, Apple Music (or any other app, mobile or computer) Step 2: Search for "Brushwood Media” Network

Coming up next on passion struck. The criminal justice system is infected at every stage of its proceedings with systemic racism, from how we police to what we define as crime, to how we punish, to how we deal with probation and parole, to how people are treated in jails, racism sort of pervades it. But there are also people from more marginalized, low income communities who also have become victims of the criminal justice system. It disproportionately impacts women. It disproportionately impacts the LGBTQ AI community. It disproportionately impacts immigrants. It sort of turns it's ferocious attention on the most vulnerable marginalized communities in America. And so that's certainly one of its flaws. That the core of the entire system is built on the idea

that isolation and punishment is the answer. Once you create a system, it's really hard to change it. Welcome to PassionStruct. Hi, I'm your host, John Armyles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality

so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello everyone and welcome back to Episode 345 of PassionStruck. Ranked by Apple is one of the top 10 most popular health podcasts, and thank you to all of you come back weekly to listen and learn how to live better, be better and impact the world. Cash and Struck is now in syndicated radio on the Brushwood Media Network, Catch us Monday

and Friday from 5 to 6pm Eastern Time, on Apple Music, tune in or wherever you listen to your music. Links will be in the show notes. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here, or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member, we now have episode sturder packs, which are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that we organize into convenient topics to give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the PassionStark podcast. Either go to Spotify or PassionStark.com, it's last starder packs to get started.

In case you missed it, earlier this week I had the privilege of welcoming back my friend, Arthur C. Brooks, co-author with none other than Oprah Winfrey of the groundbreaking new book Build the Life You Want, The Art and Science of Getting Happier. In our episode Arthur embarks on a quest to show you that the power to become happier lies within your grasp regardless of your current circumstances and he draws on cutting-edge science and his and Oprah's wealth of experience and transforming ideas into action to be your guide on a journey of self-discovery and empowerment. You absolutely want to go back and check that episode out.

I also wanted to thank you so much for your continued support of the show. Your ratings and reviews go such a long way in promoting not only the popularity of the podcast but bringing more people into the passion star community, and I know we and our guests love to hear from our listeners. Now let's talk about today's episode. For four decades, Robyn Steinberg, a lifelong public defender, and trailblazer and Bell Reform has faced a recurring question, how can you defend those people? With each client she represents Steinberg grapples with the ethical, political, and practical implications of defending individuals accused of serious crimes. However, she challenges

the narrative by asking a thought-provoking question in return. What, if your entire life was defined by the worst mistake that you've ever made? As the founder and CEO of the Bell Project, a nationwide initiative aimed at combating mass incarceration by transforming the pretrial system in the United States, Steinberg defends those people because she firmly believes in the inherent worth of deservingness of compassion for all of us. In her book, A Courage of Compassion, she shares intimate moments of self-reflection, where she has questioned her own capacity for empathy and grappled with the complexities of pursuing a more humane and just system, within one that is fraught with flaws and challenges.

Ultimately, Steinberg argues that when we fall into the trap of viewing the world as us versus them, we perpetuate divisions and feel to recognize our shared humanity. Today's interview is a powerful exploration of Steinberg's personal journey, as well as an urgent call to reevaluate our notions of justice, empathy, and the need for comprehensive reform. Through her experiences, Robin Schenslite, on the transformative power of compassion, and challenges us to confront our biases and preconceived notions, ultimately envisioning a society that embraces empathy, understanding, and the belief and redemption. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your hosting guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now,

let that journey begin. I am honored today to welcome Robin Stningberg to the Passion Struck Podcast. Welcome, Robyn. Thank you. I'm really pleased to be here. Well, today we're going to be discussing your new book, The Courage of Compassion, A Journey from Judgment to Connection, which was published by Simon Sennick's Optimism Press. And I just wanted to tell you, congratulations on such a compelling book.

Thank you so much. I like to start out the interviews by trying to give the audience a chance to get to know you better. And I know we are all defined by different things in our life, and I happen to find one that I wanted to understand how it impacted you. I understand that your father, for much of his life,

was drug addicted and he cycled in and out of jail as a mental institution. How did your father teach you to advocate for even the most troubled people? So it's an interesting question how we become the people that we become as adults and surely our early experiences and childhood experiences have a lot to do with the path we wind up taking and who we wind up being.

I like to think about, I didn't become a public defender because my father actually was impacted by the system or because he had bipolar disorder or substance use addiction. But what I like to think about is that my father taught me a very important lesson, which was despite the fact that he was obviously deeply flawed, sometimes he was even dangerous. He did sometimes things that were incredibly hurtful to me, to my family, to other people, but that I somehow learned as a child since he was my father, right? I learned to love him despite that doesn't mean I ignored it. It doesn't mean that I would put myself in harm's way. It doesn't mean that I didn't have a clear-eyed

view of who he was, but it taught me a very important lesson, which was not to define him by the things he was struggling with and to recognize that there was more to him than the label of being somebody who had a drug addiction or mental health challenge. And I think that was a lesson I carried with me into being a public defender, which really requires you to accept the fact that people are flawed, they might have done terrible things, they might have made terrible mistakes,

but that there's more to their humanity than the thing that you're focusing on that might be the least favorable thing they've ever done in their life. And so I learned that lesson early on and I've carried it with me into my public defender work, didn't become a public defender to fight for the father. I couldn't save.

I think that's a narrative people would like to put on me. That's actually not how I got into public defense, but my experience with my father taught me, I think to be a good public defender and to carry into my work the idea that people shouldn't be defined by the worst thing I've ever done and that there's more to everybody than that. Well, I'd like to talk a little bit about that path to becoming a public defender. I told you about my aunt before we came on the show her son also is an attorney and after

going to Sanford, he did what many attorneys do, and that is join a big firm. He joined Jones Day. You took a completely different path. You graduated from another excellent law school in NYU. What caused you to not go down that path that so many people do, and instead dedicate your life to defending those in the criminal justice system? So I think it was easier for me because I went to law school knowing that what I wanted to do was social justice work. When I came out of Berkeley,

which is where I went to college at UC Berkeley, I knew that I wanted to do work back then. What I thought I wanted to do was women's rights litigation. I had majored in women studies in college and I was deeply committed to both my feminist ideals, but also to really litigating on behalf of women. I went to NYU Law School. I was lucky enough to go there

and really wanted to become a women's rights litigator. And there weren't a lot of courses in women's rights, and I didn't really have a lot of avenues in law school to pursue that area of interest. And so one of the things that existed was something called the Women's Prison Project. And honestly, it didn't even occur to me in some ways that it was about prison.

I really focused on the fact that I was going to be representing women. And what that clinic in my second year of law school did was it afforded me the opportunity to travel from New York City every day up to Benford Hills' Gratial Facility, which is the maximum security women's prison in New York State. And it is ironically situated in one of the most upscale,

buccale, beautiful communities in New York called Bedford Hills. But there sits the maximum security women's prison. And I would travel up there with my classmates and I would meet my clients who we were representing mostly on civil matters, child custody issues, getting access to health care issues, things like that. And for the course of that year,

I met all these women and heard their stories and I was just struck by how much vibrancy they had to give, how much resiliency they showed in the face of being incarcerated for very long periods of time. And that began to make me wonder, why are they doing so much time in these prisons when I think they could be doing more productive things out in the world and in the community. It also got me in conversations with them about how they saw the system and they saw the criminal

justice system as a place that railroaded them. Many of them didn't even know what they had played guilty to. Few of them even knew the names of their lawyers who were public defenders, which was very surprising to me. And they didn't speak very favorably about the people that represented them. And that got me really thinking about wanting to see what was happening in the criminal justice system. And so at the end of my second year, I applied to be in the criminal defense clinic on my third year, I guess I owed off clinical education in law schools.

In my third year, I had the opportunity to work with Professor and represent people in the criminal justice system in New York City who were charged with relatively minor misdemeanors but were still cycling through the system. And I will never forget the first day I stepped foot into a criminal courthouse and how shocked I was at what I saw. And it was a whole host of things. It was the long lines of mostly black and brown low income people

who were being brought into the courtroom in handcuffs and chained together where justice looked like a one or two minute conversation mostly amongst the lawyers with almost no attention being paid to the accused who was standing at the table desperately to see their family members and then being yelled at for trying to turn around and see their family members. What I noticed also was as I heard the criminal charges that were being read out loud and you have to remember it was in the 1980s and we were in the real get-huff on crime years in America. I would hear the charges that people were being charged with and I knew that conduct was going on in affluent white communities around New York City but clearly

was being policed in low-income communities of color and that was stunning to me. Marijuana possession and trespass and the things that I knew was happening everywhere that only being policed in predominantly black and brown communities around New York City, that was shocking. And then just the way people were treated, they were just treated as numbers.

There was so little humanity, there was such little respect for the person standing in front of the judge that I was stunned by that. And so I had two choices. I could either walk away and decide that my ideas of what justice looked like were nothing like the reality that I saw, but that I wanted no part of it. I could just go off and do something else. Or I could throw myself headlong into what I saw and try to bring some change to that system to work as hard as I could to defend people in a more vigorous, humane way, and that maybe I could do something

to improve the criminal justice system and how it treated people. And so I decided to throw myself into it headlong and work from within the system in some way, so I became a public defender upon graduating from NYU. And I spent 35 years representing individuals in the criminal justice system, predominantly in the South Bronx of New York.

And that I was lucky enough to build public defender offices, the Bronx Defender, specifically in 1987. And then later, Stylshy Rises in Oklahoma, which is a public defender's office that's dedicated exclusively to the representation of mothers in the criminal justice system. And so that was my career in public defense. And then ultimately, when I decided not to do public defense anymore, I thought, I really want to get to the

front end of the system before incarceration begins. And so we launched the bail project in 2018. And that's what I've done for the past five years. It's been an incredible experience in a transformational one. And I hope somewhere along the way I made a little bit of a difference. Well, I think it's important for the audience to hear that. And thank you for sharing that long overview of your life, because I think many people listening to this have an image in their mind when they think of a public defender. And I think we're taught often by the shows that we watch

and by what people say that if you were to ever face a criminal charge, the last thing you want is a public defender. Can you talk a little bit about how people get selected to be one? Sure. So it depends on where you are. The thing that's odd about criminal justice at the state level is that every state and every county delivers public defense in a different way.

And so it is really seated to the states to make that determination. There is a federal criminal justice system, but that's a different way. And so it is really seated to the states to make that determination. There is a federal criminal justice system, but that's a different system entirely. The majority of people in our criminal justice system are coming through our state system. In New York City, we had a particularly interesting way of doing public defense, which was unique,

which was that it was really done by not-for-profits by 501C3 organizations. And so we created the Bronx Defenders in 1997 as a 501c3 not-for-profit organization, representing about 30,000 people in the South Bronx every year. That's how it's delivered in New York City. In other jurisdictions, public defenders might be appointed. Sometimes by the judges, sometimes they're elected,

but certainly public defenders are first lawyers, which I think people oftentimes don't think they're lawyers. They went to some of the finest law schools in this country. For the most part, they are dedicated to representing the vulnerable, the powerless, and the people that don't have enough money to buy representation. That's not to say that every public defender is perfect. It's not to say that every public defender or office operates in a way that I'd like to

see it operate, but people are trying really hard, given limited resources and very high caseloads around the country, and how much they're being asked to do. But most people go into public defense because they believe in defending the indigent. They believe in defending people who would otherwise not be able to have representation. And so I think it's an incredibly honorable job, but even though I know it gets a bad reputation. And I think many of the public defenders that do this work do so with a full heart and really great mind and they bring all of it to the work and to each and every client they represent. Okay, and just for the audience and so you know who they are, I would say about 60% of my audience comes from America

and 40% comes from about 100 other countries. And we're talking about the American criminal justice system today and I think it was important to level set on this. America is home to less than 5% of the world's population. However, about 25% of the world's incarcerated people live in America. Why is mass incarnation a truly American phenomenon? So, mass incarceration is something that I think people look at America these days

and recognize that we have gone in a terrible direction. When we got our get tough on crime years through the 80s and the 90s, which I call that we were involved in the quote of war on drugs, a phrase I still makes my skin crawl. It's like a war on, it wasn't a war on drugs. It was a war on our neighbors and friends and families and community members. And our get tough on crime years when rising crime rates I think scared people and when we're scared we'll do the and so politicians and legislators and people who had positions of power began to pass get tougher

on crimes longer sentences criminalizing ever more minor offenses creating collateral consequences. So if you got arrested for even a minor criminal charge, it might impact your ability to get housing or public benefits or have custody of your children or stay in this country. And we connected all sorts of civil consequences to a criminal arrest,

even if it was a relatively minor one. And during that period of time, we just kept incarcerating more and more people, thinking it was gonna make us safe. And it might have made us feel safer, but it certainly didn't make us any safer. And I say in the book, if incarceration were the answer

to what are fundamentally social and public health problems, we'd be the safest country in the world. Because we've incarcerated more people than any other country in the world per capita. And so I think what happened is we began to shift and began to look at what were fundamentally problems of poverty and disenfranchisement and mental health and substance use addiction and communities that were struggling through historic disenfranchisement and marginalization

and rather than look at an approach that might have been more uplifting or supportive or resourcing those communities, we decided to turn our criminal justice system on them. And we began to solve those problems, quote unquote, and I say solve, quote, by using handcuffs and patrol cars and jail cells. And that just kept going for 20 years. And we weren't getting anywhere, because what we know from the research is that

incarceration actually makes you more likely to commit a crime when you come out then if you had been free all along and it doesn't make anybody safer and that it has real negative impacts on not just the person in jail but on their family, on their community and that there's an intergenerational nature to being involved in the criminal justice system as well. And so it was, I think, a terrible time in American history. I think we are beginning to look back at it and recognizing that we made a terrible mistake. And it came at enormous cost,

not just to the people ensnared in the system where obviously they bore the burden of it the most, but it came at an enormous cost to taxpayers as well. Taxpayers were footing the bill for mass incarceration that wasn't actually making us any safer. In fact, all it was doing was further marginalizing black and brown and low income communities even further than they had already been disenfranchised from the American dream. So that's the story of our mass incarceration. Cash bail was the driver of mass incarceration and that's one of the things that's interesting about that in particular. So in America,

we have a cash bail system when you're arrested a judge sets an amount of money that you have to pay for your freedom to fight your case with your lawyer from your home, from your community, from a position of freedom. The problem is during our Get Up I'm Crime years, judges began to set bail in an amount higher and higher that people couldn't actually pay. And if the purpose of bail was to ensure you would come back to court, that was its purpose. It was really a release mechanism historically.

Because if you set bail in the right amount, somebody would pay it. They'd have some skin in the game that'd come back to court, because at the end of their case, they'd get their money back. But as judges began to set bail and higher amounts, people began to be incarcerated pre-trial before they'd been convicted at anything, which I think most people don't understand, because they couldn't pay their cash bail. And that is a whole host of negative consequences. Even today, with I think a new awakening about the criminal justice system and its flaws,

the majority of people sitting in our 3,000 local jails across America are there not because they've been convicted of a crime, not because they're doing a sentence? They are there simply because they couldn't pay their cash bail before they've had their day in court, before they've had a trial, before any evidence has been brought forward. And so it's still a huge problem in this country and one that I hope we're beginning to really grapple with more. Yes, and I want to dive deeper into that a little bit later. I'm going to make an interesting comparison here. I recently had famed Princeton professor Peter Singer on the podcast. And almost 50 years ago, he published the groundbreaking book Animal Liberation, which is a quest to see the value in all living creatures as the way we're treating them.

He feels especially animals is completely unethical. And he wrote it at a time when being a vegan wasn't even a thing. And yet he inspired the modern day animal rights movement through that book. In fact, he's been called the father of it. In a similar way, your book is really an awakening for the ways in which the American criminal justice system has perpetuated racism and injustice. And I just wanted to ask you, what are some of the ways that this criminal justice system is deeply and systematically flawed? There's so many ways. The criminal justice system is infected at every stage of its proceedings with systemic racism.

So you can start there from how we police to what we define as crime, to how we punish, right? To how we deal with probation and parole, to how people are treated in jails, racism pervades it. And that is a really important piece. And there has been a lot said about the straight line from slavery, traumatic incarceration in this country.

And something we really need to look at in terms of the way the criminal justice system has turned itself on black America particularly. But there are also people from more marginalized, low income communities who also have become victims of the criminal justice system. It disproportionately impacts women. It disproportionately impacts the LGBTQ AI community. It disproportionately impacts women, it disproportionately impacts the LGBTQ AI community, it disproportionately

impacts immigrants, it turns it's ferocious attention on the most vulnerable marginalized communities in America. And so that's certainly one of its flaws. The other flaw I think is that once you create a system, this isn't a flaw so much as white so hard to change it, once you create a system, it's really hard to change it, right? Systems don't go down without a fight and this one has been around for a long time. And so it's really important that we think about all sorts of strategies to change it, reform it, move it, redefine it, reimagine it, but at the core, I think,

the flaw of it is that the entire system is built on the idea that isolation and punishment is the answer. Right? And so rather than looking at a system that we might build that might be more about repair, right? Repairing harm, repairing hurt, repairing trauma, both for the person who's accused and for the person who may have been harmed. But our system can't even contemplate that, right? The way it exists now, it's purely a punishment system that is extraordinarily punitive and really doesn't leave a lot of room for conversations about not just rehabilitation, but repairing, restoring communities and people.

And that's really, I think, the fundamental paradigm shift that has to happen if we're going to reimagine a better system. But to do that, we're going to have to reexamine ourselves. And that is really the thing that, in some ways, writing this book was a journey for me as well. I spent 40 years trying to change the system. I built public defender offices.

I trained public defenders. I created the bail project. We bailed 30,000 people out over the past five years and the bail project and those are all incredibly important pieces and changing policies and practices and laws are very important and the work that people are doing in this field is incredible. But I came to this conclusion after 40 years of working in the system, that the problem may lie deeper, that the problem really may lie in each of us, that we need to do the hard work of transforming

how we see each other if we're gonna make it a progress in the criminal justice system. And so I think that the book tells a story through the lens of the criminal justice system because it's where I've spent the past 40 years. But really what we're talking about is how we demonize each other, how we cancel each other out of existence, how we label each other, how we dehumanize each other. The most extreme example of that is the way we treat people in the criminal justice system. We label everybody, we demonize everybody, we literally cancel them by putting them in jail cells and put them out of existence and out of our thoughts

and our minds, except for their families who obviously suffer along with them when they're incarcerated. And that's how we treat people. But if you think about it, that's how we begin to treat each other in society too. We demonize each other. We label each other. We don't have any interest in getting

to know each other, understanding each other, seeing the connections between us. And so I thought the book was important at this time where I feel like we're so divided and we seem to have such a hard time finding a way to connect because the book really challenges us to look at the most extreme example of what we do and then to bring that transformative work

of rethinking how we see each other to our everyday experiences and everyday interactions with each other. Well, I appreciate you giving me that lead in because you took me exactly to where I wanted to go, which is back to the beginning of the book. And I have mad respect for Simon Seneca, and I think what he's doing with optimism press

is really admirable because he is really trying to bring authors to the table who are bringing perspectives for how we forge a better world. And in your forward, he had a very powerful message. And he started off by talking about the fact that in order to forge this more incredible world that we want to live in, we need to be able to speak with each other, but instead we're speaking at each other. And we reduce those, as he writes, with whom we disagree into caricatures that we can easily dismiss or even hate.

We see this every time we turn on the news. What happens in your opinion when we succumb to this us versus them mentality? So not only do we harm the other person whose humanity we have basically erased? And sometimes as we talked about might cancel them, humiliate them, shame them, particularly in social media, and not provide a road back to community, I think we harm ourselves in doing that. I think what we are doing as well as we are denying ourselves the experience of genuine human connection with other people

who may be completely different ourselves. They may look different, they may speak differently, they may come from different backgrounds. But that's the thing of humanity that's so glorious, right? And that we uniquely have the opportunity to explore. And when we do that to other people, we harm them, but we really do harm ourselves by denying us the full range of human experience. And that sounds grandiose, but I actually believe it.

And I want to be very clear. I love Simon's for it. And it was a privilege and an honor to work with Simon on this book. But he went to ask me the question, well, do you practice compassion every day? Do you go through the world this way? And I had to say Simon, I fail at this every single day. I am just like everybody else, right? I can be driving on a highway and somebody can cut me off and I am the first person to get mad and label

and call that person something and sometimes I have to take a breath and I have to remind myself, I don't know what's going on with that other person. Maybe they're rushing to a health emergency that a family member is having. Maybe they're late for work. Maybe there is a childcare emergency and they have to pick their child up from school and so they're desperate to get there.

I don't know what the circumstances are, but I have to practice reminding myself that I don't know what that experience is and check myself constantly. So it's a process and it's a tool that you have to learn to use every day. And if we don't, I think it becomes very easy to judge people. I also think there's something about judging people that makes us oddly somehow feel better about ourselves. Oh, well, they're this, but I'm not. Or they did this, but I would never do that. And what that also does is doesn't leave a lot of room for you to recognize that you as a human being also will mess up. You will have flaws. You will hurt other people inadvertently

or on purpose. And that you have to also recognize that is part of your humanity as well. Because if you can't recognize that in somebody else, you're not going to recognize it in yourself. And by recognizing yourself, you can get better and improve and make good on the harm you might have caused. And so it's a strange cycle that we find ourselves in. And I think it is a rather compassion is really the antidote to the kind of harm that we are creating when we dehumanize other people

and label them and strip them of their full humanity. I learned as a public defender, right? And I've said that you know, nobody should be defined by the worst thing we have ever done. It just erases their entire experience leading up into that moment. And it also erases the possibility for a better future and for redemption, which I think everybody is capable of. And so when we label people, when we define people, when we minimize people and reduce them to a label or a character, to serve themselves, or even reduce them to the worst thing they've ever done,

we're denying them their full humanity, we're denying ourselves our full humanity, and we're denying our abilities to really create a community that is freer, that is happier, and that it's more connected. It's interesting you use those words and got me thinking that when I was at the Naval Academy, I was on the Brigade Honor Board. And something that I realized during that time that I was on it is,

the Honor system there was really black and white. And if you were found guilty, you were expelled. There was no opportunity to redeem yourself. Recently, about four to five years ago, that whole system was overhauled. So now, unless it's a very egregious act, people get a second chance. And I think that second chance is extremely important

because I would rather have that person learn that lesson in a training environment like the Naval Academy is supposed to be rather than having it happen in the military when you're on active duty or in your real life when you don't get these second chances. And I'm leading into this because you wrote the book, as you said, through the lens of the criminal justice system, but the courage of compassion is really about learning to see all people is human. And oftentimes, that's difficult because we are taught to see people in the criminal justice system, or even at the Naval Academy who are guilty, as being guilty.

And another core part of this book is all about compassion. And I wanted to ask you, how does compassion open us up to the suffering of another, as if it were our own suffering, and more importantly, compel us to act. I think about compassion as distinct from maybe some other emotions people think about when we have conversations like this, right?

So compassion is not pity. Compassion is not feeling sorry for somebody. Compassion is not even mercy, because mercy implies a power relationship, right? Compassion is, as you said, the willingness to travel alongside somebody, the willingness to feel their pain, the willingness to feel their experience. Now, obviously nobody can really feel somebody else's pain and you can't really experience what somebody else has experienced. So in that way, compassion is an active imagination.

But what it allows you to do and encourages you to do is to travel along with that person and get as proximate to that experience as you can so that you can understand them and the experience that they're having. So it is unlike I think pity or mercy or feeling sorry for somebody which I think creates a distance between yourself and the other person, compassion is really an invitation to take a journey alongside them as best you can even though you are walking in your own shoes. And in that way, it really is an antidote, I think, to the kind of cruelty

that we otherwise heap upon each other and the ways that we can't recognize ourselves in other people and other people can't recognize themselves in us. And so it's an invitation to do better and to travel that journey together. Speaking of compassion, I recently interviewed a professor from your alma mater, Cal Berkeley, a Wagner-Caltoner. I'm not sure if you know who Dacker is, but he has studied emotions specifically compassion for over three decades. Interestingly enough, he wrote this new book called A. And as he was researching A, most

of us tend to think that we would find it in moments of seeing nature or the birth of a baby or things like that. But he found that when people experience it the most was when they were experiencing moral beauty or one person showing compassion to another. And interestingly enough, he told me that some of his most gratifying work has been in the restorative justice program at Sam Quentin where he volunteers. And he told me the sense of awe is often thought that it's only possessed by those who have the money to do these expeditions and things like that.

But he was so blown away by the awe that he saw in prisoners who were on death row or prisoners who were facing heinous crimes. But through that experience, he came to the conclusion that we have to stop dehumanizing them. And I wanted to ask you, what has been your experience in similar systems that you have seen and do you agree in some ways with Dacquers perspective? Oh, I certainly do and it goes back to our earlier point, which is what allows us and we give ourselves permission to inflict real harm on people, even when they've done something that they need to be held accountable for. harm on people, even when they've done something that they need to be held accountable for, what I like to say is accountability, I believe in accountability. When somebody causes

harm to somebody else, I think accountability is a critical component to everybody's well-being, right? But accountability doesn't have to look like destruction. Accountability doesn't have to look like subjecting somebody to trauma. Accountability doesn't have to look like locking somebody up in a prison like saying, Quentin and throwing them away. Accountability doesn't have to look like dehumanizing people. Accountability gets us to the place exactly like what you're referring to where maybe we can think about different paradigms of what does accountability look like? That really focuses on repairing harm. And that's really the restorative justice paradigm. I think that so many people are doing such incredible work on, which is how do we shift our paradigm to really

thinking about what led the person to the place where they're at, where they might have caused harm to somebody else, and enables the person who experienced the harm on the other end, the people that in our system people refer to as the victims, right? I have a hard time with that black and white portrayal, but let's, for the purposes of discussions, talk about that. Those folks also then have the opportunity to have a voice and to understand the person who might have harmed them in a different way, which I think has repairing value and restorative value for them.

And to also express the harm that they experience to the other person, so they recognize that as well. That's all about human connection. That is all about hearing each other out, showing up for each other with an open heart and an open mind, really listening to each other, and recognizing that there is shared humanity here, even when something terrible has happened. And so I think that's a very hopeful restorative justice and the work that people are doing on restorative justice around the country is an incredibly hopeful new paradigm, just looking at some of the issues

that drive people into the criminal justice system, looking at that through paradigm, a public health is an incredibly helpful paradigm as well. I think the shifts are happening. And so I'm optimistic that those shifts are going to continue as we really look back on what we've done and try to do better in the future. Well, through the book you profile several individuals that you work with as a public defender and I don't want to go through all of them, but I was hoping that you could either talk about Martin or Faith Stevens

and you can choose which one you want to pick. Sure. Faith Stevens is somebody that I was lucky enough to meet and defend relatively early in my career with my co-counsel, Laurie, who did that work with me. And she taught me so much. Faith was a black woman in New York City who was wrongfully charged with harming her foster child. And that case in my relationship with Faith taught me a lot about the ways that we jumped to conclusions about the way that black women in the system are treated differently than white women. And the entire time I was representing faith, I was reflecting upon what would happen to me

if I brought my child as a white affluent woman brought my child to an emergency room or to a doctor's appointment and they found an injury or a broken bone. And I was 100% convinced that a doctor looking at me would try to find an explanation, wouldn't immediately jump to, you've committed this horrible criminal act in your monster. But rather would say, what happened was the child and child care would really explore the alternatives.

And so her story really taught me in some ways the way that black women are demonized not just in the criminal justice system, but in the family court system as well, because she found herself in dual systems. I had not even realized that your parental rights could be terminated, no less that you could be dragged into court and have your children taken away from you. I knew that if there was harm, there was system would get involved, but I didn't realize you could lose your parental rights altogether. And she risked losing her parental rights to her two children as a result of harm that had come to her foster child, not through her actions, but actually through a misunderstanding of a genetic condition that young child had.

We went to trial on her case in the family court and actually won, and we had a fantastic doctor who testified on a behalf about the underlying conditions that this 18-month-old child had that would have led physical therapy that she was required to administer to him to break bones. And then we went to the criminal case and we assumed we were going to do better in the criminal case because the burden of proof is higher. So in the criminal world, you have to prove guilty, under reasonable doubt.

And in the family court, civil world, it's a lower standard. So we're fairly confident, but you can never be sure what a jury does. And we tried the case in front of the judge who talk about demonizing and dehumanizing, not just our client, but us, who basically saw us as a reflection of our client. And we tried that case and she was actually convicted. And it was one of those moments where you realize that race

and class and misunderstanding and quickly jumping to conclusions and labeling people can lead to terrible injustice. But for the fact that we were lucky enough to find a judge who was willing to release her while her case was up for appeal, she would have been one of the many wrongfully convicted people sitting in prisons across America who didn't do what they were charged with, but yet are suffering the consequences of a system

that couldn't see their innocence through the lens of race and class, and I think quickly jumping to conclusions. One of the things that was really interesting about that case too was, Laurie and I went all over New York City trying to find doctors to look at these X-rays, right, to look at the records, the medical records to help us understand what might have happened to this child.

And I can't tell you the number of people that would put the X-ray up on the machine and immediately say, this is child abuse, I'm not talking to you anymore. And I'd be like, well, can we have a conversation? Nope, we can't have a conversation. That's how quick judgment happened. I understand it. I understand, understand fear and judgment and especially when it involves children, but we really need to train ourselves to be more curious about what might have happened. And that was a real case where we were able to uncover the truth, but that but faith could have so easily been sent to prison and been one of those women at Badford Hills correctional facility that I met as a young law student who would be talking

about how the system had railroaded her or convicted her or something that she shouldn't be convicted of. And Robin, as I was researching this, I happened to talk to one of the board members for the circle for justice innovations. And through that, I started to do some research and I wanted to ask this question, when a person is incarcerated,

how are those inside the prison system facing abuse and exploitation forced into free or extremely low paid labor based on the exceptions clause of the 13th amendment? So what we do to people in prisons is unimaginable and unthinkable and inexcusable. There's nothing. There's no defense possible.

I think about this all the time, even if you thought that this solution is to isolate somebody and to take them out of community because they can't be in community, there is no excuse for putting them in the kinds of traumatic environments and violent environments that prisons are. And there's no other way to describe them. Jails and prisons in this country are violent. They're dehumanizing. There is a very high risk that your mental health will deteriorate, your physical health deteriorate. It puts you in harm's way. Most suicides and deaths happen in the first week of incarceration. I was actually in Oklahoma last week for work. And in the three days that I was there,

two people died in the jail, one from a health crisis and one who committed suicide. And I was reminded again of the horrors of jail. And I always think about the ways that we treat people. I use the quote in the book from Nelson Mandela that if you want to understand the soul of a nation look inside their jails, and it is not a very pretty view of our soul of America right now, you can still believe that people need to be removed from community and treat them with dignity and have them in places where they're not subjected to daily harm and trauma and violence.

And I don't know what excuses that behavior other than vengeance and retribution or we're just unaware of it either way, it's indefensible. And so there are lots of people that are working on changing the conditions of confinement when confinement is necessary. Obviously, I think we overconfine people and over-incarcerate our own population. But if there are people that need to be removed and those are decisions that are left to the system, there's no excuse for the system

having to book the way that it is where people are exploited. Like you said, they're exploited to do work and they're subjected to literally daily harm. And then you think about, you always think about this, like when people come out of our criminal justice system who've been incarcerated and they go on to thrive and do great things, which lots of people do. And I'm always in just awestruck by the ability of somebody to come through our system and

thrive. They don't do so because of what we've done to the criminal justice system. They 100% do so in spite of it. Somehow they have the tenacity and the resilience to get through that system and come out not completely broken by it because our system literally is designed to break people. Their souls and their spirits and their physical health, not to actually enable them to come back into the community better and stronger with a better chance of thriving and living out their lives in the community, being productive members of society. And so everything about the way that we've created,

Jels and Prisons needs to be reimagined. Okay, and then I want to just spend the final portion of our time talking about Bell Reform before I have a final closing questions for you. Bell Reform has increasingly become an important issue that both sides of the aisle are seeing that it needs to be addressed. I want to ask you, how are small battles being fought in cities and towns across the country, and would impact are they having on real lives that are hanging in the balance?

Yeah, so the topic of bail has become a very hot controversial one over the past few years. And I think there is the recognition that unless we do something to transform our pre-general justice system, mass incarceration is inevitable because we will continue to transform our pre-trial justice system, mass incarceration is inevitable because we will continue to hold people in jail cells because they can't pay their cash bail. So we need to really think about how do we reimagine that pre-trial system and take money out of it. I think what's interesting is no matter where you fall on the political spectrum or where you fall on the conversation about criminal

justice reform. Most Americans, when you ask them the question, do you think money should be the thing that determines who stays in jail pre-trial before they've had their day in court have been found guilty or innocent and who doesn't stay in jail? Almost all Americans say, well, money shouldn't be the thing that determines that. There should be a different system. And yet, somehow when you start talking about bail reform, people get really afraid of what is that mean. And I think they have an image that all of a sudden everybody is going to be who's been brought into the system is going to be brought back into the community, whether they're

able to be there or not able to be there safely. And so there are battles happening at the state level. There are battles happening at the local level. there are battles happening at the local level, there are battles happening at just the procedural level in some small jurisdictions that are changing some of their bail practices. I think taking money out of our pre-trial system and taking cash out of the pre-trial system

is incredibly hard because there is a multi-billion-dollar bail bond industry that has real-dested interests in keeping that system in place. there is a multi-billion dollar bail bond industry that has real vested interests, right, in keeping that system in place. And so this battle is a very hard one and a very difficult one, but I do think that as people are learning more and more about a system that money determines who's coming out

and who's not, that money never was about safety. So people talk about community safety. Money never bought you safety. And the reason is two people charge with the same crime who might be a threat to a community. If you have enough money, you get out of jail and go into the community. But if you don't have money, you stay in the jail cell. That can't be the way we make that decision. And so I know the work we've been doing with the bill project and the work that's happening at the sort of local city and state level all over this country

is really trying to redefine if we took money out of the system and cash no longer determined who stayed in and who went home, what would that system look like and how would we create a transparent fair accountable system that could make a determination when somebody could not be returned safely to the community. And the majority of people, I think, actually could be released under that system, but we'd have to reimagine what that system looks like. But that battle is going on at every level. And it's all change, right?

It's all progress. You get to be a certain age and you recognize that change takes time and progress is never linear. It's one step forward and two steps back and one step forward and two steps back. But as long as we continue the march forward towards a more just and fair criminal justice system, I think we'll get there eventually, but it's going to take some time. Okay, and a follow on question to that is in August of 2022, a groundbreaking study on Bel reform and Harris County, Texas came out that showed dropping Bell

money for individuals charged with nonviolent crimes significantly reduced convictions and incarceration. And my follow on to that would be, can you discuss that study and the New York Bell reform law and how they are both reducing recidivism? So, it goes back to what I said earlier, right? When you think about the fact that evidence has always been there, that when you hold somebody in jail, they come out more likely to commit a crime when they've come out than when they went in. And that's because nothing that's happening in jail is working to rehabilitate, restore, repair, or address some of the issues that drove people into the criminal justice system. So all it does is perpetuate the

same problem over and over again, and that same cycle over and over again. And when you put somebody in jail, you further destabilize them, right? They may lose their job, they may lose their home, their family might no longer be in tact when they get out. And so they come out weakened, not strengthened, and they come out less able to thrive, not more able to thrive. And so it's not surprising that when you don't hold people in jail and you provide other services to them,

or you rethink what alternative to incarceration may be as a sentence if somebody is convicted, that you will begin to see people not cycle back into the system. One of the things that is striking is we continue to do the same thing over and over again and then we're surprised we get the same result. It's not until bail reform has begun to allow people to be out pre-trial that we've begun to really be able to look at how crime rates may actually come down, how people actually may not be offend when they're out

because they're able to return to their families and their communities. And so New York is a great example of, when I started practicing in New York City, Reikers Island had like 20,000 people in it, almost all pre-trial, meaning almost all there because it didn't have cash bail, not having big evicted crimes.

And now you have about 6,000. It's still way too many people, but it is a dramatic drop and when you really parse the data carefully, which is bail reform and allowing people to be free pretrial does not actually have a negative impact on public safety. In fact, it has a positive impact. But that's a narrative that we really need to get out there because I think there's a lot of misinformation out there. There's a campaign of misinformation that is a bail reform. bail reform has led to an uptick in crime.

And I always like to remind people, bail reform has only happened in two states in the country. So you can't really make the argument that the upticks in crime that we may have seen during COVID-19 and during the pandemic, and all the destabilizing impacts in the pandemic are the responsibility of criminal justice reform or bail reform. And so I think New York is a fantastic study. Not to say that crime doesn't happen in New York and not to say that they're not struggling to think about how to address mental health crises, right? How to address substance use crises. But when you look overall at the data,

both in Harris, Canada, and New York, what you can see is that holding fewer people in jail cells pre-trial actually has positive results. And that's really important for us to remember. I think the other place to look is Illinois, which is the first state in the country that has eliminated cash bail entirely. That law hasn't taken effect yet, but that will be another very important place for us to watch

as we decarcerate people in the pre-trial context and try to provide support instead. We're running a pilot project there in Chicago where we are piloting the bail projects community release with support model where we are supporting people as they're coming out of jail pre-trial, connecting them to services, these being the navigators, providing transportation and court reminders, and really tracking how there are positive impacts in that kind of support when you're out pre-trial.

Okay, and then I have two final questions, and I pulled both of them from your own writing. How is the American Justice System or reflection of our own fears and difference and lack of mutual understanding? I think one of the reasons I couldn't turn my back on it when I looked in that courtroom all those years ago as a law student was, I know that the systems we create,

they're not being created by others. They're systems that reflect the values we hold as Americans. And so when we see a system like the criminal justice system that is as flawed and racist and ineffective as it is, we have to hold ourselves accountable to recognize that we made that possible, right? That we voted in people that wanted to get tough on crime, right? We didn't do the research to understand who our DAs were

going to be in our public defenders and our judges were going to be. That our desire for vengeance and retribution and our immediate response to harm is to harm other people, that's reflected in what the criminal justice system looks like. And certainly our history of historic racism is reflected in that system as well. And so you can look at the criminal justice system as a microcosm of some of our values that have gone awry. I actually don't think those are at the end of the day our values. I actually think that our democratic values are much bolder and stronger and more positive than that. I think most Americans

believe in equal justice. I think most Americans believe people should be treated humanely. I think most Americans believe that we are all entitled to the presumption of innocence and should be treated humanely. I think most Americans believe that we are all entitled to the presumption of innocence and should be incarcerated before conviction. That's something we all hold very dear to ourselves and when a family member is in the criminal justice system, we forget it when it's other people. And that again goes to that lack of our ability to see each other

and to connect with each other and to recognize that we are each other. There isn't another out there. It's all of us. And all of us have a responsibility to make sure that those systems we create reflect what I think are the better angels in ourselves and to tamp down the vengeance and cruelty that might spring from fear. And to remember that fear can be exploited by other people. And so it's important that you lean into that fear, really to remember that fear can be exploited by other people. And so it's important that you lean into that fear, really interrogate that fear, try to understand how real it is and how real it isn't and what its historic basis might be.

Because when you do that and you get curious, rather than be driven by fear. And you really think through these issues, I think we will all come into a place where we can see that our system should better reflect our own humanity much better than it does now. And I'm going to ask you this, although I think you might have just addressed part of it. So what will it take to strategies by so many people and I every one of us, but every organization, every person who's involved in this work, every lawsuit that needs to be brought, every song that needs to be written, every poem that needs to be set out loud, it's going to take a lot, right? This is a huge criminal justice system. It has its tentacles everywhere.

And so it's going to take some time. But I think at the end of the day, there has to be a strategy of changing laws and policies for sure, changing culture for sure. And then I think really the important pieces is to transform ourselves to really dig deep, to really find that place in ourselves of compassion and love and connection,

and to not wag our finger and be so judgmental, and what it can't so people have existence, but to ask the question, my goodness, how did this person wind up here? How did this happen? What might have happened to them to actually have them find themselves in this position. And what is their potential for the future that we need to do the hard inner work of transforming

ourselves because if we don't, not only do we deny ourselves that human connection to others, not only to deny ourselves the full experience, what I also fear is that if we don't do that hard work, we're going to recreate systems that will recreate the same harm over and over again, because we haven't fundamentally struggled with and really worked on ourselves and becoming more compassionate people who really prioritize human connection

over fear or vengeance or retribution. And that we actually, and I say this in the book, that we begin to see ourselves in others and that we see our own children in others people's children. And when we do that, we will move the needle of justice forward. I have no doubt about that. Well, I believe just as in digital addiction or climate change, or trying to feed the millions across the world who are suffering daily criminal justice reform is also going to take systems approaches to solve the issue because it's so large. And we really have to get under our fears. Like fear is going to drive so much in the criminal

justice system. We legislate around the exception based on fears. And I think we really need to grapple with that and get under the hood of why we're so afraid what we're afraid of. That's not to say that crime is not scary. It doesn't mean that people shouldn't be held accountable and it's not to say you should put yourself in harm's way. But it is to say that those fears are often irrational and they're exploited by other people. And that if we don't get a handle on them, we will continue to act, and that the only real way to get through fear is to be curious about what's causing it and how real it isn't. And that when we find our way through that, I think we can create better systems.

Well, Robin, thank you so much for the honor and privilege of coming on the show. It was great to have you. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed the conversation, and thank you for the work that you're doing. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Robin Steinberg and I wanted to thank Robin and Optimism Press for the privilege of having her appear on today's show. Links to

all things Robin will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show proceeds go to supporting the show. Videos are on YouTube at both John Army Miles and PassionStark clips. My new book is now available for pre-order. It's titled PassionStark and it's all about the science of living an intentional life and 12 key principles that will help guide you there. Links will be in the show notes as will links or syndicated radio show which is now in the Brushwood Media Network and you can tune in Monday and Friday from 5 to 6 p.m. Advertiser deals and discount codes in one convenient place at PassionStruct.com slash

deals. Please support those who support the show. I'm at John Armiles on all the social platforms. You can also find me on LinkedIn where you can subscribe to my LinkedIn newsletter or you can subscribe to our normal newsletter at PassionStruct.com. You're about to hear a preview of the PassionStrike podcast I did with Major General Greg Martin, and we delve into a journey of profound significance. One chronicled in his new memoir, Bipolar General, by Forever War with Mental Illness, this candid memoir provides a gripping

account of General Martin's personal odyssey with undiagnosed mental illness, weaving through the highest and lowest of his military ascent. The structure and the routine of military life basically creates guardrails that you stay within because that's what you have to do because you're in the military.

So for years, I would say from 2003 when my onset for bipolar hit me up until probably 2013 that structure played a significant role in keeping me on track inside the white lines on the railroad tracks. But by 2014, I mean, my mania and bipolar disorder had progressed to such a level that those parameters no longer were enough to keep me in line. And I just started to go out of control. And that's when people started sending in anonymous complaints to the China command describing my behavior, which read like a listing right out of the psychiatry manual of someone with maniac.

Remember that we rise by lifting others, so share the show with those that you love and care about. If you know someone who could use the advice that Robin gave on today's episode, then please share it with those that you care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear so that you can live what you listen. Now go out there and become Ash and Strut. you