Rehabilitation, Retribution, & Criminal Justice | Craig DeRoche, Prison Fellowship | Lincoln-Douglas

0:00 to the people that that are being affected than at a state or at a federal level where it can become abstract and it’s to people on television uh when it’s in your city or in your neighborhood uh it’s a completely different conversation so as we talk about these topics today uh retribution and Rehabilitation I want you to think in terms of how it would matter to you and how it would matter to to people that live around you uh a as we go through our questions now I would like to spend some time oh and and I should give you additional information about myself one of the things that makes Not only my work unique uh um but also the work of many of my colleagues at prison fellowship is that we have criminal records we’ve actually been through the criminal justice system ourselves so for me you’ll hear me give examples very close cl to what I actually did I was arrested uh for a um drunk driving violation that’s a criminal offense in every state in America and and I had another arrest because I had an addiction that I needed to overcome so at prison fellowship as well as what we’re finding uh when we’re doing a research uh when we’re trying to find a way to actually find an effective solution to crime and have a person repay the damage they’ve done it it helps to learn from people that

1:32 have actually lived through that um and in America today I’ll give you some statistics there are 65 million American adults that have a criminal record that’s a little bit more than one in four adults have some form of criminal record as I do um if you look at the incarceration in America uh we incarcerate more than any industrialized country in in human history at at the size um that that America is today so how we use retribution and how we use Rehabilitation is very important because it’s become such a big part of our life in the K12 system where all of you are are currently members of on average in America today one in 28 students in the k 12 system has a parent who is incarcerated today not a parent who has been incarcerated ever in their life but that’s incarcerated this evening while while we’re talking on this call and so it has become a part of our life and it not only affects the life of the person that is in the system when we choose something like retribution or Rehabilitation um the outcome of whether or not it’s going to be successful when 95 percent of the people or more will

3:04 leave prison will leave jail and come back into the community the question of Rehabilitation or retribution is did we do everything we could do to make sure that the person never does that crime again because that’s what we’re investing in with the justice system now I do want to make some points here uh um and and back up and talk about the three tradition goals of the justice system when somebody commits a crime or harms someone else something in US cries out for justice but I’d ask you what is Justice that’s what we’re here to talk about today to help you with the starting point think of it as the writing of wrongs something wrong has occurred and how do we make it right it’s complicated Justice is something we all say we believe in but defining what that actually means and how to achieve it can actually get pretty complex despite the difficulty this is something we should wrestle with and that’s why I think you’re on the call today one way to begin thinking about Justice is to consider the purposes of the punishment why do we punish people what is the aim when we discuss Justice especially as it is to do with Crime and Punishment we need to understand the actions of the judges juries and policy makers is having really one of three purposes not the two we’re primarily talking about today it’s retribution Rehabilitation which we’re going to talk about but also deterrence

4:39 deterrence I believe prison fellowship believes where I work uh for a Justice that restores and and I’m going to get to that and and explain what that is but first I want you to understand the traditional goals of the justice system and their limitations because I think that’s what this debate is actually about tonight retro ution is a term that has become unfairly uh kind of synonymous with Revenge but in its simplest form retribution means to give what is due as either a reward or a punishment it’s an ey for an eye proportional uh approach to criminal justice retribution recognizes that every person uh even Those who commit crimes um if if you’re a if you’re a person of Faith You’ say the person is created in the image of God if you’re a person that beli and fairness and Equity you’d say that that person is of equal value and potential to everybody else even if they’ve committed a crime if they do something wrong though we need to respond their choices matter and we want them to experience the consequences of the choices when our goal is retribution we seek to punish wrongdoing in a way that is proportional to the crime that they committed and does not diminish that person’s value as a human being a proportional response also signifies that human value of the victim the person that was harmed by the crime so in other words if our justice system

6:10 does not have a goal of Retribution we in effect say that the perpetrator is not worth the punishment or that the victim is not worth the effort so if we don’t have retribution what I’m saying is we devalue the life of two people the person that committed the crime who’s not worth you know it’s a new they’re not worth our effort or or the person that’s been victimized and saying they’re not worth our um effort to uh hold that other person accountable and write the wrongs retribution says that a person must be punished for their crime but not punished more than they deserve I want you to note what I just said retribution as a value and a principle says that a that a person must be punished for their crime but not punishment more than they deserve however when we try to take a retributive approach we run into a complex question of what punishment fits the crime as I just said not punish more if someone has repeatedly committed a crime but a juvenile commits the same offense for the first time should they get the same punishment is that just these mitigating factors like the ones I just described can be part of what we talk about when we discuss retributive Justice now I’m going to skip deterrence and I’m going to come back to that I’m going to talk about Rehabilitation because that’s what we’re here to to uh compare and contrast to

7:40 these two Rehabilitation comes in varying degrees and approaches but this goal starts with the premise that people can change rather than just throwing someone in prison for their crime we want to try to change them hoping that they will not only keep them from committing crimes in the future but also will improve their quality of life sometimes social ills like extreme poverty or untreated mental illness lead to criminal Behavior crime can be the symptom of other underlying problems Rehabilitation focuses on trying to resolve those underlying issues as well as addressing common criminal thinking patterns for example if a person is an alcoholic as I am and gets arrested for drunk driving as I did we could just find them and make them serve time in jail but often a person convicted of drunk driving will also be uh sentenced if you will uh um but it won’t be to jail it will be to go to a rehabilitation institution or Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in order to address the underlying addiction by connecting punishment to the forms of accountability that are more effective at rehabilitating the person may be able to get sober and stay that way so they won’t have to drink and drive in the future now that’s the approach of Rehabilitation is very difficult because

9:13 it’s hard to measure how much better do you have to behave to be considered rehabilitated Justice is not necessarily satisfied when a person is quote unquote cured of their bad behavior we must always limit and rehabilitative efforts with the retributive or the proportional punishment for the crime CS Lewis an author of the 20th century um argued against Rehabilitation as the primary goal as the primary goal because although it seems mild and merciful if it is the only method used that actually keeps someone from paying for their wrongdoings and does not hold them accountable so in other words the mechanics of abilitation would be if I um uh drove my car and hit somebody’s uh else’s car and my punishment was to go and learn how to become sober and that was my only punishment that did nothing to actually uh make amends or pay back the damage that I did now the society might have benefited I did have some accountability I got sober um I will not drink and drive again but at the same time I didn’t pay back the damage I did and with retribution the other side of what we’re talking about here today um I may be told that all I have to do is pay back the damage to the car because that is in fact what I did that

10:46 day but if I’m an alcoholic I am at risk of damaging a new car every single day that I go out after I’ve been drinking and so the society is at risk if there’s no action taken to uh uh work on the underlying issue so I hope you understand the mechanics of the way I’m uh proposing this to you because in America we’ve seen approaches that have been uh almost entirely focused and in one of these uh um primary goals or or the other uh in Rehabilitation or in retribution and and um I would argue today that both come up short now I understand that your uh debate would be which one is more important and I think that that’s a worthy debate but I think that um for you to understand the mechanics of of a complete justice system and and with me sharing with you today I want to be able to um uh talk to you about a couple of other principles before we open this up for questions uh because I’m I’m sure that you’ve heard of uh deterrence a deterrence means that uh you’re not going to to break the the law um you know because we’ve made an example of other people that have done the same activity uh in a sense all laws and their Associated punishments are intended to act as a deterrent if we didn’t put people on notice what what

12:16 was a crime and demonstrate that people who commit those crimes will face the penalty more people would presumably commit crimes there would be no moral obligation not to and no formal consequences however not all laws are effective deterrence deterrence is based on a very large and often faulty assumption that illegal behavior is a logical process it assumes that before someone commits a crime they’ll thoughtfully consider the consequences before doing so so if I do X then I will suffer why in our experience however and in my own personal experience criminal activity is rarely an exercise in logical deduction in fact when asked why a person commits a crime they’re often at a loss to explain why other than it seemed like a good idea they needed money so they committed a robbery they were angry so they assaulted somebody they were addicted so they bought or sold drugs or in the case of gang violence they were sometimes simply following orders they rarely weigh the consequences before act acting impulsively if people applied logic to Crime there would be a lot less crime that’s something I’d like you to note today so in order for the criminal law to successfully deter a lot hinges on implementation some shining examples of deterrence come from what’s been coined Swift andure sanctions but those are

13:48 really penalties within the criminal justice system so you do a bigger crime um and and uh we’re seeking to have a behavioral change and so with each failure of going through the system you receive a swift andure sanction that’s proportionate to what you did if you don’t show up to a meeting on time if you don’t call your probation officer you get a swift andure small proportionate sanction which in a fact helps you change your behavior on a daily basis and and that’s where um uh deterrent uh um kind of uh um uh deterrence is brought in with uh um almost used as a rehabilitative um and a retributive uh package allinone and and the last point that I want to make toward um that point of what I just said is um where prison fellowship discusses the um ideas of uh retribution in its entirety uh um being the primary and and and really the the default in in um lead um uh system in a country uh like in the War on Drugs where where uh we said that uh we were going to uh take retribution against people that possess illegal drugs that um sold illegal drugs conspired to sell manufacturer ship and

15:19 all sorts of things and that that that retribution with stiffer and stiffer pales that that the politicians would and the sheriff’s and and and everybody up to the president of the United States would say we’re proportionate penalties for the damage these individuals were causing that the idea was that that retribution would would do two things uh one that it would um bring about Justice um for the for the people’s wronged by that person’s crime that they would receive Justice and and that second the deterrence that I just spoke of others would stay off of drugs or or they certainly would not want to buy or sell drugs and what we’ve seen is that uh retributive Focus centered um experiment in in in America um has fallen short as we know and as we watch the six o’clock news we have tried a rehabilitative approach in America this goes back sometime and it’s probably beyond the studies of of where you are in in your classes today but but I want you to know that um America has had uh um some very um detailed experiments in Rehabilitation only and and the problem with Rehabilitation only is that where there is no willingness there will be no uh change in Behavior there will be no um um uh um accountability or amends made

16:52 um and and therefore no justice uh for the person with the crime that the underlying crime um as as well as uh no change in in the future Behavior so we argue is that actually both of these systems uh left on their own uh fall short and uh prison fellowship believes that there’s a better way that combines the elements of Rehabilitation deterrence and retribution but it goes further because it looks at the big picture IT addresses the needs of the rights of the victim and the community acknowledging that crime impacts everybody Justice that restores doesn’t just mean making somebody do the time if they do the crime it means holding men and women accountable to accept responsibility for the harm they have caused to the victims and communities and it take the steps to make amends and rebuild trust with their communities healthy individuals that have grown and repented will seek to make amends either voluntarily or when the griev party seeks restoration for foreign Injustice the types of amends and consideration that can write a wrong foreign Injustice are as infinite as the forms of the Injustice itself however our government formed by and for the community simply cannot demand volunteer exchanges of amends repairs and restorative efforts between the harm parties and those who have done the damage we can and should suggest

18:23 restorative opportunities within our options for punishment but our laws rules and senten guidelines must also provide for other punitive consequences for those who do not Avail themselves to these opportunities so if you heard what I just said I said a carrot and a stick you’ve probably received that from your parents before you know do do you want to do this or do you want to face this penalty um I have a joke and I tell people that willingness comes from pain so if you want the willingness for a person to be reformed you must hold them accountable and they must voluntarily choose the other path of Rehabilitation and and behavioral change because if they’re not a willing participant you get nothing prosecutors judges police and policy makers are increasingly becoming aware that while incarceration is a necessary option and provides a powerful motivation for compliance is often less effective in restoring the victim in the community than an alternative sentence Alternatives might allow for voluntary measures of Contrition and direct amends to the to be offered to the person who violated you know from the person who violated law incarceration is an extraction of a person’s life and Liberty it’s a serious punishment but remember it’s passive for example if someone breaks into a car to steal my laptop and is punished by sitting in jail for 30 days this does nothing to pay back for the harm and lost to me

19:55 they stole my laptop in fact it significantly costs me and the community more on taxpayers it requires the person comply sit in that jail cell for 30 days but not any genuine effort to restore me this is why our leaders are learning that having other forms of accountability that offer more opportunity for active not passive but active participation in restoring the victim in the community can advance Justice and reduce future crime instead of in this case being sent to jail for 30 days the person who stole my laptop must pay restitution to me complete community service and be monitored in the community demonstrating their initiative and their efforts can lead to a more trans what it leads to is is change in a more transformative effort so this is why we advance these uh um alternative if you will to strictly uh retribution or uh re Rehabilitation I wanted to offer to you those mechanics and in summary I would say that um um you know I I I will open it up to questions but remember that I talked about Rehabilitation uh uh um retribution I added in the concepts of deterence and restorative justice uh um restorative justice is a combination of those three um and it affects three parties the person who

21:25 committed the crime the person who’s you know been victimized so the victim in the community and and those are the parties to the justice system and with that I’d like to open it up for questions I think I might be supposed to be ask uh asking these questions and answering them myself uh so uh bear with me as I’m learning uh I have a uh question uh from Victoria long can Rehabilitation uh be used as retribution can Rehabilitation be a punishment um it it can be um and it has been tried to uh do that before and in fact I I think um that it it may very well be used in that form in in America by judges who have not learned that that uh does not yield a very good result so if you say to somebody you can go to um jail or you can go to a uh Addiction Rehab Clinic um you’re you’re essentially giving them retribution for either um and they’re just picking which one sounds better which one might have

22:55 better beds they’re not really again that willingness is not evident so um I really don’t think you can um effectively use uh Rehabilitation as retribution I think um it really just it becomes one or the other um Chad Williams asks uh doesn’t a person have to want to change in order for Rehab to be successful uh Chad um I spoke about that in my comments and I’ll tell you I um very much wanted to change I I um um have a wife and and three beautiful daughters and and I was the Speaker of the House in Michigan at age 34 I graduated college when I was uh 20 years old I had a lot to live for and a lot to uh put down the bottle and and drinking from but I still got arrested after those accomplishments that I just said so um I want to let you and everybody know on the phone that willingness that seed of willingness is the big question if there is not a willingness then you can’t uh uh pursue the alternative methods and that’s why we say that rest restorative approaches work better than a rehabilitative approach altogether because it it allows for the person to opt in on their own to an active participation active participation in

24:27 making amends and paying back the damage that they did not simply attending a class in a rehab and laying in bed there or laying in bed in a jail but actually actively paying back the damage they’ve done so thank you for asking that um what work is the CS Lewis quote from um I will get back to you on that that comes from Chris Holdman actually while I have this up I’m gonna I was going to read that to you but I didn’t want to read everything so H okay the CS Lewis quote is from the humanitarian theory of punishment the 20th century It Was Written in uh 1949 CS Lewis the humanitarian the are of punishment um Adria Andrea hold a similar to Victoria do you think Rehabilitation can work hand inand can Rehabilitation be used effectively with retribution I certainly believe that it can and just so I’m maybe uh I I I talk too faster I use different words but I hope that by the time I got done um explaining what I meant that you understood that when you start combining

25:58 these together that that that’s the ingredients for restorative justice and that’s what I was trying to describe um uh Aaron asked me I’m not sure if it’s too soon uh hold on uh um she’s talking about uh um Rehabilitation helps employ ex uh Criminal people that have committed crimes paid back their debt um will will will that be hard to argue for somebody in this in this group um I don’t think it should be you know because I think that um you can start by looking at the last two presidents of the United States uh uh George W bush um when he got done he was the president of the United States I understand you’re a younger crowd now uh um but he was uh um saw America through 911 and the uh uh beginning of two Wars and he titled his book decision points and and um the first sentence and the first paragraph of the first chapter was not about 911 it was not about uh the wars or or the other the the financial meltdown in 2008 it was about how he learned to get sober and to change as a person so uh he got a pretty good job he ended up being president of the United States he go through a whole bunch of other people in popular culture some of you probably

27:29 like Robert Downey Jr uh of the um Avengers uh Iron Man did three and a half years in prison um there’s cases all around us but in each case the person has undergone a behavioral change they haven’t simply repaid their debt through a retributive process so to answer your question here and I actually think it’s a very important uh uh thing to say that um the person that goes through a rehabilitative process it it does actually help uh uh them with employment I think much more so than uh just simply a retributive uh um sentence being being paid um um but uh Theodore flunker uh should we avoid bringing up too many US examples since most from the outside look at the US and think our criminal justice system is terribly flawed um I I uh I think that that that um it just gives you more examples for what you’re trying to make of of cases um um if you’re developing your arguments based in the US um examples U I think that in other countries like New Zealand and and in the UK you’d be able to find some more developed um models of a restorative system where victims and the people that caused the crime in the community work together really not the government the government secondary plays a mediator role and they work

29:00 together it’s harder to find examples of restorative justice in America but you absolutely can find um examples of a a strictly retributive approach and and and and really um a rehabilitative approach so um I hope that answers your question uh Theodore flunker um uh what is the biggest Factor Joshua Beckman in having uh such a massive prison population would it be uh an over focus on Rehabilitation or retribution or something else uh for me it’s it’s actually something else um you know the idea that you’re a nation of laws um which which kind of answers the guest uh question below uh not a Justice system the justice system serves you know the nation of laws um that’s executed by our executive branch um and so um what you end up getting uh in in America is really what you you write the law and you create a structure and then in that structure you have incentives whether they’re properly incented um or improperly incented and then um as you meet out the Justice whether or not you get things and so our our forefathers in America this is one of the most fascinating uh fore thoughts that that

30:31 um they had in the Constitution they really understood and knew that if if a a government had the power to take away your stuff your property uh um if you’ve ever heard of civil asset forfeiture in America it exists now u u it’s being fought uh um against by by parties from the right and and and the left um to to uh um look at information without a warrant in the Amendments and you know from reading the newspaper that is being done and on your cell phones and your emails every day and that you needed to have a competent lawyer which most of our um economically disadvantaged areas don’t have and then you have the government incenting uh uh the police force and the judicial system to be paid based on the number of convictions that they process well well it only makes sense that they would say the people that are being convicted um are are really they they don’t have lawyers or or what would be a competitive uh legal defense as our Founders uh initiated and in often cases their their assets are seized without uh um without things and without a trial and and warrants and information was gained in a way that wasn’t envisioned so um I really think that um what is going on what driving the criminal justice system in America is a tolerance for um moving away from the

32:03 core values from which our country was founded and what you’re seeing is the the net result uh being being lived out in the system today um I gotta keep moving with these um so I can’t probably answer all of them um Craig uh eron thank you for this you say your information is really interesting and unbiased I’m curious what Sider on can’t tell you that Aaron I’m on the side of restorative justice I’m a a little background on myself I’m a Conservative Republican uh people have called me right of Atilla the Hun um called me right-wing extremist um but at the same time President Obama asked me to give the closing prayer at the Easter White House breakfast this year um to talk about Redemption and and and the possibility that people could repay their debts and and move forward in their life so um I don’t think I’m unbiased but I I uh do think that the work that we do at prison fellowship and that I do we try to keep it limited to our values and and and to the truth as we understand it and and that keeps it clearer than trying to make it fit with a politician or a law that they they propose um uh is it worth uh valuing Rehabilitation even though some won’t be rehabilitated no matter what um now this is going to appeal to a different side of me I’ve given you one side I gave you more of the political

33:33 analysis there um uh this is where my heart is um and and I don’t believe there’s any throw away people I just don’t um I I believe that um when people are conceived um that that I would uh care for that person um whatever circumstance that they were born into that you wouldn’t throw somebody away because their mom isn’t married or doesn’t have job or is addicted to crack cocaine or whatever is going on um you know that that we just we don’t we shouldn’t have that kind of power over each other and and and the same would be true of of somebody that’s going through the system I think that people should be given a proportionate crime for what they’ve just done and and you should take into context their history right so uh if they’re escalating in their violence or or their drug use or other things um and and they’re not repenting then you escalate the proportion of the retributive parts of their sentence but uh um for that person I just know too many people uh that are really great Americans that that contribute so much right now that have gone to alcoholic rehab more than 20 times and and now they’re great fathers great business owners uh great employers uh and members of the community and so I wouldn’t want to sell anybody short I think that’s what makes our country uh special is is that we value life uh what do I believe uh Joshua is the role of private rehabilitative organizations um I I

35:07 think that uh uh uh they do they play a role um the rehabilitative organizations play a role um almost exclusively private um in America the prison system is is probably almost or more than 90% publicly run there are private prisons in America but um prisons are not considered rehabilitative organizations and there is very little funding for any Rehabilitation inside of prisons and that uh uh is another question for structurally why did we do this if you’re going to pay for someone’s food shelter air conditioning heat television and everything else um why wouldn’t you be teaching them to live a different way while they’re there uh in America we’ve chosen not to do that other countries say while we have you for the next whatever it is five eight years for whatever you just did why don’t we see to it that you’ll never do it again in America we we don’t um have a rehabilitative going on in prison prison fellowship where I work is actually in 85% of the prisons we bring in rehabilitative programs into prisons but we don’t accept a dime from the government we do that with a private donations um and and we bring that in um governments are learning the importance of rehabilitative programs in prisons though and it is finally starting to grow um does drug rehabilitation in the CJ Criminal Justice System actually work

36:38 and does Criminal Justice System do more drug rehabilitation inh house or out of house um drug rehabilitation um uh is uh takes place inside of the Criminal Justice System um at an immense level uh in the drug and alcohol and the lowest level courts that is the highest number of arrests that that we see is at the local level for drug and alcohol violations and so yes that is referred out through and and there are successes or or um uh um you wouldn’t see the direction we’ve gone in America when actually when when um I was a kid drunk driving wasn’t something that was punished severely then it was punished too severely where you put people in jail for a year um and what they learned was uh if somebody went to jail for a year they lost their family their job their ability to earn income and so they would go back to drinking the day that they got out and they would become more of a danger to the public than wearing an ankle tether and blowing into a machine and taking blood tests every day and demonstrating that you’ve actually changed your behavior while you keep a job while you try to stay plugged in with your family while you try to keep your house and you pay back back the damage you did the person now is paying back what they did and they’re learning how to stay sober in the real world not laying on a CAU um um and saying well I

38:08 was sober for a year because I was in a jail cell um that doesn’t teach you how to stay sober you have to learn in the real world so yes there are examples of the Criminal Justice System teaching people and it actually working um uh Marita says but how can one see that Rehabilitation has worked and been completed someone has changed uh um uh people uh for example fooled authorities and was freed only to go on the murder again well that is absolutely true and and uh there is no way in the criminal justice system for us to guarantee the rehabilitation of a person and that’s why um uh at prison fellowship we say that you have to um include um the the ret contributive aspects and that’s why we say the restorative uh justice to that victim to that amends to the community um as part of it rather than just this Certificate of Rehabilitation that hey great I’ve changed well um it takes a lot of work to make amends for the damage that you’ve done not passively sitting in a Cell but actively paying it back and and through that process it it’s just harder for people um to have it both ways they either are going in the criminal way um in a disingenuous way or or they’re willing they’ve turned a corner and they’re willing to make amends and and U uh um live their life a different way and that’s noticed by people but it will never be perfect but I can tell you that

39:41 um how you measure these things and like I just gave you the example of a drug court there will be people that are in a drug court that that they do not send people to jail anymore in the drug court usually right out of the box they they uh um uh work with them to stay sober in the community wearing a tether uh doing daily testing as I described and people that go through that and successfully complete it will still get in a drunk driving accident and hurt people in America but the point is far fewer of the people that go through the drug court end up drinking and driving again than the people that went to jail for a year I’m going to say that again and far fewer drunk drivers come out of having done the drug court on the outside and having to learn to stay sober in the real life than those that were told to learn how to stay sober in jail for a year and so the public understands that when that one person unfortunately goes back to drinking and drives and and hurt somebody that they’re not going to get rid of the system now because if they got rid of it they might have 12 or 13 people driving and hurting people that day I hope that makes sense to you what I just said um would you consider restorative justice to be more rehabilitative retri

41:12 retributive or neither the answer to me is neither when it comes to more um I think that it balances last year’s LD resolution was on National Security and personal privacy is there anything that carried over with retribution in our own security uh from repeat offenders um I’m not sure Zach what that um question is I would like to answer that for you but um would be carried over with retribution um not sure um but uh Marita uh but how can one see that retro Rehabilitation is where oh wait I’m sorry uh Heather uh gesman ask can a psychopath or mentally ill person be rehabilitated um for me it’s a recognition of the truth if somebody can um understand what truth is uh um for me i’ I’ve been able to see a miraculous change in in all sorts of people um I try to make the the um comment to my friends and and others that uh talk about things like a psychopath or mentally ill person which obviously does exist in our country and every other country but um in America there there the what’s really going on is people are that are being diagnosed with mental health issues and um I can tell you that anybody that is put in a cage has a

42:44 mental health issue um if you have to live in a cage full of fear surrounded by other people um and and we’re saying that there’s a bunch of people that are mentally ill in prisons I think we mistake sometimes the numbers saying is we’re we have mental health issues we have people in prison that have been raped uh abused uh and victimized themselves so they have mental health issues and and they’re choosing crime because they’re not processing um and and and finding a healthy solution to their own pain so we have mental health issues but they may not be mentally ill uh um dealing with mentally ill people and Psychopaths uh in America is is something that is done in an entirely different way uh than the mental health system the people that um are used still in in institutions or people uh um like the the the the uh the shooter that shot President Reagan uh who was incarcerated not in a prison ever but in in a uh in in a u psychiatric ward for for uh I believe 30 some years before he was released this year uh because he was genuinely mentally ill somebody who was determined not to have been able to recognize uh the reality of what he had just done I’ve got to speed up here uh uh is our Criminal Justice System equipped to provide effective Rehabilitation principles to offenders and the answer is no uh the government does not really have a basis for that

44:15 and I would argue that um as they introduce uh the latest fact for drug overdoses uh that what they’re trying to say is a cure for your uh drug use is another drug and um I think the government will be very surprised when they learn that um that did not cure what the person’s problem was um it just prevented them from using that solution that drug you can’t get high with that drug anymore doesn’t mean that you you aren’t looking for uh something at the time um understand that when you’re rehabilitated you’re not looking anymore you have a better solution than using a drug or alcohol or um uh committing a crime a retribution cannot uh be sought outside of the criminal justice system as that would be vigilante can Rehabilitation be performed outside of the Criminal Justice System um it absolutely is all day every day Rehabilitation is performed all day every day outside of the Criminal Justice System but I want you to know that retribution is also sought in the Civil uh justice system uh uh um and and all sorts of other aspects of our life as well so the values of Rehabilitation the values of Retribution and formalized processes through our government are available in both inside and outside of the justice system what does Rehabilitation for violent crimes look like um again it uh um uh as somebody who works inside of a lot of Prisons I

45:47 would tell you to the person that is committing the crime we we we think that violent crime is a problem in America we call it a problem um I want you to know that to a person that commits a violent crime it’s not their problem it is their solution okay it’s their solution so um somebody’s solution might be to get drunk or high somebody else’s solution might be to steal uh um or do something nonviolent somebody else’s solution might be to do something violent like an assault or or even a murder but understand that that um Rehabilitation can apply to all uh folks and that there really isn’t a um too much of a mechanical difference between a non-violent or a violent crime it’s um something that is wrong uh with the decisions that the person made um you know uh uh that that committed the crime and and you have to address both of those whether you can argue it through your retributive processes or your real abilita but um I would argue that they’re um you you’re better off uh not segmenting crimes that’s just my opinion uh uh how would restor to Justice be applied the case where emotional damage is being done to the victim instead of physical damage um now I’m assuming you meant a criminal case uh Brian um so uh restorative justice would uh be

47:18 done um in a way that’s respectful of that victim so um if the person was um psychologically abusing uh um doing something that Rose to say criminal level stalking or something like that um you know usually the restorative justice um approaches that I’ve seen that are effective what they do is they actually um separate the groups so let’s say it was stalkers and and you had 30 stalkers over here that had that had stock people that wanted to pay back their debt and 30 people that have been stocked over here what you do is you switch up the groups because the person who stalked and and has been stalked they don’t want to be in a room together it’s disrespectful to both of them to work it out but a way of making amends for the people that have done it with other people is they can explain what their thought process was what they’re going through how they’re trying to change and the victim can tell them how it scared them how it made them feel and all the rest of it and they can both be validated through different processes like that so restora of justice is not always oneto one with with the victim of the crime because uh um to forgive people you don’t have to reconcile um uh what is your views about Singapore’s Criminal Justice System uh they’re very strict on retributive Justice and that is correct but they also um I’ll give you one aspect of what they do that America falls short on is that they actually have closure and they they allow people to to you know once

48:50 they’ve repaid their debt to go back into the uh community and and it’s called the yellow ribbon campaign there in in Singapore um but I think that the the the U answer is the deficiencies that I described in the uh retributive only system would be evident uh in the Singapore’s Criminal Justice System um I I’m not familiar with Saudi Arabia somebody asked me that uh um I’m sorry I’m not going to be able to get through all of these um I’m going to end with one that I didn’t spend a lot of time talking about um Victoria long says how important would you say the victim is in the resolution should their needs be Heavenly taken into account and I would say that H absolutely and that is one of the major flaws to I saw some questions about the American justice system and where the flaws are it’s that we’ve allowed the government to take the role of victim right so um uh when I went into uh trial for my drunk driving I had to pay back the state it was me against the state right if I if I broke into a shop and stole it would be the state Prosecuting me not a victim and what we do is is is we allow the person to hold their rage and and and we allow them to distance them themselves from the damage they cause um whereas if the

50:21 victim was respected and they were brought in in the amends were part of it uh uh rather than just paying the government right whatever the government fees are for for whatever the government needs instead of uh the the the um the victims uh means um I think our system would be a great check in a balance against our government and and I believe it bring the focus and the control and the scope of our system back down to where it probably should be um I think that the reason why it’s exploded was the government has successfully made themselves the victim in America not the person who is actually victim IED and um and and therefore the government could then uh have the laws written where they could go out prosecute a bunch of people because they were always the victim instead of um um focusing on where the victims are and um I’ll leave you with one horrifying statistic if you want to know what that looks like you can look it up look up the um closing rate for uh homicide uh in Chicago or Detroit in 2012 Chicago ‘s close rate was 30% in Detroit it was 50% so while the the the government says that they’re in the business of protecting victims uh 50% of the murderers in Detroit didn’t even get arrested 70% of the murderers in Chicago in 2012 didn’t even get arrested so the arrests are are on on uh nonviolent

51:53 crimes where there is not a victim asking for an arrest and there resources are going increasingly there instead of where our family has been devastated by the loss of a loved one uh who’s been murdered so uh that’s what happens when you take your victim out of the equation and with that I am uh I’m done my time is up but I thank you thank you uh let’s uh let’s join everyone in thanking Mr G Ro in the comments I I’ll be able to send him those um so now we have concluded the webinar um thank you so much for all everyone who participated you all did a great job uh with between sending each other links um and submitting questions um we will have a recording that I will send out to everyone um in case you’d like to share it um and I’m going to go onto a slide that has a quick survey um we’ll ask you to take H should only take a couple of minutes um very uh thank you so much Mr D Ro for joining us um and thanks uh thanks to all the students who joined us on this webinar good

53:25 night e