Latest / Solving America's Problems / From Prison to Purpose: Real Second Chances That Work (Full)

Transcript

From Prison to Purpose: Real Second Chances That Work (Full) · Solving America's Problems

• 0:00
  Alex: Solving America’s Problems drops into a story most people never expect.
• 0:05
  Rafael Quiroz — fifteen years behind bars, sentenced to life as a kid — walks
• 0:09
  out in 2021, applies for a home loan six months later, and gets approved
• 0:14
  for a HALF-MILLION-DOLLAR home loan.
• 0:17
  SIX MONTHS.
• 0:18
  No decades of credit history, no co-signer, just a man who refused
• 0:22
  to let the system’s label stick.
• 0:24
  Jerremy and Dave sit down with Rafael, Jason Holland, and Jennifer Morehouse
• 0:29
  — three Defy Ventures graduates who turned cages into companies, pain into
• 0:33
  payrolls that hire the overlooked.
• 0:36
  They expose an $80 billion punishment machine that still somehow lets people
• 0:40
  like Rafael buy houses, build seven-figure businesses, and prove the system can
• 0:46
  be beaten… but only if you’re willing to fight it from the inside out.
• 0:51
  The raw truth of how they did it — and what it really takes to stop America from
• 0:55
  locking up another 1.9 million souls…
• 0:59
  Jerremy Newsome: Dave, the people want to know what are we talking about today?
• 1:07
  Dave Conley: In this week's episode of Solving America's Problems, we
• 1:10
  confront an $80 billion prison system that traps 1.9 million people in a
• 1:14
  cycle of punishment over possibility.
• 1:17
  We're joined by three leaders who faced years behind bars, yet rows above and
• 1:22
  built lives of purpose and impact.
• 1:24
  Their triumph shows the system's potential to empower more if it prioritizes change.
• 1:30
  And that's this week on solving America's problems.
• 1:32
  From bars to Breakthroughs with Jason Holland, Jennifer Nancy
• 1:36
  Morehouse, and Raphael Kiros.
• 1:39
  Jerremy Newsome: You served your time.
• 1:41
  You fought for a second chance.
• 1:44
  You fought.
• 1:45
  The hardest part was over, but out here, freedom comes with change.
• 1:51
  You did not see coming.
• 1:53
  Finding work, rebuilding trust, reclaiming purpose, every step
• 1:58
  is harder when the system's built to break you and not rebuild you.
• 2:04
  I'm Jerremy Alexander Newsom, alongside my co-host Dave DC Conley, and
• 2:10
  this is solving America's Problems.
• 2:13
  Today we are sitting down with three extraordinary human beings who refused
• 2:18
  to let their worst day define them.
• 2:20
  They did not just rebuild their lives, but they are continuously
• 2:24
  leading others to do the exact same.
• 2:27
  Holland, also known as just Jason, program manager for Defi Ventures,
• 2:32
  co-founder of Reentry Wheels and creator of the Move Your Mountain
• 2:36
  program is igniting human potential.
• 2:40
  Jennifer, Nancy Morehouse, founding partner of Long Beach City Lifestyle
• 2:45
  Magazine is a top interior designer for Compass Realty is not just designing
• 2:50
  homes, she's rebuilding communities by hiring those others who they overlook.
• 2:57
  And we have Raphael a dynamic entrepreneur and nonprofit leader,
• 3:03
  spent 15 years incarcerated and turned his story into one of executive
• 3:07
  leadership transformational growth.
• 3:10
  All three are graduates, entrepreneurs in training through the Defi Ventures
• 3:15
  program, which is a revolutionary organization proving that who you were
• 3:20
  does not define who you can become.
• 3:23
  Family, thank you for being here.
• 3:25
  Really tremendously excited to have an open, amazing conversation
• 3:30
  about well prison reform.
• 3:33
  going if anything, and what we can all do better.
• 3:36
  So I'm gonna start with a general question, and I'm gonna have
• 3:39
  generous Jennifer, go first.
• 3:42
  Let's start with your fight today.
• 3:44
  What is something that you're building in your life now?
• 3:47
  Family purpose or a new path that shows the world who you really are
• 3:52
  Generous Jennifer: For sure.
• 3:53
  For sure.
• 3:54
  So I'm growing a business.
• 3:55
  It's actually growing now this year, like a few months ago,
• 3:58
  it finally became profitable.
• 4:00
  And I honestly I'm terrible.
• 4:03
  I have no sense of scarcity and I really, still working to manage my money
• 4:07
  better, but I already have started paying people to help me, even though I can't,
• 4:11
  not for sure that I could afford to.
• 4:13
  But I have a, it, it's really important to me to make sure that
• 4:17
  I scale this business by hiring people with barriers to employment.
• 4:20
  And mostly that's for return citizens and formerly incarcerated folks.
• 4:24
  And it's also people that, have little ones.
• 4:27
  It's really hard to find affordable daycare.
• 4:29
  It's really hard to be a single parent, not just for women, like
• 4:32
  anybody who's a single parent.
• 4:34
  Shortly after I left my nine to five last January, another colleague
• 4:38
  of mine also got let go and she was the breadwinner in her home.
• 4:41
  So immediately I was like I'm about to collect a big B on one of my projects.
• 4:44
  Why don't you come over and help me with some consulting?
• 4:48
  That's what I do.
• 4:48
  Anytime money comes into my business, I try to disperse it
• 4:51
  immediately to people that need it.
• 4:55
  And I hope I get better at that and less reckless.
• 4:58
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah,
• 4:58
  Generous Jennifer: Yeah,
• 4:59
  Jerremy Newsome: But hey, you also mentioned that it's becoming profitable
• 5:01
  now, and so there's a corner getting turned, and so you're showing the
• 5:05
  cool universal energy of money that I love to discuss, which is the
• 5:08
  more you give, the more you receive.
• 5:10
  Generous Jennifer: for sure.
• 5:11
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 5:11
  Generous Jennifer: And the nice thing is that I just started
• 5:13
  back up a class with Defy again, and we are looking at financial
• 5:17
  modeling, which I need desperately.
• 5:19
  So I'm getting the support in the areas that I'm weak, like from Defy actually.
• 5:24
  Jerremy Newsome: Beautiful.
• 5:25
  Yeah, I love that.
• 5:26
  All right speaking of Defy, let's hop over to my boy Jason, just Jason,
• 5:29
  who as I mentioned right now, is very much still involved in the Defi
• 5:34
  organization as a program manager.
• 5:37
  So Jason, what's in your life right now that you've walked
• 5:40
  through fire, what's one truth?
• 5:43
  About you and who you are that you want every listener to hear loud and clear.
• 5:49
  Jason Holland: Oh, wow.
• 5:50
  That's a really great question.
• 5:52
  First of all, thank you for the awesome intro, by the way, and for having us.
• 5:56
  So one truth that I want everyone to know yeah, I think that I'm
• 6:03
  still onto my way to becoming.
• 6:08
  All that I can be.
• 6:10
  And in that process, I'm relearning myself in a new context versus who
• 6:17
  I thought I was even when I left prison just in August of 2023.
• 6:22
  I think it's a really important thing that I've learned, and you
• 6:28
  alluded to this earlier, Jerremy.
• 6:30
  When I left prison, I had done a lot of work to reshape to unpack so much
• 6:35
  of who I was that brought me to that place to reshape and my relationships
• 6:40
  with myself and the world and how I connect to other people and what
• 6:45
  outcomes that I wanna see from that.
• 6:47
  But, and I really thought I had a good idea on who I was coming home.
• 6:51
  And then I came home and learned and am learning who I am in a world
• 6:56
  that's coming at me in ways that is vastly different than what I expected.
• 7:00
  And so I think that what I would want people to know is
• 7:04
  that, hey, I'm still learning.
• 7:06
  I'm gonna continue to grow and I'm gonna continue to bring value through
• 7:09
  that to others because I recognize that others are still learning
• 7:12
  and continuing to grow as well.
• 7:14
  Every day it's about I wanna wake up with the right intention to
• 7:18
  the best of my ability serve.
• 7:21
  Receive and give all that I can, and then just continue to be open to what
• 7:26
  Life provides and what life offers me in terms of opportunity to learn and grow.
• 7:31
  Jerremy Newsome: Let's go, man, let's go.
• 7:33
  That's a, that constant never ending improvement.
• 7:35
  It's a skillset and a mindset, and I would even say a heart set, that if we
• 7:40
  Jason Holland: Yeah.
• 7:41
  Jerremy Newsome: and adopt, we continually find ways to become
• 7:44
  better and look for ways to always improve, which is incredible reliable.
• 7:49
  Ralph, what a legend.
• 7:50
  A Love
• 7:51
  Ralph.
• 7:51
  Here's gonna me a fun one for you.
• 7:54
  So tell us, tell me a moment in a moment in time that made you feel unstoppable.
• 8:00
  What was that moment?
• 8:02
  Rafael Quiroz: Oh man, there's been so many both while I was
• 8:06
  incarcerated and since I've been home.
• 8:08
  I wanna speak specifically to, since I've been home.
• 8:10
  One that made me feel unstoppable is when I got approved for a home loan six
• 8:17
  months after being released af after serving nearly 15, 16 years in prison.
• 8:21
  And within six months I got qualified for half a million dollar home loan.
• 8:25
  Jerremy Newsome: Wow.
• 8:25
  Rafael Quiroz: And I really thought it was impossible.
• 8:28
  And I thought, you need years of income history and you need this, you need
• 8:31
  all these things I thought you needed.
• 8:33
  But I was able to navigate that.
• 8:34
  So at that point, I've been home, that was probably one of the
• 8:38
  biggest points professionally that made me feel unstoppable.
• 8:41
  Hey, I can do this.
• 8:42
  I could be like, just like anybody else, any other American, any
• 8:45
  other person that's been out here, I could be a homeowner.
• 8:48
  I knew that was my goal, to purchase a home, to raise my family.
• 8:51
  I've been married for years already.
• 8:53
  We now have a beautiful baby boy.
• 8:56
  But at that point I knew that was my goal, but when it happened,
• 9:00
  within six months of being released, I was like, wow, I can do this.
• 9:03
  And that really made me feel unstoppable.
• 9:06
  A few min, a few months later I scaled my my company to over $2 million.
• 9:11
  Jerremy Newsome: you did.
• 9:11
  Well
• 9:12
  Dave Conley: Wow.
• 9:13
  Jerremy Newsome: That's what I'm
• 9:13
  Rafael Quiroz: Yeah.
• 9:14
  Jerremy Newsome: Well done.
• 9:15
  And for my listeners out there, our thousands of listeners you
• 9:18
  have on your Zoom profile in the, like in a photo, if you don't
• 9:22
  risk anything, you risk even more.
• 9:26
  It's such a beautiful statement.
• 9:27
  'cause I think so many people are just generally afraid of risk.
• 9:30
  And for all three of you, we have just learned that you continually
• 9:36
  look for ways to optimize and to grow.
• 9:39
  And it's a risk.
• 9:40
  It's scary 'cause it's the unknown, right?
• 9:43
  generous, Jennifer's over here I don't know.
• 9:44
  I'm gonna make it work.
• 9:45
  But here we go.
• 9:47
  gonna hire people and I'm gonna recycle money and I'm not really
• 9:49
  sure, but we're gonna make it work.
• 9:52
  I think it's just a remarkable testament to to power.
• 9:55
  So here we go.
• 9:57
  dive in.
• 9:58
  And this is gonna be like a round robin question for the three beautiful people
• 10:01
  sitting here with myself and Dave, take us into a day behind those walls.
• 10:08
  was the hardest thing to endure and what kept you holding on?
• 10:14
  Maybe it was a person, maybe it was a moment.
• 10:16
  Let's go with Jason first.
• 10:19
  Jason Holland: Yeah, so the har I think for me the hardest thing to endure
• 10:27
  towards the end was I. I had been denied for parole, and I felt that I
• 10:37
  had done everything right at that point.
• 10:39
  There was nothing I could do with the denial to make it go faster.
• 10:44
  There was nothing I could do to change that decision.
• 10:46
  It was really just a matter of due to time.
• 10:49
  And it was difficult because was one of those situations where
• 10:54
  like even spiritually, I would question like, what would be the
• 10:57
  meaning or the purpose of this?
• 10:59
  And I didn't know, had to sit with just not knowing.
• 11:03
  And then it was like I need to find value in this some point at some way.
• 11:08
  I need to have faith that there's gonna be a value for this, that
• 11:11
  I can take from this for myself or that I can give to others.
• 11:15
  And so at that point, dealing with what seemed like such a defeat and
• 11:21
  having to sit with it while also saying, look, I still wanna live
• 11:24
  into the possibility of this future.
• 11:26
  I still want to do everything I can to move forward in the right way.
• 11:30
  While at the same time being uncertain with how some of these
• 11:33
  things that I was conflicted with, how it was going to work out.
• 11:37
  I think towards the end that would be something that, that I was faced with.
• 11:41
  And then earlier in my sentence, I was serving a life without parole
• 11:46
  sentence, which felt very much like hopelessness on a continual basis and.
• 11:53
  me at that time, enduring that.
• 11:55
  Again, just that sense of this is how my life is gonna go.
• 11:59
  This is what it is.
• 12:00
  And finally coming to a place where I was able to break that mindset and
• 12:05
  being defeated and taking ownership of my life and turning that around.
• 12:09
  I think that there's these those are the two answers that come up for me
• 12:13
  when you ask that question, right?
• 12:14
  Because there was two different phases in my life where I was
• 12:16
  enduring two types of things.
• 12:19
  And ultimately all of those things now have become gifts
• 12:23
  that I can share with others.
• 12:25
  One of the bigger takeaways of my entire journey is that all of it in some
• 12:29
  way was an opportunity to be a gift.
• 12:32
  Jerremy Newsome: There it is.
• 12:33
  Dave Conley: Wow.
• 12:33
  Jerremy Newsome: Turn the mess into the message.
• 12:35
  Jason Holland: There you go.
• 12:36
  Jerremy Newsome: life will change so dramatically.
• 12:38
  Ralph, what about yourself, man?
• 12:40
  What was one of those moments behind bars that was just so strenuously, difficult
• 12:46
  Rafael Quiroz: Man, I guess like Jason, at different points in my life.
• 12:49
  When I was younger, when I first started my incarceration, the hardest thing was
• 12:53
  getting a sentence of life in prison.
• 12:55
  It's oh shoot, this is it.
• 12:57
  Being in the hole by myself and coming to a realization that because
• 13:02
  I had been so cold and heartless and just shut my heart up to the world.
• 13:08
  I remember being in the hole at one point early on and thinking to
• 13:11
  myself like, I don't have anybody.
• 13:13
  I don't have, no,
• 13:13
  Jerremy Newsome: is the whole solitary confinement.
• 13:15
  Rafael Quiroz: yeah.
• 13:15
  Solitary confinement.
• 13:16
  Yeah, sorry.
• 13:17
  Jerremy Newsome: You're good.
• 13:18
  Rafael Quiroz: Solitary confinement.
• 13:18
  Getting in trouble and then being sent to solitary confinement.
• 13:21
  Sorry, I referred to it as the whole.
• 13:23
  And and just being in there and having a moment to think to myself for one
• 13:26
  of the first times early in my young life, and just like how isolated
• 13:30
  I really felt like I was always like, good at talking to people,
• 13:33
  manipulating really good at manipulating and getting the things I wanted.
• 13:38
  And then when I was in the hole with my own, to my own thoughts, I was like, man,
• 13:42
  I have nobody, like I, I have nobody.
• 13:44
  And it was really hard to swallow that pill.
• 13:46
  Pill.
• 13:47
  And that was a point where I'm like I want something more.
• 13:49
  I want something more.
• 13:50
  That's when I, so that's when I decided to open up and stuff like that.
• 13:53
  So that was earlier.
• 13:53
  So sentenced to life coming to the realization that, how far I
• 13:58
  distanced myself from the world.
• 14:00
  And those are some hard truths to swallow early on.
• 14:03
  But then later on, some of the hard things were just taking responsibility, like
• 14:07
  taking a hundred percent responsibility.
• 14:08
  For so long I had blamed my choices off of my childhood.
• 14:12
  Oh, I didn't have my mom or my dad around, it's because of the neighborhood
• 14:15
  I grew up in and all these things.
• 14:17
  Those were my crutches, those were my excuses.
• 14:19
  So if I failed, I always had something to point the point, the blame at
• 14:22
  or point the point, the finger at.
• 14:24
  that was a hard part, realizing I need to take a hundred percent
• 14:28
  ownership from my own life.
• 14:29
  And so that was another hard part.
• 14:31
  As I transitioned Jason said, just that due through different phases in my
• 14:35
  life, there was different hard parts.
• 14:36
  And one of the lar, one of the hard parts.
• 14:39
  Right before I was released, I was actually the chairman for the Men's
• 14:41
  Advisory Council during covid.
• 14:44
  So during Covid I was the chairman for the Men's advisory Council.
• 14:47
  And so I was the go between, between the inmate population and
• 14:51
  the staff, prison staff, and I felt like I couldn't do anything.
• 14:54
  The inmate population said, Hey, you need to have, give us yard
• 14:58
  time and blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 14:59
  I would go to the staff and say, Hey, we need yard time,
• 15:01
  we need sports, we need this.
• 15:03
  And the prison staff would be like, look, bro, it's out of our hands.
• 15:06
  I don't know what to tell you.
• 15:07
  It's coming down from Sacramento.
• 15:08
  So the officers got tired of hearing from me.
• 15:11
  inmate population felt like I wasn't doing enough, and I felt every day for
• 15:16
  almost a whole year, I felt like the most hated man on that entire yard.
• 15:20
  And that was hard.
• 15:22
  was really hard.
• 15:22
  But I'll tell you what, I learned important leadership skills during that
• 15:26
  time, during my last year in prison.
• 15:27
  I came home in 2021.
• 15:29
  And during that last year of prison, I really learned some crucial
• 15:32
  and critical leadership skills that I didn't know I had before.
• 15:35
  And so that was one of the hardest times as well for me.
• 15:39
  Jerremy Newsome: man.
• 15:39
  Thank you for sharing that.
• 15:41
  I really heard you say is you chose to be a victor and not a victim.
• 15:45
  We all have circumstances regardless to what they are.
• 15:49
  Rafael Quiroz: Right.
• 15:49
  Jerremy Newsome: you're right, they can happen to us, they can happen for us.
• 15:52
  We can be born, we can have all the things and the cards are gonna be
• 15:56
  against us, but at the same time, single person is making some level of choice.
• 16:02
  And once we get to go, yeah, but I did do that.
• 16:04
  That was me.
• 16:05
  Even though other people did or said or whatever.
• 16:08
  You turn that spotlight inward and then you started turning
• 16:12
  it outward again, which
• 16:13
  Rafael Quiroz: hundred percent.
• 16:14
  Jerremy Newsome: awesome.
• 16:15
  Ah, thank you.
• 16:16
  Thank you.
• 16:17
  Thank you, Jennifer.
• 16:18
  Generous.
• 16:19
  Jennifer, how'd you get over those hard moments?
• 16:21
  What were they like?
• 16:22
  Generous Jennifer: Okay.
• 16:23
  So I always feel the need to.
• 16:24
  Disclose this when I'm in these spaces.
• 16:26
  But I got arrested two times and both times I was able to bail myself out.
• 16:31
  So I didn't do time like some of the other folks here.
• 16:35
  But the second time, my sense of self-worth was like still completely
• 16:40
  in the dumps and it stayed that way until my dad approached me,
• 16:44
  like he saw what I was doing.
• 16:46
  He was nice and hands off, but he could tell that I was still on drugs.
• 16:50
  I was never coming home.
• 16:52
  And he approached me and just said, why don't you go back to school?
• 16:55
  I will help you pay for it.
• 16:56
  And it was like a light bulb went off.
• 16:58
  I could not believe that somebody still believed in me.
• 17:00
  So you, Ralph say that you felt like the most hated person on the yard, that would
• 17:04
  be so fucking hard to deal with because I've realized that the esteem of others
• 17:09
  is what affects me more than anything.
• 17:13
  so getting my dad's esteem and knowing that he still believed
• 17:16
  in me, I was like, that's it.
• 17:17
  I'm getting straight A's.
• 17:18
  I'm gonna get valedictorian.
• 17:19
  I'm not just going back to school.
• 17:20
  I have to be the best.
• 17:21
  And I did, I went back to school and I did get straight A's and I volunteered
• 17:25
  so much that I got an award from Obama and I did make valedictorian
• 17:29
  and I was probably the most decorated valedictorian they ever had.
• 17:33
  I was the first, architecture major, valedictorian amongst a lot of other
• 17:38
  things, but, so that's what's made me like, I'm giving that back to the world.
• 17:42
  I'm starting this business, I'm starting a scholarship.
• 17:44
  It's gonna go to other people that didn't have the same resources I did.
• 17:47
  Also, my husband served 11 years.
• 17:49
  He's also an ex-felon and now he's an electrical engineer.
• 17:53
  So it's just really important to both of us to give that back to the world,
• 17:57
  the same opportunities that we were lucky enough to have, because we still
• 18:00
  have the support from a strong family network not everybody has, which can be
• 18:06
  a make or break difference for people.
• 18:07
  Like the resources you have and how much people believe in you, I think
• 18:10
  is really what goes a long ways.
• 18:12
  Yeah.
• 18:13
  Did that answer the question?
• 18:14
  Dave Conley: Oh yeah.
• 18:15
  Generous Jennifer: Okay.
• 18:17
  Dave Conley: And Jennifer I want to piggyback on that.
• 18:19
  It's like I heard, like it was important to you that, your
• 18:21
  dad was proud of you in this.
• 18:23
  And when Jeremiah, when Jerremy and I were at the women's prison last week, one
• 18:31
  of the things I brought back with me was what an honor it was and how the remarks
• 18:38
  from the other EITs that were there.
• 18:41
  Was just to, to actually just see them and be with them and ha have
• 18:47
  them just being treated normal.
• 18:50
  And I got more than one comment that it's you're not judging me.
• 18:56
  And I'm like,
• 18:56
  Generous Jennifer: oh
• 18:57
  We,
• 18:58
  Dave Conley: I will judge your business idea, but not not you and I'm, this
• 19:03
  system is supposed to help and, but, 50% of the people who are inside deal
• 19:10
  with real mental health struggles.
• 19:14
  So how, what were those, what was that like for you?
• 19:19
  What, what were the conditions, how did those conditions hit you?
• 19:23
  Generous Jennifer: I'm sorry, I'm struggling.
• 19:24
  The mental health struggles, sorry, I'm trying to think.
• 19:28
  I think for me it was definitely the issue of self-worth and I think in, I was in a
• 19:34
  world with a lot of sex work being around the men in that world that were powerful,
• 19:40
  they were doctors and lawyers and had lots of money and not being held in their
• 19:46
  esteem, like all of that, definitely just like that message to me was not helpful,
• 19:52
  obviously for my self worth and for what I thought my future was gonna be.
• 19:57
  sorry, what were you asking?
• 19:59
  Dave Conley: I think it's at that, particularly inside, there's a, it's
• 20:02
  a big mental game and some of it's like real, you're gonna run into
• 20:06
  or even have your own mental issues and you're gonna run into people
• 20:09
  who have untreated mental issues.
• 20:11
  What's that, what's the mental game like?
• 20:14
  Because, coming from that place, just the simple act of treating somebody with
• 20:19
  some basic humanity was almost a relief.
• 20:23
  Like they weren't feeling judged.
• 20:24
  It was.
• 20:25
  Generous Jennifer: can speak better to this because it sounds like it's also
• 20:28
  really rooted in toxic masculinity, like this being okay with kindness.
• 20:34
  Dave Conley: What about you, Ralph?
• 20:35
  What's the mental game like?
• 20:37
  Rafael Quiroz: Man, there's so much, there's so much, what comes to mind
• 20:39
  for me speaking for myself, early on, young, full of pride and ego.
• 20:44
  I want to be the tough guy.
• 20:45
  I'm stronger, I'm better than you.
• 20:47
  I'll beat you up.
• 20:48
  That mentality, that persona adopting that, and it's tough.
• 20:51
  Everybody's who's gonna fold and so he it can be tough and it puts, sometimes
• 20:55
  it puts it, it can break a lot of people.
• 20:57
  It can break a lot of people, so the mental game is it's definitely in
• 21:00
  there, especially speaking against, speaking for myself, being young and
• 21:04
  immature, wanting to fit in, wanting to be cool, wanting to be that guy.
• 21:08
  Then just putting all this additional stress on myself.
• 21:11
  And then later on as I'm growing and maturing that you're right.
• 21:15
  Remember actually defy, I remember when we had a graduation at Defy
• 21:18
  Ventures, one of our first visitors.
• 21:20
  We had some visitors come in and they spoke to us like regular people.
• 21:24
  The exercise that really brought it all together for me regarding
• 21:27
  mental health and those type of things was step to the line exercise.
• 21:31
  I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with the step to the line exercise,
• 21:34
  but they said, I remember across from me was a sheriff or a detective
• 21:38
  or a somebody in law enforcement.
• 21:39
  I remember that specifically.
• 21:40
  He was in law enforcement.
• 21:41
  And the question was, have you ever committed a crime
• 21:44
  and not got caught for it?
• 21:45
  I get the goosebumps thinking about it even now to this day.
• 21:48
  And he stepped to the line.
• 21:51
  He stepped to the line, and in my head, my mind was blown.
• 21:54
  I'm like, this sheriff or detective or this law enforcement person stepping
• 21:59
  to the line talking about crimes he committed and didn't get caught.
• 22:02
  Did you ever get in fight when you're in high school?
• 22:04
  That's a crime.
• 22:05
  And he stepped to the line and it it brought me back to like humanity.
• 22:09
  I don't have to have this persona.
• 22:10
  I'm not so far different from everybody else in America.
• 22:15
  So that took a burden off of my mental health that took a burden off
• 22:18
  of that stress of thinking I have to have a certain persona in this place.
• 22:22
  And then and then coming after, after that.
• 22:25
  Just staying strong.
• 22:26
  This is, for me I think this is something, whether you're in prison or
• 22:30
  out of prison, just staying mentally strong and fit is an ongoing thing.
• 22:33
  Self-development is a lifelong journey and not a destination.
• 22:36
  I say it's a lifelong journey and not a destination.
• 22:39
  So after getting to that place of more confidence, comfortability, living life
• 22:44
  based on principles, now the mental game is just, Ralph, be honest with yourself.
• 22:49
  Stop making excuses, discipline, type of things.
• 22:53
  And that can just be an everyday struggle, even now to this day.
• 22:55
  Hey, did I really need to eat that extra slice of pizza?
• 22:59
  Did I really need to skip my leg day?
• 23:01
  Right now, it's the, that's where the, that's where the mental game
• 23:04
  has come, but it's definitely come from a long journey though.
• 23:06
  So I hope that answered your question, Dave.
• 23:08
  Dave Conley: Man, we talked about that exact same question.
• 23:12
  It was, and for a lot of us that stepped up to that line, it's like, how many
• 23:17
  times did we get behind the wheel, when we shouldn't have, and I absolutely talked
• 23:22
  to a person who was in the exact same situation and she got into an accident and
• 23:27
  now she's behind bars and that's for real.
• 23:31
  Yeah.
• 23:31
  Thank you Ralph.
• 23:32
  Rafael Quiroz: Percent.
• 23:33
  Dave Conley: Jason, you have anything to come in with on
• 23:35
  the mental game around this?
• 23:37
  Jason Holland: Yeah, no I think that my experience is much like what Ralph
• 23:41
  was describing early on for myself and many of my, associates in there.
• 23:47
  I think we were just trying to, hang on.
• 23:49
  I think we were just trying to survive and we saw a we just saw
• 23:52
  ourselves in a situation where it was like, Hey man, we're gonna make
• 23:56
  the best out of this as possible.
• 23:58
  But we didn't, I don't think that, speaking for myself, I don't think that
• 24:03
  I realized that what had happened was all of us had had this inheritance in
• 24:08
  the prison system that we didn't really realize was there, like adopting the
• 24:13
  ideals and the values and the behaviors and the way of coping in that environment.
• 24:18
  And so in that, I think that there was this sort of.
• 24:25
  Hanging on thing.
• 24:27
  I just don't wanna break as Ralph alluded to.
• 24:30
  then eventually, once I started unpacking of that, ev all the scripts
• 24:36
  that I had adopted along the way in there started thinking more for myself,
• 24:42
  I remember I, when I really started having the turnaround in my life,
• 24:44
  I read a Tony Robbins book and it
• 24:47
  The way I viewed my potential and the way that I viewed the, how I
• 24:52
  was interacting with the world.
• 24:55
  And once I started surrounding myself with new people, once I started really looking
• 25:01
  at my belief system and how I could create something new for myself, I realized
• 25:08
  that my life had become like a garden.
• 25:10
  And I could cultivate it, right?
• 25:11
  I could cultivate the relationships, I could cultivate my mental health.
• 25:15
  And it became easier because before that, I thought that I was
• 25:19
  just a victim of circumstance.
• 25:20
  And I thought that I was a victim of like my mood swings and my depression,
• 25:24
  and I was just fending it off.
• 25:26
  It was like a constant battle of fending these things off and could I just survive?
• 25:31
  But once I started making these shifts, slowly but surely, I. was
• 25:36
  no longer me fending things off.
• 25:37
  It was like, what can I create?
• 25:39
  What can I take part in generating for myself and others?
• 25:42
  And then surrounding myself with new people getting involved with
• 25:46
  reeducating myself investing in my personal development.
• 25:50
  Everything that comes with the whole development process in prison that's now
• 25:53
  offered with groups, education, et cetera.
• 25:56
  Suddenly my life was changed and I found a whole new level of freedom
• 25:59
  that I had never enjoyed before, right?
• 26:03
  It just, I was waiting physically to be free and come home, but in there I was
• 26:08
  operating on a whole new level of what was possible for me, and my mental health
• 26:12
  as a result was drastically improved.
• 26:16
  And so I think that's one way of describing how the
• 26:19
  process unraveled for me.
• 26:21
  And it was really just about becoming increasingly open to en
• 26:26
  entertaining new ideas about what could be for myself and others.
• 26:31
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 26:33
  Yes.
• 26:33
  So speaking of others, talking plural here, right?
• 26:37
  America locks up 1.9 million people more than almost anywhere in the world.
• 26:47
  Was the system that you saw or you experienced, was it trying to rebuild
• 26:53
  you, you, or keep you locked in?
• 26:58
  Tell us a story.
• 26:59
  Let's go with Jason first.
• 27:01
  Jason Holland: Yeah, in 1995, was sentenced to life without parole.
• 27:08
  and I was guilty of everything that they accused me of.
• 27:12
  I went in and I think at that time, when I look back at what prison was in
• 27:17
  California prison, especially level four institutions, I don't think that there
• 27:23
  was much intention for rehabilitation in
• 27:28
  Releasing of us who had been deemed unsalvageable, maybe that's too
• 27:33
  extreme, but I think that life without parole is a sentence that indicates
• 27:37
  that you sh shouldn't come home.
• 27:39
  I'm not gonna say that there was no opportunities available.
• 27:43
  think that there were, I just was too, I was not ready to see them or take
• 27:47
  advantage of them where I was at the time.
• 27:51
  Cut to 20 years later, suddenly the California prison system started
• 27:56
  infusing many yards with groups.
• 28:00
  They started making educational programs increasingly easier to access vocational
• 28:05
  programs, increasingly easier to access.
• 28:08
  And I'm not gonna say that it's a perfect system.
• 28:10
  I'm gonna say that there has been a lot of work from people both in CDCR
• 28:14
  and outside to provide opportunities for people that they know were
• 28:18
  gonna be coming home at some point to have the most success possible.
• 28:24
  And so I would say that in the beginning it did not seem to me like
• 28:27
  there was a lot of opportunity or a lot of intention for letting us go.
• 28:32
  It seemed like a warehousing system at the time.
• 28:35
  Towards the end, I think that they realized that they had made a big
• 28:37
  mistake in that, and that they were gonna have to release people.
• 28:40
  And if they were gonna release them, they were gonna do it as safely as
• 28:43
  possible by helping them upgrade and skill education and personal development.
• 28:48
  And I think there's been a lot of strides to towards that.
• 28:51
  And it, that's what's impacted my life in a lot of ways.
• 28:55
  But is it perfect?
• 28:56
  No.
• 28:57
  Has it changed?
• 28:58
  To a large degree, I would say yes.
• 29:00
  In my opinion, I.
• 29:01
  Jerremy Newsome: And Jason, you said they had to make that change.
• 29:04
  Why the imperative impetus to make that change?
• 29:09
  Jason Holland: In my opinion, I think that basically it was costing too much money.
• 29:12
  It was a failing business model,
• 29:14
  That it was unsustainable and it was basically like the pig that's
• 29:18
  gotten too fat to support its own weight and it's gonna go down.
• 29:22
  And so the feds came in at one point, and basically, if I understand it
• 29:27
  correctly, we're the CDCR, you gotta release people, you gotta release 'em.
• 29:32
  It's, it just cannot continue.
• 29:34
  And so had to release people what are you gonna do?
• 29:37
  You wanna do it as responsibly as possible?
• 29:39
  'cause if these guys have been in here, and these women have been in
• 29:41
  here for 20 years and they've had no rehabilitative programming, what do you
• 29:45
  expect them to do when they go home?
• 29:46
  If they haven't been upskilled, if their education hasn't increased,
• 29:50
  if they haven't learned any kind of like causative factors for what
• 29:52
  brought 'em here in the first place, they're gonna go home and be met with
• 29:55
  a whole bunch of new stress factors.
• 29:58
  How are they gonna react to that?
• 29:59
  So I think that this is my, my theory that they recognize that th
• 30:04
  this was the writing on the wall.
• 30:06
  And so to release people as responsibly as possible they've done what they can
• 30:12
  up until now to provide programming.
• 30:15
  Is it perfect?
• 30:15
  No, but I do take it as there, there has been increased opportunities for growth.
• 30:21
  Jerremy Newsome: Gotcha.
• 30:22
  Thank you.
• 30:22
  Jason Holland: Yep.
• 30:23
  Jerremy Newsome: about you?
• 30:23
  What did you feel or see or experience or notice?
• 30:27
  Rafael Quiroz: Yeah, I would say kinda like Jason said, in
• 30:29
  hindsight, hindsight's 2020, right?
• 30:31
  There
• 30:32
  Available.
• 30:33
  For example, if you wanna be really proactive, go to the library,
• 30:36
  get a book, a self-help book, read that, start from there.
• 30:39
  And there was opportunities available.
• 30:40
  But, especially in that prison culture, the prison mentality, and just taking
• 30:45
  responsibility for myself, I'm not looking for those opportunities.
• 30:48
  I'm more focused and like what Dave was asking earlier, the
• 30:51
  mental game being this tough guy.
• 30:52
  And so if there was opportunities, I just wasn't looking for them.
• 30:57
  I didn't see them.
• 30:58
  And but as Jason mentioned, things definitely changed
• 31:01
  the whole prison culture.
• 31:03
  People were started fighting to go home.
• 31:05
  Pri people just started fighting to go home, signing up for
• 31:08
  programs and things of that nature.
• 31:11
  So it did become more available.
• 31:12
  But I think going back a little bit, I think part of it is also
• 31:15
  part of the officers, right?
• 31:16
  And I'm not trying to I'm not, I'm big on taking a hundred percent responsibility,
• 31:20
  not pointing the finger, but just speaking in general terms, I think the officers,
• 31:24
  as a young man in prison, the officers, it feels like the officers, either
• 31:28
  talk down to you or look down on you.
• 31:30
  You feel less thin.
• 31:32
  And then you already, for me, speaking for myself, you have a
• 31:35
  separation between officer civilian, good guy, me, inmate bad guy.
• 31:42
  In, in my mind, I had created that separation.
• 31:45
  I'm not them.
• 31:46
  I'm not a good guy.
• 31:47
  I'm a bad guy.
• 31:48
  And at least that was my experience.
• 31:50
  I felt maybe if the officers had more, just talk to us like regular people.
• 31:53
  For example, going back to Defy when visitors are coming in and they talk
• 31:56
  to us like regular human beings, it's it's almost foreign at first.
• 31:59
  It's oh, I'm not, we're not supposed to talk like this.
• 32:01
  We're not supposed to have this kind of relationship and dialogue.
• 32:04
  I'm just like, Hey, sir. Yes.
• 32:06
  Take me to myself.
• 32:07
  That's it.
• 32:07
  That's all right.
• 32:09
  so I think the officers, maybe being able to dialogue differently with inmates.
• 32:14
  And what I think of is I was at a yard and man, the leadership there from the
• 32:18
  lieutenant on down his name the lieutenant that I'm speaking about knows who he is.
• 32:23
  I'm not sure if I should say his name or not, but I'm gonna
• 32:25
  just keep it to myself for now.
• 32:26
  But I was on a yard, the lieutenant down was freaking super cool, and
• 32:30
  he talked to us like regular people.
• 32:32
  That's where I actually did the five entrance program.
• 32:34
  That's actually where I did the Defy Ventures program.
• 32:36
  And when the officers talk to you, like a regular person.
• 32:40
  When they talk to me like a regular person, it made me feel
• 32:42
  like I am a regular person.
• 32:44
  Wait, maybe I should sign up for these programs.
• 32:46
  Maybe I was in a program and one of the officers came in, they
• 32:50
  listen, one of the officers came in.
• 32:52
  He's oh, that's cool.
• 32:53
  That's something I'm learning from you guys.
• 32:54
  Him saying that I'm an officer and I'm learning from you
• 32:57
  guys, meant something to us.
• 32:59
  Oh shoot, we're human.
• 33:01
  Where there's not that separation between officer and inmate, closed down.
• 33:04
  So that particular yard the leadership from the officers, the leadership
• 33:09
  from the officers, close that gap between inmates and officers.
• 33:13
  And man, we can go to yard, say, Hey, officer how's it going?
• 33:16
  Good morning.
• 33:17
  And that made you wanna be more proactive, more pro-social, go in
• 33:21
  there, take programs, go to school, get be encouraged At some prisons,
• 33:27
  you sign up for college and it's hard to get into the college program.
• 33:30
  hard to get, 'cause you need a what's the role, Jason, please help me out.
• 33:33
  What's the, who's the person that helps with the college?
• 33:35
  The staff that coordinates between colleges and inmates?
• 33:38
  I can't think of the term right now.
• 33:40
  Jason Holland: Oh yeah, it's a it's just a coordinator between the it,
• 33:44
  that's all, that's really all it is.
• 33:45
  It's just a staff
• 33:46
  Rafael Quiroz: So just a staff coordinator, let's go with that.
• 33:48
  And at other prisons, they'll just be like, Hey, if you don't get your,
• 33:51
  if you don't get enrolled in college in time, it's too bad for you.
• 33:53
  But at this particular prison, the coordinator was on it like,
• 33:56
  Hey, who do we need a write to?
• 33:57
  Let me send an email to this school.
• 33:59
  Let me send an email to that school.
• 34:00
  Let me, oh, you're trying to go to another school that we don't have available.
• 34:03
  Let me send an email, print out the information and get it to you guys.
• 34:06
  That kind of behavior from the leadership at the staff leadership
• 34:11
  really made me want to be more engaged.
• 34:13
  It made me wanna be more engaged.
• 34:14
  So I think that really has a lot to do with the leadership of the
• 34:17
  officers and not necessarily just the programs that were available alone.
• 34:20
  And that made me want to be more proactive, more pro-social,
• 34:24
  and get into these programs.
• 34:26
  Jerremy Newsome: That's fascinating and that, that brings a lot of
• 34:28
  awareness and kind of thoughts that I had in just general as we
• 34:31
  keep having this conversation.
• 34:33
  And Jennifer, we know that you mentioned earlier that your experience was a little
• 34:35
  bit different, and of course everyone's experience is a little bit different, but
• 34:38
  was there anything in the system that was actually right for you that was correct,
• 34:44
  that you feel was made accurately?
• 34:49
  Generous Jennifer: My personal experience, I think everything went really bad,
• 34:54
  like from the judge that I saw in court, giving me extra time while dismissing
• 34:59
  people that had DUIs when my crime was nonviolent and didn't affect anybody.
• 35:03
  Like I, it really was geared towards punishment.
• 35:06
  And I think a lot of our institutions are geared towards punishment.
• 35:08
  And a big theme from what these guys are talking about is how
• 35:11
  just like a simple message can really help with your self-worth.
• 35:15
  And that message coming from just somebody showing that they believe in
• 35:18
  you and your goodness and your value.
• 35:20
  And I think the fact that we spend more sending people to prison than we
• 35:25
  would spend on college tuition, and the fact that we send more people to
• 35:28
  prison than to college is just, I think we're all geared towards punishment.
• 35:32
  I'm a little less optimistic in that regard, in this topic.
• 35:36
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah, and that's okay.
• 35:37
  That's why we're here.
• 35:38
  Have that conversation.
• 35:39
  Jason, what's your thoughts, my man?
• 35:40
  With your hand up.
• 35:41
  Jason Holland: Yeah, I just I wanted to lean in on this one.
• 35:44
  The, absolutely I agree with Ralph in terms of I want to be able to look
• 35:50
  back and take full responsibility for my decisions while saying that yeah I
• 35:55
  think that I inherited a culture when I came into prison that was very much
• 36:00
  coming at me from different angles, reinforcing the narrative that like
• 36:06
  my way of living now is to do X, Y, Z.
• 36:09
  It's to commit violence, it's to be involved with smuggling, it's
• 36:11
  to be involved with criminality.
• 36:12
  I need to do this so that, whatever my reasoning was.
• 36:16
  And so there was a cultural thing happening there that I was enmeshed
• 36:20
  in, and I definitely could have pulled myself out at any given
• 36:23
  time had I had the courage, right?
• 36:25
  Had I had the awareness to do I lacked those things at that time.
• 36:29
  That being said, when it shifted and when I was able to finally find
• 36:33
  the courage and, make all these different changes in my life, I also
• 36:36
  think that the staff had a culture that they were dealing with, right?
• 36:41
  In terms of while our culture was shifting, their culture was shifting.
• 36:45
  And I think that, 'cause I've had conversations with them where it wasn't
• 36:49
  as easy as simply getting behind the rehabilitation because I think that
• 36:54
  a lot of them felt or what they were catching from their end of things
• 36:57
  was this is gonna cost us our jobs.
• 36:59
  This is gonna change the way that we've done things and what
• 37:01
  they were familiar with, right?
• 37:03
  And so when we talk about this conversation in terms of prison
• 37:06
  reform, a lot of complexity to it.
• 37:10
  it's, you wanna simplify it and be break it down to simply, we
• 37:13
  should provide opportunities for people to change and grow.
• 37:16
  Absolutely.
• 37:17
  We should do that while also me, while also understanding
• 37:20
  look, this these questions.
• 37:22
  And specifically in California, there's a whole cultural thing that's
• 37:27
  happening on many different levels.
• 37:29
  Inside of these institutions, right?
• 37:32
  And so while we look at it, it's just, I think it's important to note that these
• 37:37
  are complexities that are occurring.
• 37:40
  But I do have hope that in time people can come to see that really in the humanity
• 37:46
  of the people that are inside, both the officers and the staff or, and the inmates
• 37:50
  and the residents, that that there's actually more to gain out of investing
• 37:55
  in the humanity and the shared connection there than there is in simply creating a
• 38:00
  greater divide between good guy, bad guy, us versus them and in just punishing.
• 38:05
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 38:05
  Jason Holland: that's my 2 cents on that.
• 38:07
  Thank you.
• 38:07
  Jerremy Newsome: Thank you.
• 38:07
  Thank you for your 2 cents, because ultimately, I, me and Dave, and I think
• 38:11
  a lot of people who are listening to the show are learning more and more about this
• 38:14
  recently, but private raking billions.
• 38:19
  I did not know this was a thing.
• 38:20
  Again, I just thought all P prisons were government.
• 38:24
  But private prisons, they're pushing for full occupancy.
• 38:30
  Did any of the three of you experience a private prison?
• 38:32
  And in that situation, did you feel up more like a number versus a person or
• 38:36
  what, how did that shape what you saw?
• 38:39
  Jason Holland: I haven't personally experienced that.
• 38:41
  Jerremy Newsome: Okay,
• 38:43
  Rafael Quiroz: Yeah, same here.
• 38:44
  I, we were, I was never at a private prison either, so I
• 38:47
  wouldn't be able to speak to that.
• 38:49
  Jerremy Newsome: gotcha.
• 38:50
  Yeah, it was just mind blowing ultimately to me.
• 38:51
  Jennifer you're shaking your head a little bit.
• 38:53
  Generous Jennifer: Oh no, I just, when you monetize something,
• 38:56
  you incentivize it, right?
• 38:58
  So I know I've heard, I've done the research on this because it's horrible.
• 39:01
  I've heard about like people passing out more sentences, like harassing inmates,
• 39:06
  more so that they can give you more time.
• 39:07
  You incentivize something.
• 39:09
  What do you think will happen?
• 39:11
  don't know.
• 39:12
  I just.
• 39:13
  Jerremy Newsome: Justin said earlier just Jason said earlier
• 39:17
  that this is a failing business model, is the word that Jason used.
• 39:22
  And again, not only the privatized prisons, but also just the.
• 39:27
  Federal prisons in general, like they're getting their subsidies and their
• 39:30
  grants and the government loans and the projects and the programs, like they're
• 39:34
  receiving money and it's a system, but the system has to be profitable.
• 39:38
  And I definitely think there's some level of components, kinda what you said,
• 39:41
  Jennifer, that is focused more on how can we keep these individuals, these inmates
• 39:45
  in longer so that we can make more.
• 39:47
  Dave, what's your take and what you feeling over there?
• 39:50
  Dave Conley: I am just, I'm wondering if anything's working, if so seven
• 39:55
  outta 10, that, what is that?
• 39:56
  Almost three, almost four out of five are going back in, within three years.
• 40:02
  That by definition is a completely failed system.
• 40:07
  And I was talking to one EIT graduate and I was asking him, Hey, what's
• 40:11
  what's the sunny side on this?
• 40:13
  And he said, you know what, actually I learned a lot of discipline, and
• 40:16
  that's really served me really well.
• 40:17
  Being on the outside, it's I'm regimented and like I, like I'm on top of things.
• 40:21
  And I noticed when, like when we started up this conversation, like
• 40:25
  everybody here was a here early and on time and I, I don't know.
• 40:28
  I don't mean to make fun of that at all, but in your opinion, is anything working?
• 40:33
  Is anything, did the, did anything in the system go right by you?
• 40:38
  What do you think Jen?
• 40:39
  Generous Jennifer: The reason why I say that it did not Okay.
• 40:44
  Did anything in the system, was anything working for me?
• 40:46
  Okay.
• 40:47
  So I was ordered to do rehab and the group of people that I was hanging out
• 40:52
  with found me a rehab that would take my money and let me keep doing drugs.
• 40:56
  So
• 40:56
  Dave Conley: Oof.
• 40:56
  Generous Jennifer: work.
• 40:57
  Yeah.
• 40:58
  And then when I ordered to do community service and I was nine hours short on
• 41:04
  my community service, and I went to court and I was in court with a lot
• 41:07
  of other people that were asking for extensions for their community service.
• 41:11
  A lot of people went up and some people had d UIs and people had
• 41:15
  some really to me different crimes.
• 41:17
  Like I was in there for prostitution.
• 41:18
  So I thought, for sure she's giving all these people extensions.
• 41:22
  I just have nine hours.
• 41:23
  I didn't finish.
• 41:24
  She was ready to send me to jail, and I could see that it was like,
• 41:28
  there's this hate, like with women that I experienced that makes it hard.
• 41:32
  That's the barrier that I get.
• 41:33
  So I didn't do time, but I have a crime that women are especially hostile towards,
• 41:37
  I'm in a field that's dominated by women.
• 41:39
  I'm an interior designer, so that created some weird issues and barriers.
• 41:43
  But just to speak to why I personally don't feel like anything went
• 41:48
  right for me, like at any time that I should have been given
• 41:50
  grace or help, I got punished and I
• 41:53
  A message that.
• 41:55
  You're irredeemable.
• 41:56
  I don't care.
• 41:57
  Yeah.
• 41:58
  Think there's a lot of work to be done in that field, especially like
• 42:02
  just considering the circumstances that lead women to go into
• 42:05
  to, to get that kind of crime.
• 42:07
  It just doesn't make sense to me.
• 42:08
  It's not offer more support versus punishment.
• 42:11
  And I see this as a theme in a lot of things.
• 42:13
  Not to go too far off topic, but just really quickly, like I hear about
• 42:17
  single moms that will there was this mom that was working at McDonald's
• 42:22
  and she dropped her kid off at the park right across the street.
• 42:24
  And so she got in trouble for that and they took the kid away and it was like,
• 42:27
  okay, so we're gonna spend resources taking the kid away and traumatizing
• 42:31
  them versus spending resources giving them to this mother that needs support.
• 42:36
  Like we have a very punishment driven society.
• 42:40
  I think our institutions are very punishment driven it bothers
• 42:43
  me and I seek to help fix that.
• 42:47
  Jerremy Newsome: Me too.
• 42:48
  Me
• 42:48
  Dave Conley: What?
• 42:49
  Jerremy Newsome: or go ahead Dave.
• 42:50
  Sorry.
• 42:50
  Dave Conley: No.
• 42:50
  I was just to open it up to Jason, did anything in the system work for you?
• 42:54
  Does anything work?
• 42:55
  I'm I'm trying to find if anything is working because I think I. One
• 43:00
  of the reasons why it, it feels like it's around so much punishment is
• 43:05
  that's the political easy thing to do.
• 43:07
  Whereas everything else seem that actually works like Defi, which costs very little,
• 43:13
  and people get out and they get jobs and they get reintegrated into society.
• 43:17
  And like Youth three are very, quite successful by any stretch
• 43:22
  of the imagination, not just, as somebody who's, been in the system.
• 43:25
  I'm just trying to find anything that works and I'm not finding it, but Did
• 43:29
  anything work for you, Ralph or Jason?
• 43:32
  Jason Holland: So I don't mean to be poll, what is it, Pollyanna-ish about this?
• 43:37
  I believe back on who I was at the time when I went in,
• 43:41
  that I needed to be detained,
• 43:44
  A danger, right?
• 43:46
  I was a dangerous young man I really believe that prison helped save me.
• 43:54
  That there were plenty of opportunities, gifts, guides along the way that placed
• 44:01
  me in a position to really change my life and to find a value that I had more to
• 44:07
  give and more to receive from the world and to the world than just hurting people.
• 44:13
  And I think that prison gave me that opportunity.
• 44:15
  And the people that I met along the way, they helped me build good habits,
• 44:22
  re-up my education, unpack what I had been carrying, and learn how to relate
• 44:28
  to the world in a whole new way that I don't know that I would've had otherwise.
• 44:31
  And any, even if I try to imagine another scenario, I had what I had,
• 44:37
  And so I learned la I got lasting friendships, I got involved with
• 44:40
  Defy and so many other just beautiful things, a result of my time in prison.
• 44:45
  Now, I'm not saying that my experience is the same as everyone else.
• 44:49
  I'm saying that, and I had plenty of terrible experiences in
• 44:52
  there, like nightmare scenarios.
• 44:54
  Plenty of nights of fear, waking up thinking I'm gonna die in here
• 44:57
  and I'm never gonna get outta here, and all this stuff thinking that.
• 45:01
  Just terrible stuff, right?
• 45:03
  But it offered me a lot.
• 45:05
  And also I think when you're talking about changing a system like this,
• 45:10
  it requires all stakeholder buy-in.
• 45:13
  That's not just the staff, it's not just legislators, it's
• 45:17
  also the inmate population.
• 45:19
  And not all inmates are ready to make the changes are necessary to grow.
• 45:27
  And thankfully, it's becoming more and more, we're reaching a
• 45:30
  critical mass more and more where people are willing to do that.
• 45:34
  And thankfully for myself I've been willing to do that and seeing results
• 45:38
  as a re as ultimately from it.
• 45:40
  But yeah I would never say or begrudge my time.
• 45:43
  There is horrible as some moments where there were just as many beautiful moments
• 45:48
  and I met many beautiful people and I'm so grateful for where I am today and
• 45:52
  that I have this as a part of my history.
• 45:54
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 45:55
  Jason Holland: I'm while saying I'm terribly sad that committed
• 46:00
  the harm that I've committed, and I'm definitely focused on bringing
• 46:05
  healing to the world rather than harm.
• 46:08
  So I.
• 46:09
  Jerremy Newsome: I appreciate being bold and brave enough to say that
• 46:11
  man, and having the courage, because to your point, the people that do go
• 46:15
  to prison, I don't know the statistic but ultimately there are people there
• 46:19
  that need to be there for a reason.
• 46:21
  They did something terrible, painful, scary, terrifying.
• 46:27
  And to your point, they probably don't know a different life.
• 46:31
  They don't know a different way.
• 46:32
  They're not entirely sure because that's just their environment and they
• 46:35
  might not have seen it any other di any other way, any other direction.
• 46:40
  And for you to say, I needed that because the person I was, when I
• 46:43
  got in there, I needed to be there.
• 46:45
  I was supposed to be there.
• 46:46
  That was the only way I was gonna get course corrected.
• 46:49
  I think it's huge because, again, to, to your point, some people wanna
• 46:53
  change, some people don't wanna change, but there's two things that
• 46:55
  will change someone, pain or pleasure.
• 46:58
  Dave Conley: There's.
• 46:59
  So I,
• 47:01
  I feel like we're lumping together nonviolent crimes, violent crimes,
• 47:06
  people who are severely mentally ill.
• 47:09
  People, terrible mistakes,
• 47:11
  Addiction.
• 47:13
  I, we're mixing up all, these are way different situations in my mind, right?
• 47:18
  These are different people, yet they're treated all the same.
• 47:21
  They're sent to prison.
• 47:23
  I don't know.
• 47:24
  Do I have that wrong?
• 47:25
  Generous Jennifer: Yeah.
• 47:26
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 47:26
  I feel like you're, I feel like you're really uncovering something other, Dave,
• 47:28
  because ultimately that we just go, oh, you did something that we don't think
• 47:32
  is societally totally acceptable prison.
• 47:35
  Oh, like you, so we, we met three women in the event that we just attended last
• 47:40
  week, Dave, that were in there for DUIs.
• 47:42
  Now, again, the Step to the Line program.
• 47:46
  Has anyone ever listening to this podcast Driven while they shouldn't have?
• 47:52
  Probably.
• 47:53
  I have.
• 47:54
  I was in college once, there's really good chances that you could
• 47:58
  have been just slightly toasted and still got in that vehicle.
• 48:04
  some people got caught and some people didn't.
• 48:06
  And there were people in that organization, in that product, in that
• 48:09
  program that had gotten caught with DUI and therefore they were in prison.
• 48:14
  just this really fascinating aspect that you mentioned, Dave, where it's like
• 48:17
  we just, we blend everyone together.
• 48:19
  So on the, on this solution piece of this, on the solution
• 48:23
  piece, Ralph, I'm coming to you.
• 48:25
  You've seen the systems and the flaws up close.
• 48:31
  one change?
• 48:32
  I know you've briefly mentioned one before, and that could be the
• 48:34
  one or there could be another one.
• 48:36
  What's one change policy or program or mindset you would make
• 48:40
  right now to set things correct.
• 48:45
  Rafael Quiroz: That's a, that's definitely a loaded question.
• 48:47
  Man there's just so many things, right?
• 48:49
  And it starts with the leadership.
• 48:50
  It's hard to say which policy exactly.
• 48:53
  So many come to mind.
• 48:53
  So I started a nonprofit.
• 48:55
  I also started a nonprofit called The Made New Foundation and
• 48:58
  serving the reentry community.
• 49:00
  So I'm very proactive.
• 49:01
  I don't wanna wait for a policy.
• 49:02
  I don't wanna wait for this to change.
• 49:04
  I don't wanna wait for that to change.
• 49:05
  I'm gonna go do it today.
• 49:07
  If it means something to me, I'm gonna go do it today.
• 49:10
  So my first year home, I also started a nonprofit called the May New Foundation.
• 49:14
  And I can't help but to echo a lot of things that Jason says.
• 49:17
  I echo a lot of the same things, I put myself in that place.
• 49:19
  No excuses.
• 49:20
  I was given a second chance.
• 49:22
  And, again, it's hard for me to narrow on what policy would be best, but our
• 49:27
  philosophy and our approach at the May new foundation at my nonprofit,
• 49:30
  it's meet people where they're at.
• 49:32
  There's a saying, you could take a horse to water, but you can't make 'em drink.
• 49:36
  Jason said, some people are not ready to change.
• 49:38
  They're not ready to change.
• 49:40
  However, there's another part of that saying that we don't really
• 49:42
  talk about, or may, maybe I'm just making it, maybe we just made it up.
• 49:45
  Me and my peers, we talked about it was, you can't make the horse drink
• 49:48
  the water, but you can feed him salt.
• 49:51
  And when you feed him salt, he starts to thirst naturally.
• 49:54
  He's gonna get thirsty.
• 49:55
  So you're gonna incentivize him to drink this water.
• 49:58
  And what I mean by this water, personal responsibility, personal change.
• 50:02
  I've been in so many groups and programs and speaking for myself, I started taking
• 50:07
  programs just 'cause I wanted one day.
• 50:10
  I'm thinking criminally here one day, if I ever have to go to the
• 50:13
  parole board, I wanna show them.
• 50:16
  I've changed.
• 50:16
  And I started taking these programs, we call it, at least at the prison
• 50:20
  I was at, we call it paper chasing.
• 50:21
  You're just chasing chronos and certificates to fool the board
• 50:25
  and one day be let out of prison.
• 50:28
  So it's really hard to focus on what one thing.
• 50:33
  'cause there's so many things that come to mind for me.
• 50:35
  What one thing can change the whole system at the end of the day?
• 50:38
  We can take people to water, but we can't make 'em drink.
• 50:40
  But we can give them salt.
• 50:41
  We can show them an example, be a leader.
• 50:44
  Be a leader and be an example.
• 50:46
  Look, this is what the other side looks like when you take responsibility.
• 50:49
  When you take ownership and you stop worrying about,
• 50:52
  your peers or this or that.
• 50:53
  I know you have hardships, I've had hardships, but let's get
• 50:56
  through those hardships together.
• 50:57
  Don't be so disconnected.
• 50:59
  Let's actually be connected to our humanity.
• 51:01
  So those are some things, and there's a, I really believe in the compound effect.
• 51:06
  Really believe in the compound effect.
• 51:07
  I'm sure you guys have heard your listeners and the people here, would
• 51:10
  you rather take a million dollars or a penny doubled up every day for a month?
• 51:13
  And at first people are like, oh, gimme that million dollars.
• 51:16
  But when you double up the penny every day for a month, 30 days, it's
• 51:19
  $5 million on your 30, on your 31st day, it's it's 10 over $10 million.
• 51:25
  The compound effect.
• 51:26
  So what I mean by that is it's not about trying to save everybody today.
• 51:31
  not for me.
• 51:32
  So I'm speaking for myself.
• 51:34
  It's not about trying to save everybody today.
• 51:36
  It's being a mentor and a leader.
• 51:38
  And an example for just one person.
• 51:41
  Just one person.
• 51:41
  If you could do that becomes two people.
• 51:43
  And then two people become four, eight becomes 16 and so on.
• 51:47
  And in theory in 35 to 40 years, you could reach a over
• 51:50
  a billion people on the planet.
• 51:52
  So trying to save everybody today, I don't think is the solution.
• 51:55
  I think it's raising strong men, strong leaders in our communities.
• 52:01
  And it starts with yourself.
• 52:02
  Before I went to prison, I. I was a good father figure.
• 52:06
  My, my mom was on drugs and my sister was on drugs, and they had pretty much
• 52:10
  abandoned my nieces, and so I, I stepped up as a fatherly figure for my two nieces.
• 52:14
  I raised them.
• 52:15
  I put a roof over their head.
• 52:16
  I took 'em to school.
• 52:17
  I was doing the right things.
• 52:19
  If you knew me at home, you would be like, man, that's a great guy.
• 52:22
  That's a, he's such a good guy.
• 52:24
  He's stepping up, he's taking care of his sister's kids, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 52:27
  But I was somebody else away from home.
• 52:29
  And what I learned is you can't be two different people.
• 52:32
  You can't be a good guy at home and somebody else on the streets.
• 52:35
  It's incon that, that consistency's not gonna last.
• 52:38
  And because I was two different people came to the light and
• 52:42
  I abandoned my family, the people I said I would be there.
• 52:44
  Unfortunately, I abandoned them because I didn't deal with the
• 52:47
  trauma of being abandoned myself.
• 52:49
  I didn't deal with my trauma.
• 52:50
  And so I did the exact thing I promised I would never do.
• 52:54
  so to answer your question, I know I said a lot because I'm
• 52:57
  very passionate about this.
• 52:58
  Very passionate.
• 52:59
  I don't think a bandaid solution, politics, or policies or economies
• 53:05
  are gonna change the system today.
• 53:07
  I think it needs to be a long-term solution.
• 53:10
  It needs to be a genuine solution.
• 53:12
  And I believe in the compound effect over time, I think we have a better chance of
• 53:15
  changing more lives over the next 30 years as opposed to trying to fix everything
• 53:20
  over the next four or eight years.
• 53:22
  Jerremy Newsome: Sure.
• 53:22
  And one of the things I heard you say was that we need to, create
• 53:26
  strong men and do that again through a longer period of time.
• 53:29
  One of my sayings is the brokenness of this country is in direct
• 53:32
  proportion to the brokenness of men.
• 53:35
  That's a very crucial aspect.
• 53:37
  And
• 53:38
  Rafael Quiroz: hundred percent.
• 53:39
  Jerremy Newsome: ultimately, that's really only characterized and understood and
• 53:43
  probably change adapted and visualized and integrated through education.
• 53:47
  My big focus and my huge platform for the presidential run will be education reform.
• 53:52
  'cause I believe ultimately, if we know the things on the front
• 53:55
  end, to your point, Ralph, the compounding effect on the back end.
• 53:59
  If we did all the things that you both are, Jason, that you did going through and
• 54:04
  Ralph, you did to get the papers right?
• 54:06
  Those books, the courses, the programs the insight because in order to get parole,
• 54:12
  in order to become a returning citizen, has to be some level of inner work.
• 54:17
  The insights to change the person from the inside out.
• 54:20
  It's not the outside in, inside outs, the beliefs, the composition,
• 54:23
  the structure, the thoughts.
• 54:25
  The inner soul really needs to be shifted and re-categorized and reprioritized.
• 54:29
  Rafael Quiroz: If I I want to, I wanna just piggyback off that
• 54:32
  what you just said, Jerremy.
• 54:33
  I cannot agree with you more.
• 54:34
  It's I believe in that same idea.
• 54:37
  It's, that's what I'm so passionate about is, when we have weak men.
• 54:42
  families, weak communities.
• 54:44
  This is what's broken up, broken families.
• 54:46
  I read a statistic, this was years ago.
• 54:48
  I was watching a I was watching a interview with Denzel Washington.
• 54:51
  I was watching a, I've always really enjoyed watching Denzel
• 54:55
  movies and just him as a person.
• 54:56
  I always thought his movies were great and all that.
• 54:58
  So he is watching, he's doing it.
• 54:59
  He's in an interview and they were asking him some questions and he said the
• 55:03
  greatest indicator of prison or criminal behavior, I forgot exactly what it was,
• 55:08
  but he said, it's fatherless homes.
• 55:09
  It's not race, it's not religion.
• 55:11
  It's not these other things.
• 55:12
  It's
• 55:12
  Jerremy Newsome: likelihood.
• 55:13
  Rafael Quiroz: fatherless homes.
• 55:15
  I get the goosebumps today thinking about that because I'm like, man, I
• 55:18
  look at the statistics racially, break it down by race and class and income.
• 55:23
  It's fatherless homes.
• 55:25
  That's the number one indicator.
• 55:26
  And so for me, I've been on fire about that ever since.
• 55:30
  Jerremy Newsome: Oh man.
• 55:30
  Jason, what's your thoughts with that?
• 55:31
  Hand up, my bro.
• 55:33
  Jason Holland: Yeah.
• 55:34
  So to the question of what policies need to change I, and I agree with Ralph.
• 55:39
  There's not one I, what I, what came to mind as you guys were having
• 55:43
  that conversation was I. In terms of the internal system prison.
• 55:48
  The prison system, what needs to be fostered and what's missing
• 55:54
  is the individual sense of agency a desired future, right?
• 56:02
  I have any kind of agency to actually move towards a future that I want?
• 56:07
  Or are all the forces around me telling me a story and re enforcing a story that
• 56:14
  my life is hopeless, that it's over, that it's meaningless, that it's worthless.
• 56:18
  To quote Jennifer, is the messaging so overpowering, that
• 56:26
  I have no hope, I have no agency.
• 56:28
  Right?
• 56:29
  And I think that the more we do for prisoners through legislation through
• 56:37
  infusing institutions with opportunities towards education, vocational training,
• 56:42
  personal development, all everything that we're doing now just and in moving
• 56:46
  towards a cultural change where people don't feel like they'll be ostracized,
• 56:50
  looked down upon victimized for making changes towards a d desirable future.
• 56:57
  If we can make those shifts, then you'll see a critical mass, because why would
• 57:02
  you wanna stay inside of a place that cultivates and promotes fear and harm?
• 57:07
  If, you know you have agency and opportunity to move towards
• 57:10
  a place that promotes health, family love freedom, prosperity,
• 57:17
  Would you do that?
• 57:18
  Unless you believed that staying in that place of harm and fear was
• 57:24
  your only way to maintain security?
• 57:27
  The Greeks had this idea that everything you do is for the good, It doesn't
• 57:33
  necessarily mean that it had a good outcome, but you believed at the time that
• 57:37
  what you were doing was for your own good.
• 57:39
  When I look back on all the harm that myself and the people that I used to run
• 57:43
  around with, that we were doing, I look back on it today and I'm like I cannot,
• 57:47
  I can't fathom what was going through our minds, but at the time, there's a lot of
• 57:52
  times where I realized we thought we were actually doing something good, right?
• 57:57
  But that's because of the narrative that we were telling ourselves and what
• 58:00
  we thought was possible for ourselves.
• 58:01
  And so what we were basically relegating ourselves towards.
• 58:05
  there's a lot of things that need to change.
• 58:08
  It's hard to say what exactly, but I, for me, from my per perspective,
• 58:13
  it's should be, it should be things that promote agency within the
• 58:18
  individual towards a desirable future.
• 58:20
  Because if he doesn't feel that he has that agency, if he doesn't feel that he
• 58:23
  has that hope, then he's gonna likely buy into negative narratives around him in
• 58:29
  order to just stay as safe as possible.
• 58:32
  Jerremy Newsome: Dang.
• 58:32
  There we go.
• 58:34
  All right, Jennifer.
• 58:36
  Generous Jennifer: So I think that based on everything that we're saying,
• 58:39
  like supporting places like Defy really addresses a lot of this, like through
• 58:43
  those on the line exercises, like it really does cultivate self-worth in
• 58:47
  these formerly incarcerated folks.
• 58:49
  Like I could see that all of the work for Defy was really geared towards
• 58:53
  you getting rid of self-limiting beliefs and thinking of an idea where
• 58:56
  you can bring value to the world.
• 58:58
  Like it really is about bringing back your sense of self-worth.
• 59:01
  And I think that a policy that could help is changing this up
• 59:05
  ecosystem that is this privatized, monetized, incentivized prison system.
• 59:10
  There's an EIT through Defy that I met recently that is trying to
• 59:14
  start a business doing procurement for prisons where he only sources
• 59:17
  the items that go into the prisons from sustainable companies.
• 59:20
  So now he's also gonna scale that business and hire other
• 59:24
  formerly incarcerated folks.
• 59:26
  And now that's a new ecosystem that maybe the prison can't just obviously
• 59:31
  it can't completely go away, but it could be a healthier ecosystem.
• 59:34
  So it could bring in products from sourced, sustainably sourced
• 59:38
  places or places that are also hiring people that have barriers.
• 59:42
  And it could just become a healthier ecosystem that way.
• 59:45
  I think supporting places like Defy is the kind of policy that we need to be
• 59:50
  looking towards because there's a lot of I live in a neighborhood with a lot
• 59:53
  of halfway houses and I can tell that they're not doing the same work to.
• 59:59
  Reform the citizens that Defy does, right?
• 1:00:01
  Like they do get a sense of community in the halfway house, but
• 1:00:06
  they're not getting their sense of self-worth the way that they need to.
• 1:00:10
  Dave Conley: Jen, let's dig a little deeper in that, coming home's a battle.
• 1:00:15
  If 75% of people who've been in the system can't find jobs, what's ways,
• 1:00:21
  communities and employers can really step up and give people a real chance?
• 1:00:26
  What do they need?
• 1:00:27
  I.
• 1:00:27
  Generous Jennifer: Man, it's not hard.
• 1:00:29
  My husband has a BS in electrical engineering and made it through
• 1:00:35
  three interviews and then had a job offer revoked because of
• 1:00:38
  something he did almost 30 years ago.
• 1:00:41
  that's illegal that we have laws in LA against that.
• 1:00:45
  But there were no fucking consequences.
• 1:00:47
  It didn't matter.
• 1:00:48
  We could start with what we're already not doing a good job at
• 1:00:51
  that we want to be doing a good job at, there's the Fair Chance Act.
• 1:00:54
  So that happened and I reported the company and they tried to resend
• 1:00:57
  the job offer, but there's not any real consequences for employers
• 1:01:01
  to discriminate ESP even with people that are fully reformed.
• 1:01:05
  To the point where you have a bachelor's degree and a wife and a child, and we're
• 1:01:09
  just not helping people that are doing everything they can to help themselves.
• 1:01:13
  So even with that 75 to 85%, even with those people that
• 1:01:17
  didn't have a supportive network.
• 1:01:19
  Even with the people that did have a supportive network,
• 1:01:21
  they're still having barriers.
• 1:01:22
  So there's a lot that we could do.
• 1:01:25
  And then there's also some really obvious basic things we could do, like
• 1:01:27
  starting with enforcing the laws that we passed eliminate this discrimination.
• 1:01:31
  Dave Conley: What about you, Ralph?
• 1:01:32
  What are what are, what do employers and communities, what, how can they step up?
• 1:01:36
  Rafael Quiroz: Awareness.
• 1:01:37
  I think awareness education.
• 1:01:38
  Ultimately as an employer.
• 1:01:40
  As an employer, myself right now my company, I think I have
• 1:01:43
  a total of nearly 70 people.
• 1:01:46
  I employ 70, 60 something people I employ today.
• 1:01:49
  And so as an employer, you wanna make sure your company's running efficiently and
• 1:01:54
  effectively and that it's, you're hiring people for an ROI, you need, in order for
• 1:01:58
  the business to continue to exist, I need to hire people so we can keep growing.
• 1:02:02
  So I think employers just need to be made more aware.
• 1:02:05
  'cause if an employer, for example, I went to an event Ontario, California.
• 1:02:09
  At a HR event, and we're talking about hiring people and a lot
• 1:02:14
  of HR professionals don't know that, oh, we can't hire people
• 1:02:18
  criminal records as truck drivers.
• 1:02:19
  That was like an assumption a lot of them were making.
• 1:02:22
  And I actually got to speak to that because that's, I own a trucking company.
• 1:02:25
  And I was like no.
• 1:02:26
  No, you actually, we can hire them.
• 1:02:28
  And sometimes let me explain to you why it's good to hire people.
• 1:02:32
  Criminal records coming home, they're hungry for success.
• 1:02:34
  They're willing to be out there on the road.
• 1:02:36
  They're some of the hardest working people I've been able
• 1:02:38
  to hire, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:02:40
  Educating and informing them.
• 1:02:41
  Some of them think, oh, criminal record, I can't hire.
• 1:02:44
  And then they see if an employer doesn't see an ROI or if they see
• 1:02:49
  risk, forget just for a moment here, forget changing this or changing that,
• 1:02:54
  or that this is the right thing to do, or this is a good thing to do.
• 1:02:57
  Or that's all gravy.
• 1:02:58
  Put all that to the side and just at the end of the day, especially for
• 1:03:02
  small and mid-sized companies who are looking to grow, the bottom line is ROI.
• 1:03:06
  If I hire this person, am I putting my business at risk?
• 1:03:11
  Or am I ensuring a return on my investment?
• 1:03:13
  And so what I think we just need to maybe just educate the public,
• 1:03:19
  educate employers, Hey, by hiring people, one of the number one reasons
• 1:03:23
  why people rec go back to prison recidivism, fall into recidivism
• 1:03:27
  is, you don't start making income.
• 1:03:29
  You start getting stressed out.
• 1:03:29
  And it's easy to fall back to the old behaviors and habits of, before
• 1:03:33
  I'm stressed out, how am I gonna pay my mortgage, my bills, my rent,
• 1:03:35
  my utilities, and, all this stress.
• 1:03:37
  And if they haven't picked up the skills to deal with that
• 1:03:40
  stress, it's back to prison.
• 1:03:42
  You go.
• 1:03:42
  So if employers and the community knew, hey, by giving people a second
• 1:03:47
  chance, giving them employment opportunities, one, does it break?
• 1:03:50
  What's, how do I mitigate the risk if there is there a risk?
• 1:03:54
  How do you ensure my ROI by hiring this person?
• 1:03:57
  So educating HR professionals, educating potential employers, then
• 1:04:02
  the community, by having them employed, they're gonna be paying tax dollars.
• 1:04:06
  There's a less likelihood that they're gonna go back to prison.
• 1:04:08
  There's a less likelihood they're gonna be committing crime.
• 1:04:11
  You get so busy, myself, I'm so busy.
• 1:04:14
  Crime or criminal behaviors, it's the, it's, nobody has time for that.
• 1:04:18
  I'm working.
• 1:04:18
  I'm trying to pay my bills, I'm taking care of my family.
• 1:04:21
  You give people those responsibilities and sometimes it surprises you.
• 1:04:25
  They step up to those responsibilities.
• 1:04:27
  So again, just to reiterate.
• 1:04:29
  Educating the communities, showing them how employing people is
• 1:04:33
  a is in our favor for safety.
• 1:04:36
  'cause that's what it comes down to.
• 1:04:37
  It has to be safety.
• 1:04:37
  There has to be safety.
• 1:04:39
  Two, educating employers, letting 'em know, Hey, you you can hire
• 1:04:44
  people from these backgrounds.
• 1:04:46
  You can do this.
• 1:04:46
  And let me show you the ROI, 'cause that's the bottom line, right?
• 1:04:49
  For a business owner, for a small business person, a mid-size company, what's my ROI?
• 1:04:54
  you can tell me all day till you're blue in the face.
• 1:04:56
  Oh, hire people from prison.
• 1:04:58
  It's good for you.
• 1:04:59
  You're not gonna pay my bills if something happens.
• 1:05:01
  Are you, if they crash my truck, are you gonna gimme the money for it,
• 1:05:04
  Mr. Higher people criminal records?
• 1:05:06
  No, probably not.
• 1:05:08
  It's easy to try to push that on me if I'm the one who has to pay for it, right?
• 1:05:12
  But, so taking all that to the side, informing, educating, and
• 1:05:16
  creating awareness to employers.
• 1:05:18
  Let me show you how we mitigate risk.
• 1:05:20
  Let me show you how this is good for business and let me show you how it
• 1:05:23
  helps your ROI and your bottom line.
• 1:05:25
  So I hope that answered your question, Dave.
• 1:05:28
  Dave Conley: Yeah.
• 1:05:28
  Yeah.
• 1:05:28
  When I was in corporate, the number one question when I was hiring every
• 1:05:32
  single person I hired, I asked the question what was your biggest mistake?
• 1:05:37
  What happened?
• 1:05:38
  What'd you do?
• 1:05:39
  And when somebody was like, eh, like all over, I'm like, they never got a job.
• 1:05:43
  But if they had your story, I'd be like, oh, you can do anything.
• 1:05:47
  You can get through anything.
• 1:05:48
  Nothing's gonna phase you.
• 1:05:49
  And that's the exactly the kind of people that I want in my business
• 1:05:53
  is people who have resilience that can focus and work under pressure.
• 1:05:57
  I can't think of anything more pressure sensitive than something like that.
• 1:06:01
  Jen, you had you had something to,
• 1:06:04
  Generous Jennifer: I just wanted to ask Ralph, because I think it would
• 1:06:06
  be good for everybody to know, like when you're you've hired people
• 1:06:09
  that are formerly incarcerated.
• 1:06:10
  When you were looking, where do you go?
• 1:06:12
  Like where exactly do you start when you're trying to find somebody?
• 1:06:16
  Jerremy Newsome: Great question.
• 1:06:16
  Rafael Quiroz: just in general.
• 1:06:17
  Trucking has a 92% turnover rate.
• 1:06:19
  We have a high turnover rate in trucking.
• 1:06:21
  A lot of people are gonna use, they'll start with you today and they're out of
• 1:06:24
  the truck with another company within a month, within six months, under a year.
• 1:06:29
  So we're always looking to hire drivers, dispatchers sales professionals.
• 1:06:33
  Sales also has a high turnover rate.
• 1:06:35
  A lot of people don't like doing sales.
• 1:06:37
  They hate the rejection.
• 1:06:38
  We're always looking.
• 1:06:39
  So we post traditionally on, indeed ZipRecruiter
• 1:06:43
  Craigslist we run Facebook ads.
• 1:06:46
  We run Facebook ads that shows that we're hiring.
• 1:06:49
  And then we use third party recruiters as well.
• 1:06:51
  So we, I am always using probably like five different sources to hire people.
• 1:06:56
  So I'm going through third parties Craigslist, indeed, ZipRecruiter
• 1:07:01
  trucking job boards, and then other job boards as well, salespeople.
• 1:07:05
  And I'm also able to hire globally.
• 1:07:07
  I also hire globally.
• 1:07:08
  I also hire, I actually got the opportunity to hire a couple of guys I
• 1:07:11
  was incarcerated with that got deported.
• 1:07:13
  They're actually in Mexico, and I actually got to hire a couple of them
• 1:07:16
  and it's been working out pretty cool.
• 1:07:17
  Generous Jennifer: Rad.
• 1:07:18
  Awesome.
• 1:07:19
  Jerremy Newsome: Very rad.
• 1:07:22
  Dave, you'd like, you're about to say something, or you just warm it up.
• 1:07:24
  You're just getting pumped.
• 1:07:25
  Dave Conley: No, it,
• 1:07:26
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 1:07:26
  Alright, cool.
• 1:07:26
  Dave Conley: Ralph, do you actually put in the job description, like felons welcome?
• 1:07:30
  Like how does that work?
• 1:07:32
  Rafael Quiroz: no, I, I don't put that I put what's the term we use
• 1:07:35
  is don't put Fallon's welcome.
• 1:07:36
  It's there's a term that we use in the industry and not in the industry,
• 1:07:40
  but when you're looking to hire, not second Chance friendly, it's no,
• 1:07:44
  there's a term Jason, what's that term?
• 1:07:45
  I'm sure you've probably seen it.
• 1:07:46
  If you go on Indeed, you could literally put in the filter on Indeed.
• 1:07:49
  If you go to Indeed and put in it's the actual filter.
• 1:07:52
  It says.
• 1:07:53
  It doesn't say second chance hiring.
• 1:07:55
  It says second opportunity.
• 1:07:56
  Fair chance.
• 1:07:57
  Generous Jennifer: Yeah.
• 1:07:57
  Rafael Quiroz: fair chance Hiring.
• 1:07:58
  So we
• 1:07:58
  Dave Conley: Love it.
• 1:07:59
  Rafael Quiroz: chance hiring.
• 1:07:59
  And that's what that indicates to people criminal records.
• 1:08:02
  Oh, okay.
• 1:08:02
  I can apply here.
• 1:08:03
  Dave Conley: So every business should do that.
• 1:08:05
  Jerremy Newsome: yeah.
• 1:08:05
  Very educational for me.
• 1:08:06
  Thank you, Jason.
• 1:08:07
  Jason Holland: Yeah.
• 1:08:08
  Just to touch back on the question, I think that David posed I personally,
• 1:08:12
  I don't see employers as the issue.
• 1:08:15
  I don't, granted, there's some situations that are bad where someone
• 1:08:19
  doesn't get the job that they want.
• 1:08:21
  I think that by and large though, most of my friends that have come home they've
• 1:08:26
  had pretty good employment opportunities and a lot of that started with them
• 1:08:29
  doing work while they were incarcerated, preparing to come home, right?
• 1:08:33
  To put themselves in position, to be the kind of person that Dave suggested
• 1:08:36
  where you can deliver your story in a way that would actually and inspire an
• 1:08:41
  employer to want to give you a chance.
• 1:08:43
  So I'm not I'm not sure that's necessarily the gap.
• 1:08:46
  I think that for me, where I'm throwing in my hat in the reentry field is
• 1:08:51
  yes, I'm a program manager for Defy and I love the fact that I can have
• 1:08:55
  an impact on people and families by helping them build businesses.
• 1:08:57
  That's great.
• 1:08:58
  That's amazing.
• 1:09:00
  of, two of the places where I see the biggest gap in reentry
• 1:09:03
  is in personal transportation for people coming home, which is why
• 1:09:07
  co-founded Reentry Wheels, we.
• 1:09:09
  Help people coming home get reliable and personal transportation for
• 1:09:13
  a couple of reasons that can help them secure employment can help
• 1:09:18
  them with reduced financial strain.
• 1:09:21
  And also as a result of being in our program, we want them to provide
• 1:09:26
  meaningful community service, right?
• 1:09:29
  So that does three things and meet the conditions of their parole.
• 1:09:31
  That's one way we can help.
• 1:09:33
  And it's, there's a big gap in that with reentry services,
• 1:09:36
  personal transportation, right?
• 1:09:38
  The other one is I think many people coming home have what they think
• 1:09:44
  are ideas about financial literacy because they take personal fi finance
• 1:09:48
  courses in college, or they take these financial literacy courses while inside.
• 1:09:52
  But there's a difference between financial literacy and financial freedom.
• 1:09:56
  And when you're coming home and you think you understand what these things mean, but
• 1:10:01
  there's no clear pathway towards acquiring assets that generate cash flow, right?
• 1:10:06
  You may understand what that is in theory, but not what the steps are.
• 1:10:10
  I think that there is an opportunity for us to provide a service to people
• 1:10:14
  coming home where they can do really well for themselves if they have a
• 1:10:18
  clear plan that's currently missing.
• 1:10:20
  And so what happens is a lot of people come home, they spend six months to a
• 1:10:24
  year inside of transitional housing.
• 1:10:25
  They don't pay rent.
• 1:10:26
  They save up, say, 10 to 20 Gs.
• 1:10:28
  And what they do is they squander it once they get out of transitional housing.
• 1:10:33
  But if we provided the right type of.
• 1:10:36
  A guidance and structure for them, they could actually build that into something
• 1:10:41
  worthwhile in a few years if they had the right skills for knowing how to
• 1:10:44
  move from just theory and financial literacy towards financial freedom.
• 1:10:48
  So that's where I'm seeing gaps in reentry.
• 1:10:51
  That could be really beneficial because then person could get a job, but then
• 1:10:56
  with the money that they're making from the job they use that money to
• 1:10:59
  make money that makes money, right?
• 1:11:01
  Versus just simply saving it in a bank where it might not do
• 1:11:05
  exactly what they're hoping for.
• 1:11:07
  And especially if they haven't had 20 years of being outside here and having
• 1:11:11
  their money, just compounding interest.
• 1:11:13
  There's gotta be a way to find legitimate shortcuts, what M Scott Peck would
• 1:11:16
  call legitimate shortcuts towards that.
• 1:11:19
  And so I'm really interested in finding those things and laying out
• 1:11:21
  those pathways for people coming home.
• 1:11:24
  Yeah.
• 1:11:24
  And that's what I think is missing currently.
• 1:11:27
  Jerremy Newsome: I love that.
• 1:11:28
  So fill us in, just because I think that's extremely informative and
• 1:11:31
  also interesting, like when you mentioned reliable transportation.
• 1:11:37
  Tell me more.
• 1:11:37
  What does that mean exactly?
• 1:11:39
  I.
• 1:11:40
  Jason Holland: when I came home, okay, so a lot of times when people come
• 1:11:43
  home, they are given a tap card to get on public transportation, right?
• 1:11:48
  Or maybe they get some kind of voucher to do Uber and Lyft,
• 1:11:51
  and that's great to an extent.
• 1:11:53
  But there's people that come home and they don't have access to a car right away.
• 1:11:57
  And because of that, they may have had a union job waiting for in them, but
• 1:12:01
  the union won't hire 'em because they can't get to the job locations because
• 1:12:04
  they don't actually have a personal car.
• 1:12:06
  And so what we wanna do with reentry wheels is if they're eligible and if
• 1:12:10
  they meet our requirements, we wanna make them registered users in an, in
• 1:12:13
  a vehicle that they have access to.
• 1:12:15
  And after a probationary period, if they meet all of the requirements, we'll
• 1:12:18
  transfer the title of the car to them.
• 1:12:20
  Right now, if they don't meet the requirements for the car program, what
• 1:12:24
  we'd like to do, we'd like to get them on an e-bike so that they can at least
• 1:12:30
  have some means of mobility to and from the places that they need to be, right?
• 1:12:35
  Because these expenses, so think about this.
• 1:12:38
  If I come home, rather than having my family spend $5,000 on a car or me
• 1:12:43
  spending my first $5,000 on a car, if I'm able to get that through an organization
• 1:12:48
  that helps me do that, now I can put that $5,000 towards something else.
• 1:12:53
  That's gonna, that's gonna have long term ramifications for me potentially
• 1:12:57
  if I know how to use that money.
• 1:12:59
  But if I don't know how to use that money and I don't have the car,
• 1:13:02
  then the money goes towards the car.
• 1:13:03
  Now I'm in a depreciating asset.
• 1:13:05
  Or let's say that I buy a car that's not a good car and it's not reliable and
• 1:13:10
  it's breaking down and it ends up costing me more money to just keep the car than
• 1:13:14
  it would had I gotten a better one.
• 1:13:15
  So that's what I mean by reliable, right?
• 1:13:17
  We wanna provide them with reliable transportation that they can depend
• 1:13:21
  on, at least for the first couple of years, so that the money that they
• 1:13:25
  would've spent there goes somewhere else that can build them up long-term.
• 1:13:30
  hope that answers the question.
• 1:13:31
  Jerremy Newsome: It does.
• 1:13:32
  I just had no clue because I, in movies, you see someone get out and they always
• 1:13:37
  have a car and their friend drives 'em, and so you just don't think about
• 1:13:42
  anything else outside of that okay, they've, if they've been in prison for
• 1:13:45
  X amount of time, probably don't have a car anymore, so how do, how would
• 1:13:48
  they get from point A to point B?
• 1:13:50
  And no.
• 1:13:51
  It's fas fascinating.
• 1:13:52
  It's very you'd even create that as well.
• 1:13:55
  Jason Holland: Yeah.
• 1:13:55
  We're building it out yeah.
• 1:13:57
  Jerremy Newsome: Awesome.
• 1:13:58
  And one other thing I'll mention, and I know you all know this, but just to
• 1:14:01
  say it verbally, one of the industries that I'm a part of the stock market.
• 1:14:05
  The stock market is always welcoming participants.
• 1:14:10
  it doesn't matter if what your background is, what your skin color
• 1:14:13
  is, how much money you do or do not have, what choices you have or have
• 1:14:17
  not made in the past, it'll take your money and it'll give you more.
• 1:14:21
  so that's a very interesting skill for all of us to be aware of is that
• 1:14:24
  anyone at any point, if you have access to internet, have access to income.
• 1:14:30
  I think also too, that's a very popular misunderstanding that is
• 1:14:34
  something that even though it's very financially institution laden, it's
• 1:14:38
  open to the general public as well.
• 1:14:40
  So going forward to a little more education, I feel like you guys
• 1:14:43
  got all excited as I was talking a little bit about the educational
• 1:14:47
  component, which gets me pumped.
• 1:14:49
  There's a bunch of kids that are getting trapped, right?
• 1:14:51
  Ralph?
• 1:14:51
  So you mentioned fatherless homes, 60,000 young men and
• 1:14:56
  women are in detention every day.
• 1:14:59
  one way that we can stop that cycle early on just your either experience
• 1:15:05
  or just your general thoughts.
• 1:15:07
  Rafael Quiroz: For me this is something again specifically
• 1:15:09
  I'm very passionate about.
• 1:15:11
  I think we need to raise strong.
• 1:15:12
  Strong men, strong leaders, and it starts with themselves and then in
• 1:15:16
  the home, and then the community.
• 1:15:17
  I think sometimes it's, is just a observation I've made.
• 1:15:22
  Sometimes it's cool to be the leader in the community because the popularity
• 1:15:26
  and it's cool, but it's not so cool or easy to be that leader at home.
• 1:15:31
  Sometimes it's harder to be that leader at home, so it really needs to start at home.
• 1:15:34
  So I think some of the things like program, going back to programs and edu
• 1:15:37
  education again, this can be a really 'cause I've thought very deeply into this.
• 1:15:41
  So it could be a very lengthy segment all by itself.
• 1:15:44
  But just to try to bring it down.
• 1:15:45
  Teaching people skills, soft skills, communication skills.
• 1:15:49
  I think related skills.
• 1:15:50
  'cause that's really where it starts.
• 1:15:51
  The relationships are you building a healthy relationship and then you
• 1:15:54
  have a kid, and then you have kids.
• 1:15:56
  And it's if you pick the wrong partner and you guys don't have
• 1:16:00
  a healthy relationship, then you know it's not gonna work out.
• 1:16:03
  For example, my father, when my mother and my father met my mother was, an addict.
• 1:16:07
  My father was a drug dealer also a womanizer.
• 1:16:10
  And so when they connected, the relationship was very
• 1:16:12
  toxic from the very beginning.
• 1:16:13
  And so obviously it didn't work out.
• 1:16:15
  But when you're already picking the wrong partner, you're already
• 1:16:19
  setting up your possible children.
• 1:16:21
  If you guys have children together, you're setting up your possible
• 1:16:23
  children for a very difficult future.
• 1:16:25
  So educating people when they're young, one thing, even though I grew
• 1:16:29
  up in a very, I had a very difficult and challenging childhoods and
• 1:16:32
  traumas and stuff like that, being young, I'm still very impressionable.
• 1:16:37
  So when I was in elementary school, I would hear things in school and even
• 1:16:40
  though things at home were tough, I would hear the things at school like Dare the
• 1:16:43
  DARE Program, which is against drugs.
• 1:16:46
  I've never been into drugs even though I come from a family that
• 1:16:49
  did a lot of drugs, sold drugs.
• 1:16:51
  I've never been into drugs myself.
• 1:16:52
  The DARE program had an impact on me as a young kid.
• 1:16:55
  'cause I was impressionable.
• 1:16:56
  Even though I had negative examples and bad examples at home, those little things.
• 1:17:00
  So maybe educating educating a young people to be leaders, teaching 'em soft
• 1:17:06
  skills, not, I'm all for math, science, all those things are super important.
• 1:17:10
  But also teaching the soft skills, communication skills.
• 1:17:12
  What is a healthy relationship look like?
• 1:17:15
  And hopefully it's not always gonna stick to the wall, but hopefully it
• 1:17:18
  sticks to the wall with one at least one.
• 1:17:20
  And go back to that compound effect, you continue to rebuild it.
• 1:17:23
  What I think could potentially help fix that besides being a long-term a
• 1:17:27
  long-term thing, educating people when they're young and still impressionable,
• 1:17:31
  putting that in the back of their mind.
• 1:17:32
  So maybe when they get older, even if they are facing childhood trauma
• 1:17:36
  at home, maybe if it's in the back of their mind, they're gonna second
• 1:17:38
  guess their decisions later on.
• 1:17:40
  And so dev develop, learning how to develop communication skills,
• 1:17:44
  healthy relationships, what to look for in a healthy relationship.
• 1:17:47
  I can't tell you guys how many of my peers come home that have been
• 1:17:51
  incarcerated for 20 plus years.
• 1:17:52
  Ex lifers.
• 1:17:54
  And the two number, re two number one, reasons why ex lifers go back.
• 1:17:57
  Substances and relationships.
• 1:17:59
  Substances and relationships.
• 1:18:01
  And so just learning how to identify what's a healthy
• 1:18:04
  relationship look like First.
• 1:18:06
  Are you ready for a relationship?
• 1:18:08
  Are you in a position for a relationship?
• 1:18:10
  And two, does the other person across that you're looking at, are they not
• 1:18:14
  just a pretty face, but are they healthy and ready to engage in a relationship?
• 1:18:19
  Or do they have their life together?
• 1:18:21
  They don't have to be perfect, nobody's perfect, but are you both,
• 1:18:24
  as the Bible would say, equally yoked?
• 1:18:26
  Are you both equally yoked?
• 1:18:28
  Are we on the same page here?
• 1:18:29
  So you have an unhealthy relationship.
• 1:18:31
  You potentially have kids with somebody you don't even like, you're
• 1:18:35
  already setting up your kids for
• 1:18:36
  Jerremy Newsome: yeah.
• 1:18:37
  Rafael Quiroz: Some challenges.
• 1:18:38
  Jerremy Newsome: I love that you mentioned soft skills.
• 1:18:40
  I. That we are dozens and dozens of episodes in to solving America's problems.
• 1:18:44
  And again, I am always gonna bring up whatever we're discussing.
• 1:18:49
  I'm like, education's gonna be the main problem.
• 1:18:52
  It's gonna be the biggest solution to this, right?
• 1:18:54
  So for your point, when you're talking about soft skills, I've been saying
• 1:18:59
  in almost every episode, at some stage, if we have, our schools totally
• 1:19:04
  get massively updated and changed.
• 1:19:07
  Where one of the classes is just called conversation, communication, having people
• 1:19:14
  sit down like we're doing right now, often talking so that they no longer feel
• 1:19:21
  judgment or embarrassment when they speak.
• 1:19:24
  The number one fear is public speaking.
• 1:19:25
  Where do you think we get that from?
• 1:19:27
  One person staying in front of a room of a bunch of people.
• 1:19:29
  You're gonna get judged if you say something incorrectly.
• 1:19:31
  That's where it stems from, right?
• 1:19:32
  School.
• 1:19:34
  Learn to start nurturing.
• 1:19:36
  The simple ability to be open, to be vulnerable, to communicate so that way
• 1:19:42
  men and women can talk to each other.
• 1:19:44
  Girls and boys can talk to each other.
• 1:19:45
  Kids and other kids, parents, other parents and teachers.
• 1:19:48
  Teachers and kids.
• 1:19:49
  They could start just seeing, like I, I remember vividly when I was in
• 1:19:53
  third grade not thinking that my.
• 1:19:54
  A teacher was a person and then when I saw her in a grocery store,
• 1:19:58
  I'm like, what are you doing Ms.
• 1:19:59
  Johnson getting groceries?
• 1:20:00
  I didn't even know she was a human being.
• 1:20:02
  I was like some wizard alien that came in to teach school every so often.
• 1:20:06
  It was just, it's strange to me 'cause I didn't know who she was as a human.
• 1:20:11
  I didn't know or feel or see or understand any of her challenges or
• 1:20:14
  flaws or struggles or hopes or goals.
• 1:20:17
  Her admirations.
• 1:20:18
  'cause we never talked, we didn't have conversations, we
• 1:20:21
  didn't have communications.
• 1:20:21
  And that's the soft skills.
• 1:20:24
  Ralph, that I'm hearing you talk about, I'm hearing you say is these
• 1:20:27
  are aspects that Yes, are absolutely change, changeable and very easily
• 1:20:32
  implementable implementable.
• 1:20:33
  Jason, what about you, man?
• 1:20:35
  Starting in school, what could we do?
• 1:20:38
  Jason Holland: so I think parents need to get on the same page with
• 1:20:43
  teachers and administration needs to get on the same page with teachers
• 1:20:49
  that they, there's a divide a lot of times between I. and teachers.
• 1:20:56
  if the student, is not necessarily doing the best that they can in the
• 1:21:02
  class and the teacher is wanting to work with the student, sometimes
• 1:21:06
  parents will be overly protective.
• 1:21:08
  And it creates this whole dynamic where I think teachers often feel
• 1:21:12
  helpless today versus where they may have felt when I was going to school.
• 1:21:17
  So I think that there needs to be an overhaul there in
• 1:21:20
  that, in those relationships.
• 1:21:21
  For one.
• 1:21:22
  And secondly one of the things that Ralph mentioned that I, that was
• 1:21:26
  coming up for me is, and this is a complex thing, but just simply reducing
• 1:21:31
  violence and exposure to violence as a tool to get what you want, Domestic
• 1:21:36
  violence that starts in the home.
• 1:21:38
  The statistics are that a kid that witnesses that is exponentially more
• 1:21:45
  likely to commit violence later, right?
• 1:21:48
  Because it becomes a way to solve problems.
• 1:21:50
  And so I think that just exposure to that, obviously, so much of what
• 1:21:56
  Ralph was saying would do that, right?
• 1:21:58
  Just with healthy relationships.
• 1:22:00
  And then the other thing too that I think, honestly, this is gonna be,
• 1:22:04
  this is may sound controversial.
• 1:22:07
  really believe that most people, most of the time want power.
• 1:22:12
  They want power, period.
• 1:22:14
  They want to have the ability to make something happen, which
• 1:22:19
  is how I define power, right?
• 1:22:22
  The difference is they don't always know the difference between abusing
• 1:22:26
  power and using it in a healthy way.
• 1:22:30
  And I think that if we could reeducate people on simply
• 1:22:34
  that look, you want power?
• 1:22:36
  Sure, we'll show you how to get it, but there's a healthy way
• 1:22:38
  where it can grow sustainably.
• 1:22:40
  Your ability to change things can grow sustainably or you abuse it.
• 1:22:44
  And what happens is that actually reduces your opportunities in
• 1:22:48
  your ability to change things.
• 1:22:50
  And I think that if we serious conversations about that and just
• 1:22:54
  acknowledged it and did it in a way that was smart with teachers, educators,
• 1:22:59
  administrations, and parents on board for the kids to develop a sense of
• 1:23:03
  agency how they could move towards a desirable future we go a far away in that.
• 1:23:09
  That's my take on that.
• 1:23:11
  Jerremy Newsome: Hot take.
• 1:23:12
  Thank you, generous.
• 1:23:13
  Jennifer, what's your hot take?
• 1:23:16
  Generous Jennifer: I hear all of you guys, and I do not to go there,
• 1:23:19
  but I feel like these are very masculine struggles, so just to bring
• 1:23:23
  it into kind of a. Feminine space.
• 1:23:27
  Jason Holland: go
• 1:23:27
  Generous Jennifer: that, sorry, power.
• 1:23:30
  I get it.
• 1:23:31
  For me it's more esteem and it's more like I, I have ego too.
• 1:23:35
  Like I want this business to be successful.
• 1:23:36
  And I took a really honest look at myself recently and was thinking about why.
• 1:23:40
  And my ego is very much in that, but it's because I wanna be a mentor.
• 1:23:44
  Like when my ego comes in, it's 'cause I realize I wanna be
• 1:23:46
  a mentor, I wanna be a hero.
• 1:23:48
  I wanna pay for houses for people.
• 1:23:50
  I wanna make people rich.
• 1:23:51
  It's not about me and my power and what I wanna gain, but it's
• 1:23:54
  what I wanna give and provide.
• 1:23:56
  But I think that going back to the education part of this question,
• 1:24:00
  now that I'm a mom, I understand why my mom was so terrible.
• 1:24:04
  She was tired.
• 1:24:06
  She did not have the resources that she needed to be present,
• 1:24:10
  let alone encouraging for me.
• 1:24:12
  And my mom was very abusive.
• 1:24:13
  She was also a paranoid to schizophrenic.
• 1:24:15
  And she said some really strange things to me about my sexuality when I was too young
• 1:24:19
  to even know what she was talking about.
• 1:24:21
  So if my mom had better resources, then she could have been better for me.
• 1:24:26
  And just talking about kids and youth, I really, I get that we wanna
• 1:24:29
  start with the kids, but I really think that starts with parents.
• 1:24:32
  And it starts with the parents that are spending the most time
• 1:24:34
  with their kids that are gonna have the most impact on their kids.
• 1:24:38
  I realized really early when I was raising my son, like the toys that I
• 1:24:42
  buy him, none of this shit matters.
• 1:24:43
  What matters is the quality of time that I spend with him and how much
• 1:24:46
  I encourage him and how much I help him through frustrating situations,
• 1:24:50
  stay focused and determined.
• 1:24:53
  Yeah, now that I'm a parent, a lot more grace from my mom and a lot
• 1:24:56
  more understanding and realization that being a parent is really hard.
• 1:25:01
  And that's who I wanna give my support to
• 1:25:03
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 1:25:04
  Dave Conley: So these are these are very personally centered.
• 1:25:08
  Jen, I want to, I wanna come back to something you said earlier and
• 1:25:12
  think about the justice system.
• 1:25:15
  The front end of this, like sentencing fuels a lot of this.
• 1:25:18
  The people of color, if you're poor you ran into it with bias because of your sex.
• 1:25:26
  These people are getting longer terms.
• 1:25:28
  What do we need to do on the justice side so that it's just.
• 1:25:34
  Generous Jennifer: A lot of the things that we talked about today.
• 1:25:37
  I will always say that it goes back to self-worth and every, everything
• 1:25:41
  that we do should be helping people with their sense of self-worth
• 1:25:44
  so that they wanna bring value.
• 1:25:46
  So our justice system should be geared towards, you did
• 1:25:50
  this, why did you do this?
• 1:25:52
  And how do we address that?
• 1:25:55
  Versus you did this, now you're being punished.
• 1:25:58
  If we had more programs like Defy, if we had more programs that supported
• 1:26:02
  mothers, if we had more programs that supported people that are gonna start
• 1:26:05
  businesses with social causes, if we gave more grant money to these small
• 1:26:10
  businesses, and it doesn't even have to just be businesses with social causes,
• 1:26:13
  but supporting locally owned businesses, supporting small businesses, like that's
• 1:26:18
  gives better opportunities to a lot of these places where we see crime, like
• 1:26:23
  people commit crime because they don't have opportunities that they want,
• 1:26:26
  or they feel like have to compete for these opportunities with people that
• 1:26:31
  don't deserve them more than they do.
• 1:26:32
  So they'd rather compete in another arena where it's easier
• 1:26:34
  to win or quote unquote win.
• 1:26:38
  I think
• 1:26:38
  Opportunities to neighborhoods is a big it's think something I believe
• 1:26:42
  in strongly and why I support Defy and this entrepreneur component
• 1:26:47
  like this business component.
• 1:26:48
  This making you a successful business oriented person and spreading that into
• 1:26:53
  the world and not being shortsighted and having it being about profit,
• 1:26:56
  but having it be about something you really care about, like Jason wanting
• 1:26:59
  to bring to solve this problem that he sees as a barrier to people reentering
• 1:27:04
  society and getting their life together.
• 1:27:07
  Sorry, I'm rambling.
• 1:27:08
  Dave Conley: No.
• 1:27:09
  Great.
• 1:27:09
  Jerremy Newsome: that's great.
• 1:27:10
  Dave Conley: Jason what do das, what do das and judges need to hear on
• 1:27:15
  the front end of these sentences?
• 1:27:18
  Jason Holland: Oh gosh, that's a tough one.
• 1:27:19
  I honestly I don't think that it's necessarily das and
• 1:27:22
  judges that need to hear it.
• 1:27:24
  I think it's legislators that need to hear that.
• 1:27:28
  People need some, they need to see some tunnel or some way for how
• 1:27:37
  to move towards that's desirable.
• 1:27:41
  If they feel that there's no light at the end of the tunnel for them,
• 1:27:43
  there's no hope, then the odds of them actually making healthy decisions as
• 1:27:49
  a result or are lessened if you say, Hey if you would've if I would've came
• 1:27:54
  into the prison system at 18 and you said, look, Jason, have life without
• 1:27:58
  parole, but here's what you can do.
• 1:27:59
  If you followed this pathway, you could potentially go home
• 1:28:03
  in 15 years, and you know what?
• 1:28:05
  You'll have a college degree.
• 1:28:07
  You'll be worth this much in the market.
• 1:28:09
  You'll be able to get a reasonable job.
• 1:28:10
  You'll be able to do these things.
• 1:28:12
  Yeah.
• 1:28:12
  You're gonna have to spend the time and you're, it's gonna be hard work,
• 1:28:14
  but there's a clear pathway for you.
• 1:28:16
  Think that would've changed my entire trajectory in prison.
• 1:28:20
  And I would've, instead of doing 28 years.
• 1:28:24
  might have done 15 and come home a lot earlier and been able to
• 1:28:27
  provide a lot more to my family and the community as a result.
• 1:28:30
  And maybe I wouldn't have impacted the prison system as negatively
• 1:28:34
  I, as I did for as long as I did.
• 1:28:36
  So I think that the idea of locking 'em up and throwing away the key
• 1:28:40
  is a terrible solution, right?
• 1:28:44
  I think that we wanna provide a meaningful avenue for people to change
• 1:28:49
  the outcome of or the course of their life, even if they find themselves in
• 1:28:54
  really bad circumstances inside a prison.
• 1:28:56
  Because otherwise what you're gonna get is just people dwelling in hopelessness
• 1:29:00
  and reacting from hopelessness and fear and hurt and harm, and
• 1:29:04
  that's not a recipe anything good.
• 1:29:07
  Jerremy Newsome: Wow.
• 1:29:08
  Dave Conley: I love that you both said the same thing in wildly different ways
• 1:29:11
  and it it keeps coming back to that.
• 1:29:14
  Jerremy Newsome: Yep.
• 1:29:14
  Agreed agreed.
• 1:29:16
  So how about this?
• 1:29:17
  If we think about it on a immediate picture, again, just imagine that you're
• 1:29:22
  talking to thousands and thousands of people who can make a big change.
• 1:29:26
  This system that we're describing costs $80 billion a year, and it also
• 1:29:35
  blocks 6 million people from voting.
• 1:29:39
  What is one step every listener can take to break this cycle?
• 1:29:45
  it's learn, maybe it's act, maybe it's vote a specific way.
• 1:29:50
  Do you have an opinion on what is one step every listener could take?
• 1:29:54
  I.
• 1:29:55
  Jason Holland: Yeah, I think that there's a bill coming up for, for people
• 1:30:00
  that are serving life without parole that were eight under the age of 25, I
• 1:30:04
  believe, when they committed their crime.
• 1:30:06
  I would highly encourage everyone to look into that bill and search their
• 1:30:10
  hearts on voting that bill passed.
• 1:30:13
  They, the science behind juvenile offenders.
• 1:30:17
  Coming home, like the science behind their brains not being fully
• 1:30:21
  formed up until the age of 26.
• 1:30:23
  They've passed several laws allowing juvenile offenders or
• 1:30:27
  youth offenders to come home.
• 1:30:28
  But for some reason, if they were sentenced to life without parole, they're
• 1:30:31
  not allowing them to do in my case, I just got lucky that I got the golden
• 1:30:35
  ticket and was commuted by the governor.
• 1:30:37
  But there's plenty of other men and women that are just like me, and
• 1:30:41
  they've, they're doing great work inside of prisons and they would be great
• 1:30:45
  in the community, and they're just restricted simply because of a sentence.
• 1:30:48
  And so one thing that voters could do is just look at the bill and
• 1:30:52
  say, Hey, does this make sense?
• 1:30:53
  If the science provides for other youth defenders to come home, why not these guys
• 1:30:58
  simply based on what they were sentenced to, that's one thing that they could
• 1:31:01
  do that could really transform lives.
• 1:31:04
  Jerremy Newsome: All right.
• 1:31:05
  One, one of my immediate answers is make sure if you are a
• 1:31:07
  listener, reach out, look up.
• 1:31:10
  right?
• 1:31:10
  DEFY ventures Jason?
• 1:31:13
  Jason Holland: was the mo more low hanging fruit, and I'm glad that you,
• 1:31:17
  I'm glad that you filled that one in.
• 1:31:18
  Thanks, Jerremy.
• 1:31:20
  Tag Team.
• 1:31:21
  Jerremy Newsome: Yes.
• 1:31:21
  That's also something that just changed my life in a great way.
• 1:31:24
  I think every listener here wants to give back time, energy,
• 1:31:29
  effort, it feels so good to give.
• 1:31:31
  And the more you give, the more you receive.
• 1:31:32
  It's always a feeling regardless of where you are or what you're
• 1:31:36
  doing or why you're doing it.
• 1:31:37
  And I think Defi Ventures provides an incredible opportunity for any individual
• 1:31:41
  to be a part of helping someone journey and their entrepreneurship to really
• 1:31:47
  become the best version of themselves.
• 1:31:50
  And I think that's an awesome opportunity for all of the listeners to take part in.
• 1:31:53
  Jennifer what's your take something one step that a listener can do.
• 1:31:57
  I already got the low hanging fruit.
• 1:31:58
  Took that away from you.
• 1:31:59
  My guy.
• 1:32:00
  Jason talked about the voting.
• 1:32:02
  What should they do?
• 1:32:04
  Generous Jennifer: I guess just look at formerly incarcerated folks with more of
• 1:32:07
  an open mind and just know that, when I was writing my vale, sorry, I'm a snob.
• 1:32:12
  When I was writing my valedictorian speech, I had not wanted to.
• 1:32:17
  My experience being arrested and told me, the person who was helping with
• 1:32:23
  a speech, that it's really important that everybody out there know that
• 1:32:26
  this is what an ex-felon looks like.
• 1:32:27
  They're a valedictorian, ex-felons look like me.
• 1:32:30
  They don't look like what you think.
• 1:32:32
  And I just, if one thing, since all the low hanging fruit has been covered,
• 1:32:36
  it's just change your perception of what you think an ex-felon is and
• 1:32:39
  know that they can be really caring and hard, really hardworking really
• 1:32:43
  tenacious and thirsty individuals
• 1:32:46
  That you should allow in your life.
• 1:32:48
  'cause they can bring a lot of value.
• 1:32:50
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 1:32:52
  Yeah.
• 1:32:52
  Change the visual identification that, that, that initial judgment
• 1:32:56
  that people might be throwing out.
• 1:32:58
  Generous Jennifer: Yes.
• 1:32:59
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah, that's a big one.
• 1:33:02
  Ralph, what's your take?
• 1:33:03
  What's one thing that listeners can do?
• 1:33:06
  Rafael Quiroz: Man.
• 1:33:07
  Awareness and opportunity, I think sometimes for us who are transitioning
• 1:33:12
  back into society sometimes sometimes we just need opportunity and awareness.
• 1:33:16
  We don't, we're not aware of certain resources that are available.
• 1:33:20
  For example, Def five ventures I know this is already covered.
• 1:33:23
  I'm not gonna recover it, but what I mean is.
• 1:33:24
  Some people who come home and they wanna start businesses or whatever
• 1:33:27
  that have been incarcerated, they're not aware of Def five ventures.
• 1:33:30
  So just, Hey just yeah, creating awareness.
• 1:33:32
  I think a lack of awareness sometimes is a is a, can be a little bit of a headache.
• 1:33:37
  I'm just thinking of something simple, something simple that
• 1:33:39
  anybody can do and just be proactive.
• 1:33:41
  Just creating opportunities spreading awareness supporting local organizations
• 1:33:47
  like Defy Ventures, like the main new foundation, like other nonprofits who are
• 1:33:53
  doing this work, who are helping returning citizens transition successfully.
• 1:33:58
  So those are some things that I think that your listeners can potentially do.
• 1:34:02
  Jerremy Newsome: Thank you.
• 1:34:03
  Thank you.
• 1:34:03
  All right here's another shift, and again, I don't know exactly how or what
• 1:34:07
  or where or when, but I'll say it anyway.
• 1:34:11
  You have all lived through something that most people haven't.
• 1:34:16
  What is one piece of wisdom that you've earned you would like to pass
• 1:34:22
  on to someone still on the inside?
• 1:34:25
  Generous Jennifer: It's not how you start, it's how you finish.
• 1:34:27
  Jerremy Newsome: Oh, let's go Jen.
• 1:34:30
  It's not how you start.
• 1:34:31
  It's how you finish.
• 1:34:33
  Amen to that, Ralph.
• 1:34:34
  What you got for me?
• 1:34:36
  Rafael Quiroz: Principles without a doubt.
• 1:34:37
  Principles.
• 1:34:38
  One thing of my transition during my transition, I started living a life based
• 1:34:42
  on principles while I was incarcerated.
• 1:34:45
  And when I came home, those principles traveled with me.
• 1:34:48
  Living principles, being fair, honest, respectful.
• 1:34:51
  It has nothing to do with being in prison or out of prison.
• 1:34:53
  Being honest doesn't mean I'm honest, because you're honest with me.
• 1:34:56
  Being honest means I'm honest because that's a principle I dec
• 1:34:59
  I made a decision to live by.
• 1:35:01
  Being fair.
• 1:35:02
  Life isn't always fair, but that doesn't give me the right
• 1:35:04
  to not be fair to others.
• 1:35:06
  So what I something I've definitely learned and would love to pass on
• 1:35:10
  is live a life based on principles.
• 1:35:11
  I get it.
• 1:35:12
  Earlier in my transition.
• 1:35:13
  I want to change because of my family, my friends, my loved ones.
• 1:35:16
  I wanted my freedom.
• 1:35:17
  I wanted all these things.
• 1:35:18
  But what it really boiled down to was principle centered living.
• 1:35:21
  And when I focus on principle centered living, almost everything else followed.
• 1:35:25
  And my transition, I think, has been a successful one because I've been
• 1:35:28
  making decisions based on principles and not just on things alone.
• 1:35:32
  And that kind of helped shape my decisions.
• 1:35:34
  So that's the lesson I would wanna share for the people who are still incarcerated.
• 1:35:37
  Make your decisions, be principal centered.
• 1:35:40
  And when you transition I think it'll be a little smoother.
• 1:35:44
  Jerremy Newsome: Thank you, Jason.
• 1:35:46
  Jason Holland: For me, I think if I was speaking to anyone inside or even
• 1:35:50
  someone outside that's going through something, I wanna remind them that
• 1:35:55
  everything that happens is an opportunity.
• 1:36:00
  Everything, not all blessings come wrapped like a Christmas gift.
• 1:36:05
  Some of them come wrapped in thorns.
• 1:36:08
  You have to learn how to find what's inside of that and turn it into something.
• 1:36:13
  I don't believe in guarantees.
• 1:36:15
  I believe in probabilities, and I believe that if we live our lives in a certain
• 1:36:20
  way, day in and day out, we create a higher probability for an outcome, right?
• 1:36:26
  For the negative or the positive.
• 1:36:28
  And I think that if they just focus on.
• 1:36:31
  Living towards a probability, we're all recognizing that everything
• 1:36:34
  that comes, if they're creative, if they use their creativity, they
• 1:36:38
  can turn that into an opportunity.
• 1:36:40
  It might not be right away, down the line.
• 1:36:43
  And having that openness and that mindset can be crucial really
• 1:36:49
  turning your life into a miracle.
• 1:36:51
  And that would be my message.
• 1:36:53
  Jerremy Newsome: My man.
• 1:36:54
  Turn your life into a miracle because it is, it truly is.
• 1:37:00
  Miracles are all around us.
• 1:37:01
  If we look for it, if we expect it, if we want miracles in
• 1:37:05
  our life, they're available.
• 1:37:07
  Ralph, Jason, thank you for your time.
• 1:37:10
  Thank you for your energy.
• 1:37:11
  Thank you for your courage to share.
• 1:37:14
  Thank you for your compassion towards others and still continuously
• 1:37:18
  daily helping others, not just yourself, but those around you so
• 1:37:23
  that we can live a more bright, more bold, more unified country.
• 1:37:29
  Jason Holland: For having us guys.
• 1:37:30
  Appreciate it.
• 1:37:31
  Rafael Quiroz: Awesome.
• 1:37:32
  Thank you guys.
• 1:37:33
  Jerremy Newsome: Yep, our pleasure.
• 1:37:34
  Thank you so much.
• 1:37:36
  Dave Conley: So what'd you learn?
• 1:37:37
  Jerremy Newsome: Oh, what did I learn?
• 1:37:41
  What I learned, Dave, I learned that everyone's journey is different.
• 1:37:48
  Some people will need want and require different forms of discipline in order
• 1:38:00
  to change, in order to become better.
• 1:38:02
  In order to shift that discipline could be pressure.
• 1:38:06
  discipline could be the prison system, that pressure could just be
• 1:38:12
  It could be financial requirements, it could be family requirements.
• 1:38:15
  But ultimately, if we all ask to become stronger, we're not given more muscles,
• 1:38:22
  we're given more weight to carry.
• 1:38:24
  I think each and every one of our guests have carried their own weight.
• 1:38:28
  They have made decisions that they're not proud of, but I am 100% confident
• 1:38:33
  every single listener is human and therefore they have made at least
• 1:38:37
  one decision that they're probably not tremendously proud of just one.
• 1:38:45
  I do one a week probably, where I'm like, I could have done that differently
• 1:38:48
  with my three and a half year old.
• 1:38:49
  So I truly believe that the journeys that we're all on.
• 1:38:57
  It's one of remarkable opportunity and the visions and the and the
• 1:39:02
  rehabilitation and the growth that, the three individuals that we worked
• 1:39:07
  with today, Jason, Jennifer, and Ralph, have undergone a remarkable, and I have
• 1:39:13
  heard loud and clear that yes, there was definitely elements inside the prison
• 1:39:19
  system that can or could have worked, but there are very few and far in between.
• 1:39:24
  And they're only going to work for the individual and for the person, for the
• 1:39:30
  spirit, and for the soul who also says, and articulates internally that I am
• 1:39:36
  willing to change, I am willing to make that shift, and that is gonna be that
• 1:39:44
  person that we've, we need to continue to learn studying and figure out how
• 1:39:49
  we can make that change happen faster.
• 1:39:51
  How we can make the realization for that to occur quicker.
• 1:39:53
  Because if someone is so bold and brazen in their belief system and they
• 1:39:57
  cannot change, they're not gonna change through pleasure or through pain,
• 1:40:01
  they're gonna remain the exact same way.
• 1:40:03
  But if you can find ways to crack into the crack, into the spirit, into the soul
• 1:40:07
  that does need to be shifted or could be shifted, or would like to be shifted,
• 1:40:11
  you have to do it the right way, then really true, remarkable change can happen.
• 1:40:15
  And I think we saw that today and I, and it was really quite moving for me.
• 1:40:20
  Dave Conley: I think for me, I think the last 10 days, going to the women's prison
• 1:40:26
  and then having this conversation, if.
• 1:40:27
  Absolutely changed me.
• 1:40:30
  I heard over and over again that the things I thought, would help, right?
• 1:40:36
  All the money that we need to pour into inner cities and, opportunities and
• 1:40:41
  healthcare and daycare and transportation.
• 1:40:44
  Like all of these, like huge, like undertakings that we need.
• 1:40:48
  I didn't hear that from these folks and I didn't hear it last week either at all.
• 1:40:53
  Each one of them started with personal responsibility.
• 1:40:57
  And you get in the system and you need to change your mindset.
• 1:41:01
  You need to, focus on your values.
• 1:41:04
  You need to grow up, you need to work on yourself.
• 1:41:07
  You need to have good relationships and not hang, and everything was
• 1:41:11
  about what the internal person can do.
• 1:41:13
  And all of those things are near costless.
• 1:41:17
  That on the very beginning of this, where they grew up and how they grew up.
• 1:41:22
  They needed hope, they needed a pathway for success and they didn't have it.
• 1:41:28
  And then one thing leads to another, which leads to another, and it dominoes
• 1:41:32
  and their life falls apart and they make the mistakes or they're in with the
• 1:41:35
  wrong thing and they're doing the wrong thing and they end up in the system.
• 1:41:38
  And then once they're in the system again, they needed hope
• 1:41:42
  and they needed a path and.
• 1:41:45
  That is what sustained them, and that's ultimately what
• 1:41:49
  got them out of that system.
• 1:41:52
  And they came into being like real, like shining lights in the community.
• 1:41:57
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 1:41:58
  Dave Conley: And I think there's a complete ignorance by the
• 1:42:01
  people who are actually in charge.
• 1:42:03
  And I think by the voters and the people like coming from very pri privileged
• 1:42:07
  backgrounds who have hasn't really talked to somebody who's been in these systems
• 1:42:13
  and realizing, Hey, that could be you too.
• 1:42:15
  And you know what, it's education.
• 1:42:18
  It's different things than what you think it is.
• 1:42:21
  And it's not these, crazy unimaginably costly kind of things that we're talking
• 1:42:27
  about because what we're doing now is incredibly costly and it's not working.
• 1:42:30
  Jerremy Newsome: Yeah.
• 1:42:31
  Dave Conley: Guess what?
• 1:42:31
  The cheaper, better option are things like defi, giving people that hope
• 1:42:36
  and giving people those opportunities.
• 1:42:38
  Jerremy Newsome: We've heard today many powerful stories, real lives
• 1:42:43
  shaped by a system locking up 1.9 million people and millions more.
• 1:42:51
  This isn't just a conversation, it's a call to understand and act.
• 1:42:58
  We want to hear your stories.
• 1:43:00
  Have you had someone close to you who have faced incarceration
• 1:43:03
  challenges or maybe found a way to rebuild and push for change?
• 1:43:08
  Share that with us.
• 1:43:09
  Tag us at Solve USA Pod on X or solving America's Problems Podcast on Instagram.
• 1:43:17
  Your perspective can drive progress.
• 1:43:20
  Feel free to please subscribe, leave a five star view and share this episode
• 1:43:24
  with someone who needs to hear it, because together we can build a better way.