A Different Philosophy of Justice

This episode of Beyond the Bandaids is brought to you by Project PACT (Police And Community Together).

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Chief Mike Butler on LinkedIn
Dr. Carol Engel-Enright on LinkedIn
Kristin Daley on LinkedIn

The following three organizations—each committed to enhancing community well-being and policing integrity—joined forces to create Project PACT.

Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP)
New Blue
The School of Statesmanship, Stewardship & Service (SOSSAS)

Beyond the Bandaids is dedicated to exploring how police officers, public safety professionals, community leaders, and community members can reconnect with their sense of purpose and inspire positive change in their local community.

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[narrator] (0:02 – 0:58)
Welcome to Beyond the Band-Aids with Project PACT, the podcast where police, public safety experts, city leaders, and engaged community members explore how to create real, meaningful change in our communities. Each week, host Dr. Carol Engle Enright and Chief Mike Butler have conversations with experts and visionaries who are transforming public service. Discover how innovative leadership, compassion, and restorative practices can bridge gaps and build stronger connections between community stakeholders and police officials.

If you’re ready to rediscover your purpose within your community, enhance your leadership, and make a lasting impact, Beyond the Band-Aids is the podcast for you. Whether you’re a police officer, city leader, or committed community member, join us to unlock new possibilities for a safer, more connected future. Subscribe now to Beyond the Band-Aids and be part of the movement for change.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (1:03 – 2:32)
Well, welcome to Project PACT’s Beyond the Band-Aids. I’m Dr. Carol Engle Enright. I’m here with Mike Butler, a retired public officer, public safety chief of City of Longmont, and Kristen Daly.

We’re going to start off by talking about, you know, the project that we’ve put together in terms of how did we come about this philosophically? And I’m just going to kind of go from our website. We activate goodness to build safer and healthier communities.

And we move beyond the Band-Aids of the past. Now, we’re going to have a quick discussion about what is a Band-Aid when it comes to police and community. But we offer an unprecedented approach.

This is a new approach to education and enhancing public safety, along with community well-being. We are putting them both together. Our proven strategies help expand the good in your community and foster a lasting partnership with your public safety department.

So Mike, I want you to talk about, first of all, what is a Band-Aid? What does that mean? And then how do we kind of approach this philosophy of goodness, activating the goodness in terms of public safety when it comes to police?

[Mike Butler] (2:33 – 6:02)
Yeah, thanks, Carol. I just want to also say, Kristen Daly, our co-host here is the Executive Director of New Blue. And we’re both, Kristen and I are both board members for the Law Enforcement Action Partnership.

And so I just wanted to kind of finish that aspect of the introduction. But Band-Aids, we all know what a Band-Aid is. But what’s been happening all the way back to Ferguson, Missouri, that took place in August of 2014, is that we’ve been saying, well, we have to change the cultures of our police department.

We have to change the relationship that the police departments have with our communities. And everything that’s been going on since then, and every time we have a major incident in this country that involves a police department action that doesn’t go well, you hear the pundits, you hear the, quote, experts say that we need to shift the culture within our police departments. Well, that hasn’t happened, because most of the time, all we’ve really applied are Band-Aids.

It’s something that to a set of dynamics that’s much deeper and much more comprehensive than what a Band-Aid will fix. And so Band-Aids are like, well, let’s give our officers body-worn cameras, or let’s change the use of force or pursuit policy, or let’s add a program, let’s plop in a plug and play program, which seems to be very popular, and let’s hope that that changes. Or maybe the more popular one that mayors and city managers have used over the years is, let’s just change our police chief.

And so none of those things have worked. They’ve all been Band-Aids on, like I said, a deeper set of dynamics and circumstances that exist within our police departments and impacts the relationship that we have with our community. And the other thing with our community, in terms of Band-Aids, is that we want our community to feel and to sense that they have this healthy interdependence amongst and between each other, and between them and their police department and their public safety divisions.

Not this unhealthy dependency. And so every time we do something that’s Band-Aid-like in the police department, we somewhat exacerbate that relationship that’s so unhealthily dependent between the police and the community. We don’t want that.

We don’t want the police to really come down to it, really doesn’t want the community to be so dependent on them that they won’t call a neighbor, or they won’t try to strengthen their neighborhoods, or they won’t be involved in their community, or they’ll just sit back in their homes and hope somebody else takes care of it. And so those are the residuals of the Band-Aids. And so what Project PACT is offering is an entirely different approach to be able to work with police departments and communities so that they can get beyond the Band-Aids.

And that’s the name of this podcast, Beyond the Band-Aids. And that’s what we’re talking about. And so there’s there is a variety of and there’s numerous perspectives and circumstances that we’re going to be addressing.

And we hope that people tune in and want to ask questions, push back maybe a little bit, and kind of get a sense for what we’re trying to talk about, but also to kind of give us the opportunity to explain what we are trying to do with Project PACT.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (6:02 – 6:32)
Okay, so Kristen, we’re going to jump right in this, because there is, there’s a lot of talk around this. And there’s a lot of talk around justice. I want you to talk, you’ve worked in, you’ve worked in research around policing for, for 17 years, as you’ve been involved with the Law Enforcement Action Partnership in New Bloom.

Talk about the historical kind of sense of justice and how it’s starting to transform.

[Kristin Daley] (6:33 – 9:37)
So I think historically, there’s been a feeling of, you know, as Mike said, the police will solve the problems in our community and community members don’t have a direct hand in not only expressing what they need, but actually being part of solutions that change the things that aren’t working. And I think in recent years, there’s been a real shift in that communities are getting very, very vocal about wanting to be directly involved. And, you know, I think we need to expand the opportunities so that more and more people can be involved in what public safety means and what it looks like, and what agencies are doing and what communities are doing.

So I think a good example, to me, a Band-Aid is something that’s a very surface level fix. And it’s not kind of digging below the surface and unearthing some of the issues that we’re really facing. So the whole thing, to me, starts with communication between police departments and their communities and finding out what the community actually needs.

What do they view as the problems? And what do the police department think they can actually kind of meet in the middle and start to talk about in terms of solutions? So what we do at New Blue is that officers work directly with community members to create solutions to some of the things that are not serving them to the highest capacity.

And to do that, we need to really be clear about what the community needs and what it wants. So a potential solution for us, so Evanston, Illinois is a great example. They interacted with community members, they surveyed the community, they identified a big problem with recidivism, and they set out to build a project that would create recidivism reduction.

So they created a program called Care Card, which is communities all in recidivism. And it actually enables officers at the point of arrest to survey the person that they’ve encountered. And ask them what their needs are, what resources are falling short for them, what brought them to this place where they needed help.

And they’ve also built a lot of relationships within the community with organizations that can provide those resources and provide direct services. And I think that’s really been a game changer in that community because it has dug deep below the surface, figured out what resources were lacking, and set about boosting them up and making them not only more available but more accessible. Because I think that’s a lot of times we can put a resource out there, but if people don’t feel that they’re able to readily access it, then it’s not really doing any good.

[Mike Butler] (9:38 – 14:09)
So can I build a little bit on what Kristen said around the nature of justice in terms of historically what it’s been like? So let me give the example here. The example that maybe most of us are familiar with.

Let’s say someone is victimized by a heinous crime. A family member has been seriously hurt or killed. And the media gets a hold of that person, sticks a mic in front of that person, and says, what do you want?

And the person invariably will say, I want justice. And what they mean by that is that they want a pound of flesh. They want an eye for an eye.

They want someone to pay for what happened to them. And that’s all understandable. We all get that.

But there’s a sense of vengeance that also arises with that in terms of saying, this is what I think is going to be fair, that that person paid to the level that they need to pay in order to compensate me for the injury that my family had. And we understand that. And for any of us who have been involved as a victim or has had a family member, we get that emotional response and that reaction.

But there is a level of retribution, and there’s a level of vindictiveness, and there’s a level of punitiveness to that, that I’m not sure where Project PACT is coming from the perspective of, we can actually do something different with justice, where there are consequences for people, but we’re not looking at it from the perspective of vengeance, and we’re not looking at it from the perspective of a pound of flesh or an eye for an eye. And I’m just going to say this. I think our concept of justice in our country has kind of been stuck in that primitive mode for a long time.

And a lot of the wheels of the criminal justice system often kind of turn and rotate around that aspect of what justice is, that definition of justice. Which, by the way, when you look at what’s happened, and going back to what Kristen said around recidivism, it hasn’t lessened recidivism. Recidivism in this country is anywhere between 15% and 70%, wherever you’re at.

And recidivism also means that people are getting victimized. That anytime you recidivate, anytime you repeat a crime and hurt somebody else, there’s another victim. And so what I think we need to be kind of looking forward towards is a new form, a new light and perspective around what justice is that minimizes the recidivism rates, maximizes a victim’s capacity to heal, and gives the community an opportunity to have voice in the outcome.

And so when we begin to do that, and we begin to say, we want justice to be able to minimize recidivism, help victims heal, and help communities become whole, my take is that’s a little bit more enlightened form of justice than just, I want to punish somebody, and I want someone to pay for their crimes. We get that. And we’re not saying here in Project PAC that there shouldn’t be consequences, because we all know, and I definitely know, that there are people in every community that need to be removed from those communities so that the community is safe.

But the role and purpose of justice should be community safety, which also takes into account offender recidivism, the healing of victims, and the fact that the community can rally around these circumstances and become, they can heal and become whole themselves, because we’ve seen, many of us, we’re all familiar with a set of circumstances where someone’s victimized, and it upsets the equilibrium of a community. And no one’s really doing anything about that other than saying, well, we’re going to make sure that they pay for their crime. That doesn’t necessarily heal anybody.

That doesn’t necessarily, and ultimately the victim has a lot more work to do beyond that offender kind of feeling that sense of retribution to heal themselves. And so that’s been our history, and that history comes with high recidivism rates, high victimization rates, and communities that have not necessarily figured out how to become whole again because we haven’t necessarily kind of determined what justice can really look like in a more enlightened society.

[Kristin Daley] (14:10 – 14:38)
Right, and you know, when someone is significantly harmed, you’re right, it is a natural instinct to want sort of retribution, but the justice system should be about rehabilitation and not just punitive punishment, because that is creating a cycle where the person is not learning from what they did. They’re just, you know, accepting a punishment without really understanding what they can do to change the behavior.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (14:42 – 15:27)
Okay, so we’ve had, Kristen, you talked about rehabilitation. Mike, you talked about, you know, the community having a voice, the victim having healing, and people paying consequences. So we’re really talking about this new philosophy of morality, justice, that is community, community partnership with law enforcement.

And, Mike, can you kind of take it from here? Like, how does the history of the punitive justice system in the US, how it’s worked? And then you talked about the recidivism rates that they’re so high, everyone knows that.

But people aren’t talking about, you know, what is down the road? How do we create a future that’s different than what we have now?

[Mike Butler] (15:28 – 19:28)
Yeah, so, you know, the origins lie in the kind of the essence of what drove the development of our criminal justice system over time. And a lot of that is found in the idea of or the perspective of retribution and punishment, and that people needed to be punished, and that there needed to be a form of retribution for committing a harm. And therefore, we ended up with a large apparatus of a criminal justice system, lots of prisons, lots of lots of court systems, lots of prosecutors, lots of police officers, all with the idea that we’re going to make our communities and countries safer if we have a larger apparatus.

And so that’s been the kind of the movement. And we’ve not really done anything to kind of pull back from that. We talk about it.

We talk about how the United States imprisons more people, incarcerates more people than any other civilized country in the world per capita. But we don’t really do much about it. And so again, a lot of Band-Aids.

And so whenever, and all depending on who’s an office and the political winds at that point, whether or not we’re going to get tough on crime, whether we’re going to throw away the key, whether we’re going to continue down this road of punishment and retribution, or whether or not we’re going to do something different that has. And so we’ve gone back and forth, back and forth. There’ve been some things that have been done too, that for instance, bail reform was something that was tried in certain cities and certain jurisdictions and counties and judicial districts throughout the country, that because it was a plug and play program and didn’t take into account all the other aspects of the system, that it failed miserably in a lot of communities.

And a lot of people were re-victimized. It was higher recidivism rates and people were re-victimized. And so because we only deal with one aspect of the entire system, we’re not necessarily dealing with something of the larger apparatus.

Because anytime you change a part, it changes the other parts and we don’t necessarily know how that’s all going to look. And so you’re going to have more failure than you are successes if you approach this just from a fragmented approach. And so anyway, that’s been the history.

And we’ve come at it from, not from the whole is greater than the sum of the parts perspective, but well, let’s just change this fragment. Let’s look at this sliver, or let’s change this law, or let’s add that, let’s stiffen that penalty. Or let’s do something policy-wise that tends to have a little momentum behind it at either a local or state legislative level, sometimes a national level.

And all of those things don’t necessarily take into account the other aspects and parts of a larger apparatus and system that has to shift. And no one knows the intended consequences or the unintended consequences of the changing of these approaches fragmentally. And so that’s been somewhat.

And so retribution, punishment, vengeance, I for an eye, pound of flesh has been kind of driving our criminal justice system. And to add a little bit to that is that it gets talked about a lot on the social networks and in our mass media in the form of, we have to find retributive responsibility a lot. Anytime something goes wrong, we have to find out who’s to blame and then punish them or fire them, or they have to have consequences.

We live in a world where there’s a lot of humanness and there’s a lot of imperfection. And so none of us want to be subject to that. But on the other hand, that’s been our approach historically.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (19:28 – 20:49)
Okay, so this is a lot to kind of dive into or unpack, Kristen. Like talk about this, you brought up rehabilitation. In terms of criminal justice, the prisons were a place to go pay your consequences, maybe learn some new skills, not feel that punishment, not feel that neglect, not feel that departure from community.

So what do we think about as we think in terms of, you have to be responsible for the actions you take, you have to be responsible for a decision that was maybe immoral or hurt someone. But mistakes are made, as we just said, all over. We’re human.

So how do we think about rehabilitation in terms of police and community? I really want to talk about community safety because I want this podcast to reach out to community members. I want them to think that they are part of the public in public safety.

So let’s kind of start to address how we can think about justice in partnership with community and police.

[Kristin Daley] (20:52 – 23:05)
So I mean, very truthfully, I don’t know that the current way that the system operates in the sense of being very punitive, I don’t know that it necessarily does make communities feel safe. I don’t know that if you asked the average community member, they would say that that makes them feel safer because they don’t think it’s addressing the underlying harm. I think that someone who, as you said, you know, hurts someone or does something really gravely wrong needs to be held accountable.

But does that mean that they need to be sort of blindly punished without the opportunity to rehabilitate? I don’t think that that does that person any good and I don’t think it does greater society any good. So in terms of, you know, that applying to police community relations, I think it’s the same thing.

I think there needs to be this opportunity to heal that starts with looking at what is working well and what’s not working well, and finding solutions that improve what’s not working and amplify what is. And, you know, systems that we’re creating around restorative justice and deflection, diversion, I think those will go a long way toward getting at that sense of we’re trying to offer a lifeline, offer a way to change a behavior that is detrimental to the community at large and detrimental to that person. I think we also need to take into account that a lot of people that enter into the justice system have underlying trauma that’s never been addressed.

And if we’re just, you know, throwing them in prison and throwing away the key, they never have the opportunity to address that and learn to be a productive and positive part of society. It just kind of amplifies their feeling of not belonging. And when or if they are let back out into society, they haven’t learned to be a productive and positive member.

[Mike Butler] (23:06 – 26:48)
So I want to add a little bit to what Kristen said because she hit something very important. And that is the other thing that’s been very, very much characteristic of our criminal justice system is that it has gravitated towards the one size fits all quick fix way of doing things. And so whether the crime is a low hanging fruit, kind of a low level crime, or whether it’s been a high level crime or everything in between on that continuum, that the same response is delivered.

And so we only have one response to a lot of these things once an arrest is made, that once a summons is issued. And that is arrest, ticket, introduction to the criminal justice system, prosecution, courts, probation, parole, prisons. That’s a one size fits all.

And I’m going to say it’s very much a quick fix in terms of what we’re trying to do. And that quick fix doesn’t take into account the things Kristen’s talking about in terms of there are people who made a bad choice and a bad decision. And now they’re going through a system that’s very rigid, very inflexible, because there’s this one size fits all somewhat quick fix approach to it.

And they’re not given necessarily an opportunity to kind of reevaluate, rethink, reassess, recalibrate themselves in a way where they could be more productive if they could be out in the community. But I also want to say, and I want to make this point very, very clear, and for all you police officers out there, maybe some of you citizens that are watching this, there are people in our communities that I’ll use the phrase sociopathic or psychopathic, that may not be able to be rehabilitated. And I am absolutely convinced that there are people that need to be removed from our communities and never let back out.

And so what we’re not good at in this whole thinking of justice is how to get beyond the one size fits all, get beyond the quick fix approach to things. And we kind of lump everybody in the same pile because that’s the way the justice system works in the vast majority of our judicial districts, our counties, and in our cities and across the country. And so what Project PACT is emphasizing here is there has to be a more diverse, a system that has more discretion, more in alignment with the science, especially neuroscience, that’s available to us now in terms of how we can approach people so that we can minimize recidivism, we can help victims heal who have been harmed, and we can make our communities safe because ultimately the criminal justice system isn’t doing that.

It’s just not doing that. And yet we think we’re going to turn it up a notch because we have a series of crimes and we think, well we got to get more aggressive in our policing, or we got to get more law enforcement oriented, we have to hire more police or build more prisons or whatever that might be. That’s been our approach.

That approach, frankly folks, hasn’t worked. And we need those systems, but we need to have a lot more discretion, we need to have a lot more a kind of variety around how we’re working with people so that ultimately the number one goal here, the number one purpose, is so that our communities are safer. And that should be the goal and idea around justice.

There should be a major purpose for how we define justice and how we want to see that carried out in our communities.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (26:48 – 27:30)
So it seems to me that citizens themselves, you know, I’m just looking at some of the places we wanted to go, thinking about accountability. Citizens can be accountable for their own safety, right? For themselves, for their family.

They can reach out to their neighborhood. They can’t really be responsible, accountable for the entire city. What happens when somebody commits a crime?

Causes a disorder? Who becomes accountable? Is it the police or do we have any systems in place that make that person accountable?

[Mike Butler] (27:30 – 29:29)
Okay, so maybe the one way of saying it is to, how can we create an apparatus where people choose accountability? We’ve talked a little bit about accountability here in this podcast. We’ve talked about how legislating accountability, it doesn’t sustain itself with people.

Demanding accountability, purchasing, forcing accountability, those things don’t work. But if we can create apparatuses where people can choose, or systems where people can choose accountability, that has a much more probability of sustaining itself over time. In our criminal justice system in this country, people have the right to remain silent.

They don’t have to take accountability. And we know that that’s a sacred right and an approach in this country that separates us out from a lot of other authoritarian-like autocratic nations in the world. And we’re all grateful for that.

But somehow we have to come up with a way where people can choose accountability in a way that says, you know what, I am responsible. I am willing to pay a consequence here. We’ve lost something along the way because what we’ve really kind of emphasized since the beginning of this country are the individual rights of people.

The fact that they all have rights. And we get that. And we want those rights.

Each of us want those rights. But the part that’s missing is the responsibility piece. And so Viktor Frankl once said that, you know, we have the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast.

We need a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast. And so until those two things kind of come into some kind of level of equilibrium where responsibilities on the part of citizens and the responsibility on the part of communities are just as important as the rights of citizens and the rights of communities, we’re going to struggle. We’re going to struggle with this.

And so part of our project pact is to find that equilibrium.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (29:29 – 29:43)
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I’m just I’m just thinking we never hold anybody that’s within the system that enters the system.

We never say you have to be accountable, do we? And Kristen, yeah, we do and we don’t.

[Mike Butler] (29:43 – 30:28)
But it’s one of those things where there’s a lot of conversation that takes place prior to that. And but that choosing of accountability is something that is it rubs up against the whole idea of the right to remain silent. And that’s an important we have to figure out how to factor that in to whatever we’re doing.

But on the other hand, I think all of us want to see people be responsible. It’s just that to what level does the government play a role in terms of forcing that responsibility, which is why we have that right, because that sense of we’re going to force you to be responsible and accountable didn’t work either. And so now we’ve come up with the idea that we have the right to remain silent.

So I know Kristen wants to say something.

[Kristin Daley] (30:29 – 31:55)
What you just said really resonates with me, you know, in my area of expertise around sexual violence and domestic violence. Taking responsibility goes a long, long way. The offender taking responsibility goes a long way in actually helping the survivor to heal.

And, you know, we’re thinking about what how can we sort of balance this and create that, that… I’m trying to… Just, just and fair.

Yeah, how does a how does a victim or survivor feel like they were treated justly and fairly? And how do we balance that with, you know, the rights of the person who has caused the harm? And I think that’s exactly it.

Giving that person a path to take responsibility and take accountability. And for the person who has been harmed to hear that and know that and have that means of, you know, an apology. That is huge in the healing process.

And to be very blunt about it, a lot of survivors and victims of those sensitive crimes do not feel like the system has worked for them in terms of, you know, healing and seeing an outcome that made them feel they could move forward.

[Mike Butler] (31:56 – 32:32)
Exactly right, Kristen. There’s no, there’s no legal… I want to say one other thing.

There’s no legal provision for a victim’s voice in the system. The system is all designed around the rights of the offender. And so the victim is kind of left out.

Now there are certain jurisdictions that have kind of tangentially included the victim and victim’s rights and some states have passed some laws around that. But for the most part, Kristen’s exactly right. Victims are left out of the equation when it comes to determining what justice looks like.

And what they’re healing, how they’re healing can progress. They’re left out.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (32:33 – 34:06)
Yeah, I’ve seen families, you know, of murdered victims, you know, a family member, that they’re so angry, they’re into that vengeance and vindictiveness at first. And then, you know, as the court case moves through, they sometimes say, all we want is an apology. And, you know, I’ve, I’ve been with Mike as he’s toured the nation and talked about, Mike, I know we don’t want to go into restorative justice on this, on this episode, we will.

But just to think about what does just mean in both parties for all parties involved. And I want to get back to community well-being. And, and also get back to the fact that police departments are local.

They are within a community. It is not, sometimes we talk about this big federal system, the justice system, but within the local communities. And I know, Kristen, you, you talked a little about Evanston and how they’re starting to interview people.

And Mike has done all kinds of work in this, you know, this interfacing of a police, a police person with a community member and what that feels like. So let’s talk about justice in terms of there’s a mistake made in the community. And, and how do we start to think of this new philosophy of justice for all parties involved?

I don’t know who wants to take that first.

[Mike Butler] (34:08 – 34:42)
So, yeah, let me just say that one of the things we’re going to have, we will be talking about on a podcast that police chiefs, mayor, city managers, police officials might be asking themselves, well, what’s that look like for the police? What, what do police, what can the police do differently? Because we’re part of the criminal justice system.

All we know is enforcement. All we know is that we make arrest and issue summonses. Our legislators pass laws, they stiffen our penalties.

And the demand is for the police department to go out and arrest people who violate those laws.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (34:42 – 34:44)
Do more, right? Do more and do more.

[Mike Butler] (34:44 – 38:42)
We’ve never had a conversation, an in-depth comprehensive conversation in this country about what could the alternatives and options be to those, to the criminal justice system, to the harms that are committed. How do we deal with the kind of the messiness of the human condition in a way that’s more effective than the process we have going on right now? Because this justice system built on retribution and punishment isn’t making our communities safer.

And, and so, and there’s lots of data to support that. And so we won’t go into that now, but a future podcast is going to have to be around how we can create alternatives and options to deal with the messiness of the human condition without necessarily invoking the criminal justice system. Because I think there’s a lot of people asking that.

And I think when it comes down to community saying, we want our communities to be safe, the vast majority of community members I have spoken with have said, I just want to know that my family’s safe. I just want to know that my neighborhood’s safe. I kind of want to know that something’s happening, and I’m willing to be engaged by the way, that helps this community be safe.

And what we’re not necessarily talking about, that’s going to be the subject of another broadcast, is what can the citizen’s role be in creating a safer environment in their neighborhood and in their community? That’s something that I think a lot of people are asking questions. Because what I know, what I know for certain, is that there’s a lot of people, tens and tens of millions of people in this country, that would step up to the plate with their gifts, their resources, their expertise, their talents, their skills, and be able to offer something that could contribute to the safety of their communities.

But because we are designed the way we’re designed, there’s this almost monopolizing chokehold on who’s going to provide safety in our communities. And typically that comes down to, and all the elected officials and all the appointed leaders are all saying, they’re problem solvers, they’re action takers, we’re going to take care of safety. Well, that hasn’t gotten us anywhere, folks, other than this community has become, this country has still has a high recidivism rate, high victimization rate, and a very low rate on chosen accountability.

And so we’re going to have to figure that one out as we talk about this in future podcasts. But there are systems in place, there are ways of being able, there are pockets in this country where people have chosen to say we want to create alternatives to our criminal justice system that makes our communities safe. We don’t have to necessarily arrest somebody or ticket somebody.

One of those is the restorative principle practice way. There’s no question about that that’s worked. That’s gotten some bad press lately because it hasn’t necessarily worked well.

But what’s interesting is the folks who are giving restorative principles and practices bad press are saying nothing about the 70% recidivism rate in this country in terms of this person’s been arrested, they’ve been prosecuted, they’ve been convicted, they’ve been imprisoned, and they’re still out victimizing people. What about that? What about that?

We get asked that hard question too, in terms of why isn’t that working? And the rate of that not working is considerably higher than the restorative justice system rate, considerably higher. I have personal experience with close to 7,000 to 8,000 cases where recidivism rates were less than 5%.

And I have experience with the criminal justice system where recidivism rates are 50 to 60%. And so what would I rather have? What would I rather have?

For me, I want something that’s effective. I want something that has low recidivism rate. I want something where the victim can heal.

I want something where the community is saying we have voice in the outcome in terms of what happened, because that helped the community heal.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (38:42 – 40:19)
Do you want something that where the community thinks, well that person is much less likely to come back into this community and commit another crime? Like the community needs to think about that. All right, so Kristen.

Yeah, chime in. Let’s just keep going with this thread. On rehabilitation, restoring, reintegrating someone into a community that could be productive, that could be a citizen.

You know what I find so interesting about the system is that the minute you’re ticketed or summonsed, you are considered a criminal. And maybe more importantly, you consider yourself a criminal. That the self-identity starts in in terms of, well, I can’t be anything more.

And there’s never anywhere. One thing, Kristen, I’d like for you to talk about. I know you know the history of the Department of Justice.

And Mike talked a little bit about the quick fix, but I would call it the zero tolerance and this idea of equality as we move through the system that then settles itself into places in communities that feel a little outside of the norm.

[Kristin Daley] (40:20 – 42:21)
Yeah, I think there are certainly communities that feel like they’ve been disproportionately impacted by the justice system. And that’s not just a feeling, that’s a fact. There are communities that have been really disproportionately harmed by policies that haven’t worked for them.

And I think that does, as you said, that kind of creates a mindset of other. You know, we’re kind of living outside of the what’s the community or the, you know, we’re not a part of this. And when we create that feeling of being the other or being the outsider or being, you know, outside of the larger group, that that doesn’t create a feeling of wanting to proactively participate or wanting to be a part of solutions or a part of what’s working well and what’s good.

And we need to kind of break down those barriers of, you know, these people are not working within our system. So they’re, you know, we’re not going to ask for their input. We’re not going to ask them what they need.

We’re not going to invite them to be a part of the larger work that we’re doing. That creates that otherness, that creates that boundary. And that’s the thing that we really want to break down.

And I think that’s a big part of what Project PACT is looking at doing is breaking down those communication barriers between police and community, between community member and community member, between, you know, between different communities. There are a lot of barriers up. And when we start to have conversations that are meaningful and, you know, sometimes uncomfortable, but communities need to feel like they can openly express what they need and what they want to see.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (42:21 – 42:32)
Do you think people start to, when there’s a barrier in place, people start to point the finger of blame? Like, it’s their responsibility. It’s their, you know.

[Mike Butler] (42:33 – 45:33)
I want to add to that a little bit too. And I don’t know of anybody, I’ve never met anybody in my life that wants their life identity and defined by one act that they’ve committed. I don’t know of anybody that, but yet there’s not, I don’t know of anybody that hasn’t committed something that they could have very well been defined by that act.

But for some reason it didn’t happen for them because they weren’t arrested or summons. But we got to get out of that mode where we’re defining people by the act they committed, because there’s a lot more to people. And that’s part of what Project PACT is doing.

And as part of what a new form of justice, a new philosophy of justice should take into account is what are the underlying aspects of that person’s humanness? What strengths and assets and gifts do they have that could be helpful to the community? And how can we help them kind of figure that out so that they can begin to on themselves leverage what they have that’s good for others and make it work for others?

That could very well be a form of justice in terms of that’s the payment, so to speak, if you will, back to the community in terms of saying, you have these gifts, you have these assets, you have these strengths, and the consequences are you have to make those work for the good of the whole. I’m not saying that works everywhere. I get that.

We get that there’s a lot of, there’s a crime, there’s certain crimes where that’s not going to happen. I get that. I’ve been around the block enough to know the nature of certain people too in terms of sometimes, like I said before, their sociopathic or psychopathic kind of tendencies.

But there’s so many people, the vast majority of people, that get entered into the criminal justice system where that would work a heck of a lot better than how the criminal justice system and how we’re responding now as a society to the harms that are committed. And so what Project PACT will be recommending, what we’ll be teaching and instructing, are what those alternatives, what those options look like, how you can begin to apply the research that’s in neuroscience in a way that deals with, as Kristen talked about, the trauma induced people who are struggling because of that trauma, and what that can, what needs to happen so that those folks who are committing these acts can heal as well. And that’s the rehabilitation aspect of things.

Because I think the other thing that victims would love to know is that not only did someone say I’m sorry, please forgive me. But they also say I’m willing to, I’m willing to pay it forward in terms of compensating the community and you in terms of what I have to offer. And so there’s, there’s an entirely different perspective here versus throwing away the key and vengeance and eye for an eye kind of approach.

And so that’s what we’re trying to get to.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (45:33 – 45:54)
Yeah, boy, the the brain science, the neuroscience of being able to use your own gifts and strengths and talents to give to others, what that does, and to to alter the identity versus I’m a criminal, I’m a felon, I’m a, yeah. Oh, my gosh.

[Kristin Daley] (45:54 – 46:05)
Also having access to the resources to help them learn not to do that again, not to harm anyone going forward.

[Mike Butler] (46:05 – 46:45)
And you know, exactly. And you know, if you did this, if communities could do it in a way that we’re Project PACT is going to be recommending, it would be a much, much less expensive way to move forward this way, than it would be to kind of continue on with that larger apparatus of the criminal justice system. I know this is going to be potentially threatening to people in the criminal justice system, but I also know enough people to know that we have to figure something else out.

We have we have to shift, we have to kind of realign the purpose for our criminal, the institution of our criminal justice system and our police. That’s what Project PACT, that’s where Project PACT is headed.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (46:45 – 48:04)
Yeah, boy, and the possibilities of being proactive to working with young people and groups of people before the crime is committed. Crimes are almost always committed out of despair, out of really other, yeah, other mindedness, substance, whatever. But if there’s a way to be proactive, well, this has been a really great conversation around philosophy.

Thank you for for all of your thoughts. I mean, there’s there’s so much more to talk about. So please stay tuned.

Get on our website, projectpact.org. Please sign up for our newsletter and so that we can be in touch with you. If you are within a police department, please contact us.

Contact Mike and Kristen personally. They’ve got emails on there. If you have questions, we’d love to get feedback.

Where do you want us to to go? And what is available for your department in bringing bringing through some of these new kind of strategies, proven strategies to building people, to making better societies, to creating a healthier community and interchange between police and community itself.

[Mike Butler] (48:05 – 48:48)
So the last thing I want to offer is if all we’re going to do is kind of of shift the nature of the conversation or maybe change the conversation, we will. That’s what we’re trying to do here, folks, in terms of we have to shift and change the nature of the conversation we’re having around this. It’s not an elusive topic.

Justice is not an elusive topic. It’s something that if we begin to talk about, I think we can come to consensus and find common ground in terms of what we all want in terms of a safer community, less recidivism, victims being able to heal and communities finding a way to become whole as a result of crimes that are committed.

[Carol Engel-Enright] (48:49 – 48:54)
Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Kristen. And tune back in for another episode of Beyond the Band-Aids.

[narrator] (48:56 – 49:47)
Thank you for tuning in to Beyond the Band-Aids with Project PACT. We hope today’s episode has inspired you to think differently about public service and community engagement. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate and leave a review.

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Pioneered by Law Enforcement Action Partnership, New Blue and the School of Statesmanship, Stewardship and Service, Project PACT is the culmination of three leading organizations committed to enhancing community well-being and policing integrity. Until next time, keep moving forward and stay engaged. Together, we can create a safer, more connected future.