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Repair in the Middle of Everything · Just Stories

0:13
Rob: Welcome to Just Stories. If you heard our conversation with Howard Zehr last time,
0:18
Rob: you know restorative justice begins with a simple idea.
0:21
Rob: Crime hurts people and relationships. And if crime hurts, justice should heal.
0:27
Rob: But how does this work on the ground, and where is it being practiced?
0:31
Rob: My guest today has spent 30 years asking what it takes to build that idea into real
0:36
Rob: communities. His name is Derek Miodownik.
0:42
Rob: About 15 years ago, I was living in Vermont teaching at Saint Michael's
0:47
Rob: College, and I wanted someone with experience in restorative justice to come
0:52
Rob: speak to my Crime and Deviance class. Somebody said to me,
0:56
Rob: "You gotta talk to a guy named Derek Miodownik," to which I, of course,
1:00
Rob: responded, "How do you spell that?" But we had the first of several really meaningful
1:05
Rob: conversations. I remember being at a little place down in Winooski,
1:10
Rob: and in which you asked me some really good questions. So I feel like it's payback.
1:15
Rob: It's time for me to ask you, hopefully, some good questions.
1:18
Rob: But most of our listeners are meeting you for the first time,
1:22
Rob: so before we go any deeper, take a minute or two to introduce yourself. Who are you?
1:27
Rob: Where do you live? What do you do?
1:30
Derek: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for the opportunity, uh, and/or the payback,
1:35
Derek: however we'd like to. And so yeah, my name's Derek Miodownik.
1:40
Derek: I use he/him pronouns. I have a role within the state of Vermont's Department
1:47
Derek: of Corrections as the Community and Restorative Justice Executive.
1:52
Derek: I'm a father of four and live in Richmond, Vermont, town of 4,000 people,
1:59
Derek: beautiful little town, where some of these abstract ideas that we'll get into, they,
2:05
Derek: they play out. They play out every day. And so that's me.
2:09
Rob: You oversee people doing restorative justice across the state. Is that right?
2:16
Derek: That's right. My main hat is more of an administrator that looks at how programs
2:22
Derek: perform. I'm accountable to the Vermont taxpaying public about decisions that the
2:29
Derek: Department of Corrections makes about how we're using our money.
2:35
Derek: And then I also get the pleasure to be an adjunct professor at Saint Michael's
2:41
Derek: College, which I've maintained now for 11 years or, or so.
2:45
Rob: Wow.
2:46
Derek: And that's a nice space to get into what I like to think of as the praxis,
2:53
Derek: the intersection between theory and practice, and that messy and juicy place
3:00
Derek: where ideas and on-the-ground reality kinda
3:04
Derek: have to figure out how to get along, hopefully.
3:07
Rob: Speaking of messiness, that I didn't know, that we never talked about before,
3:12
Rob: and I'm a little surprised because we both share it in common,
3:16
Rob: is that you spent a lot of time in theater as a young person. Tell me about that.
3:21
Rob: What drew you to theater?
3:22
Derek: Yeah. I just instinctively grew up with an interest in theater and performing.
3:28
Derek: I was fortunate enough to grow up proximate to New York City on Long Island,
3:33
Derek: and had a family that had the interest and the resources to expose me to theater,
3:38
Derek: so we would go into New York City and see shows and not only Broadway shows,
3:43
Derek: but downtown small theater productions. So I was active in theater in high school.
3:48
Derek: I stayed somewhat active a little bit in college,
3:51
Derek: but then I found myself spending a year in Colorado.
3:54
Derek: They had an improv theater group there
3:57
Derek: called the Aspen Ridiculous Theater Company.
4:00
Rob: Oh, that's great.
4:01
Derek: Yeah, and w- I was part of it. One rule of improv is, you know,
4:05
Derek: you need to accept what's sort of being offered and-
4:09
Rob: Right, right
4:09
Derek: Then work with it, right? A- and transform it and offer something back.
4:14
Derek: Couple years after having spent a year doing improv,
4:18
Derek: I found myself applying for a job helping to set up peer mediation programs in
4:26
Derek: public middle schools throughout the five boroughs of New York City.
4:31
Derek: And I didn't have a lot of formal training at that point in conflict resolution,
4:36
Derek: in mediation, alternative dispute resolution, but I made some connections
4:41
Derek: that were instinctive during the interview and found myself saying like, "Look,
4:47
Derek: I kind of think on some level, the job of,
4:51
Derek: of mediator is to try to create the conditions that mirror what makes improv
4:57
Derek: work." And that became that magical inflection point for me that tied all my
5:03
Derek: theater training together with the transformational ingredients of conflict
5:10
Derek: resolution, because they require presence, they require a willingness to believe,
5:16
Derek: and a receptivity. And, you know, I kinda just kept cooking with that.
5:29
Rob: One of the important early stops in your career was this place called Red Hook,
5:34
Rob: Brooklyn, which probably not that many listeners are familiar with.
5:39
Rob: So, tell us about Red Hook, and what it was like when you were in your 20s not so
5:44
Rob: long ago. How did it feel? What, what was happening,
5:48
Rob: and how did you get drawn into that?
5:50
Derek: Yeah. Uh, you're taking me back to a time in my late 20s when I was hired by an
5:56
Derek: organization which is now called the Center for Justice Innovation in Red Hook,
6:02
Derek: Brooklyn. I didn't grow up there, in part of the history of New York City,
6:09
Derek: it really cut off Red Hook geographically. A big highway sort of like intersected the
6:17
Derek: actual community of Red Hook. So it was one of these situations in which sometimes
6:22
Derek: you can be less than a mile away from something, especially in urban settings,
6:27
Derek: and it feels like different worlds. And so, in its isolation,
6:30
Derek: became predominantly utilized by the city of New York for public housing.
6:35
Derek: That came with a lot of its own kind of challenges and density.
6:38
Derek: And then a seminal event in the life of Red Hook was that the principal of the
6:45
Derek: middle school, um, maybe Robert Daley Middle School,
6:49
Derek: named after the former principal, he left the building one day in search of a
6:55
Derek: student who had left and was tragically killed in gun crossfire by rival gangs.
7:06
Derek: Uh, my, the youth court office that I operated, my office was in a, uh,
7:13
Derek: a ground floor apartment in one of the public housing buildings at that time had
7:21
Derek: been overrun with narcotic dealing. I do remember once flushing the toilet in the
7:31
Derek: bathroom of my office and a hypodermic needle came up through it, you know,
7:40
Derek: through the plumbing. And so this was a community that was really experiencing
7:48
Derek: marginalization, as a whole community, but then individual marginalization and
7:55
Derek: heavily sort of surveilled. It was a tough place.
8:00
Derek: So many of the folks who lived in Red Hook were somewhat involved with adult criminal
8:09
Derek: court, family court, housing court. Could there be an approach to justice or
8:17
Derek: approaches, could begin to generate a different type of conversation,
8:23
Derek: as opposed to just be kind of consumers of court services?
8:26
Derek: And so the Red Hook Youth Court was one of those initial expressions of what has
8:32
Derek: become now the Red Hook Community Justice Center.
8:38
Rob: So some of our listeners might be familiar with Teen Court,
8:42
Rob: but many of them probably don't. So, so talk about Youth Court at the Center for
8:46
Rob: Innovation. Like, take us into a youth court. What's happening? Who's there?
8:52
Derek: Basically the idea, like, it wasn't intended to prosecute youth,
8:57
Derek: but it did play to the drama and the blocking of what w- what we,
9:03
Derek: collectively in the United States, know to be, like, our court process, right?
9:08
Derek: The basic idea was that when a young person had police contact for a variety of
9:14
Derek: low-level offenses that, frankly, the system at
9:17
Derek: the time wasn't about to devote the resources
9:20
Rob: So if I bring a knife to school, is that gonna land me in teen court?
9:24
Derek: Exactly. Knife, knife to school, tagging up,
9:28
Derek: in other places and cultures referred to as, like,
9:30
Derek: cautioning by a police officer and say, "Hey, Rob,
9:33
Derek: we'd like to give you an opportunity, give you the opportunity to really kind of
9:37
Derek: repair that harm, address it, and become an asset,
9:39
Derek: become an asset in your community." We would ask, speak to the parents,
9:43
Derek: make sure that they understood that this is voluntary.
9:47
Derek: If the young person was willing to come down,
9:51
Derek: we'd conduct an intake and a youth court member would be responsible.
9:56
Derek: It's actually, we called it a youth advocate.
9:58
Derek: So the youth advocate's role was to elicit from the young person some more
10:03
Derek: information about who they are, what are their assets?
10:06
Derek: And conversely, there was a community advocate, another young person,
10:11
Derek: and their role within the youth court, they were just simply there to advocate
10:16
Derek: for the community needing to be, you know,
10:18
Derek: sort of safe and articulate how these behaviors detract.
10:22
Derek: And so then you have a young person experiencing two of their peers.
10:28
Derek: Both sort of holding them up, but also holding up the rights of the community in
10:34
Derek: a really powerful and legitimate way that wasn't performative.
10:38
Derek: I mean, there was a performative aspect in that, again, it had this court blocking.
10:43
Derek: And then ultimately, an active jury pool of other youth court members,
10:48
Derek: who would be able to ask questions directly of the young person.
10:55
Derek: And so it was interactive, and then both of those sorta advocates, if you will,
11:00
Derek: would make some, like, closing statements and make some recommendations.
11:04
Derek: Two cool things I'll point out is that, one,
11:07
Derek: over 90% of the young people were successful in completing whatever
11:12
Derek: activities. Now, other really cool thing was that on top of the intervention with
11:18
Derek: the young person who did the harm, the youth court members,
11:24
Derek: who got a lot of training that I was able to develop,
11:27
Derek: this became like a youth development program.
11:30
Derek: The legal community in Brooklyn started opening their doors for internships,
11:36
Derek: and some of the young people who went through it had enough of a positive
11:40
Derek: experience that they actually expressed desire to become part of it.
11:43
Derek: So the youth court became an engine for generating, I would say,
11:48
Derek: professional capital for young people in a marginalized community,
11:53
Derek: and it became a way for young people whose door into it was through, you know,
11:59
Derek: somewhat harming that community to feel sufficiently motivated to now be a
12:06
Derek: standard-bearer for it. I think a piece that I took away is that if we believe
12:14
Derek: there's a, a, a sort of a natural impetus to restore and repair a- at,
12:21
Derek: at the deepest level of our, like, consciousness,
12:25
Derek: if and when we can create the conditions that I would say unearth that instinctive
12:32
Derek: desire, that affiliate desire to, to repair,
12:36
Derek: the most powerful thing is to provide actionable opportunities in that moment,
12:41
Derek: that there is a power in the doing.
12:57
Rob: So, a lot of people, though, see what you saw in Red Hook in the '90s and become
13:03
Rob: cynical or walk away or, or think about grand projects or something,
13:07
Rob: but you turned what you were experiencing into your life's work.
13:12
Rob: So i- there's a question you love to ask your students:
13:15
Rob: Where does justice come from? And, and I wanna turn to that question and ask you
13:21
Rob: for yourself, where does your sense of justice come from?
13:27
Rob: W- what did it grow out of?
13:29
Derek: I appreciate that. Such an evolving and important question.
13:33
Derek: A couple things about me. So my dad was born in Germany in 1935 to a Jewish
13:40
Derek: merchant family that owned a string of, uh, shoe stores.
13:45
Derek: For your listeners, tease out some of the implications of being born in 1935 in
13:52
Derek: Germany and Jewish. The-
13:54
Rob: There were safer places to be born Jewish than Germany in 1935.
13:59
Derek: Abso- absolutely. My father, and his father, and his mother,
14:04
Derek: and his sister were all fortunate, through a mixture of resources and courage,
14:10
Derek: to leave Germany. My father lived, had to live in Uruguay for a couple years, um,
14:16
Derek: between the ages six and nine, and then he ultimately, with his parents and sister,
14:20
Derek: emigrated to New York City. And so that's a big part of my family history, for sure,
14:25
Derek: and I, I've always been somewhat fascinated with how do these things
14:31
Derek: happen? How do everyday citizens and neighbors become socialized to rendered,
14:41
Derek: vulnerable, you know, whatever combination of things allows for those types of
14:45
Derek: atrocities to happen has always fascinated me. So I think it led me on the path of
14:52
Derek: like, like, yeah, where, where do we derive these things?
14:55
Derek: And, and for me, I think the answer has been in every little interaction,
15:03
Derek: every moment, every passerby exchange, how we all carry ourselves with some sense of
15:12
Derek: obligation to one another and to the broader space.
15:16
Derek: So somewhere in all of that became, for me, I think a growing belief:
15:23
Derek: the atomic level of justice is in, you know, human relationships.
15:30
Derek: Like, atrocities of that level can't happen without a multitude of tiny little
15:38
Derek: microaggressions, might not even raise to the level of most of our consciousness,
15:45
Derek: and yet they're being massaged, right? If there's a defense against an atrocity,
15:50
Derek: I think it doesn't begin at stage two or four or when the Nazi power,
15:57
Derek: party comes into power. It places the notion of justice squarely within each of
16:04
Derek: us to be vigilant and to be aware and to be cognizant that it does not reside
16:12
Derek: inherently in institutions, and that to me is
16:16
Derek: fascinating 'cause there's so much opportunity there.
16:31
Rob: I mean, it, it's almost like it starts in those places where I don't see you as a
16:38
Rob: person to whom I have any obligation whatsoever.
16:43
Rob: And that is the danger and the sinister aspect of othering on a grand scale.
17:04
Rob: So you work for the Vermont Department of Corrections because Vermont is a state
17:11
Rob: that it's unique in that restorative justice is written right into state
17:17
Rob: policy, funded by the state, and embedded into communities.
17:22
Rob: And a lot of listeners probably didn't know that there are states where this
17:26
Rob: happens at a state level through, to some degree, the Department of Corrections.
17:32
Rob: So tell me the story of how this happened?
17:37
Derek: I think it's fair to say that all states in the United States have a Department of
17:42
Derek: Corrections. In many states, there's actually two different departments,
17:46
Derek: one that just runs correctional facilities and another that supervises people in the
17:50
Derek: community. In Vermont, that's rolled up into, to one department.
17:54
Derek: In the mid to late '80s, there was a whole slew of policies that really tried to use
18:00
Derek: the court as, you know, the sharp kinda tip of the spear for trying to prevent the
18:07
Derek: infiltration of narcotics into our communities by issuing really, you know,
18:11
Derek: long sentences and so on. But... And these things have long tails, right?
18:15
Derek: We don't often know the impact of shifts in policy until 15 or 20 years later,
18:21
Derek: and so now it's, my understanding, it was very clear that the public sentiment
18:25
Derek: around the criminal justice system in Vermont,
18:28
Derek: which includes but is not limited to the Department of Corrections,
18:32
Derek: we were getting bad marks. Whatever we're doing, we're not seeing people get better,
18:36
Derek: and we're not feeling better about when people come back from prison,
18:41
Derek: and more and more people are going to prison.
18:43
Derek: And so the Department of Corrections at the time had some really thoughtful
18:47
Derek: leaders, so they hired an outside market research firm.
18:52
Derek: That research firm, you know, engaged the Vermont Department of Corrections in
18:59
Derek: creating, um, some surveying and more in-depth focus groups.
19:04
Derek: They found themselves realizing, like, we kinda have two main things.
19:08
Derek: We'd make, like, a tank and a bicycle. Like, prison is kind of like the tank.
19:13
Derek: It's, it's like, it's good on a couple things, right?
19:17
Derek: Like, but it is not nimble, and it's very expensive.
19:20
Derek: And conversely, a bicycle's great for getting around to some places, but, like,
19:25
Derek: you can't really commute to a ton of places in Vermont, you know,
19:29
Derek: year-round on a bicycle. They basically said, like, "Yeah,
19:30
Derek: those are our two main products, probation being like the bicycle,
19:34
Derek: incarceration being the tank, and the public is saying that neither are really
19:40
Derek: giving them what they want. So why don't we ask them?"
19:43
Derek: And, and, and that is this restorative notion of involving the people most
19:48
Derek: directly impacted. In sort of professional parlance,
19:52
Derek: that's now called responsive regulation. It's taking the principles of restorative
19:58
Derek: inquiry, uh, relational legitimacy like you and I were talking about,
20:03
Derek: make centering them in making regulatory decisions with, you know.
20:06
Derek: And I think that that's a great example of, of good governance.
20:10
Derek: And so they did focus groups, and they asked Vermonters across section
20:14
Derek: representational, across a bunch of different demographics.
20:18
Derek: Like, okay, the public definitely wanted dangerous people to be temporarily
20:23
Derek: incapacitated, but they wanted them to be better off for their time incarcerated.
20:32
Derek: They wanted programming. They didn't simply just want them sidelined.
20:38
Derek: And another theme was, "We want probation. We want that to have some meaning.
20:42
Derek: We want that to tie back to why that behavior impacted us."
20:48
Derek: It's not just Section 4A of the Penal Code 122 that you violated. It's not abstract.
20:57
Derek: And in a state like Vermont, again, I live in Richmond, 4,000 people, this notion of,
21:04
Derek: like, stone in the pond rippling out, the ripple impact, that's a beautiful analogy,
21:09
Derek: and I think it only gets us so far in some places because it sort of infers this
21:16
Derek: interconnectedness. I think one of the great things about Vermont is, like,
21:19
Derek: there is usually only two or three degrees at most where an offense really does
21:26
Derek: connect back to somebody in a local community.
21:29
Derek: And so Verm- the Vermont Department of Corrections was keen enough to say,
21:33
Derek: "All right. What if we centered part of the probation experience around community
21:38
Derek: members?" And so that gave rise to these what, what were called reparative boards,
21:45
Derek: where one of the conditions of probation, in addition to all the standard ones,
21:51
Derek: there are community members who are gonna wanna, like,
21:53
Derek: sit down and talk with you about it, and that gets very personal and intense.
21:57
Derek: And again, I think, and this is a belief thing,
22:02
Derek: but I hold the belief that when people's moral dignity is appealed to,
22:08
Derek: they are more likely to respond from that place.
22:14
Derek: Not always, not easily, lots of stuff gets in the way,
22:17
Derek: but that built this notion of reparative boards or reparative boards that then we
22:23
Derek: kinda continued to build off of here in Vermont.
22:34
Rob: You've described reparative boards a little bit,
22:37
Rob: and I think some of our listeners probably have a sense of what those might be like.
22:44
Rob: What about COSAs? So w- when I f- when we first met,
22:48
Rob: you were heavily involved in kind of designing these and making sure that they
22:53
Rob: were working and finding people to get involved.
22:56
Rob: Describe a COSA, Circle of Support and Accountability,
22:59
Rob: and what that looks like in Vermont today.
23:03
Derek: Yeah, so the reparative board experience really became foundational and led to us
23:08
Derek: asking this question, like, "Okay, what would it look like to apply the notion of
23:14
Derek: direct citizen engagement not just with individuals who objectively are presenting
23:22
Derek: less public safety risk, uh, you know, as, as m- for misdemeanors?
23:28
Derek: But what would it look like to apply these with folks who've committed serious
23:33
Derek: offenses, have been incarcerated, and now are returning back to communities in
23:41
Derek: Vermont under supervision?" You know, that sets up this really interesting dynamic
23:47
Derek: tension. And COSAs became an initial, uh, experiment,
23:54
Derek: a thoughtful experiment in what would it mean to form voluntary kind of micro
24:01
Derek: communities, involving three or so volunteers from a local community with a,
24:10
Derek: a coordinator of that COSA, who would work directly for one of what we call com- the
24:16
Derek: community justice centers, these are state-funded agencies around Vermont that,
24:22
Derek: that operate these restorative programs, with an individual who's coming back into
24:28
Derek: community a- after a significant period of incarceration?
24:33
Derek: Make a commitment, we landed on a year operationally as the,
24:37
Derek: as the initial construct, and basically essentially have another set of people who
24:45
Derek: are definitely not their probation officer, but kind of like guide rails for
24:53
Derek: someone who is going to probably experience some speed bumps coming back
24:59
Derek: into community, and for whom those bumps, if they disregulate that person enough,
25:05
Derek: could potentially result in a new victim, and that the motto for COSA is, you know,
25:12
Derek: "no, no new victims." It's not an attempt to reconcile that victim.
25:16
Derek: It's an attempt not make a new victim through providing active support, right?
25:21
Derek: And accountability, within that informal authority. And what often happens in my
25:28
Derek: experience, Rob, is that it's a bit of like a, a graft,
25:33
Derek: like a social grafting process that is a little artificial at first.
25:38
Derek: Like imagine, these are kind of my new people.
25:42
Derek: I don't know if they're just my friends, but they're, they're volunteering.
25:45
Derek: They're showing up once a week. They're not here to just pepper me with questions
25:51
Derek: a- about, you know, surveil me some more. But what often happens,
25:57
Derek: and many of our COSAs extend well beyond the one-year mark,
26:02
Derek: is that within a couple months, some authenticity starts developing,
26:07
Derek: and a meaningful set of relationships that all share the same starting goal of public
26:16
Derek: safety become infused with actual quality time spent.
26:25
Rob: So tell me about the people in these circles. They're not social workers.
26:29
Rob: They're not therapists, no professional training.
26:31
Rob: They're not getting paid for this. Who is signing up for this, and why?
26:37
Derek: The COSA project that initiated out of southeast Ontario, Canada rather,
26:44
Derek: it started with a Mennonite community and individuals convicted for sexual offenses,
26:50
Derek: who were leaving prison without any supervision.
26:54
Derek: And it was the pastor within the correctional facility up in southeast,
27:00
Derek: Ontario. The juror reached out to the Mennonite pastor in that community,
27:05
Derek: and he basically said, like, "Might you have any folks who are just willing to
27:10
Derek: span this?" I mean, it really is a spanning, a bridging, a grafting.
27:14
Derek: And that, that community, at that time, was able to find some people who basically
27:20
Derek: were like, "He's gonna go somewhere. I g- he's coming here.
27:25
Derek: We can kinda be, take the ostrich approach, right?
27:29
Derek: Head in sand or not my responsibility, and I'll make sure my door's locked,
27:33
Derek: or maybe we can lean in." And I think the why in that, uh, initial one that,
27:38
Derek: that carries through, I think it's different for every individual, for sure,
27:44
Derek: and people come at it from slightly different angles.
27:49
Derek: And I think one narrative is like, "Ah, here's an opportunity to, like,
27:53
Derek: actually do something." So I think some people are just action-oriented, and,
27:59
Derek: you know, it's not highly fraught for them.
28:03
Derek: I think there are others, who fundamentally have strong beliefs.
28:07
Derek: Everybody needs the opportunity to not just be the worst thing that they've ever
28:15
Derek: done, and the notion of opportunity really is a function of connections, right?
28:24
Derek: Vermont's motto is, you know, "freedom and unity."
28:27
Derek: We kinda need to stick together as Vermonters,
28:30
Derek: but we al- we don't want too much government in our lives.
28:35
Derek: They are not simply left-leaning liberals who just think, "Hey, look,
28:41
Derek: everybody's a good person at heart." You know, so I think there's, like,
28:45
Derek: a civic faith that runs through a lot of our volunteers,
28:49
Derek: the belief that relationships matter, and that it's not enough to just rest on the
28:58
Derek: regulatory levers of the state to kind of co-create sustainable communities.
29:11
Rob: What are people actually talking about in these meetings?
29:15
Derek: Yeah. I mean, usually it has a coordinator,
29:18
Derek: and that's an important position in our model, who is not a state employee,
29:23
Derek: but works as a, a staff member of a justice center through a DOC grant.
29:28
Derek: They are, they are kind of the liaison between the COSA itself and coordinating
29:35
Derek: each weekly COSA meeting, and then the probation and parole officer.
29:39
Derek: There's a no-secrets policy. If a core member discloses a behavior that may be,
29:46
Derek: in fact, in violation on some level of their conditions,
29:52
Derek: that will be shared with the probation and parole officer.
29:56
Derek: They'll usually convene the meeting. It's usually people are sitting around a
30:01
Derek: circular table. Sometimes opening prompt, right? Just go around, "Hey, you know,
30:06
Derek: one good thing that happened this week, summer bucket list item," you name it.
30:10
Derek: You know, there'll probably be more attention on the core member on how
30:13
Derek: they're navigating the terms of supervision,
30:16
Derek: on how if they're making progress: job search, housing, all of these, you know,
30:22
Derek: hard and critical things. You know, but later on,
30:25
Derek: it begins to really kind of mirror more sharing, more like, "Hey,
30:31
Derek: what's going on this week?" They also get the experience of not just being under the
30:36
Derek: lens. It's, you know, it go... You know,
30:37
Derek: the COSA coordinators are incredibly skilled. They kind of have to code switch.
30:40
Derek: They're, they're professionally supervised personal relationships that also still
30:45
Derek: have some boundaries. Even if somebody goes back to prison who's in a COSA,
30:50
Derek: it actually doesn't necessarily mean that it's a failure.
30:53
Derek: It often means that they were indicating signs that, if left unchecked,
30:59
Derek: could likely result in a new victim, but they started doing some behaviors that
31:05
Derek: violated their conditions. Uh, in the film, once again,
31:08
Derek: a guy drives out of state and, which he's not allowed to do, drinks,
31:12
Derek: which he's not allowed to do, is going to confront the spouse of his sister who he
31:18
Derek: has reason to believe is abusing div- physically abusing his sister.
31:23
Derek: So he's feeling the need to protect his sister and, and, uh,
31:26
Derek: confront and probably assault her sister's husband.
31:29
Derek: He commits several violations, drives without a license, leaves the state,
31:34
Derek: doesn't ultimately confront this guy, um, puts the brakes on.
31:38
Derek: And in the movie, he ends up going back to prison because those are still not
31:43
Derek: acceptable behaviors for him. Many, including the COSA folks, would argue,
31:49
Derek: "Okay, he didn't go and beat the, you know,
31:53
Derek: stuff out of this other guy," and the earlier version of this same core member
31:57
Derek: most definitely would have. So that's just another way of, like,
32:01
Derek: how I'd say what goes on in a COSA can show up in a lots of different ways.
32:05
Derek: It's pretty fluid. It's organic. And then when there's real stuff going on that's
32:11
Derek: acute, the other thing I should mention is that the default structure of a COSA is
32:16
Derek: that built-in meeting. But core members are always available,
32:19
Derek: and then they do activities outside of that too.
32:21
Derek: And because of those people allow folks on supervision to sometimes access places and
32:27
Derek: do things that they wouldn't be allowed to do by themselves.
32:29
Derek: You need permission to sometimes go fishing, uh,
32:33
Derek: if you're on furlough in Vermont. You can get it, if you're going with your COSA,
32:39
Derek: so you get access to humanizing experiences.
32:50
Rob: You've said there's a secret story hiding in this model.
32:54
Derek: I feel like COSAs start off from that place of like,
32:58
Derek: here's the plan and here's the theory, and often, after a little bit,
33:03
Derek: I feel like the core member, that's the individual for whom or with whom the COSA
33:08
Derek: is developed. I think that there's a like, okay, maybe I'm not,
33:11
Derek: I'm not gonna give all these people my trust right off the bat,
33:14
Derek: but a settling in, a sort of like, okay, wait a minute.
33:18
Derek: I'm, I'm showing up every week and they, they don't,
33:20
Derek: they're not getting on top of me about stuff.
33:23
Derek: They seem authentically engaged and maybe I can drop into like a,
33:26
Derek: a different layer of trust. And then, I think the deeper magic,
33:31
Derek: the secret story starts to get revealed, which is the individuals who volunteer who
33:38
Derek: I think generally are motivated by the ability to keep their communities safer.
33:45
Derek: Something, I think, starts shifting often and the presence and the relationship of
33:51
Derek: the core member begins to be reciprocally beneficial to them.
33:56
Derek: Not just feels like, oh, I can trust these people, but oh my gosh,
34:01
Derek: like I am actually adding value to their lives.
34:06
Derek: Then we switch the equation, and we have...
34:08
Derek: We see this in their narratives, where there is an equality, if you will.
34:15
Derek: Yeah, we've seen that. The film that we had commissioned,
34:19
Derek: there's a scene in which the core member is out for breakfast and with her couple
34:26
Derek: COSA member or two, and bumps into someone that she knows and, you know, says, "Oh,
34:33
Derek: hi, here's my, you know, COSA volunteer, you know, so and so."
34:37
Derek: And the COSA volunteer is like, "I, I, I don't want you to introduce me as that.
34:41
Derek: Like, we're just friends right now, you know, at this point.
34:44
Derek: We're just two people having breakfast." You know, as a sociologist, this speaks,
34:49
Derek: as you know, to, like, labeling theory. Like, I mean, in some ways,
34:54
Derek: it's like the moment when the labels just dissipate.
34:58
Derek: And that tells to me, you know, it says we're onto something good there, right?
35:04
Rob: And if I'm a core member and one of the hardest things for me is to admit when
35:10
Rob: I'm, when I might be vulnerable or I have a problem or I am tempted to be doing
35:15
Rob: something I know I shouldn't, if I'm sitting across from a therapist,
35:20
Rob: I may or may not choose to divulge that.
35:23
Rob: But if I'm sitting across from somebody who just shared something deep and
35:26
Rob: personal with me, now I might feel a little more likely to share something with
35:31
Rob: them because what we have is a two-way street, a relational, a,
35:35
Rob: a back and forth that is more natural.
35:41
Derek: Many people might say, "Well, why would we front somebody who's only had a harmful,
35:48
Derek: extractive effect?" You know, that's a tough question.
35:51
Derek: I think one of the vexing questions that corrections faces, and beyond corrections,
35:57
Derek: humanity, like how do we motivate and invite people into spaces of true
36:04
Derek: accountability? I, I think about this question all the time and, you know,
36:09
Derek: nobody has to do a COSA. And one of the critiques of restorative justice
36:13
Derek: sometimes, as you well know, is, well, the data generally keys off participants who,
36:19
Derek: on some level, are more likely to succeed because they've already chosen.
36:25
Derek: I, in some space, I do think restorative processes expand our collective capacity
36:33
Derek: to wrestle with the inherent messiness, juiciness if you will, as I said before,
36:40
Derek: of what are like naturally co-occurring truth. I'm not taking away the fact that
36:47
Derek: people in COSAs have done a lot of harm, but that's not to say that we can't make
36:52
Derek: space for what does it look like if we actually invest relational capital, uh,
36:58
Derek: in them. We don't always have to go left or right at every moment.
37:05
Derek: Sometimes we do, but not always.
37:19
Rob: You're Jewish, and I know that tradition means a great deal to you.
37:24
Rob: Um, has your faith tradition or your faith heritage been a support in this work,
37:29
Rob: or has it impacted or intersected in any way?
37:33
Derek: You know, I, I think it has in the ways that I touched upon in terms of what sort
37:39
Derek: of animated some of, like, what's become a career around justice.
37:44
Derek: That notion of repairing the world. It's called Tikkun Olam.
37:49
Derek: And that, that always resonated for me. I would tell you that personally,
37:55
Derek: my philosophical or moral or socio-judicial kind of, like,
38:00
Derek: identity development process over the arc of 56 years has been more drawn toward,
38:09
Derek: I'd say, a more secular, like, it doesn't tie back particularly for me to my sense
38:19
Derek: of being Jewish. I feel like we can come into humanity through many ways and derive
38:28
Derek: our humanity. COSA volunteers, not that you asked, I know, I'm sure,
38:33
Derek: come from multiple faith backgrounds, but there's definitely training and boundaries
38:40
Derek: about how that gets expressed. It is not a proselytizing opportunity.
38:45
Derek: You know, whatever, whatever faith is bringing people to the table,
38:50
Derek: it's offered in the sense of like, we want the community to be safe,
38:54
Derek: and we want you to have a life that is productive and that we believe is a ve-
38:59
Derek: you know, both of those things are possible. So, like, how can we get to it?
39:04
Rob: Restorative justice is about repair, fundamentally, right?
39:08
Rob: And I think you and I both appreciate the work of John Braithwaite,
39:12
Rob: who likes to say, "If crime hurts, justice should heal."
39:16
Rob: And we've been talking about repair, in many ways,
39:20
Rob: with or without the context of a victim facing an offender.
39:25
Rob: But you and I both know some harms can't be repaired in a literal sense.
39:31
Rob: That principal in Red Hook is never coming back.
39:34
Rob: The years your family lost having been chased out of Germany are not coming back.
39:40
Rob: After 30 years of this work, how have you
39:42
Rob: learned to live with what cannot be repaired?
39:47
Derek: Yeah. I, I appreciate that question. And I just started reading,
39:54
Derek: literally this past weekend, a book, sort of clarifies some of my thoughts.
40:01
Derek: I'm likely mispronouncing the author's name. I've never heard it spoken,
40:05
Derek: but it's called These Wilds Beyond Our Fences:
40:08
Derek: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home by Bayo Akomolafe.
40:16
Derek: Thanks to my wife, Tamara Smith, who's a children's book author,
40:23
Derek: about flagging an article and sending me this book.
40:28
Derek: And the book talks about the notion we're always in the middle, essentially,
40:36
Derek: of something, that we've constructed this notion of a beginning and an end,
40:42
Derek: and then we think that anything in between those is, like, the middle. But his...
40:47
Derek: It is. I'm just gonna read this. L- And th- and this book is letters to this, uh,
40:51
Derek: his daughter, which I just think is incredible.
40:55
Derek: Let me tell you the little things that I have come to learn
40:58
Derek: while I still can, right here in these middling
41:01
Derek: places, still trying to reach out to you. Everything
41:06
Derek: begins in the middle. There are no beginnings
41:11
Derek: that appear unperturbed, pristine, and without
41:16
Derek: hauntings. There are no endings that are devoid
41:20
Derek: of traces of the new spontaneous departures from
41:24
Derek: disclosure and simmering events that are yet
41:28
Derek: to happen. The middle isn't the space between
41:32
Derek: things. It is the world in its ongoing practices
41:37
Derek: of worlding itself.
41:41
Derek: So when I think about your question, is this linear experience of events in which
41:56
Derek: something happened and we can't go back and undo that thing,
42:00
Derek: and restorative justice, as you rightly mentioned, is so much about repair.
42:04
Derek: I also think restorative justice is not just about the episodic repair of things
42:10
Derek: that can't be fully repaired, but it's about interrogating the structural,
42:16
Derek: as many of the possible confluences of things that led to that.
42:23
Derek: If we understand what did happen from everybody's perspective and are willing to
42:30
Derek: look at our own culpability, both through omission and commission, I suppose.
42:43
Rob: I learned in the process of preparing for this interview that another thing we share
42:48
Rob: in common is that we're both Leonard Cohen fans.
42:53
Derek: I have always loved the line when Jesus knew for certain
43:00
Derek: only dying men could see him. He said, all men shall be sailors then until the sea shall free them.
43:09
[♪ Leonard Cohen, “Suzanne” ♪]
43:15
Derek: In many ways, I feel like the conversation we've had is like the complement to that.
43:21
Derek: Like, what would it look like if we don't wait for dying men to see justice, right?
43:31
Derek: Like, if it's like we recognize it's here, it's available,
43:36
Derek: we have to construct it right now, not we have to try to reclaim it through
43:45
Derek: procedures. So yeah.
43:46
[♪ Leonard Cohen, “Suzanne” ♪]
43:58
Rob: Beautiful. Thank you, Derek. We've taken a lot of your time, and I, I so appreciate.
44:06
Derek: Great. I've- I'm, you know, I'm always happy to ramble, so yeah.
44:11
Rob: So much more catching up to do, but we will have to do it over a beer one of
44:20
Rob: these times. You're listening to Just Stories.
44:27
Rob: I'm Rob Brenneman, and my guest today is Derek Miodownik.
44:32
Rob: Next time, we're back in Goshen with a local police officer talking about
44:36
Rob: violence, peace, and how the two are connected. Stay tuned.
44:44
Rob: Just Stories is a collaboration of the Religion, Justice,
44:48
Rob: and Society Department and the Communication Department at Goshen College
44:51
Rob: in Goshen, Indiana, with funding from the Lilly Endowment.
44:55
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