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In the final episode of our CAPS series about community violence intervention work we talk about how improving the criminal justice system is a huge piece of the puzzle. Travon checks in on Indianapolis, Indiana and sees how people there are pushing for less incarceration and breaking cycles of recidivism. Executive Director at the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform David Muhammad and RecycleForce Director and councilwoman Crista Carlino share the ways in which they are reducing crime while investing in formerly incarcerated men and women.

Thank you to the Coalition to Advance Public Safety, and in particular the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform and RecycleForce for making today’s conversation possible. To learn more about CVI, and the individual organizations at work in this coalition, visit https://www.capsinitiative.org.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Crista Carlino, Travon Free, David Muhammad

Travon Free  00:32

Hello and welcome to Good Things, I’m Travon Free and thank you for joining us for the final episode of our four part series with the Coalition To Advance Public Safety, also known as CAPS. CAPS is a collective working to expand and strengthen the community violence intervention ecosystem by providing resources, technical support and sustainable infrastructure to intervention programs in cities and communities most impacted by gun violence today, we’re zooming in on Indianapolis, Indiana, and we’re joined by David Muhammad, the executive director at the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, or NICJR. NICJR is a nonprofit organization providing technical assistance, consulting, research and organizational development in the fields of juvenile and criminal justice, youth development and violence prevention. We’re also joined today by Crista Carlino the Director of Development and communications of recycle force. Now Recycle Force is a social enterprise focused on the re entry of returning citizens from incarceration. They’re committed to reducing crime through employment and job training while improving the environment through electronics recycling, and since 2006 Recycle Forces safely recycled more than 65 million pounds of electronic waste while providing job training to 1000s of returning citizens. That’s incredible. David, Crista, thank you so much for joining us today.

 

David Muhammad  02:38

Thank you for having us.

 

Travon Free  02:39

You know, I’m always fascinated by what brings people to their passions, and especially with work like this. Could you guys start by just kind of telling me how you got into this work, what led you down this road?

 

David Muhammad  02:52

Crista ladies first.

 

Crista Carlino  02:55

Crista Carlino, I represent Recycle Force, which is a nonprofit workforce development training programs serving individuals coming out of jail and other incarceration form in Central Indiana, I did not get my start though, in re entry, I was an educator for 13 years. I’m a licensed English teacher. I’ve been a librarian. I’m a school principal. I live to serve people and serve my community. I’ve lived in Indianapolis my whole life, better part of four decades, and I just continue to seek to have the biggest impact on my city that I can in 2019 I ran for office. I ran to be the youngest person ever to serve on our city county council in the city of Indianapolis, and I was elected in 2019 and so in our city’s 200 year history, the youngest female ever to serve. And I was recently reelected. I serve as the vice chairwoman of the public safety criminal justice committee of the city county council. And we are the legislative and fiscal body of the city of Indianapolis. And so two jobs, both of which are focused around serving the citizens of Indianapolis and trying to make it a beautiful place to live that’s safe and welcoming for everyone. So thank you for having me on today, Travon.

 

Travon Free  04:14

Basically, what, basically, what you’re saying is you’re lazy and you only care about yourself.

 

David Muhammad  04:18

EExactly.

 

Travon Free  04:20

I mean, that is a that is a very impressive resume and amount of work.

 

David Muhammad  04:25

Absolutely.

 

Travon Free  04:26

David, good luck following that.

 

David Muhammad  04:28

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I don’t know why I asked her to go first, but I am born and raised in Oakland, California, and I had my fair share of challenges. I experienced both the child welfare system and the juvenile justice system as a as a young person, but was able to, you know, relatively early on, turn things around. And actually went to college for journalism. I jokingly say I don’t know how I got involved in this. Stuff, but there actually was a direct connect when I worked at a news agency after college in San Francisco, we started teaching writing workshops in juvenile detention centers, and that really grew my passion for working with people in the justice system, as well as seeing the problems in the system and wanting to help make reforms. And so that really my own personal experience, but my early on observation of the challenges was really what has drawn me to this work, and that work made me realize that we really can not just change systems, help people turn their lives around, but really also reduce violence, and so this is been what I’ve been doing for nearly three decades.

 

Travon Free  05:48

Amazing. You guys are both very, very impressive. David, I want to start with you. I know there’s, there’s two sides to what you do at NICJR. You deal with criminal justice reform, violence reduction. But can you explain to my audience and myself, you know, how those things go hand in hand, or how you think they do?

 

David Muhammad  06:07

Absolutely, you know, as I mentioned, with my own experience and even career, I started, well, started as a journalist, but quickly moved to work in the juvenile justice system, initially working on advocacy to reform the system. I then ran a direct service agency in Oakland where we also did policy advocacy. And then I got a weird call where I jokingly say I went to I was asked to join the Dark Side of the Force, and I was asked to come be the deputy director of the justice system in Washington, DC, the local justice system in DC, which I did, and I went to New York, then I came back home, but I spent nearly a decade inside the system, trying to reform the system, but I also realized that although it’s a small number of people in the system, that violence is largely driven by people who’ve been touched by the system. They’ve they’ve been in custody, they’ve been on probation and parole again, it’s a small number of them, which is something that people don’t realize. But if we understanding that and then learning models like in Boston in the early 90s, they went, you know, two and a half years without the youth homicide because they implemented what was later called ceasefire and, and we took lessons from that to develop what we call the gun violence reduction strategy and so we understand that there is the short version to the answer your question is, you know, our model is reduce, improve and reinvest. Reduce the size of the system, improve the system itself, and improve the outcomes the system involve individuals, and then reinvest funds. Because, you know, incarceration is very costly, but if we can reinvest in community, we can have better outcomes. And then we also know, as we relate to gun violence, there’s a small number of people driving gun violence, and so we don’t need a massive system. We need to focus right on the small numbers of folks who are a genuine risk to public safety, but most people can be adequately served in the community if done right and we resourced well, and so those are the connection between justice reform and violence reduction.

 

Travon Free  08:27

Yeah, I’m glad, you mentioned, you know, the gun violence component, because you know, the work, clearly, is about saving lives. And I want to know if you can sort of walk us through a big picture of how your organization is combating gun violence and the toll is taken on US cities. And you know what has been you guys response to the cycle?

 

David Muhammad  08:50

Yeah, I think you know one of the best examples is Indianapolis, where Crista both helps lead some of the community work and also as a policy maker. And so in Indianapolis, now, six or so years ago, there was a local advocacy group faith in Indiana who, you know, I jokingly say, before they approached me, I didn’t know where Indianapolis was. It’s actually a bit of a joke. I’d actually done some training there years prior, but I wasn’t thinking about Indianapolis, to be honest with you. And a local advocacy group came and said, hey, we want to implement effective gun violence production in Indianapolis. And would you help us with this long story? A little shorter, I began meeting with the mayor and city county council members and others, and we started off with an analysis of, hey, what’s going on in Indianapolis, and so this kind of speaks to our process say, hey, who’s doing? What? What’s working? Well, where are the gaps? What are the needs? And we issued a report that reviewed the current landscape, but also a series of recommendations. And then that started our long partnership with the city of Indianapolis. And so the next step is we did a detailed analysis of gun violence to really understand the dynamics of gun violence in Indianapolis, what we call a gun violence problem analysis. Next we help the city, the privilege the police department amend an existing meeting that we now that’s called the shooting review, where there’s a review of every shooting that occurs in the city over the previous seven days. And this isn’t a meeting where they’re saying who we’re going to arrest, who we want investigate. I’m sure they have those. This isn’t meeting. This is what is the likelihood of retaliation, right? And it does this incident have a likelihood of retaliation, and based upon the information we have and the intelligence we have who would do the retaliating and who would get retaliated against. And when you have a discussion about each of those incidents, very few of those people are going to get, like, arrested soon, right? The example I give all the time, in fact, I’ll maybe give this quickly, and could be the full example is sure. You know, Travon, you and I are both 24 years old. We’re from the Baltimore apartments and East side of Indianapolis, and we both been arrested four or five times. Two of those times were together. I was shot two years ago and survived, and you know, sorry, Travon, then you’re shot and killed, and I’m on social media vowing revenge for your murder, right? I didn’t do anything to get arrested, but based upon my risk factors and what just happened, I’m likely to make good on that threat, and so, okay, let’s dispatch outreach workers and violence interrupters to go get David, right? It’s not a we’re gonna go serve everybody in the neighborhood. We’re gonna we’re going after date, right? Because we want to make sure he does not retaliate for Travon shooting right. And you who you go with them, with the people who have similar lived experiences. They may be from that neighborhood, they may be formerly incarcerated, but somebody who has credibility, who could go into the ball departments and go get David, right. And what we have found is what we call specificity and intensity specifically focused on the individuals at high risk, and then doing so on an intensive matter. And so we set that type of system up in Indianapolis called the gun violence reduction strategy. Incredible partners like recycle force, who provide employment services. But because you know, always somebody, in fact, you know, one of the the pieces that we were able to bring to Indianapolis is the coalition to advance public safety CAPS, where we were in icdr has other part national partners, and we’re able to give money out. And one of those orgs we gave money out was to recycle force. And one of our partners said, well, they don’t advise intervention program. They’re an employment program. And I said, go by there and then tell me that same thing. If you walk into Recycle Force, you’re like, Oh, this is not a normal employment program. They are. I mean, you know, and they’ve got folks in Indiana now has some intriguing logs. And so one of the challenges that recycle force have is everybody coming in there, it’s got a gun on their hip, right, and they’re dealing with folks who have have had some serious background but people who love being there.

 

Travon Free  13:18

We’re going to take a quick break, but we’ll be back with more good things.

 

Travon Free  13:36

I understand the partnership was launched in 2022 and Crista talk to me about, you know, some more of the results that you you’ve seen, you know, coming from the program. I mean those numbers that David just mentioned, sound like a great, great step forward.

 

Crista Carlino  15:53

We say nothing stops a bullet like a job. And that’s exactly what we do, is we make sure people have a place to come and work and do so safely. And you know, to get to get those services right on site. You can step off of our floor. You’re getting paid $15 an hour. You can step off of our floor talk to a therapist. You know, if you come in, we start every day at recycle force, at our circle of trust. We come in as community, and we make sure there are no one’s needs and concerns. If somebody lost somebody in the streets the night before, we’re immediately addressing it. If they are about to be evicted from their home, we’re immediately addressing it. If they’re getting a call from their po saying, Hey, I might be violated, we’re immediately addressing it. And I think one of the biggest things that we’ve seen Travon, we’ve stood up a whole entire court liaison team. So we don’t just give a job provide training and say, Okay, you’re OSHA certified, you can drive a forklift now. Goodbye. We stand by them even after they move on to those better jobs and careers. And we’ll show up to court with them. You know, sometimes to get off tapered to be able to fully reintegrate into society. And what we’ve what we found is the first question a judge is going to ask is, do you have a job? And what we’re able to stand up and say, hey, Crista Carlino from recycle force, absolutely. David does have a job. He does have a place to come. We’re working on getting him housing. We’re working on getting him some support with any substance abuse that they may have. We we keep the guns, you know, maybe locked in cars or back at home, where we’re a gun free facility, and even once you’re gone, if you lose someone, and you’re ready to retaliate, or you think someone’s going to retaliate against you, you know, those peace fellows are with us at recycle force, you can come back to us. We’re always that safe space that you can come and we’re kind of those navigators to help navigate that system. And we’re trusted partners. We work with our probation, parole, the courts, the law enforcement and all of that to make sure that people know if you’re coming to recycle force, that regardless of what was in the past. You’re here to work. You’re here to get better. And our mantra is, you know, I’m not looking back because I’m not going back. I’m moving forward because I’m going forward. And we really do believe in that. And while we are very focused on that job piece, come to work, get your 30 hours in, stay out off the street, you know, get your child support back, going. Take care of your kids, get a house, get your things taken care of. And the other piece is, is not just that recidivism piece, but that retaliation piece. And so we know that that’s the biggest piece, and that’s the biggest factor, is to target and build those relationships with those individuals. And it’s kind of incredible to see. You know, sometimes folks coming in who are maybe on opposing, you know, affiliations, right? Who you would think, as soon as they see each other, it’s on site. But what we’re able to really foster and facilitate that we’re a culture of work. Work is therapy. We’re here to get through our therapy. We’re here to work.

 

Travon Free  18:58

No, absolutely. That’s incredible. David, hearing what she’s saying and thinking about the fact that the US imprisons more people than anywhere else in the world, right? And we don’t do the things that you guys are doing to help people both when they are getting out of trouble and and preventing them from getting in trouble. And so what do you think of it like, the contributing factors to why we have such a highly populated incarceral system in America? And you know, it’s a it’s a big question, but in your mind, what is one or two things you think are important to reducing that?

 

David Muhammad  19:40

Yeah, I mean, the way, the thing we need to think about this is incarceration is an extreme and harmful response to certain behaviors we don’t like, right? And if we think about I like to liken it to. Much the the treatment of chemotherapy, chemotherapy, we know is extreme and has significantly harmful side effects, but is needed for a small number of people who are sick. But think about it, what if we gave chemotherapy to everybody who got sick in America, not just everybody who’s cancer, everybody cancer, everybody who got sick, right? That would be absurd. It would be expensive, it would be harmful, and it would be ineffective, it turns out incarceration is the same, right. And the reason we’ve got it blew up is that there are that we use it far too much. The conservative Supreme Court Justice near Neil Gorsuch, was just talking about this with the New York Times. Pretty incredible. He said there’s more people serving life sentences in America today than were in prison in 1970.

 

Travon Free  20:59

Jesus.

 

David Muhammad  21:01

Right, and so that we just, we just have really overused it. And yes, there’s a small number of people, like, there’s a small number. Now we don’t even give chemotherapy, but everybody has cancer, we give it to everybody who is in late stage, right? And so there’s a small number of people who are a real threat to public safety and have caused genuine harm, that small number of people, yes, needs time out of the community, but that is a small number compared to the number of folks who are in prison. And then even for that small number, we need to do much better. It’s not effective to just simply punish and warehouse. We have to engage and rehabilitate and treat and prepare to return. And so we’ve gotten this way because we’ve just over overused, and we have, you know, last thing I’ll say, connected to kind of treatments we used to treat in America schizophrenia with electric shock, right. And then we realize that is ridiculous, and we need to wake up to the realization that mass incarceration, overuse of incarceration, is similarly ridiculous.

 

Travon Free  22:20

Yeah. I mean, and you know, we know at least half of the citizens you know released from incarceration will recidivate in some way after their release. And Crista, have you witnessed, or how have you witnessed recidivism affecting people’s lives with your work?

 

Crista Carlino  22:38

We actually recycle force was part of a random control trial, and we fare better our program. When people come to us and have our supports and services, they are less likely to recidivate and so we’re able to drive that number down. But But oftentimes what we’ve seen is those technical rule violations, you know, electronic monitoring, some of those additional things, where, even after individuals have served their time, right, they have these additional rules, drug test, lie detector tests, fines and fees and all these things. And because of those things, through the community corrections, probation, parole, all of those, those are unfortunately cumbersome, and there are additional barriers placed on people, and they’re difficult. I tell people all the time I would not do well on probation and parole, because I’m always a little bit late. I’m always kind of running from one job to the other. I’m a mom, and I just, I just don’t do well with being armed time. And I and the prosecutor had told me, like, I’ve been late to a meeting with our prosecutor, and he agree like you would be violated and and I know that for our folks, especially, they have already a ton of barriers coming out. You can, you can discriminate against people with criminal histories on where they live, where they work, and all of these things. And so when you do that, it places additional barriers on them as well. And so in terms of making sure that when folks come out, they have the things that they need to be successful, from housing and those basic needs to the job. And so we know we folks will go back in and then come back out, and they’ll come right back to us. Sometimes those petty, technical rule violations I know here locally in Indianapolis, the bulk of the people who are in jail and in jail, the longest are serving those higher, you know, felonies and things like that. But even then, this the system for small, minor, petty things. You know, once you’re in, it’s hard to get out because of all of those additional pieces and parameters put on you in order to get out. And so it really does kind of become a revolving door, and it becomes a cycle. It’s very true what they say about that school to prison pipeline, right? That is very true, and really, especially in our larger we serve people coming out of federal prison. We serve people coming out of state DOC as well as our local county jail. And what we find is that, you know, we have individuals who, while locked up, are doing great work, are doing jobs getting paid to produce a product, or or or do something, and then, when they get released, that company that they’ve been working for on the inside won’t hire them, even though they have all the skills necessary, but because of their criminal background and so, or their you know, their their past, and so we know that there are really a lot of inequities, particularly around workforce and housing, when you’re discriminating against people who have served their time, paid their dues and and served we’re still kind of continuing to punish them in in American society and not letting them go back and get on with their lives. And it really does perpetuate the system. And it’s to me, it’s a modern form of slavery.

 

Travon Free  26:07

We need to take a quick break, but we’ll be back with more Good Things in just a minute.

 

Travon Free  26:30

You know, I think about how so many countries, European countries especially, have dealt with incarceration so differently from America, and how they seem to be much more interested in rehabilitation. And, you know, you think about how expensive it is to incarcerate people the way we do and and then not take care of them or provide for them afterwards. And you know, I want to, I want to ask, why do you guys think we are so much more interested in punishment than the rehabilitation, when we know the outcome of that is people going back out into a system that is also going to punish them for having been punished in the first place that it doesn’t allow them to to recreate their lives and and you know they need organizations like you guys to help them do anything to keep from falling back into that cycle. So I guess, yeah, like, why do you think the system, as you guys have seen and experienced it, is so much more interested in the punishment than the rehabilitation?

 

Crista Carlino  27:34

Well, I would, I could. David, we in America, we’re consumers, and when we’re done with the thing we’re consuming, we throw it away. And fear we I mean, look at our previous president. Fear drives the ship in America, sometimes, maybe all the time, depending on who you’re going to argue with. So when you’re you have that fear and you have this perceived threat. You want to, you want to throw it away, and it’s the same force. We’re, we are an electronics recycling end of life facility. So broken things come to us to literally die, be broken apart, and go back into their homes. And we save those things too, just like we save people as well. We’re not throwing them away. We’re we’re making use of them. They’re still very valuable people. That’s our that’s our view, that’s our belief, right? And so when you think about fear and wanting to just get rid of something, sweep it under the rug, you know that’s that’s been the traditional way, and that’s obviously not led us to be very successful. It’s not human at all. It’s not the way that you treat folks ever. And so thinking about what how do we educate people? How do we eliminate that fear? And for us, it’s bringing it home. It’s the same way the people in our streets, the people who are experiencing gun violence in our streets, are experiencing trauma every day. Some of them are kids. It’s not unlike a war zone. It’s not unlike our military, who we send all around the world into crisis, who have bombs and bullets flying over their heads. We have babies at home, you know, and little kids that this is happening as well. And so we know that there’s, there’s definitely a great amount of trauma that’s happening. And so if we don’t, if the military doesn’t understand how to deal with trauma and fear, and our guys are coming home with PTSD, and they’re taking their lives, how do you think we’re handling those people who have been in the same traumas, and they’re just that 42nd and Post Road in Indianapolis, right? And so it’s a little bit of education for overcoming that fear, in my opinion.

 

David Muhammad  29:44

Yeah, and I would just add that, I think the very great points that Crista was making, that we in this country, the fear based response and fear based policy making, that at some point in America, there was an effort, right? There’s long studies around this, from from Nixon to Reagan to Clinton around, you know, war on drugs, war on crime. Crime deal that there is this, the fear of crime turned into this punishment. But there just is no question. There is a racial elements to it, that we have racialized crime as well and punishment of crime, and so you know, the same exact crime you could commit today, that if you committed it in 1960 you would get about half the sentence, no different whatsoever in the crime, just massive difference in law, and particularly once we know it is ineffective, it is harmful and it’s excessively expensive. Those aren’t my opinions, though. That’s what the research proves right, and so there are effective ways to reduce crime and violence that don’t have to include mass incarceration. And there was a brief moment in America where criminal justice reform was bipartisan. The door, you know, kind of shut quickly on that bipartisan era. But you know that thing that that got us things like the first step act from a Trump administration right now, unfortunately, it’s literally title first step, because it’s supposed to be many more steps and but that that kind of door closed, and so it is weird. I’ll just say that that you have something that research and evidence proves is ineffective, harmfully harmful and excessively expensive, and yet we continue to invest in it?

 

Travon Free  31:51

No, absolutely. I mean, I think it’s, it’s, it’s one of those things that baffles me all the time to think about how simple it seems the solution is to these problems that we just continue, you know, to ignore and David, I want to ask you, you know, there’s a misconception that the only way to stop violence is is by having law enforcement, you know, intervene and step in and and you seem to have found another way. You guys have found other ways to do this. And we hear the words credible messenger come up a lot in these conversations, who who are considered credible messengers, and how are they helping interrupt violence in Indianapolis?

 

David Muhammad  32:30

Yeah, just a couple. Let me just quickly address this mental model of only law enforcement can reduce violence and crime, because it’s that, that the false notion is prevalent. And I’m going to talk about, I want to talk for a moment from a premise. Follow me here for a minute. Let’s say police are perfect. Let’s, let’s imagine police are perfect. That is, something I wish we could but let’s, let’s even just say they’re perfect, right? So, all right, the every city in the country, the largest expenditure, the largest the largest single expenditure is a police department. Sometimes that’s 35% of the general fund, sometimes that’s 60% of the general fund. But the largest single expenditure is the police department. In the police department the largest division, and therefore the largest expenditure, is the patrol division. The vast majority of what the patrol division does in some cities, it’s 100% but most are 90 or so are respond to calls for service, mostly not one calls but other types of calls for service. And it turns out about 50% of calls for service in many places are for extremely low level stuff like noise complaint or neighbor dispute or abandoned vehicle or often false home alarms. And so it turns out, when you look at the data, not the emotion of on either side, when you look purely at the data, most of the work load of police departments are not addressing serious and violent crime when you just address the workload, right? And so therefore it’s just inaccurate to say only police or investment more in police will get you that. And I say that to say I work very closely with IMPD, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. I actually think it’s a pretty darn good department. I love its leadership a lot. I think they’ve got some brilliant leaders and Indianapolis, but more so I’m just talking about national it’s just not true this paradigm that police equal public safety. Now, police being a part of it, obviously, right? But now let’s look at, you know this, this this notion of credible messengers of community, violence, intervention, the credible messengers generally speaks to people who have similar lived experiences as the people they’re engaging. And that might be you’re from that neighborhood, it might be you’re formerly incarcerated, but you’re otherwise have credibility, right? You’re able to engage somebody. Who is on 42nd and Post Road in the Far East side of Indianapolis, or or who are from parts of the west side who are challenged with poverty and crime and violence, right? And so that you can go to that person and say, you know, initially, I’ve been there, done that. I turned my life around. I want to support you now that that story by itself, will maybe just get your toe in the door, but then you’ve got to work with them intensively, and engage them, and be them for them, and connect them to great places like Recycle Force and so this, this coalition to advance public safety. That’s what it’s about all over the country. It’s about working with the local groups like recycle force to support them, to provide financial support, provide technical support, to create a kind of ecosystem of other service providers. So, for instance, in Indianapolis, every month, several organizations, including recycle force, get together as a part of this kind of indica session to say, how can we share information and work together to ultimately reduce crime and violence in the city, and is very effective when you have folks who are credible messengers, who have been well trained or in a well structured in this strategy, there can be significant reductions in violence from this community perspective. And what we have done, I think, really well in the city of Indianapolis, is have a strategy where there is enforcement involved. But even on the enforcement side, we’re saying, hey, let’s focus right. Most of your activity is all over the place. How about we focus on the small bit that is very serious in violence, and then we could have a better bang for our buck, so to speak. And then on the services side, similarly, we’re saying focus. Hey, let’s focus on the higher risk guys, so that we could engage them successfully and then reduce gun violence.

 

Crista Carlino  37:00

I love that, because some of the caps work has really helped us inform when, when there are situations in which we don’t want law enforcement to respond, because we know that a there’s no loss being broken, maybe there’s a crisis, maybe there’s a medical issue that needs resolved. And so working, as David said, in partnership with the city has been great because then the city stood up an MCAT team, medical assistance crisis response, right, which does sometimes have law enforcement parallel, but we also have a clinician led crisis response, where clinicians and people go out with those trusted folks. There is no law enforcement, and so we can actually address those issues without getting law enforcement involved, so that those we don’t want any you know, issues to accelerate, we want to reduce and sort of defuse some of those situations, so that people can get the assistance they need and move on, and law enforcement can do the things that they need to do because they don’t have any place there. And so that’s a really big deal too, I think, to make sure we know, as Dr Mohammed said, we don’t always need a guy with a gun and a badge to respond to move through some of these situations absolutely and get people to support.

 

Travon Free  38:16

Absolutely, and Crista, you know, as a Councilwoman, how do you get voters and your peers to pay attention to these issues and to push for the change, to reduce things like that?

 

Crista Carlino  38:30

Yeah, well, number one, it’s funding those things, right? And that can be a little bit difficult because, oh, you’re defunding law enforcement. No, we’re backing up law enforcement by funding programs that, you know, reduce the number of calls they’re getting and runs that they would normally get, that they don’t need to be on number one. But I would say, from a personal perspective, you know, after George Floyd was murdered, after drag was murdered, I put forth policy to reform our general orders board, which the general orders board for the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department is the rulemaking body. The previously, before I was elected, there were three members of that body. Chief of Police got to designate a person, a former chief, and then someone representing the mayor the city was on there. So what we did, I worked with my colleagues on the council, worked with faith in Indiana, worked with the communities around the city to expand that three person board to become a seven member body in which four out of the seven members are civilians. And so you have a member of clergy. We have, we have a professor from our McKinney School of Law. So we have brains and eyes looking at the rules for how our police department is run and governed. And what we’ve discovered is that, you know, there are sort of double standards. There’s sometimes there are standard operating procedures that. Don’t fall in line with the general order, and even our law enforcement officers sometimes don’t know which rule to follow, and have followed a rule only to be told, I don’t want you to follow that rule and get in trouble with their commanders. And so that reform has not only been helpful in terms of serving the public and getting the public back in public safety, you know, by putting civilians as a majority on that board, but also, we’ve been able to refine the rules so that even our our, you know, you know, citizens on patrol really understand how they should be conducting themselves and the things should and shouldn’t be doing. You know, pursuing people in vehicles, shooting up individuals running away. You know, banning choke holds. You know, different things that we know have resulted in a loss of life when law enforcement get involved. And so if you look across the country, not many general orders, boards. I mean, cops are one of the only groups that make their own rules in the nation. I mean, teachers serve on school boards, bankers serve on, you know, the FDI, right? And so it’s really that site that we felt was critical as a piece of the reform model is to really, you know, dig into that law enforcement piece. And then right now, we’re looking at the data. Marion County in Indianapolis has a very high amount of people on electronic monitoring the ankle bracelets, right? And so number one, we know that doesn’t reduce crime, right? And number two, we know it’s an additional barrier. And at least in Marion County, we pass those fees on to the individual. And so yet another barrier on top of a barrier. And so we’re looking at, what does it look like to have those monitors be paid for, even by the city? And so we know, recycle force in order to continue to keep doing this work, people at work need to not be on monitoring, so they can go to work and get their job done and not be in the middle of a warehouse and their ankle band goes dead or doesn’t get good signal. And in the state of Indiana, law enforcement can come in with guns drawn. And so one thing we’re able to do is really put a barrier there and have that great relationship so that those things don’t happen.

 

Travon Free  42:23

No. I mean, that’s a great answer, and I know we’re running really low on time. So the if I could get one last question to you guys before you guys have to go you know, what is one thing you guys wish my audience knew about violence prevention and how you would want them to get involved.

 

David Muhammad  42:41

I’ll just say quickly I think, as we discussed earlier, that community violence intervention is effective, and investment in community violence intervention can have significant impacts. The former Secretary of Education under President Obama, Arne Duncan, said in a session we were in together in the city of Chicago, the money they spend to settle police abuse lawsuits is double the amount of money they invest in community violence intervention. So like take a look, let alone the police department’s actual budget. The money they spend on abuse lawsuits is double the amount that they invest in community violence intervention, and if we had, if we had appropriate and proper investment in community violence intervention, we could have significant reductions in gun violence, as we’re seeing in Indianapolis.

 

Crista Carlino  43:36

Yeah, I would agree with that. In fact, we, we really were struggling with with this, as David said, right before and during the pandemic. And so what we’ve been able to do is leverage some of those American rescue plan funds that came out from covid, because we know our the prison population, jail population, especially people of color, were vastly more impacted by covid than anyone else. And so those dollars we’ve really infused into this work, and as those dollars wind down Travon, we really need philanthropy, and we need, you know, the private sector to really support and step up some of this funding, because cities and governments cannot fully afford some of these things. And so really making sure that we as a society are investing in those things as some of those extra dollars go away, and I know here in the city of Indianapolis, that is a priority. And so even though some of those peace fellows and violence interrupters were initially funded with some of those federal dollars, we’re going to make sure they’re funded with local taxpayer dollars. But it’s our nonprofit organizations and some of our institutes, like the National Institute for criminal justice reform, that do need continued support from from donors and philanthropy to continue this work. And so thank you. If anyone is listening to this podcast who has supported this work because it’s paid wages, it’s paid people to go to work and stay. Off the streets and keep them out of jail and going home to their families night after night. And so I appreciate that, and I thank them for that, and really encourage them to keep that support up moving forward. We need it now more than ever.

 

Travon Free  45:14

Yeah, I mean, this is this has been such a great and informative conversation, and I wish we had so much more time. And I want to thank you, Crista Carlino and David Muhammad for the time you guys have given us today, and I hope our audience can can take away something from this really, really great conversation we just had.

 

Crista Carlino  45:31

Thank you so much. I would just encourage anyone to go to recycleforce.org, to learn more about the work that we’re doing. And if you’re in the city of Indianapolis, give me a call. We’d love to give you a tour and link you in on some of the cool work that we have happening in Sherman Park.

 

Travon Free  45:44

Thank you guys so much.

 

David Muhammad  45:46

Thank you Travon, appreciate the time today.

 

CREDITS  45:48

A special thank you to the Coalition to Advance Public Safety for making today’s conversation possible to learn more about how they foster transformative CVI ecosystems and the individual organizations that work in this coalition, visit www.Capsinitiative.org that’s www.capsinitiative.org. This series is produced by associate producer Dani Matias. Our supervising producer is Jamela Zarha Williams, mixing and Sound Design by Noah Smith. Steve Nelson is our SVP of weekly content. Executive Producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer and please help others find our show by leaving us a rating and leaving us a review. Thank you so much for listening, and we will see you next week.