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Manoush Zomorodi: So, Robin Steinberg,
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thank you so much for being
my first official guest
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as the new host of TED Radio Hour.
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I'm pretty psyched about that.
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Robin Steinberg: I'm delighted.
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(Applause)
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MZ: So OK, I want to start
with the Bail Project,
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how it came to be,
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how you came up with the idea.
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The story goes
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that 10 years ago, you and your husband
were eating Chinese takeout food
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when you came up with the concept.
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You'd been a public defender
for over 30 years,
-
but there was this moment
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where you decided something had to change.
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RS: So we had both spent decades
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in the trenches of the criminal legal
system as public defenders,
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fighting for each and every client
the best we could,
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defending people's humanity
and their dignity
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and fighting for their freedom.
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And no matter how good
we were as lawyers,
-
and I like to think we were really good,
-
and how forceful we fought
on behalf of a client,
-
sometimes it all came down
to a few hundred dollars.
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And that was whether or not
your client could pay bail
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and fight her case from freedom
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or whether she was going to be
locked in jail on Rikers Island
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and desperate
would wind up pleading guilty,
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whether she did it or not.
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And that just enraged us.
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And sometimes, you know,
-
the answers are simple
and they're right in front of you.
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And so we thought,
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"Well, what if we just paid
clients' bail?"
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And that's where the idea
of creating a revolving bail fund,
-
because bail comes back
at the end of a case,
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if we could raise money
and put it in a fund,
-
and have a revolving fund,
-
we could just pay bail for our clients.
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Now I have to say, that was back in 2005.
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People weren’t talking
about criminal justice reform
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the way they are now,
-
there wasn't a lot of conversation
about bail reform,
-
and quite honestly, we spent two years
knocking on people's door.
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Nobody answered.
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Until one day, one man and his family,
Jason Flom and his family,
-
decided to take a chance on us
and gave us a grant in 2007.
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And we began to test
the revolving bail fund model.
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And to see what would happen.
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MZ: Can you clarify, though,
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like, why it is so important
for someone not to be in jail
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while they await trial?
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You've explained this in the past
and it really blew my mind,
-
because I had no idea what could happen
in those days or weeks
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before someone actually
has to plead their case.
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RS: Sure. So, being held in jail
even for a few days
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can change the trajectory of your life.
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It is not only the place
where you can be victimized, sexually,
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you can be exposed to violence,
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you'll be traumatized in all sorts of ways
while you're in the jail,
-
and even that's even
the first few days or a week
-
is when most jail deaths actually,
whether they're suicides or homicides,
-
actually happen.
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But while you're sitting in jail,
-
and understand,
folks sitting in jail pretrial
-
have not been convicted of a crime.
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They're there because
they don't have enough money
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to pay bail.
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And while that's happening,
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people's lives are falling apart outside.
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You're losing your job,
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you might be losing your home,
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your children might be taken from you,
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your immigration status
might be jeopardized,
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you might get thrown out of school.
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So it's the damage to you
that's happening in our local jails,
-
but it's also what's happening
to you and your family
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and your community
that you've been removed from,
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while you're waiting for your trial,
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which, by the way, can take days, weeks
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and no exaggeration, can take years.
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MZ: So you explained this sort of
crazy limbo that people are in,
-
from the TED stage in 2018,
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and I want to just play a quick clip
from that talk that you gave,
-
which was incredibly moving.
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Can we play that?
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(Audio: Robin Steinberg TED2018)
It's time to do something big.
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It's time to do something bold.
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It's time to do something,
maybe, audacious?
-
(Laughter)
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We want to take our proven
revolving bail-fund model
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that we built in the Bronx
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and spread it across America,
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attacking the front end
of the legal system
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before incarceration begins.
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(Applause)
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MZ: The energy in the room
when you gave your talk was palpable,
-
and it ended up getting you
quite a bit of funding
-
from the Audacious Project,
-
which is TED's initiative to get
some of these big ideas support,
-
to make them actually happen.
-
Can you explain what has happened
since you gave your talk?
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RS: Sure.
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So, the Audacious grant allowed us
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to take our proven concept
and to scale it.
-
And the idea is that we are scaling
this model across the country.
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We're currently in 18 different sites.
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And we are doing two things, right?
-
The Bail Project is designed both,
-
provide an immediate lifeline
for folks that are stuck in jail cells
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simply because of poverty,
-
because they can't pay their bail,
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and that's a response
to the immediate direct emergency
-
and human rights crisis
that we have in this country
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around pretrial incarceration.
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But the second thing we're trying to do
is we're testing a model
-
that we call community release
with voluntary supports.
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And what we're trying to prove is,
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A: you don't need cash bail,
-
people will come back to court
without cash bail.
-
That myth has already been debunked
and we know that.
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But we're also trying to model
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you can actually release people
back to their communities
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with effective court notifications.
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Make sure they're connected
to services they might need.
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And people will come back to court
while their cases are open,
-
and until those cases close.
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It is in an effort to move policy forward,
-
to ensure the systemic change happens,
-
but here's our fear:
-
it's a race against time.
-
Because as this conversation
picks up speed,
-
and as bail reform begins to take hold,
-
some systems will move to new systems
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that we fear will recreate
some of the same harms, right,
-
that the initial bail system happen.
-
Those are racial disparities,
-
economic inequality,
-
and we can actually recreate that
if we don't get this right.
-
And so we're in a race against time
-
to prove that you can do
a community-based model
-
that doesn't require electronic monitoring
-
or risk algorithms,
or jail cells or cash bail,
-
but that you can simply release people
to communities with supports.
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And that will work.
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MZ: I want to come back to that
in just a minute, but before we do,
-
my background is as a tech journalist,
-
and when you talk about
scaling a program like this,
-
I can only assume that you are facing
completely different challenges
-
than, say, a founder of an app
or a platform or something like that.
-
What are the challenges?
-
I mean, you're going to states
with different laws,
-
each city must be so completely different.
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How do you do it?
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RS: So you know, scaling
the revolving bail fund itself,
-
that's been the easy,
elegant solution, right?
-
That's the easy part,
that's direct service part,
-
we can scale that across the country.
-
The ground game,
-
the teams that work as bail disruptors
for the Bail Project
-
at different locations across the country,
-
they have to take our model
-
and adapt it to the unique needs
of each jurisdiction.
-
And that's where it becomes complex,
-
and it's very resource intensive,
-
because criminal justice
is incredibly local,
-
and so how each system operates is unique.
-
And what the needs of our clients are
-
are incredibly different
from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
-
So you can be in Oklahoma
-
and what you know is that communities
have been ravaged by the opioid crisis,
-
and when we're bringing people home,
-
we have to connect them to services
that might address that.
-
When you're in Spokane,
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you're talking about an epidemic
of homelessness.
-
So when you're thinking about providing
direct services and bringing people home,
-
you have to be mindful of the fact
that in that jurisdiction
-
that may be the biggest
obstacle for people,
-
is that they don't have shelter.
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And so we need to adapt our model
-
in every jurisdiction we go to,
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to address the needs of that community.
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MZ: I could only assume
that some of these communities
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are not so happy that you're there.
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That must be a reality of it.
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Do you have to win
hearts and minds as well,
-
in some of these places?
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RS: So I think it depends
on the definition of community.
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So communities that have been targeted
by our criminal legal system
-
for generations,
-
communities of color,
low-income communities,
-
marginalized communities,
women across the country,
-
they are more than happy to see us come,
-
because we are just an immediate lifeline.
-
Bail funds are a tool to get people out
as an immediate lifeline,
-
it's not a long-term
systemic answer, right?
-
But people are, of course,
-
they want to get out,
to go back tot heir families,
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their communities want them home.
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Has there been some opposition?
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Sure, of course.
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You know, when we go into a new site,
-
we do so carefully,
we prospect it carefully,
-
we try to understand
who are our partners on the ground
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that might help us in this initiative,
-
grassroots organizers,
not-for-profit organizations,
-
systems holders, sheriffs, right?
-
Who is going to support us
and who our opposition might be.
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MZ: You also put some of the people
that you bail out,
-
you bring them back, right,
as program officers.
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Is that part of the system
-
that you're trying to actually
make a community around your efforts
-
in some way?
-
RS: So when we're hiring
for local jurisdictions,
-
we always hire locally.
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If we open a site in Baton Rouge,
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we hire people who are from Baton Rouge
and are connected to the community.
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We do try to prioritize people
with lived experience
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in the criminal legal system,
-
or people who have been
personally impacted by the system.
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We think it's important,
-
they understand the system best,
-
they have the best solutions and answers
-
because they're closest to the problem,
-
and they're credible
messengers for the clients
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that we're going to be interviewing
and providing bail for.
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MZ: OK, so you touched on this,
-
criminal justice reform
has become a hot topic,
-
you must be like, "Yay, finally
people are talking about this thing
-
that I've been banging on
about for decades."
-
Here in California actually,
though, there has been a big change.
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Now it's complicated,
-
but my understanding is
that they're getting rid of cash bail.
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Good thing, bad thing,
not quite that simple to explain?
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RS: So everything about
criminal justice reform,
-
and particularly bail reform,
-
is way more complex than it looks, right?
-
So it's easy to have a hashtag
that says "end cash bail."
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Totally right.
-
We have to eliminate
unaffordable cash bail forever.
-
We know money isn't
what makes people come back,
-
it's a myth, let's get rid of it.
-
But the question about what comes next
is very, very complex,
-
and California was a good example.
-
There was a bill that worked its way
through the political process,
-
called SB 10.
-
It started out
as what looked like a bill
-
that would actually move
towards more decarceration.
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By the time it came out
of the political process,
-
frankly it was a bill that almost nobody
in the community would support,
-
including the Bail Project.
-
And it had gone through
-
some changes in that process
-
that placed, you know, pretrial services
in the hands of law enforcement,
-
that put people through risk algorithms,
-
that sort of had a lot
of the telltale signs of a system
-
that was going to recreate the same
racial inequity and economic inequalities
-
that we had always seen,
-
and so, that bill actually
moved through the process,
-
and we thought that was the end.
-
But then the bail bond industry
actually got 400,000 signatures
-
to put it on the ballot.
-
So in November,
Californians will be voting
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on whether or not SB 10
should go forward or not.
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MZ: So Californians in the audience,
you will be voting on this.
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How should they vote?
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RS: So I'm not so bold as to say that,
-
I may be audacious,
but I'm not that audacious.
-
But what I will say is,
educate yourselves.
-
Understand what you're voting on.
-
Understand what it means
to hold somebody in jail
-
who hasn't been convicted of a crime
-
simply for their poverty, right?
-
And ask yourselves, do we want to have
a criminal legal system
-
that incarcerates people
before they've been convicted of a crime?
-
Do we want to have a criminal legal system
-
that continues to target
communities of color
-
and low-income communities
across this country,
-
do we want to continue
the damage and the devastation
-
that we have created
through mass incarceration?
-
So I'm not taking position
on which way you should vote,
-
but take that into account.
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MZ: She told me backstage,
"I'm not sure how I'm going to vote yet."
-
I mean, it's that difficult, right?
-
RS: Well, it's a little more complicated.
-
It's the form of SB 10
as it exists is not a bill
-
that most of us would support, right?
-
But eliminating cash bail is critical.
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MZ: Alright, I want you
to forecast into the future.
-
What does an ideal system look like?
-
You have said that America
is addicted to incarceration.
-
Does there have to be
a cultural shift around that
-
in addition to making some of the changes
that you're talking about?
-
RS: So, you know, we have to reckon
with what we've done.
-
If we don't face head on
-
how we've used our criminal legal system,
-
and who we have targeted,
-
and how we've defined crime,
-
and how we punish people,
-
we're never going to move forward.
-
So we are going to have to reckon
with the harm that we've caused.
-
And in so doing,
-
we're going to have to shift our lens.
-
And that's a real challenge for us, right?
-
We're going to have to shift our lens
-
from a system that's about punishment
and cruelty and isolation
-
and cages,
-
to a lens of,
-
"What do you need, how can we support,
-
where have we failed,
-
how can we make that better,
-
how can we restore and how can we heal?"
-
And if we aren't willing to do that,
-
criminal justice reform
is going to be stalled,
-
or what comes next
is going to be really problematic.
-
It is a fundamental shift
in the way that we see
-
our criminal justice system.
-
And make no mistake about it,
-
the context of our criminal legal system
-
is we have turned our back
on social problems, right?
-
So we have turned our backs
on homelessness,
-
and dire poverty and structural racism,
-
and mental health challenges
-
and addiction,
-
and even immigration status.
-
And instead, we have used our jails
and our criminal legal system, right,
-
to answer those problems.
-
And that has to change.
-
MZ: It's not the answer.
-
RS: We have done damage
to millions of people
-
and in so doing,
we have harmed their families,
-
and we have harmed their communities,
-
and we need to reckon with that.
-
MZ: So I want to ask you finally --
-
(Applause)
-
You've got some of the smartest
women in the world here,
-
surrounding you.
-
They're energized,
-
they want to know
what to do with that energy
-
when they go back to their communities.
-
And actually I know you took some of them
to see a local jail yesterday, right?
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RS: I did.
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MZ: Can you tell us about that?
-
RS: So, here's what we need
to understand, right.
-
This problem is all of our problems.
-
Each and every one of us is implicated
-
in what our criminal
legal system looks like.
-
There is no escaping that.
-
It reflects each of us.
-
Every time a prosecutor gets up and says,
-
"The people of the state of California
or New York or Idaho,"
-
they are speaking in your names.
-
So we have to take
some ownership over this.
-
And we really have to own the fact
that this has to change,
-
and this implicates every one of us.
-
So what you need to do, is as I said,
-
you need to get educated,
you also need to get proximate to this.
-
And by getting proximate,
-
I mean you need to go and see
how our criminal legal system operates.
-
That may mean go to a local
criminal courthouse,
-
sit in the back of a courtroom,
-
and I promise you will never be the same,
-
it's what made me become
a public defender all those years ago.
-
And yesterday, I took a bunch of people
from the TED conference
-
to the local jail here.
-
I have been coming in
and out of jails for 38 years.
-
And I have never not been shocked,
-
and yesterday was no exception.
-
I was shocked, I was horrified.
-
The conditions were dehumanizing
and degrading and horrifying,
-
and incomprehensible,
-
if you don't actually see it
with your eyes.
-
It was shocking.
-
And I saw it on the faces
of the people that I was with.
-
So we have to know that's what we're doing
in the name of justice in this country
-
and stand up against it.
-
But the only way you're going to do that
-
is if you fight back the narrative
of fear that enables that to happen.
-
And what do I mean by that?
-
I promise you, every single time
you get into a conversation
-
about bail reform
or criminal justice reform,
-
here's what happens:
-
everybody starts talking
about the scary case.
-
"But what about the guy who did X?"
-
So here's what I'm here to rest --
-
Just have you rest a little bit
and sit with this, right?
-
Despite the fact that we have used
our criminal legal system
-
and destroyed millions of people,
-
that we have harmed people,
-
exposed them to trauma and violence,
-
day after day after day,
-
the truth is, when people come home,
-
bad things happen rarely.
-
It is the exception, not the rule.
-
It is the extraordinary, not the normal.
-
But if you don't know that,
-
if you don't hold on to that,
-
if you can't support that
with data, which we can,
-
you will be drawn
into the narrative of fear
-
that will lead us to justify
-
the kinds of horrors we have inflicted
-
upon communities of color
and low-income communities
-
and people that become
ensnared on our criminal legal system
-
for far too long.
-
So get educated --
-
(Applause)
-
Get educated, proximate, stay vigilant,
-
do not be drawn
into the narratives of fear,
-
which are wildly and grossly
racialized anyway.
-
Check it when you hear it,
-
question it when somebody says it to you,
-
ask for the data,
-
"Why do you say that," right?
-
And don't get drawn into that.
-
And if you do,
-
I'm actually convinced
-
that we're at a moment where we will build
a better criminal legal system
-
if you get proximate to this,
-
and you actually begin to engage in it,
-
we will not only be a better country,
-
each of us will be better people.
-
And that is worthy goal.
-
MZ: It's a very worthy goal.
-
(Applause)
-
I mean, did I hit the jackpot
with my first interview, or what?
-
She is badass.
-
Robin Steinberg, the Bail Project,
thank you so much.
-
RS: Thanks.
-
MZ: I'm Manoush Zomorodi,
-
I'm the new host of the TED Radio Hour,
-
and I'll see you in spring.
-
(Applause)