- No no, we're not gonna do that to me on television.

(upbeat music) (audience laughing) - "A Slice of the Community" is made possible by the support of the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee and R.H.

Boyd.

(audience cheering) Hello and welcome to another episode of "Slice of Community."

I'm your host, Jerome Warren.

Today, we're live in studio with Rahim Buford, Preston Shipp, and Dr.

James Pratt.

Now he's given me permission just to call him Pratt, but I always want to make sure I put that respect on that doctor, that PhD.

We all don't have that, you know what I'm saying?

You know, but I appreciate y'all fellas, you know, being a part of this conversation.

Y'all ready?

- Ready set.

- Absolutely.

- Absolutely, so I'm gonna get straight into it because I want to make sure I respect all of our time.

And I'll start with you on this, Rahim, and this will go a question for all three of you all.

When you think about the word public safety, when you think about the word safety, what does that mean to you personally?

- Personally, I think about people having what they need, peace of mind.

I think of not being in fear of being harmed.

I think of just having a really good, fun life, yeah.

- [Jerome] How about you, Preston?

- I share that.

I think, you know, people having what they need.

I also think about predictability.

I think, you know, when people feel like their lives have some order to it and they kind of know what to expect day to day, I think that makes people feel safe and secure.

- Okay, so I build on that, as my students say, I piggyback.

But also like I imagine the grandmother saying, "Come on and get some sweet tea," or, "All right, y'all don't need to be doing that."

Those types of conversations where we can hug on each other, where we don't feel the fear of meeting and giving to our neighbor.

I think those types of things, those comfort, those peaceful moments is what safety and public safety look like to me, that it's not an institution necessarily, that it's the people in the environment.

- All right, and so, and I want to start with you on this one, Pratt.

When we think about the United States history and when we think about punishment, criminal punishment in particular, many of us equate that to being safe.

Retribution, "Hey, you did something to me.

Now you need to be punished for me to feel well off."

Can you give us maybe some history from your criminology classes and everything that you teach at Fisk about like how do we get to that point?

And maybe even assuming and equating, you know, punishment is how I feel safe.

- Absolutely, man.

So we don't have all night to talk through that whole history, but when you think about the history of America, you think about the Northeast being industrialized and that safety was not about necessarily the people, but protecting resources, protecting capital, these businesses.

And you've seen that over history where police forces were actually for the private entities, right?

There were parts of our history where police did some public goods, but by and large, police have been bought to protect the public or the private interest.

In the South, you're very familiar with slave patrols and empowering communities to capture Black bodies.

And so we have that history baked in.

And then out west is vigilante tradition.

All of that kind of falls into our culture that says we need retribution and to protect our capital and our resources by any means and that's through punishment.

And so that's something that we got to unpack and think about, what do we own and what can we capture to make sure that we're safe, protected, and feel as a part of community?

- And I want to give you, do y'all want to build on that a little bit far as how we got here in that punishment from your own perspective?

Or do we all just go to class real quick and we understand?

- Well I think, I agree.

I think we've all been conditioned to think that justice is tantamount to punishment.

I think it's sort of the water that we swim in.

We take it for granted, you know, after someone is executed, that's when we say, "Well justice has finally been done."

But then we read the Bible, we say, "Well the Lord requires justice and we want to see justice roll down like mighty waters.

I don't think we want to see punishment roll down like mighty waters."

So we've been conditioned to think that way and we've got to be unprogrammed a bit, I think, yeah.

- I want to, because I really want this to focus on maybe even from a victim lens, right?

Because I think from a criminal lens and punishment, we hear a lot of conversations focused on, well how can we be, you know, harsh on crime?

How can we be less harsh on sentencing?

But there's still a victim on the other end of that, that maybe public safety means something totally different at this standpoint.

And as a former prosecutor, I think this would be a good direct question to you, but of course, Rahim, chime in.

What does it mean for a victim to feel safe after, you know, harm has been committed to them or they have been harmed?

What does accountability look like for a victim, whether, you know, the person gets 50 years, 100 years, five years, probation?

If that victim still doesn't feel safe, is the criminal legal system has done its job or, where are we at from a victim standpoint?

- Somebody who has suffered harm has also been conditioned to think about justice in terms of punishment.

And so there is an expectation among most victims that the way that we're gonna make this situation right is by hurting the person who hurt me.

But I think we've got to start way before a sentence is actually imposed because for someone who suffered harm to start feeling safe and start feeling like, okay, I'm getting back to my predictable life where there's a sense of order that has been disrupted, first they have to be listened to.

And right off the bat, the current system fails because it puts the victim on the sideline.

The main actor or the main focus here is the person who caused the harm.

The question is, you know, what crime was committed and what's the punishment going to be?

And once we get those questions asked, you know, the lights shut down, the court system comes to a halt because we've answered our main questions.

If we want to really promote the healing for the person who sustained the harm, we got to center that person and start listening to that person because they have questions.

And those are questions that probably can only be answered by the person who caused the harm.

You know, why me?

Why my house?

You know, why did you break into my house?

Are you coming back?

You know, am I safe now?

Well, those questions have to be answered in order for that person who sustained the harm to start feeling a sense of closure.

And that's why in our present system, a lot of folks talk about a second victimization where they feel like they are so left out of the retributive process.

They just find out, you know, after the fact, oh, well he pled guilty, and now he's serving this sentence.

But their questions were not answered.

They weren't listened to, their needs weren't met.

And so that's where I think we have to start is centering that person and listening to that person.

- And can I just say that I think what Preston points out is that for so long, we've seen punishment as both process and the goal.

And we need to have a conversation about how do we navigate those processes and allow for victims to be heard and really think about what are the needs and what were the causes and so we can have those face-to-faces so we can understand what victims want and what they need.

And the research is clear.

Victims see prisons as good at holding the body, right?

Getting the person off the street.

But when you ask a victim what do they really want, you often see in the research talking about restoration, kind of many of the things that Preston has already mentioned, their lives being able to feel normal again, not being alarmed walking outside.

So those host of things.

So I think if we think about punishment not as both process and goal, but think about what is the restorative, comprehensive process that let everybody comes to the table to see what is the heart of the issue.

- And you brought up the word I was gonna lean in with restorative.

Restorative justice is something that I think I've learned a lot from Rahim personally.

And so Rahim, I would love for you to break that down from a restorative justice standpoint, how does that fit into public safety?

How does that fit into the person that has harmed and been harmed?

- Yeah, for me, it comes down to the point of, if I have been harmed, I've been injured, I would want to be healed, what does that process look like?

And in the current system, that process doesn't exist at all.

In fact, the current system wants to keep you divided, separated, and keep you at odds with the person who you hold responsible for the harms that may have happened to you.

And in my case, I have caused harm.

I know what that is like, but I've also been harmed.

I know what that is like.

And there is no process.

But when we talk about, we want to talk about transformative justice in the same conversation as restorative because as I've learned that certain things can't be restored.

You can't restore a life that has been taken and you can't restore a woman's dignity if she's been violated in that way.

But there is a thing called transformation, this is an internal process where even the person who has caused harm has to experience something internally, mentally, emotionally, psychologically, where he or she comes to a point to where they recognize that they have caused this injury.

And then their humanity, they want to do something about it.

But on the other side, for a person that has been harmed, that could look different depending on, because everybody doesn't see themselves as a victim, you know?

There is a community of people who've been harmed, they consider themselves survivors of harm.

And so when we're talking about that process, we're asking really one question, what does healing look like?

- Yes.

Okay.

Preston, I want to get this back to you, again, as a former prosecutor, you know, looking back at maybe some of the decisions you've made, is there anything in that criminal punishment decision-making that you've done as a prosecutor that you would do differently today or that you've learned for where you've pivoted, right, to the other side?

- Well, I've changed my mind about a great many things since I was a prosecutor.

And I think most of that change has been because I had the opportunity to go inside prisons and be proximate to people who were serving long sentences.

And find out that, like Brian Stevenson says, "We are all more than the worst thing that we've ever done."

There were people who I encountered behind the walls who were serving 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, life without the possibility of parole, all of whom had invested heavily in their own rehabilitation and any of whom I would have been very happy to have as my neighbors, I would have written letters of recommendation for them.

And that is an odd place for a prosecutor to be and continue to show up and demand long sentences.

And ultimately, that led to me quitting my job because I couldn't hold that tension together anymore.

And I think what it boiled down to for me was this belief that we shouldn't give up on people, that we think that there's not a social problem that we can't punish our way out of.

Every single one of those people that I met on the inside was dealing with trauma, had dealt with trauma.

And there's mental health issues and there's substance abuse and there's poverty and it's all, it seemed like it was always a perfect storm that came together in a flashpoint and then some bad thing happened.

And as soon as you start addressing that perfect storm and you remove some of those elements, we don't have to worry about that person anymore and they sure don't need to spend 20 or 30 or 50 years in prison.

So I think we need to start asking a lot better questions than just what crime was committed and how are we gonna punish this person.

- And now I want to kind of go on the polar opposite of that.

And I know you all, you and Rahim knew each other while he was still incarcerated.

Rahim, you served 26 years, right?

And that's nothing to sniff at in general, but just going to prison in general is nothing to sniff at regardless you served like 26 years or one day, 24 hours.

How have you viewed public safety at this point after serving 26 years, after having to go through transformative justice, after looking at what accountability rehabilitation looks like within those walls that Preston was talking about?

Did that change your perception on public safety?

Did that change your perception on what does it even mean to feel safe in society today?

- You know, it's an interesting question for me because, you know, some days when I wake up, I don't really feel safe.

You know, having paroled a life sentence and always knowing that somebody could just make a phone call.

Parole officer could just say, "Hey, you know what?

Yo didn't show up on time, a technical violation."

Or if I'm driving down the street, a police officer can pull me over.

I can't say "You don't have a right to search" because I agreed to a search before I came home.

So when I think about public safety, I start with myself and I think about, you know, like, how can I make myself safe, right?

But when I think about it from the point of view of looking at others, I'm like, okay, so what does that look like?

It's certainly not the police because that's after the effect of something that may happen.

And so I think about it from the point of view at home, I'm safe, and when I come out, you know.

Am I driving too fast?

Am I in a certain crowd?

So public safety for me is a different question.

And then when I think about it just from the point of view of being formerly incarcerated, if over 70% of the people who are released from prison, over 600,000 a year, return within five years, what does that really say about public safety?

And 95% of everyone that's in prison is gonna be released.

What does it say about a system that takes complete control of your body and it does nothing to see to your transformation while you're on the inside?

It's in spite of the system.

So when we talk about public safety, it's probably a deeper question.

- Well, and that's why we got the good Dr.

Pratt here, because with those numbers and those stats, how do we answer that question, does criminal punishment keep us safe?

From a research and development standpoint, what does it say, what does that mean?

- Right, so another stat, on the front end, over 90% of cases are pled out, right?

And so that's a decision-making process that folks that have done harm don't even get to be a real part of, right?

They're thinking, "I'm gonna go to jail for however long or I can get this deal and go in for maybe five years or what have you."

So I think on the front end of the process, that's the issue.

And so we have to think about that.

But to Rahim's point, we talked a little about this in the room, I wanted to be a prosecutor too until somebody took a chance on me and showed me what restoration looks like.

I got in a fight at school or I did something wrong and someone said, "Okay, these are the tools you can use to solve problems better."

And we have to do that in our community.

Imagine if somebody commit a crime and we survey them in a thoughtful way to fulfill whatever that need that they had that they were doing the crime for and find out what are the processes to make them restored as we're finding the victim being restored at the same time.

And so I think really having a thoughtful conversation of all the stops along the criminal justice or criminal legal system process to think about who's making the decisions, whose anger and frustration is put on the front street, and how are we healing everybody from the bottom up and top down in our communities?

- So is there tools, or are there solutions that can be put in place that are in place that gives both spectrums of public safety that safety net that they're looking for?

Or just even from a community standpoint, you know, because I'm sure if we ask, you know, Nashvillians like, "Hey, what does it mean for you to feel safe?"

We'll probably get, you know, 700,000 different responses, different answers.

But when you mention public safety, they'll probably think immediately, "Oh, police."

And we know public safety is more than that.

And so I'm curious of what is the next pillar?

What is the next layer to really make it a wholesome experience, a wholesome process for those who want to make sure we safe, you know, those who have been victimized or survivors, and also those who, you know, are just like, "Hey, I just want to make sure that I'm a part of a safe community overall."

And that's a question for either one of you all.

- So I'll just say, somebody that you just recently had on Tucker with human rights, they're doing some of the work to have those conversations.

So I think having those critical conversations is a critical part.

I think also starting young.

So one of the things that Tennessee and other states participate in is corporal punishment in schools.

And that's fundamentally teaching kids violence and bodily control are the ways that you punish and shape behavior and get your redemption.

And so we have to engage there and really unpack, what do we mean by spare the rod, spoil the child?

We have to think about what does a shepherd do with a rod, guiding their sheep, right?

We hit the enemies, we hit those outsiders, but we guide our community.

And so really unpacking our values, what we believe, and embedding things like conflict transformation, mediation, things that we do at Fisk, mediation, and really thinking about, again, restorative justice and those values is how we get there.

And that starts with conversations in our schools, in our communities, in our workplaces as well.

How do we resolve disputes with somebody that we fundamentally disagree with, and how do we establish terms and ground rules to get to a goal where we're both transformed like you mentioned earlier?

- Yeah, I would just say like, I know, at least I believe it begins at home, in how you establish communication within your family.

And then you take that out into the community because we're not really having neighbors anymore.

You might like be living next door to somebody that you don't even know, but you know, you have to be proactive in how you engage and socialize with people because until people feel familiar, like I don't want to live in fear.

So I don't think anybody else wants to live in fear on me.

So that's fundamental to feeling safe is not living in fear.

And so what makes me afraid?

I mean, police don't make people feel secure.

I mean, if they just deal with it, because when you think about, even just from a police perspective, but just think about- - But that's a response though too, feeling safe.

We want or need more presence of police in not all communities, but many.

- But you know, I think that's a conditioning because of the culture there's a history that comes with that because, you know, it goes all the way back to the plantation.

You know, police is rooted in the plantation, right?

And so, but when you think about the people who make the laws to make you think you're feeling safe, we don't live anywhere near these individuals.

And for the small amount of Democrats who get elected into Tennessee legislature, they don't really have any real influential power.

They can speak, but they don't have the voting power.

So we have people in rural Tennessee making decisions about what's happening in the metropolitan areas, taking and snatching power, right?

And so we have to start thinking a little deeper about if we want to feel safe, who can help us create those type of environments?

And I look at what's happening in the legislature because locking people up for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years is not making the person safe who might have been harmed, you see?

So we have to look at if you want to censor the people been harmed, what makes them feel safe?

It's not the police.

- And that goes back to, I think, Preston's kind of initial statements like we're not even asking a lot of times victims that simple question.

- Well, I think too, and then I kind of heard this from both guys, is that our criminal justice system is reactionary.

And that's never gonna make for public safety if you're just constantly in a reaction mode.

I had a dear friend who was a Nashville police officer and he was as clear on this as anybody could be.

He said the tools that he was given to work with, like a gun and handcuffs and tear gas, they don't promote public safety.

And if we keep treating mental health issues as criminal justice issues, or if we start treating substance abuse issues, keep treating substance abuse issues and addiction as criminal justice issues, we're not gonna be safe because those tools do not promote safety.

They're reactionary.

And we've got to be more proactive in establishing healthy communities.

- And it goes back into, I think, the theme of this conditioning, right?

As Americans, you know, starting from pre-K, I know my son and, you know, going to first grade, you know, you do something, you get in trouble, somebody do something to you, you know, it's already been learned, right?

At the earliest elementary school.

And so from a community standpoint, how do we unlearn that?

Especially if we feel like as a victim possibly, that is giving me joy, right?

You know, Pratt, you did this to me, a hundred years, I'm happy, you know, that is public safety to me.

How do we unlearn that from a community standpoint and from a teaching?

And like I know you mentioned the young, but are we too far gone, you know, from that conditioning, is it community, advocacy from a legal process, policy?

Like what does that unconditioning, unlearning of the conditioning start?

- I think part of it is empowering people to tell their story, right?

Folks like hearing our stories is a part of how we see each other differently and see our ability to exist in this world, right?

We deserve it.

And so I think teaching our children that is key.

And again, I go back to punishment in schools.

The way we punish our kids shapes their whole lives, right?

And a lot of people say, "I was hit as a kid or I was punished this way as a kid, I turned out all right."

But when we look at the long ray or the long existence of your life, you see that you don't trust adults or authority or your parents in the same way as you could as if you messed up, they hugged you, embraced you, or redirected you with logical consequences versus punitive and oppressive ones.

So I think having those conversations, telling stories of redemption, and then thinking about what are logical consequences to this behavior rather than the most harmful, most punitive ones that we're pulling from slavery and these histories.

And then the last thing I'll say, think about the origins of policing in the UK and Robert Peel and his principles.

Some of his principles around the fundamentals of policing is saying that the effectiveness of policing is the lack of their existence.

As the crime is going down, we should see less and less police forces.

And we don't think about those original principles, even though that was the originary point for a lot of policing principles today that came over to America.

So stories, having those conversations, rethinking discipline in the homes and our schools, that will change our lives.

- And I'm gonna end it with this before we can get to the extended part of the conversation.

I'm gonna to have this for you, Preston and Rahim.

If you could give a message to anybody that's watching and listening about public safety, what would that be?

- For me, it's a matter of presence.

I think we have to be present to one another in our communities.

I think we have to be present to people who have sustained harm.

And I think we have to be present to the folks who have caused harm.

The fencing and the gates and everything at a prison operate as much to keep people out as they do to keep people in.

And for me, my perspective started to change when I was given the opportunity to go inside and find out there's really nothing to be afraid of.

- Rahim, final word?

- Yeah, and I would just say, and it may not answer the question, but it's what I want to say, is that from a practical perspective, it's meeting people where they are.

Many of the people, some of the people in this room and even Preston, I met them in prison.

They're still in my community today.

So when people believe that they can sit in front of people who have caused harm and have a intelligent conversation, an emotional conversation, a safe, liberated conversation, then we begin to change what it feels like to be safe.

- Let's give our guests a round of applause.

(audience applauding) Thank y'all.

- Thank you.

- And the conversation isn't done.

If you want to continue watching more of "A Slice of Community," please go to our YouTube channel.

Just search Nashville PBS.

As always, I appreciate y'all, another episode of "Slice of Community."

Thank y'all.

- Thank you.

- [Preston] Thank you.

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