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Survivor’s Guilt After Leaving Prison - Chris Miner · The soulnotskin Podcast with Jen SluMac

• 0:00
  Speaker: Ronnie B.
• 0:00
  Speaker: Simpson in a book actually mentioned it that we'd have to change the hearts and minds, not the legislation, because the legislation can be changed back.
• 0:06
  Speaker: And also it has a lot to do with this obsession that if we punish someone, they will be better and be good.
• 0:12
  Speaker: And I have to deal with that a lot in my classes when talking to students who are coming.
• 0:16
  Speaker: You know, I teach in Chicago a UIC which isn't as rich as UIUC where I live down here, but there is a lot of people that don't have any interactions with the criminal justice system, don't have any friends or family or been wrapped up in it.
• 0:28
  Speaker: And they're highly punitive.
• 0:30
  Speaker: I mean, when I was a kid, I'd say some smart ass stuff to my mom, get slapped.
• 0:34
  Speaker: You think I didn't say smart stuff the next day?
• 0:36
  Speaker: It didn't fix me.
• 0:37
  Speaker: I think it was more about the person actually dishing it out.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Welcome The soulnotskin Podcast, a virtual living room, a safe, welcoming place to land where you can pull up a chair and share stories straight from the heart.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jen SluMac, or as my students like to call me, Miss Jen.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: We talk about the real human experience, the hard stuff, the wonderful stuff, and the messy everyday growth that shapes who we become.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Real stories, real people, real insight, becoming who we are.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Settle in and let's dive into today's episode.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of The soulnotskin Podcast.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: I am here with a gentleman that it took me about two months to coordinate with.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: So uh I'm as happy that he's here as hopefully he is, uh, that he's here.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: And I'm gonna just introduce Chris Minor.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: If you would tell us about who you are, what you do, and why I wanted you on the show.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Or I guess you may not know that, but why you do what you do.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: How's that?
• 1:38
  Speaker: Okay, I can roll with that.
• 1:38
  Speaker: I'll just kick you the five-minute version and we can go from there.
• 1:41
  Speaker: So who am I?
• 1:42
  Speaker: Well, basically, I'll explain that through three aspects: my professional career, my academic career, and then my personal life, all three intertwine, rather big.
• 1:51
  Speaker: As far as professional, I currently work at the Champaign County Public Defender's Office.
• 1:55
  Speaker: Not an attorney, unfortunately, but I do mitigation.
• 1:57
  Speaker: Uh basically, it's a lot of getting medical records and interviewing people that are inside the jail who are looking at sentencing to try to paint them as a human.
• 2:06
  Speaker: Uh, when the state's attorney is going to try to paint them as the villain, is the worst person alive.
• 2:11
  Speaker: My job is to help those people tell their stories.
• 2:13
  Speaker: Um, before that, I work with probably three or four hundred people coming out of prison, helping to link them up uh with opportunities, education, employment, and housing.
• 2:21
  Speaker: I've done this through many nonprofit organizations, including my own nonprofit.
• 2:26
  Speaker: So academics, uh, I got a bunch of degrees for whatever that's worth.
• 2:29
  Speaker: I mean, not much, but it gives me some platforms to speak.
• 2:32
  Speaker: I have undergrad degrees in political science and urban planning, have a master's degree in social work, and I got about a year and a half left on my PhD in criminology.
• 2:40
  Speaker: As far as personal life, it kind of feeds into everything.
• 2:43
  Speaker: I've been out of prison for about 20 years.
• 2:45
  Speaker: Um, that kind of like you'll look back at the professional and academic, like, oh, okay, this kind of adds up.
• 2:51
  Speaker: Uh, before uh, I mean, I've been arrested about 15 times.
• 2:54
  Speaker: I talked very openly about this.
• 2:56
  Speaker: Um, what I did, maybe we'll get it at eventually.
• 2:59
  Speaker: Generally, it's not a good idea to ask people who've been incarcerated what they've done.
• 3:02
  Speaker: Me, I'm an open book.
• 3:03
  Speaker: Okay.
• 3:04
  Speaker: And um, on that point, uh, a few disclaimers about when I talk.
• 3:08
  Speaker: Uh, first of all, I cuss a lot.
• 3:10
  Speaker: I'm gonna do my best to tone it down a little bit since I don't know you or this audience so well, but I'm gonna drop some F-bombs.
• 3:15
  Speaker: It's just how I is, uh, how it is, because I talk about stuff that's very important to me.
• 3:19
  Speaker: Or I can cry, yeah, you might get your full admission price and get both on the day, depending upon where exactly this goes.
• 3:26
  Speaker: Second of all, I'm ADHD A F, which means I go on side rants and tangents and side quests, and quite often I'll be in the middle of making a point and I'll completely forget where I was going.
• 3:36
  Speaker: So be ready, because that might happen once or twice during this talk.
• 3:40
  Speaker: And uh lastly, I like to give a disclaimer that I don't give to criminology students.
• 3:46
  Speaker: Trigger warning.
• 3:46
  Speaker: I don't know where this is going.
• 3:47
  Speaker: I work with murders, I work with child lusters, I work with rapists, I don't nub the volume down to hide what anyone has done.
• 3:54
  Speaker: Just know I don't know where it's going, but we might be talking about that stuff eventually.
• 3:59
  Speaker: And in closing, I'll guess say the biggest thing about me.
• 4:01
  Speaker: Well, the two biggest things is one, I'm a power lifter, I just came from the gym.
• 4:04
  Speaker: And two, I am a cat lover, and my cat tunes has passed away about a month and a half ago.
• 4:09
  Speaker: So unfortunately, I've not I've been without a cat for quite a while.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: So I'm sorry about that.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: That's a huge loss, man.
• 4:16
  Speaker: But that's me.
• 4:17
  Speaker: Um, so where do we want to start this conversation?
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Well, um, I'll reiterate to you a little bit about what the podcast is for.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: My mission is I have a desire to sort of introduce people who don't typically meet uh to stories of their experience, their authentic experience, because I think uh somebody who may have othered somebody else uh might be able to hear the humanity in their story while they're folding laundry in the privacy of their own earbuds or while they're driving in the car.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: I really believe that we have so much more in common than we have uh different.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: I think that it's important that we hear each other's stories because we will find ourselves in them.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: And then suddenly the facade breaks just a little bit, right?
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Which could begin to change the way that we move through life.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: So let's hit it.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Um tell us what you do at the public defender's office.
• 5:07
  Speaker: Okay, I kind of summarized that, but let me talk again.
• 5:09
  Speaker: And leading up to it, let me tell you how I got the job might be interesting.
• 5:12
  Speaker: Because obviously somebody's been to prison working at the courthouse, the same exact courthouse where I was sentenced to prison, working with the same state's attorney who sent me to prison, who I get along very well with.
• 5:21
  Speaker: Um, because I think in a way it's kind of a win for him.
• 5:24
  Speaker: He did his job and it was in the past, and things are going well now, well, as well as they could be.
• 5:28
  Speaker: But anyway, I was on the Champaign County Mental Health Board.
• 5:31
  Speaker: Again, one of these boards that, you know, we dictate where a bunch of money goes for mental health, and that was a complete, yeah, I'm no longer there, we'll put it that way.
• 5:37
  Speaker: But I was there about a couple years, and we had an actual study session about re-entry, you know, who should we fund in Champaign County, who does re-entry.
• 5:45
  Speaker: And during that, the state's attorney was there, and the head of probation wear is there, and the head of the public defender's office.
• 5:50
  Speaker: And I got to talk a little bit about my past, and then I got to talk to some other people who've been incarcerated and re-entered about their past.
• 5:56
  Speaker: And at the end of the meeting, my public defender, uh, the head public defender, I guess, was somewhat impressed.
• 6:01
  Speaker: Um, she wanted, she mentioned to the head of the mental health department that, hey, Chris should come talk about his dissertation stuff, which is assistance and social capital and all that, which we'll probably get into eventually.
• 6:11
  Speaker: Um, but I never did it.
• 6:13
  Speaker: And then about a year later on LinkedIn, which is a great, great, great thing.
• 6:16
  Speaker: I think we met on LinkedIn, didn't we?
• 6:18
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 6:18
  Speaker: But um, she was advertising a job for a mitigation specialist.
• 6:21
  Speaker: And I don't remember the exact job description, but it was basically like I said before, basically telling incarcerated people stories to the judge and to the state's attorney uh to get them the most lenient sentence possible, hopefully no sentence at all.
• 6:34
  Speaker: But generally, when I come in, because of funding, I only get about 2% of the people coming through the public defender's office.
• 6:39
  Speaker: They can't afford to have a mitigation specialist for everybody.
• 6:42
  Speaker: Uh, but once they get to me, it's the sentencing, and it is just get any records that might explain their story and actually do interviews with this people.
• 6:50
  Speaker: Because what a lot of people don't realize is generally if you're uh a defendant in a major case, you're not gonna testify.
• 6:56
  Speaker: You will give what's called a uh allocution statement, which basically um I might be digging too deep into stuff, but uh I'm gonna assume that's you know the basic process of court.
• 7:08
  Speaker: But when it comes to a sentencing, that's when you've been found guilty, or you've more likely pled guilty because of how the criminal justice system works.
• 7:15
  Speaker: Very few people actually get a jury trial like they're supposed to.
• 7:18
  Speaker: I think that's a good thing.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we can talk about we can talk about that too, because that's absolutely the truth.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: We're just everybody's making plea deals instead of getting a jury by their peers.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: But let's go back just for a moment, if you'll excuse me.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Um, I'm not sure that the audience even knows some of the basic terms that you said.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna, and that's fine.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: I want you to speak like you speak and tell what you tell, but every now and then I'm gonna break it down for folks.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: So just perfect.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: If you don't know what re-entry is, it's uh when somebody's sentence is up and they have to now go home.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: And that sounds like a joyous occasion.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: It sounds like something where you'd be throwing streamers in the air and and you know, hitting pots and pans like it's New Year's Eve.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: But the reality is people who come out of prison, not always but often, uh, have a very, very difficult time acclimating to life on the outside for multiple reasons, not the least of which is their lack of welcome home by the employment uh industry, by uh, you know, benefit, but I mean, you just name it, right?
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Um and so re-entry, when you spoke of uh providing services and providing um re-entry assistance, this is to get people connected to housing, to medical benefits, to employment opportunities or employment skills or college or all of the things that may help them, despite society's pushback to their arrival, help them navigate life on the outside.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: You also said mitigator, that they can't necessarily uh afford to have a mitigator in all of these cases.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Now, mitigation is a pretty general term, so I I imagine people know what we mean by that.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: But could you just um real quickly just say what does that mean in your environment?
• 8:47
  Speaker: With every offense, and I hate using that word, but it it fits here, with every criminal offense or infraction of the law, um, there's gonna be factors that play into it, aggravating factors, which make something seem worse.
• 8:59
  Speaker: For instance, like with a murder case, if you planned it out ahead of time, you're gonna get a higher degree, probably first degree.
• 9:04
  Speaker: First degree doesn't require that.
• 9:06
  Speaker: I thought it did, it doesn't, but that's an aggravating factor because yeah, you had time to think about stuff and calm yourself down, but you didn't.
• 9:13
  Speaker: Well, the mitigating factor would be this person, well, that's a plan.
• 9:18
  Speaker: You walked in and this person is having an affair with your spouse or your partner and you shoot them dead.
• 9:22
  Speaker: Again, murder, don't in the act, sure.
• 9:25
  Speaker: Yeah, but but in the heat of the moment, it's a mitigating factor.
• 9:29
  Speaker: Also, um, most of the mitigating factors I deal with are mental health issues from the past.
• 9:33
  Speaker: We'll get records, and it turns out, well, this person at 12 years old was diagnosed with bipolar and schizophrenia, but then the records stop.
• 9:41
  Speaker: And they never went back and got help because generally there are people who have lower incomes and this and that.
• 9:47
  Speaker: Generally, it's people who are pressed to marginalized black folks and Latin folks.
• 9:51
  Speaker: And yes, I'm not gonna make this 100% about race because poor white folks get screwed too, but this is disproportionately black and Latin folks.
• 9:58
  Speaker: And it's just uh what they can do and what they can't do.
• 10:02
  Speaker: But with mitigation, when you see something like that in the past and realize they never got treatment, and then at age 21, they're playing with guns and doing this and that.
• 10:11
  Speaker: That's a reason.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: What I what I hear you saying is like the mitigating factors are sort of provide you leverage when you advocate for these individuals' report, right?
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: So it's um it's not an excuse for what they did, but it is an explanation for what they did.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: And um, and it and I think you have the opportunity then to try to shed a little bit of humanity on the individual rather than, oh my God, this person did this.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: You're like, yes, and also uh they had no parents.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Uh they were literally literally bounced through 15 uh foster care systems, three of which they were sexually abused in, none of which provided them uh, you know, their basic needs.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: They weren't fed for, I mean, you can really sort of paint the picture of why perhaps this led to this expression of their pain, of their anger that harmed others.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: So that's what I'm hearing you say in terms of being a mitigator is you get to bring the bigger picture to the table, hopefully, to uh assist the individual move through the sentencing process.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Is that right?
• 11:03
  Speaker: Yep, yep, exactly.
• 11:04
  Speaker: Thank you.
• 11:04
  Speaker: You say it so much better than me.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Well, hey man, I hear I hear your heart.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: I hear your heart.
• 11:08
  Speaker: So I wouldn't be able to do that without you sort of explaining it.
• 11:10
  Speaker: So one of the biggest things I help with is I was leading up to this, but at the sentencing, and that's generally where I come in, that's where I supply all my paperwork.
• 11:18
  Speaker: Sometimes I write an actual report for the person, but generally I just put a bunch of information in the attorney's mailbox where they can disseminate what exactly they want to release.
• 11:26
  Speaker: But one of the biggest things I do is during that sentencing, what happens, this is you know, a week to a month after the person is found guilty.
• 11:33
  Speaker: This is where they find out how much time they're going to do in prison or what community you know, community sanction they have.
• 11:40
  Speaker: Um, and what happens that time is the state's attorney rehashes the whole case and paints my client as evil.
• 11:46
  Speaker: And they don't always do it that up front, and but generally they do because that's their job is to get the person phone in jail or to convict them.
• 11:54
  Speaker: Um then my people, the public defender, will speak and counter that stuff and like, okay, well, yes, yes.
• 12:00
  Speaker: And that's when they'll use a lot of my information.
• 12:02
  Speaker: Then the judge will look at the actual defendant themselves and say, okay, well, now if you would like to defend yourself or make a statement, uh, it's called a statement of allocution, this is where the uh the person who's in defense actually gets to speak.
• 12:14
  Speaker: And I work with them a lot on this because a lot of people just want to come out and first they'll want to relitigate stuff.
• 12:20
  Speaker: Okay, it's BS that you had to claim that you were guilty without going to trial, but you said you were guilty.
• 12:26
  Speaker: So we can't relitigate this.
• 12:28
  Speaker: You're just gonna discredit the judge, piss them off, and probably get yourself locked up for longer.
• 12:31
  Speaker: So it is make an apology.
• 12:33
  Speaker: And if you didn't do it, you can word your apology very carefully.
• 12:35
  Speaker: You never say, I'm sorry that I stole this.
• 12:37
  Speaker: If you didn't steal it, okay, fine.
• 12:39
  Speaker: Just say, I'm sorry that I I caused this, uh, that I was involved in this situation and I've made things stressful for my family and for you and all this.
• 12:47
  Speaker: Um then explain what you're doing to better yourself since you caught that case, et cetera, et cetera.
• 12:52
  Speaker: And then at the end, you know, judge, hopefully you're not going to send me to prison today.
• 12:55
  Speaker: But if you are, I'll do my best to rehabilitate myself once I'm in there.
• 12:59
  Speaker: And again, I give these little thingies here, these quotations, because there's not a really there's not much rehabilitation going on in prison.
• 13:06
  Speaker: Um, but that's the gist of what a mitigation specialist does.
• 13:10
  Speaker: But there is more.
• 13:11
  Speaker: We also do a lot of resourcing because if we get somebody out, we definitely don't want them going back in.
• 13:17
  Speaker: But that's problematic because I do a lot of work, as I mentioned before, with sex offenders and finding housing for sex offenders.
• 13:22
  Speaker: Oh, that's a message.
• 13:23
  Speaker: Very challenging about that particular crime.
• 13:26
  Speaker: I hate it, I don't love it, I don't think all crime is equal, and I hate that that offense exists because every time I'm advocating for a change in the criminal justice system, people immediately go, What about the job blusters?
• 13:38
  Speaker: What about the killers?
• 13:39
  Speaker: What about the rapists?
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: I would say too, and this again, absolutely okay.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: So when I when I talk about this, and I imagine when when you talk about this too, please correct me if I'm wrong.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: I am not okay with the harm caused by rape.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: I am not okay with the harm caused by homicide.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: I am not okay with the harm caused to children through molestation or human trafficking and all of these things.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: That is never what I am saying.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: What I am saying is frequently people have been highly traumatized, have been abused or offended or um exploited or whatever first.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Again, not an excuse.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: We cannot excuse the harm caused to a family, to an individual, whatever, because the the damage is done and you can't undo it.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: And now we have a whole nother issue of what's going to perpetuate from that individual having been offended.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: But in the eyes of in terms of being able to see the humanity even in somebody who committed murder, which is critical.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: In my in my humble opinion, it is critical that we see the human in all of these things because in my understanding, behavior is something that we do in an effort to get a need met.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: And some behaviors are unacceptable.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: And in my experience, working in the prisons and doing trauma hearing healing circles and doing restorative justice work with murderers, with folks who are in the inside for some egregious things, usually that they did in their teens or in their 20s.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: So essentially we could say we we criminalize adolescents in certain poor areas, but we won't go into that right now.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: The point being, these men, when they get the language to articulate what it is that happened to them, when they get the support to begin to look at the pain that that caused, the vacancy that that built, the trauma that is unresolved and living in their body and in their psyche, and how the need to escape that pain uh caused um sort of a tolerance for each of the things that we've used, so that the things that we've used have had to get increasingly more violent.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: When they realize that, now they have a place where they can start to first of all acknowledge their childhoods, second, understand the decisions that they made, third, take accountability for them, four, do the hard work of healing, and five, commit to a life of peacemaking upon whether they stay in prison for the rest of their lives or whether they are released.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: And when we lose sight of the person, none of that is is possible.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: And if we can see what I just described, then maybe we'll get it into our thick heads, I say respectively, of people everywhere, that if we invested in the communities that so many of these folks are coming from, if we invested in the schools, if we invested in the family structure, if we invested in these economies, there's the communities riddled with liquor stores and churches.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Uh, churches they're too ashamed to go into, and liquor stores uh have canned goods and liquor.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: And the only working economy is that corner store or the drug trade.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: If we want to change some of this, maybe we can start investing in people again.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: No matter the zip code.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: And we can start to prevent them needing to escalate to the point of committing a crime that they can't turn back from.
• 17:55
  Speaker: What you said, uh Simpson in a book actually mentioned it that we'd have to change the hearts and minds, not the legislation, because the legislation could be changed back.
• 18:03
  Speaker: And we and we really need to change the hearts and minds by humanizing people.
• 18:07
  Speaker: But the things that are blocking that is one money.
• 18:09
  Speaker: That's gonna cost a lot of money to fix this situation because we kind of made the bed and have to lay in it.
• 18:13
  Speaker: I'm working with a lot of gun violence now, and I don't even know what the solution for that is.
• 18:17
  Speaker: Um, so I talked about, I just mentioned that.
• 18:20
  Speaker: And also, and also it has a lot to do with this obsession that if we punish someone, they will be better and be good.
• 18:26
  Speaker: And I have to deal with that a lot in my classes when talking to students who are coming.
• 18:30
  Speaker: You know, I teach in Chicago at UIC, which isn't as rich as UIUC where I live down here, but there is a lot of people that don't have any interactions with the criminal justice system, don't have any friends or family or been wrapped up in it.
• 18:42
  Speaker: And they're highly punitive.
• 18:44
  Speaker: I mean, when I was a kid, I'd say some smart ass stuff to my mom, get slapped.
• 18:48
  Speaker: You think I didn't say smart stuff the next day?
• 18:50
  Speaker: It didn't fix me.
• 18:51
  Speaker: I think it was more about the person actually dishing it out.
• 18:53
  Speaker: Um and second, I talk about how uh I'm realistic about stuff.
• 19:00
  Speaker: If you were to, we'll go ahead and go there.
• 19:03
  Speaker: If you were to kill my mom, I want you I want you dead.
• 19:07
  Speaker: For a while.
• 19:09
  Speaker: Six months later, I might start realizing like what does that fix?
• 19:14
  Speaker: A year later, maybe I want to talk to you.
• 19:16
  Speaker: Why?
• 19:17
  Speaker: Was this just a coincidence?
• 19:18
  Speaker: Or what happened here?
• 19:20
  Speaker: And then I think that opens a lot of people's mind.
• 19:22
  Speaker: Like, yeah, it's okay, I'm not perfect, but my initial reaction if you hurt me is I want to hurt you back.
• 19:27
  Speaker: And I think a lot of people think that way initially, but you have to realize hurt doesn't fix the situation.
• 19:34
  Speaker: More pain does not fix the situation.
• 19:36
  Speaker: This is restorative justice.
• 19:37
  Speaker: Oh, yeah, and it is really, really weird how so many people don't grasp that.
• 19:42
  Speaker: And those people generally come from families that have wealth, they're generally white, but because of broken window policing, etc., their crimes, their cocaine use, their cocaine dealing, all this stuff, which is connected to what I went to prison for.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: So I know a little bit about that, isn't enforced quite so hard.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: And a lot of the folks that are in the audience right now are hearing this stuff for the first time in an authentic way.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: And so I want to stay in the stuff that we're talking about for just a little bit longer because I think it's important.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: So you said some really important things, Chris.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: You said, if you killed my mom, God forbid, I want to hurt you, right?
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Because I am full of rage and anger and why, and what what were her last words, and how did it happen?
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Did she suffer?
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: And I've got all this stuff haunting me.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: And, you know, respectfully, screw you, man.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Who the hell are you?
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: And and and do I have to watch my back and am I safe?
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: And like all the fear comes up, and all the anger comes up, and it makes sense, bro.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: It makes sense.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: And I've talked to many women and and siblings of people who were killed in gun violence, uh, in gang violence, uh, in home intrusions, and that's what they wanted, and they finally got it in some cases, and they felt worse.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: They didn't feel like anything had been resolved.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: Now they felt bad because they began to understand that if they're honest with themselves, a lot of people will be like, Yeah, I feel better.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Screw that guy, right?
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: But if we're honest with ourselves and we're gonna have a come to Jesus moment or whatever it is, a come to whatever you come to moment, and and really think about and and face my feelings, you're gonna realize now you just took somebody else's son or brother or dad.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: And people don't do the kind of stuff that they did if they're not already in pain.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: None of that is your responsibility.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: You're still aching for your mother.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: I don't want you doing that stuff to me.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: But the bottom line is killing somebody back does not relieve the pain.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: And that's point blank, and that's simple, and that's real.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: And that's what I I think you landed in there for a minute that I really want people to hear.
• 21:44
  unknown: Right?
• 21:44
  Speaker: This all comes down to healing.
• 21:45
  Speaker: Now, I'm not I'm not healed.
• 21:48
  Speaker: We'll put it that way.
• 21:48
  Speaker: And healing seems like a lifelong thing anyway, like you never end up completely being healed.
• 21:52
  Speaker: You got to get away from the initial knee jerk reaction.
• 21:55
  Speaker: All of us are gonna have it and just say, let me think about this situation a little bit deeper.
• 21:59
  Speaker: Deeper instead of hey, let's just throw somebody away and lock them in a cage and then let them out twenty or thirty years later.
• 22:05
  Speaker: I once claimed to be an abolitionist when I came back to academia.
• 22:08
  Speaker: Now I'm a quasi-abolitionist because I'm not all or nothing.
• 22:11
  Speaker: If I can get 10 people out and a hundred people got to stay, sorry for the hundred, I'll come back for you eventually.
• 22:17
  Speaker: I think that incarceration can work for a very short time.
• 22:22
  Speaker: Sometimes you need to incapacitate somebody.
• 22:24
  Speaker: The idea of prisons and punishment, according to criminology, is there a pillar.
• 22:28
  Speaker: There's rehabilitation, which isn't really happening.
• 22:30
  Speaker: Um, retribution, revenge, which appears to be a big part of it, incapacitation, which is legitimate.
• 22:37
  Speaker: Sometimes you just have to extract somebody from the community and give them the time to think.
• 22:40
  Speaker: But I think we need to get away and realize there's no rehabilitation going on at all in there.
• 22:45
  Speaker: All you're doing is punishing somebody and attracting them from the community.
• 22:48
  Speaker: Sometimes people do need removed from their community for a short time.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in my classes where I taught about addiction, cycle of violence, uh, family of origin, of resilience, all of the things I had the opportunity to teach people and give them language for in their own lives.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Quite a few would say, you know, Miss Jen, getting arrested saved my life.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: You know, I I the way I was going was just foul.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: Like I was killing myself with drugs or alcohol.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: And now that I'm inside, I'm choosing not to use or drink.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: It's available, but choosing not to, the reality is the interruption, the arresting literally means stopping in your tracks, right?
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: The arresting of somebody can't generate benefit to the individual and to the people on the street around them who may not be safe from their antics, right?
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: We over-arrest, we over-incarcerate, and some people need to be there and will have a harder time getting out.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Pardon me, and some people you can actually save, so to speak.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: Tell me if you would your thoughts having been inside and actually having the experience.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: What is if you had to throw a percentage on it, what do you think is the percentage of men that you came across that you met who are actually ready to do the work that it takes to restore themselves?
• 24:50
  Speaker: Are you talking about in my work or the people I met actually in prison?
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: When you lived inside.
• 24:55
  Speaker: Okay.
• 24:56
  Speaker: Um, quite a few of them actually.
• 24:58
  Speaker: Reason being is again, I hate portraying jail in prison as positive, but a lot of us were sober for the first time.
• 25:04
  Speaker: A lot of us were around uh diverse populations for the first time, and we were forced to be there and forced to get along.
• 25:11
  Speaker: But the one thing I do want to say, and I've heard this a lot, and uh I definitely agree the process is the punishment more than the actual incarceration.
• 25:19
  Speaker: There's a book by that title, I don't remember who wrote it.
• 25:22
  Speaker: Um, but I I told people many times, you might have read that I wrote this, like a five three or four years leading up to prison and the three or four years after prison were way worse than my time in prison.
• 25:31
  Speaker: I don't want to downplay it.
• 25:33
  Speaker: My thing is I don't really have much family and a whole lot of friends.
• 25:37
  Speaker: I didn't have a single visitor my entire time.
• 25:39
  Speaker: I was locked up.
• 25:40
  Speaker: That made it easier because I'd see people crying on the phone to their wives and their kids, like, oh God, at least I don't have to deal with that.
• 25:46
  Speaker: But it was it was the time before and after the leading up, the building up.
• 25:50
  Speaker: Because you don't have court immediately.
• 25:52
  Speaker: It's not like you commit a crime, you have court the next day, and then you go to prison.
• 25:56
  Speaker: I mean, I was originally put on two and a half years intense probation, um, which was stressful because I continued smoking marijuana the entire time and flunking tests.
• 26:04
  Speaker: Well, my crime had little to do with marijuana, so they keep stringing me along, like, oh, you're fine.
• 26:08
  Speaker: And they eventually revoke that probation and send me to prison.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: So probation, real quick, probation for the audience, uh, for to be clear, is, and correct me if I'm wrong, Chris, but it's sort of like a uh a first-level incarceration, but in the community, you've got a bunch of sanctions against you, you have to check in, you may have to go to certain programs, you may have to go to meetings, you may have to get um, you know, you've got to meet all these different stipulations.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: You might have an ankle monitor on, you might not.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: Um, but it's an effort to sort of contain you and your behavior and provide you some resources to hopefully turn it around before you might go into jail.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: And jail is supposed to be pre-judication, meaning you've been arrested, you sit there and you wait for trial or court.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: And then prison typically is when you're sentenced.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: Now, the overcrowding in prisons uh changed that a little bit in California.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: You had, you know, post-judicated folks coming and serving four, five, six, seven, ten year sentences in the county jail.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: But anyway, um, so that's sort of the pattern: probation, jail, uh, prison, and then sometimes prison probation.
• 27:09
  Speaker: Right, it's parole after prison.
• 27:10
  Speaker: Probably people get that confused.
• 27:13
  Speaker: Probation is pre-incarceration.
• 27:15
  Speaker: I appreciate that.
• 27:15
  Speaker: Yeah, it's like it's almost a diversion thing.
• 27:18
  Speaker: It's like, hey, we we're not gonna send you to prison, but we're gonna put a bunch of sanctions on you, and as long as you can be good.
• 27:23
  Speaker: We're watching you, yeah, you'll stay out.
• 27:26
  Speaker: Which a lot of people say it's just a rope to hang yourself with.
• 27:28
  Speaker: It's kind of true, but my thing is I would much rather be on probation than actually in prison.
• 27:33
  Speaker: I mean, most people feel that exact way.
• 27:35
  Speaker: Now, there are some people like I cannot, I'm not gonna be able to do this, this, or this.
• 27:39
  Speaker: Let's just go ahead and get this prison sentence over with, which appears crazy to me, but I mean, if you're realistic, might as well go ahead and do it.
• 27:46
  Speaker: Um, and then parole is we kind of touched on, uh, once you get out of prison, you're gonna get on parole for one year to four years.
• 27:53
  Speaker: And um, parole wasn't really the issue for me uh during that time, because you know, I did well, but the issue was getting a job, uh getting a place to live.
• 28:03
  Speaker: And I never thought I was gonna end up back in college because I'd, you know, heard a bunch of stuff.
• 28:07
  Speaker: If you're convicted for a drug crime, you can't get financial aid, like a plead urban legend, at least in Illinois it is, you just can't get a drug case while on financial aid or you'll lose it.
• 28:15
  Speaker: But I didn't know that.
• 28:16
  Speaker: And I eventually went back to college.
• 28:17
  Speaker: But yeah, it was a mess.
• 28:18
  Speaker: The only place that would hire me is restaurants.
• 28:20
  Speaker: I pulled us off what you were gonna say about um folks inside.
• 28:24
  Speaker: Do you have any recollection?
• 28:25
  Speaker: Um all of them talk a good game because all of us were sober, all of us were there's a lot of bonding going on in prison.
• 28:32
  Speaker: Um, I was scared when I showed up.
• 28:35
  Speaker: Basically, I'm gonna tell a little story about what goes on in prison.
• 28:38
  Speaker: So uh my first day actually in prison, uh, you start in jail, then they bust you off to what's called processing here in Illinois.
• 28:45
  Speaker: That's either in Joliet or Graham, and that's where they spend three or four weeks figuring out where you're actually gonna be serving the bulk of your time.
• 28:52
  Speaker: So once I got sent down to where did I start?
• 28:55
  Speaker: In Vienna, Illinois, down on the southern border.
• 28:57
  Speaker: Um, first day there, I'm sitting in my bunk in my bottom bunky.
• 29:01
  Speaker: This was a dorm situation until you got yourself.
• 29:04
  Speaker: Like, hey, you want a cigarette?
• 29:06
  Speaker: Like, oh no, no, no, no, no.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: Want some coffee?
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: Like, no.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: Want a candy bar?
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: No.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 29:14
  Speaker: Then he pops back up.
• 29:15
  Speaker: I'm like, I just heard you don't get in debt in prison.
• 29:17
  Speaker: Well, this isn't debt.
• 29:18
  Speaker: I'm not borrowing you nothing.
• 29:20
  Speaker: Anyone who's gonna loan anything is gonna say it.
• 29:21
  Speaker: You're the new guy.
• 29:22
  Speaker: I know you've been sitting and processing three or four weeks.
• 29:25
  Speaker: You look and smell like poop.
• 29:26
  Speaker: Um, so I'm just trying to hook you up.
• 29:28
  Speaker: I'm like, oh, really?
• 29:29
  Speaker: He's like, yeah, I'm like, okay, well, can I have that cigarette?
• 29:31
  Speaker: And I jumped down and we watched basketball, and he told me all the rules.
• 29:34
  Speaker: He's like, first of all, nobody in here is getting raped.
• 29:37
  Speaker: There are people that are gay, and there are people that are gay first days, so yes, sex is happening, but none of it is first day.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: I understand.
• 29:45
  Speaker: Only there are coming years, so I didn't bother partaking, but I understand if you're in there for life, uh, maybe it is what it is.
• 29:51
  Speaker: Then uh he also mentioned like gangs.
• 29:53
  Speaker: He goes, There are gangs here, but there is no shankings, there's no jumpings, and nobody identifies because you get sent to segregation immediately.
• 30:00
  Speaker: So it was nothing like I thought.
• 30:01
  Speaker: Now, you're in California.
• 30:03
  Speaker: I've heard about the racial politics and all the stuff going on there that doesn't happen in Illinois.
• 30:08
  Speaker: I guess our prisons are just really relaxed.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: It's really important that we understand that there's no blanket statements here.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: Like there's no one profile of an individual that's been inside or his experience being the experience any more than asking me about being gay or being a woman or being none of that is going to give you a full story of that population.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: And so we need to listen to individuals' stories to hear their experience and believe them.
• 30:33
  Speaker: The other thing with him, two days later, after watching basketball and smoking all this guy's cigarettes, which became illegal three months later in prison, I never saw him again.
• 30:41
  Speaker: And I kind of wish I would have got his real name and maybe looked him up on the outside.
• 30:44
  Speaker: But then again, that's another thing we talked in prison.
• 30:47
  Speaker: Um, quite often there were people like, I'm gonna find you when I get out.
• 30:50
  Speaker: Like, nah.
• 30:51
  Speaker: Don't.
• 30:51
  Speaker: We ain't alike.
• 30:52
  Speaker: We're alike in here.
• 30:53
  Speaker: Once I get out, I'm not the bad guy, but we ain't alike and we wouldn't get along.
• 30:57
  Speaker: I keep coming back with sobriety.
• 30:58
  Speaker: Not everybody in there was a cokehead like I was.
• 31:00
  Speaker: Everybody was at least a pothead.
• 31:02
  Speaker: Most of them were drunks.
• 31:03
  Speaker: And again, I'm overgeneralizing when I say everybody, I don't literally mean everybody, but I a good portion of them.
• 31:10
  Speaker: And the fact that we didn't have that access, I mean, yes, there was there was a little bit of weed and a little bit of drink going around, but the prices were so outrageous.
• 31:18
  Speaker: And when it came to drinking or smoking, you have to hide from everybody else, or you're gonna be giving it all out.
• 31:23
  Speaker: So it really wasn't prominent here.
• 31:25
  Speaker: Plus, I was in a dorm setting for about eight months of the 14 months I was in.
• 31:29
  Speaker: In a dorm setting, really, there's no privacy.
• 31:32
  Speaker: You're not gonna be doing a whole lot.
• 31:33
  Speaker: That just how it was not how it was said to be.
• 31:36
  Speaker: But also, uh, there are bad parts.
• 31:38
  Speaker: The rehabilitation they claim.
• 31:40
  Speaker: We had technical college courses.
• 31:42
  Speaker: I was taking horticulture in prison.
• 31:44
  Speaker: Well, was it gonna be a farmer?
• 31:46
  Speaker: This was back in 2007.
• 31:47
  Speaker: And other courses they had, they had cosmetology, which is a certificate, not a degree, but at the time in Illinois, unless you paid $1,000 for a variance, you couldn't get a cosmetology license.
• 31:57
  Speaker: So, yes, it was really cool that because I was in school, I'd get my hair.
• 32:00
  Speaker: Well, I had hair back then.
• 32:01
  Speaker: I get a nice fade two times a week so that they get practice.
• 32:04
  Speaker: Let me let me ask you this.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: So, so we talked about the uh sort of camaraderie and the helpfulness of the folks that you encountered.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: Um, I also just did a talk with an incredible woman, Sheila Bruno, and she started a program called Wife After Prison about post-incarceration syndrome, which is uh sort of someone's overwhelm and response coming to community having been institutionalized, institutionalized, referring to strict schedule, strict compliance, uh rarely offered the opportunity to express themselves or be listened to.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Uh, mealtime is mealtime, you eat what you've got, you know, just sort of this like this is the schedule, this is where you're going, someone's gonna walk you there, that whole kind of thing.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: And then you get out, you're looking at the grocery store, and there's 500,000 kinds of toothpaste and you can't move, right?
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: I wonder, have you encountered any of that in being released?
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: You said you were inside for three years, three and a half years?
• 32:59
  Speaker: No, sentenced to three years.
• 33:00
  Speaker: So it's in Illinois, yeah, in Illinois, that only came to 14 months the way they do stuff.
• 33:05
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 33:05
  Speaker: I was arrested 12 times before then because of whiteness, it kind of kept me out, but this was just so you were in a low security prison.
• 33:12
  Speaker: You weren't in a high security prison.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: That says a lot too.
• 33:16
  Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:16
  Speaker: And I uh what you're talking about is de-institutionalization.
• 33:19
  Speaker: And I, with me being a short timer, I'm a lot of people are probably hearing, well, that was more than a year.
• 33:24
  Speaker: Yeah, but there's lots of people doing 10, 20 in life.
• 33:28
  Speaker: Um, so yeah, my situation is way different.
• 33:30
  Speaker: So I didn't completely become institutionalized.
• 33:33
  Speaker: I think it takes a little more time.
• 33:35
  Speaker: Again, it's it's person specific.
• 33:37
  Speaker: Somebody might become institutionalized immediately.
• 33:39
  Speaker: I adjusted halfway well, but that was all knowing that I'm not here for life.
• 33:44
  Speaker: I mean, there is the fear everyone has where I'm gonna get into some fight or something, someone's gonna get hurt, and my year is gonna turn into 10 years or whatever.
• 33:51
  Speaker: But as I mentioned in Illinois prisons, at least where I was half, that really wasn't so much of a concern.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about a few things that I've read in your Substack.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Substack is an online magazine.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: Chris is a remarkable writer, and your writing is doing an incredible job of expressing the journey that you've been on and that you currently are on.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: And some of the stories that you tell about the folks that you have uh joined in mitigation and worked with um are are raw, man, and just really, I think, eye-opening, hopefully, to those who read them.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: So if you don't mind, uh we're almost on the hour, but I can go a few more minutes if you're open to that.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: So um I actually wrote down two of the things.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: Um there was one story that you wrote about an older gentleman and a younger gentleman, and you said something like winning doesn't always feel like winning.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: So I'd be really interested in you sharing a brief uh part of that uh with the audience.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: And the second one is um you just wrote recently, you said uh prison never really lets you leave.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: It just packs its bags and comes with you.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: What does that actually feel like on a daily basis is what I want to know.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: But also you said um some people honor you for the work that you're doing, but you hate it because you feel like you're still incarcerated.
• 35:05
  Speaker: Yeah, well, let's start with questions.
• 35:07
  Speaker: We're gonna answer those in order so I can leave after answering that last question.
• 35:11
  Speaker: Uh so the two people, this is really cool to talk about because I can't talk about it so much on local social media because even though it's all public information now that they've been sentenced, I don't know.
• 35:19
  Speaker: You still have to, yeah, you have to respect the details.
• 35:21
  Speaker: But anyway, the first gentleman was a young guy, um, had just turned 19 when he was 18.
• 35:26
  Speaker: Um, no criminal record at all.
• 35:28
  Speaker: Uh he was at a Walmart and got in a fight in the car.
• 35:32
  Speaker: I'm not going to go too deep in the details.
• 35:34
  Speaker: Um, got kicked out of the car.
• 35:36
  Speaker: He left his phone in the car.
• 35:37
  Speaker: They threw the phone out, backed up, and ran over it.
• 35:40
  Speaker: And he pulls out a Glock with uh all kinds of illegal, like a legal switch to turn into an automatic, made it a machine gun.
• 35:49
  Speaker: Because you see in the docket like a machine gun, then you see the gun, well, it's because it was automatic.
• 35:53
  Speaker: Uh, so we unloaded 15 bullets in five seconds at the car.
• 35:57
  Speaker: Luckily, nobody got hit, no property got hit at all.
• 36:00
  Speaker: And just dealing with this kid so much, I spend so much time interviewing and talking to him and reassuring him.
• 36:05
  Speaker: Uh reassuring, being realistic, like this is a serious gun charge, and we have gun problems where in this community uh you probably do there as well.
• 36:14
  Speaker: I assume it's everywhere, so we don't know what's gonna happen.
• 36:16
  Speaker: Um, and then working all this, and he gives his statement that I had mentioned, everything sounded good, and the judge looks at him is like, I don't want to do this, but I'm sending you to prison.
• 36:26
  Speaker: Um, only four years, but it's an 85% case, so it's you know it's gonna be some serious time.
• 36:31
  Speaker: And that just kills me because it's a first offense, but it was a freaking doozy of a first offense.
• 36:37
  Speaker: And is this kid gonna come out worse?
• 36:40
  Speaker: I question not, but it's a constant concern because he's young and impressionable, and you know, not who knows?
• 36:47
  Speaker: And then again, there's always a thought maybe he was completely conning me, maybe this was a bad guy.
• 36:51
  Speaker: I don't buy that.
• 36:52
  Speaker: I don't buy that.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Question the first thing that what came up in my mind, even being familiar with all of this work, is uh 18 years old, no charges.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: Initially, I I felt like, oh, this kid like you know goes to school and and you know, helps his mom around the house and he's at Walmart and somebody runs over his phone and gets pissed off, but then he pulls out a gun.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: What is he doing with the gun?
• 37:13
  Speaker: And there was uh with the mitigation, I mean, he was his father was poisoned and killed when he was a child, poisoned of all things to read, and bipolar schizophrenia.
• 37:23
  Speaker: Um, one thing that I'm seeing a lot is cutters, people who've cut themselves.
• 37:28
  Speaker: This is seems to be a recurring thing that I'm seeing constantly because he was a cutter, and the older gentleman that I talked about was also the cutter.
• 37:36
  Speaker: Uh, the older gentleman um was uh 61, I believe.
• 37:40
  Speaker: And his situation was he'd been arrested about 17 times, been sent to DOC like six times.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: And our attorney has been Department of Corrections, DOC Department of Corrections.
• 37:49
  Speaker: So he'd been arrested a bunch of times and actually been to prison prison six or seven times.
• 37:54
  Speaker: Don't remember the exact total, so I don't want to be accurate.
• 37:57
  Speaker: Um but we took an angle with him again, massive mental health issues.
• 38:02
  Speaker: He can't read or write, he can barely initial his signature on the release forms that I'm using to get his records.
• 38:08
  Speaker: And he's just such a delightful person.
• 38:10
  Speaker: And there's no violence in his history.
• 38:12
  Speaker: Chronically homeless, so constant theft after theft after theft.
• 38:16
  Speaker: Um, and this particular offense was he stole a laptop that was sitting in a book bag up on campus.
• 38:21
  Speaker: Anyway, the attorney's like, like, well, here's what I'm gonna go with.
• 38:24
  Speaker: They sent him to a DOC to prison seven, six, seven times.
• 38:28
  Speaker: It's obviously not working.
• 38:29
  Speaker: That's insanity.
• 38:30
  Speaker: It's insanity thing to do the same thing over and over again.
• 38:32
  Speaker: And I'm like, I don't think that's gonna work.
• 38:33
  Speaker: Well, it worked.
• 38:35
  Speaker: This guy got four years probation.
• 38:38
  Speaker: Well, why isn't that a win?
• 38:40
  Speaker: Um, because as soon as they took him back to get dressed out of the county outfit because he was in jail, another county came and picked him up on a theft charge he had.
• 38:48
  Speaker: So the first one, the celebration was technically this kid got the minimum, but the minimum was four years.
• 38:54
  Speaker: Yes, there was a small chance at probation, but with a gun offense, it was doubtful.
• 38:58
  Speaker: Four years, that's not a celebration.
• 39:00
  Speaker: Secondly, we got the guy out and he just goes to another jail.
• 39:04
  Speaker: And, you know, who knows what's gonna happen up there.
• 39:07
  Speaker: So two cases where there were somewhat victories were not victories at all.
• 39:12
  Speaker: And that that that happens a lot.
• 39:13
  Speaker: I mean, there is the rare occasion where somebody just gets off and you expected, like, they're gonna get five years.
• 39:19
  Speaker: Wait, probation?
• 39:20
  Speaker: Okay, great, awesome.
• 39:21
  Speaker: Uh, but yeah, so it can be a very frustrating job, especially with the lived experience of I have dealing with this.
• 39:26
  Speaker: And it's kind of gonna segue into the the last question I'll answer.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: Before before you do, I'm sorry.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: One more, I'm gonna be devil's advocate one more time.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: So I hear the angle that you're speaking on as the mitigator, as uh somebody who's capable of seeing these individuals and and what they've been through and the tools that they do or do not have to move through society well.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Um, but as somebody who hears that story, I imagine some folks are like, well, I'm sorry that he got four years and that's disappointing, but he had a gun and he was in the community and anybody could have gotten killed.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: So I'm glad he got put away.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: And the same with the other gentleman.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: Well, good that you got him off of a charge, but if he committed a crime somewhere else, then he deserves to be put in prison.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: Now, what's notable to me about the older gentleman is his inability to read and write.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: When you don't have the skills to go through life, and people might say, Well, why didn't he learn?
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: Why didn't he go to school?
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: Anybody can go to school.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: And I would say to that individual, why didn't you stay on your diet?
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: Why didn't you uh, you know, wake up at 6 a.m.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: every morning and journal like you promised yourself that you would, because change is hard.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: Change and risk taking and vulnerability to say I'm 40 and I don't know how to read and write is really, really hard.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: So I just want to give him that credit, but I also want you to answer to the community's concern.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: Like, I'm glad these guys are in jail or in prison.
• 40:47
  Speaker: With that, I'll just counter with the whole there's no rehabilitation going on in jail.
• 40:51
  Speaker: These people aren't going to get services to make them better.
• 40:54
  Speaker: They're just gonna be incapacitated for a certain amount of time.
• 40:57
  Speaker: Um, in my situation, I met the right people in prison, everything was good.
• 41:00
  Speaker: There are bad people, regardless of why they are bad and they are in there, so things could go wrong.
• 41:06
  Speaker: But if you're an outsider looking at this, like, why shouldn't they be punished?
• 41:10
  Speaker: What does that fix?
• 41:11
  Speaker: And you're spending tax money to incarcerate this guy so you can have this false sense of security.
• 41:15
  Speaker: It's just not helping the problem.
• 41:18
  Speaker: But also, like I mentioned earlier, punishment doesn't fix anything by itself.
• 41:22
  Speaker: If we really were doing rehabilitation in prison, then possibly I could see some of the angle of people like, well, in prison and he'll get better.
• 41:30
  Speaker: Some people, a lot of people are getting better, but it's not because of the services the prison is providing, it's because of a lot of people locked up sober for the first time, interacting with people, hearing stories they never heard before.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, I think I answered that.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: We did.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: Um, two notes before we end on the questions that you uh want to go out on.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: Um one, I just want to call to the attention of the audience.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: There's a really great book.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: Uh, I will actually be interviewing the author of it later in uh later this month, but it's by Sonny Schwartz and it's called Dreams from a Monster Factory, or Dreams from the Monster Factory.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: And it's it's uh touches on the idea that we take these individuals who have uh low criminal offenses and we house them with folks who have done incredibly dangerous things and they learn.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: This is the college that they go to and they come out more dangerous than they went in.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: Um so just a very interesting angle on it.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: And she's talking maximum security prison.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: This was not your experience.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: Uh secondly, I would say I agree with you.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: If we had, if we uh revamped what prisons look like in terms of like um, I think the Netherlands or Denmark has a whole different, or maybe it's Norway, forgive me, I don't remember.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: I just had a look at the colour.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: They have like where literally folks are going to like resorts and where there's like college and there's mental health help and there's like all of these different things and healthy environments and people are like, what in the heck?
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: In the United States, they're like, Why would you send somebody who did this horrific thing to a nice place?
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: That's ridiculous.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: Like, I'm gonna commit a crime, right?
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: I can't afford to go to a place like that.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: But the idea is more about you're taking people who have rarely experienced safety, healthy community, uh, real options of improving how they see themselves, right?
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: You you get an opportunity to safely fail, you get an opportunity to learn, you get an opportunity to feel safe when you go to sleep at night, you're engaging with other people who are on a journey to learn, giving them a new experience of what life can be like, of who they have the possibility of being, is a far more rehabilitative type thing.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: So that's a whole nother show.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: But if we could end on this, um you said that prison never really lets you leave.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: It just packed its bags and came with you.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: Also, people honor you for the work that you're doing, Chris.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: And in one of your um Substack articles, which I really encourage people to check out, you said uh you've admitted that you don't you hit your work, you feel like it's a life sentence.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: Tell us about that.
• 44:02
  Speaker: Oh, okay.
• 44:03
  Speaker: I'm gonna keep it as brief as I can.
• 44:05
  Speaker: But basically, as I when I introduced myself, you probably put it together that I live in a world of pain and suffering, whether it's what I study, uh the work I do, or actually just at home.
• 44:16
  Speaker: I can't escape this.
• 44:18
  Speaker: And a lot of it comes because I have a lot of survivors' guilt.
• 44:22
  Speaker: There's a a lot of people I left behind, and a lot of people I've lost even since I've been out because of this life.
• 44:30
  Speaker: A quick story I generally don't tell.
• 44:33
  Speaker: I told a few times, I gotta get my focus here, and then we'll close on.
• 44:36
  Speaker: This and this is why I do the work.
• 44:38
  Speaker: And this kind of will inform and answer the question as to why it's so haunting sometimes.
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: When I left prison, I kept contact with four people.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: Um sorry, I was gonna make sure I keep myself composed.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: No, take your time, and you know what?
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: You don't have to be composed.
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: Um one of them, uh Lamar, black guy, he's doing great since he's been out.
• 45:09
  Speaker: Another of them, Scott, uh, one of the meth heads I was talking about, completely disappeared off the planet about six years ago.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: About five years ago, buddy's act.
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: We were gonna do a podcast together.
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: And then I woke up uh see on Facebook that he uh decided to have a little talk with his shotgun.
• 45:32
  Speaker: He was a close cast kid.
• 45:33
  Speaker: We'll leave it at that.
• 45:35
  Speaker: Um he's somebody I talked to a lot, and we were locked up together.
• 45:38
  Speaker: I was locked up with all these people.
• 45:40
  Speaker: Then another one, Chris, uh somebody that I helped get in school, probably the first person I work with.
• 45:46
  Speaker: And we lost contact for a couple years, and then I saw in the news gazette that he was doing horrible things to his girlfriend's seven-year-old kid.
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: And I gotta keep doing this.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: Because maybe all those people would still be around.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: Maybe that seven-year-old girl wouldn't have got victimized, maybe my friend wouldn't blow his fucking head off.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: You know, they realized there were chances for people on the outside.
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: And that makes me feel so much guilt because things are working out pretty well for me.
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: That's why I gotta keep trying to give back.
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: Uh because maybe uh maybe somehow I can make all that shit right.
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: Can't save the world, maybe I can save a couple people, and I think I have.
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah.
• 46:37
  Speaker: So I think answering your question basically to summarize, it just there's so much pain and suffering in this world, and I feel like I can take it and I'm built for sometimes a breakdown, kind of like you're human, bro.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: And that's because your heart is buried beneath a whole lot of you've seen too much.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: You know, this is part of the challenge is that folks who find themselves in this work or in these systems, we've seen too much.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: The facade was broken a long time ago.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: We know what's really happening.
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: We see people getting crushed by uh we call it rehabilitation, but sometimes it's habilitation.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: Sometimes people didn't get a first chance, much less what we perceive as a second chance.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: Um, I've also buried some folks when they came out.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: Um, I've buried a lot of people through addiction in my 24 years, clean and sober.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: I I want to honor you, but I also want to tell you that you said it, we can't save the world.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: Um, but we do feel like we have it's almost like a soldier on the on the war field, right?
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: Like you don't want to leave your your fellow soldier behind, man.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: It's like because you've been on the front line together, you know.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: Um I tell you, I when I was working at the jail, Chris, I was about as composed as you just were coming off of a day of work because of a story that a gentleman had shared with me in my class.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: And a buddy of mine who was a probation officer, he and I knew each other from recovery.
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: So we had an established relationship uh prior to this conversation, but um, he saw me and I was falling apart and he knew how much I loved and cared for these guys.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: And he put his arm around me and he said, you know, statistically speaking, Jen, um, you're trying to help people who've already been crushed to the ground by this world, by this life.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: If you can save one without the rehabilitation access that you spoke of, right?
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: They don't have that.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: Then you've done your job.
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: You've done well.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: That said, I feel your heart.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: I feel your tears.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: I appreciate the work that you do.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: And I hope, Chris, and I say this from the bottom of my heart, please also take good care of yourself.
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: I do.
• 48:57
  Speaker: Like I said, this isn't a constant everyday thing, it's just talking about it sometimes.
• 49:02
  Speaker: Because it's a lot, brother.
• 49:04
  Speaker: It's a lot.
• 49:04
  Speaker: It is what it is, and I'm gonna keep trucking because like I said, it makes me feel better.
• 49:10
  Speaker: It's one of the few things that makes me feel good is when I actually do get a win, and the wins do happen.
• 49:14
  Speaker: And I also realize that you know, I a lot of the people I talk to they're in jail and they're like, wait, you've been locked up, and they say that it gives them hope.
• 49:21
  Speaker: And it's just so so weird to me, but I guess I understand it because there was I never had anybody like me in my life, and maybe that would have made things a little better.
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: Appreciate you.
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Chris, for your time, for your vulnerability, for your truth, for your experience.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: Um, maybe we can talk again.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: Definitely.
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: All right, appreciate you.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: If this conversation sparked something for you, or if you want to dive deeper, head over to soulnotskid.com and take a look around.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: Grab a copy of the book, Soul Not Skin, free resources, or get on the wait list for our next workshop.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: I hope you'll pull up a chair next time and hang out with us again.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: We're figuring out this world and ourselves at the same exact time, growing as we listen to the stories of others.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: Let's keep getting to know each other.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: After all, we are in this together.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: See you next time.