Presenting: Everyday Injustice Podcast

Hello everyone, while we're on the season break, we wanted to share a podcast we think you'll find interesting. Today, instead of a Women Beyond Wars episode, we're featuring an episode of Everyday Injustice. Everyday Injustice is a podcast from Davis Vanguard, a non-profit watchdog news organisation based in Davis, California. There are show dives into issues such as mass incarceration, wrongful convictions and more. In this episode, they speak with Stephanie Ackter, Director of the Women's Justice Commission at the Council on Criminal Justice, about why women's involvement in the criminal legal system is rising, how their experience is different from men's, and what meaningful change actually requires. If you like what you hear, find Everyday Injustice wherever you listen to your podcasts, go follow the link in the show notes. Thank you. Today on Everyday Injustice, we are talking with Stephanie Ackter. She serves as the Director of the Women's Justice Commission at the Council on Criminal Justice, a non-profit national organisation advancing the understanding of the criminal legal system and promoting effective equitable solutions. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. So I'm curious, what is your background and how did you get into this line of work? Sure. Thanks for the question. It's really an honor to be with you today, talking about this topic. I am so grateful that you've prioritized talking about women's justice issues. My background is as a social worker. I started my career working in direct practice with folks coming home from prison, typically after late the terms. What I found pretty quickly on was that the challenges that they were facing and being successful were in large part, not their own challenges. They were the policy system barriers that were getting in the way of them reunifying with their family, getting stable, housing, connecting to employment, opening a bank account. And so while I really enjoyed working directly with my grants and the folks that I had the opportunity to get to know, I felt like if I was going to affect change and get to move into a more macro space and shift gears to a policy environment. And so worked, moved to the Council of State Governments, Justice Center, where I oversaw reentry and employment initiatives, mostly focused on state policy. How do we reduce barriers for people to get access to jobs, have the types of skills and training that they need to be employable. And then had the privilege of working at Arnold Ventures, leaving philanthropy in the criminal justice field as chief of staff of the criminal justice team, where we really got to know so many folks across the country working on criminal justice reforms and see where the gaps were primarily the gaps in the data and the evidence of which there are many, but certainly not gaps of folks who are trying in terms of folks are trying to move the dial and create more effective solutions. We I joined CCJ that comes on criminal justice a couple of years ago to lead the Women's Justice Commission. And the Council was one of our one of our grantees at Arnold Ventures. And from the moment they launched it, I felt like the perfect blend for me of grounding in data and evidence, but really believing deeply in the ability to get bipartisan support and to maintain bipartisan support on criminal justice issues as the way to sort of move the ball down the field. So it's really interesting watching kind of how this field has evolved. And you mentioned you started as a social worker. And one of the things that we kind of see now, we cover a lot of courts and we go into the courtrooms across the state of California is maybe 15, 20 years ago when I started, you didn't see a lot of social workers. Now you see public defenders offices hiring social workers. They understand that they can't just defend people. They need to help people. And so the whole system is kind of evolved. And then we can talk about maybe how it's pushing back against itself, but at least there's a little bit of progress. Absolutely. I mean, my first job out of grad school was at the an appellate defender's office working as a social worker with their clients. And in large part because they were just totally under water. The attorney is in being able to meet the needs. The very, very deep and complicated needs that their clients were facing in order to appeal their decisions or prepare for a reentry. And so they needed somebody. They needed a team of people really to be able to connect those folks to the best available services and interventions therapeutic supports to get back on their feet. But we've seen this shift across parts of the criminal justice system. And even in our work on the women's justice commission, we've really tried to lift up where social workers where other therapeutic and social service agencies can play a critical role, especially in the face of staffing shortages and other demands on law enforcement. So how do we pair folks together to respond to calls for service and not only to get people connected to the health that they need, but really to see if we can divert people away from the criminal justice system that aren't really a threat to public safety, but are in crisis. And they need some other type of service. And that's a big lift to ask our police to do to be to hold both social work responsibilities and sort of public safety responsibilities. And so getting that integration there that those early stages feel to me like one of the greatest areas of progress in our field in the last 10 years or so. Yeah, and certainly we ask our police to do way more than they're trained to do. So, you know, anything we can take away from them, I think, is beneficial to all of us. Now one of the interesting things we've been really tracking over a number of different discussions over the last several years is the rise in women in the criminal legal system. And it's interesting like I was reading something this morning where the person was pushing back against the notion of calling it the criminal legal system, but we won't get into that. But in any case, you know, what's interesting is, you know, the criminal legal system traditionally and even now is heavily male, but women are the fast-discroing segment and the needs and also the type of crimes and the type of services that they need are very different. And so maybe we can start there. Sure. Well, there's a lot in that. I'll just take one step back to tell you sort of what brought the Council on Criminal Justice to the issue of women's justice issues because I think it really animates a lot of this part of the conversation. So, you know, as you mentioned, we're both a membership association and a nonprofit policy think tank. And one of the ways we do our work is by bringing together sort of high profile, ideologically, experientially, geographically diverse leaders to see if they can comb through the data and the evidence that exists and come up with a set of policy recommendations. There's probably 900 things we could do differently on any topic. And we identify 10 that are really actionable that can sort of continue to move this all down the field. And when the Council was formed in late 2019, the sort of the national environment really dictated the organization's priorities. So we want to be responsive in real time to what the criminal justice field was facing and what public safety meant. So very soon after launch COVID hit and we launched a COVID in corrections working group to really dig into what corrections leaders be thinking about as we talk about COVID. And then George Floyd was murdered and we launched a policing task force. And then post pandemic, we saw increases in violent crime. Okay, we launched a violent crime working group. We have finally gotten the opportunity to catch our breath and to say of the issues of import that are not on the national agenda, but should be what do those look like? And so we surveyed our members and overwhelmingly folks that you have to be talking about women in the justice system for all of the reasons you mentioned and more. Yes, the numbers are staggering in terms of increases in women's involvement in the justice system. Women now make up a quarter of all adult arrests. That's really alarming. The other alarming sort of component to this is that the trends that we're seeing for women differ from that of men. So we're seeing women's jail incarceration rates increase while men are decreasing. So what's going on there? Why are the reforms that are being put in place that are benefiting men, not having the same impact on women? And then you look at the some of the things that you talked about, what we, how are women different? What do we know about the population? Not only in terms of the their experiences, you know, high rates of mental health disorders, high rates of substance use, extensive histories of trauma and victimization, but also in terms of why they commit crime. risk profiles look different. What's your name? arrives to crime looks different, and their responsibilities look different. Primary caretakers for children, for elderly, for the community. And so, you know, our criminal justice system is really not designed to account for any of that. We sort of have a response that we apply and folks sort of colloquial say, add women and stir. And the system wasn't designed to meet the needs of women. Certainly wasn't designed to account for their risk factors, their experiences. And we wonder why we don't see better outcomes across the board. And so when the commission, when the women's justice commission was launched, we really set out to get a better sense of why women were coming into contact with the justice system at greater rates. And how effective the system is at responding when women break the law. And we have two main goals that we are we could sort of consider our north star. One, safely reduce the number of women in the justice system. We will never be able to get the justice system to be the most therapeutic sort of environment that it could be, and that it needs to be for women. And so when safely possible to keep women in the community, we want to identify those opportunities to do that. And for women who are coming in contact with the justice system, how do we ensure that those are opportunities to improve outcomes? Not just outcomes in terms of public safety, though, those are critical, but family stability, wellness. Like where can we connect her to some of the services and supports that she needs to address some of the untreated trauma or mental health issues, the substance use, et cetera. And so those are the two sort of filters that we look at all of our work through. Can we safely reduce or can we improve outcomes? And that's we've been going sequentially through the entire criminal justice system to identify opportunities. It is a lot of ground to cover when we're thinking about as a sort of entire population of people who are different have different sets, you know, women are not a monolith. And so there's nuance within it, but have learned a whole lot about their experiences. - So I'm kind of torn as to where to go next. I'm gonna start with kind of this simple question, which is why are we seeing the rise in women's arrests at a time when, you know, really, especially in the last two years, we're back down to record lows in the criminal legal system. - I'm gonna give you a little bit of a disappointing answer, which is that we don't really know. So we, you know, there could be changes in behavior as sort of our women committing more crimes. It could be post pandemic sort of economic realities that there's more strain on communities. Women are bearing the brunt more of the financial load in their households, but there could be relational dynamics and of course policy policing practice changes. My, you know, there's lots of theories. There's not a sort of field wide consensus and certainly not the evidence that we need to say, like this is the driver and this is the solution. The things that are the, like the release valves or the opportunities here are really to focus more on mental health and substance use and that sort of across the board but that shows up differently for women, domestic violence and how those interpersonal relationships are driving women to crime, either in relation to their partner or person in their life or through coercion and control and the economic instability that many women face is homelessness, sort of lack of ability to grow in the workforce, that's what's driving women to crime. And so this is, we're not talking about a population by and large that's predisposed to crime that is a sort of deep criminal thinking. We're talking about circumstantial or situational factors that are driving them there. And so that to me is where we should be placing our emphasis even if we can't perfectly untangle, like is it this component or have policy practices changes? A lot has changed in the last few years. It's hard to tease that out. - Yeah, so I think you're spot on with all of that. It was interesting, I think it was last week. I've been attending this long hearing in San Francisco and it's ostensibly about the availability of the public defenders office and they believed that their case load is too high and so they're decoying themselves unavailable. What's really interesting is that over the course the last three weeks for an hour a day, they've been having hearings in front of a judge trying to figure out what to do about it. And one of the conflict panel partners made a very interesting comment, which dovetails with what you were saying, which is that the nature of their clients has shifted in the last 10, 20 years. And by that, it's everything you said, right? Like domestic violence, mental illness, homelessness, housing insecurity, and then drug use. And so like of course you're gonna see an increase in women because who is impacted by all of this? You know, we're not seeing, you know, we're seeing some women in violent crimes, but mostly we're not. We're seeing women who are trying to deal with all of these societal problems. And this is kind of where we're going as a criminal legal system in general. And I think it's only natural that women are gonna be more than 25% of that or traditionally, I think they've been 10% of the population. And that doesn't make sense if you're talking about domestic violence and drug use and mental illness, then it should be much closer to 50/50. - Yeah, I think that's right. And there is, you know, all of these are policy decisions that we choose to make as a society of sort of, where do we want to, how do we want to respond to these social situations that people are in and what tools and resources do we have available. And I get it, you know, you have somebody who is repeatedly shoplifting. We can't do nothing, right? That is a problem, but we rarely ask, what are they shoplifting for? Is it formula for their babies? Maybe there's a different solution here. So we rarely sort of take that step deeper and ask what's really going on that's driving this behavior, that's driving the drug use. And have we given opportunities to connect them to the types of treatment and services that we know work to get their lives back on track? It's very hard for people to do that when they're living in unstable environments and certainly when they're living in sort of coercive unhealthy relationships that it makes it very hard for women to have the ability to step away and to be able to put themselves first when they're so often caring for family members, children and that's what's driving a lot of their communal behavior. - So the second question I have and hopefully it doesn't self-flip it, I think it's critical is how are women different from men within the context of course of everything we're talking about? - So many different ways, not flipping at all. And I think that there's lots of ways you could sort of slice and dice up population and understand why is this group unique or distinct? Women have different experiences in how they operate through the world in society and communities and sort of free life. And so it's no surprise that when we look at a justice-involved population, we will also see lots of differences. So while yes, men experience high rates of mental health and substance use disorder, certainly men who are involved in the justice system, women have higher rates of mental health and substance use disorder and it presents differently. So men tend to be not all in a sort of a more broad generalization but backed by brain science that men tend to be more external in how they process is sort of more externally aggressive sort of outward facing women tend to internalize and think more about sort of how should I interpret what that person said or what does that mean about me? And so this is how we've been socialized. These are our gender norms in our society. And so-- - There are stereotypes are sometimes accurate. - Right, exactly. And we enforce and reinforce through all of these systems and inner society more broadly. So this is not a unique to the criminal justice system involved population. This is a much larger sort of commentary on gender norms and gender stereotypes. The, you know, another difference is the histories of trauma and victimization. Again, certainly men, particularly men who are in the justice system have very extensive histories of trauma and victimization. Women have overwhelming histories of-- I mean, 90% of women who are in the justice system have had an experience of victimization as a child that leads to sort of higher levels of adverse childhood experiences, which we know lead to mental health disorder, substance use. So I mean, we're talking from an early age, the type of victimization and the type of relationship, often with men that women are having sets them up on a true trajectory that just looks different. So that's sort of the relational piece of it. the caregiving part, very different. So in many, often times for men when they're incarcerated and they have minor children, they're with mom. That's who they're within the community. They're with their immediate family members. And that time, while dad is away in being held accountable for his behavior, he needs the women in the community, he's sort of holding down the floor. For women, it's not like that. And so even while they're incarcerated, trying to get the help that they need, they're often sort of cobbling together, who's picking my kid up from school. Do they have the supports they need? Is there a way that I can communicate with them or see them more regularly? And so this caregiving responsibility, again, a gender stereotype that plays out, given the high rates of women who are in the justice system with young children, really puts an added pressure on women to sort of continue to maintain that household, even while they're incarcerated and jail are present. And then as we think about sort of incorrections, I mean, then you then you get into the, or incorrectional systems, then you get into the health differences. And so the, you know, the reproductive rights, the OB/GYN needs, the sort of aging women in prison have different needs, nutritional differences and nutritional needs. So that the sort of physical health differences matter a whole lot as we're thinking about designing jails and prisons that can be responsive, often whom see a gynecologist as a specialist and not a primary care physician that you may need to get an go outside to receive services from. So there's like, those are the like very obvious sort of differences that come up later, but the sort of relational gender dynamics and play out in every part of how many women are different in the criminal justice system. The last thing about the differences is risk. Women are just less risky and less dangerous than then overall. There's, you know, there's always cases, there's always outliers, but the women tend to commit fewer violent crimes, tend to recidivate at lower rates, get re-arrested at every, convicted at lower rates. So across the board, we're looking at a less risky population when we think about public safety. And so who is at our greatest risk to the community? It's often not women, yet they're getting caught up in the system and we're using our resources to to incarcerate. Yeah, so there's a lot there. I want to go back to this notion of trauma. Had a really good discussion yesterday with three formerly incarcerated folks and we've been doing kind of a series on this. And yesterday it was one woman and two men. And the interesting thing, I think, you know, if you look at the statistics and you cited it, you know, the vast majority, almost all women that end up in corrections have been victims of some kind of abuse. They're crime victim, you know, whether that's a sexual abuse or domestic violence or, you know, whatever category it falls under, there's a clear nexus. The interesting thing was talking to all three of the people, all of them were victims of abuse growing up. And, you know, one guy, you know, he saw horrific things as a kid. You know, he, his mother's boyfriend beat him up, you know, like, you can go down the line on this stuff. And so, you know, we were talking about fact that hurt people, hurt people, which is all true. But I think, you know, you also pointed out there's kind of a difference in how people respond to that. And it's true. Like, you know, some of these stereotypes are actually rooted in fact. And women tend to be much more internal and, and men external and how they react. How does that change how you deal with trauma informed care and counseling and be able, because the ultimate goal has to be we rehabilitate or as some of my friends who are incarcerated, no, I was never habiltated. So I need to be habiltated before I can be rehabilitated. Right. Yeah. I mean, absolutely. And this is both, you know, like we see this play out in gender stereotypes. But it's deeply rooted in, in evidence and in brain science. Like what happens to girls when they experience trauma and victimization, books different than in your brain than what happens to boys. And so this starts from a very young age, like how, how it ages you, how you think about how you have a different sense of self of self worth of identity. And that that carries with you through your life. So that that's a lot to unpack when you're in a jail setting and you're sitting through a drug treatment program that you know, we're really trying to go a lot deeper. So most of the most effective substance use and mental health interventions for women have to be gender responsive. And so it really, we see this across the board of the sort of one size fits all program often is less effective for women. And what that looks like is trauma, understanding trauma, helping them understand and connect their trauma to their experiences and say, oh yeah, right, I, if you look at my life course, you know, someone from the outside might look in and say, oh my gosh, you know, she was victimized at age five. And then at 16, started using drugs and was arrested here, it's you can see the trajectory. But for someone who's experiencing it, they don't see it that way. That's sort of their norm and their life. And so taking a step back and helping them to understand the things that have happened to them and how that's shaped who they are is really critical as a foundation of healing for for many of these women. And so the most effective interventions are tailored to be gender responsive. And that does not mean sort of they're offered in a room with pink walls and that they, you know, are that there's a female facilitator like it means that their space for processing and discussing in different ways, they feel safe in the environment that they're in to be able to talk about their their feelings and their trauma and their experiences not be retaliated against that they have pure supports that there's sort of other other women with lived experience with similar experience that can process together. Those are really critical elements of gender responsive interventions. And so it's harder. It's harder to do than to just say here's the sort of standard curricula that we know works. It's really important and we see vastly more impressive outcomes both in terms of reduced recidivism and public safety, but also in terms of wellness and healing and connections to services when we provide those types of gender responsive interventions. Yeah, and I think that's really important. Although I would push a little bit back on that and say, well, we have for men isn't sufficient either. So it's all I, one size fits all is helping anyone. Not working either. You're right. Yep. And, you know, the other big problem and you kind of alluded to it with the caregiving aspect to it. But, you know, one of the things that, you know, I'm particularly concerned about is collateral consequences. So, you know, let's say, you know, most of these women that go in to prison are going to come out at some point and they're often still going to have, you know, children, minors that they're responsible for and they may have parents that they're responsible for too. But we make it really hard in a lot of different ways because, you know, if you're convicted of a drug offense, you may not be eligible for public housing. You may not be eligible for food assistance. You may not be eligible to get your education because you can't get educational loans. You know, as I like to say, or I hate to say, but it's true, unfortunately, you know, if we wanted to design a system that said everybody up for failure, we couldn't intentionally design one better than we have. And so, you know, how do we, how do we change that mindset? Like, you know, I feel like we need to change our mindset that we need to let people, you know, if we're going to have people do their time, we need to allow them to get out and be able to succeed once they're out. And a lot of times, we make that really difficult. Yeah, I mean, you were right on so many fronts here and and to layer on, you know, those are just like the policy barriers that stand in the way, but, you know, imagine coming home from jail or prison and, and, you know, not having a stable or safe place to live and, and Mr. Black, of employable skills and having to take care of kids, having to take care of family. I mean, it's just, it, that is a very tall order for a lot of the women, to have to hold all of those things. And so, we do need to be thinking differently about, about all of it. I'll say, you know, I think it starts with, think about whether they need to be in jail or prison in the first place sort of it. And we, we have that. that as an opportunity, certainly when there is a real public safety risk, when someone is a danger that needs to be incarcerated, that makes sense. There are lots of other ways to hold people accountable, to help a course correct, give them opportunities for treatment and rehabilitation, and keep them home and connected to their sources of support and stability. And so that's what the Women's Justice Commission is really focused on in the front end of the system, is we sort of, how do we use that as a use, jail in prison as a last resort, not as sort of the common place, or the sort of place of first order business? The second, I'll say, just to give a little bit of credit to some of the correctional institutions that I think get a pretty bad rap for being, sort of not gender responsive and gender informed, we spoke to a lot of correctional leaders in forming the commission and through our deliberations, and they get that the women have different experiences, that the facilities are often not trauma informed, and they are under enormous pressures. They're staffing shortages, budget cuts, I mean, they are being asked to do lots of different things from like keep the facility safe and secure to heal people in a very nuanced holistic way. Understand health needs, understand. Sure, but what is it, you know, is, when she says, you know, I think I'm having cramping and she's pregnant, like, is that urgent? How fast do I get her somewhere? I mean, that's so much to ask frontline staff to be responsible for, and that's why we're so focused on, when can we, you know, instead of trying to get this system, which we need to do, it's a both-hand, but really where we can get, I think the most effective outcomes is to think about alternatives, whether that looks like diversion programs, sort of problem-solving courts that can really wrap around people and identify all of these needs, many women in the justice system are also in the civil court system, dealing with child welfare cases. And so there's sort of straddling these systems and requirements in lots of different ways, but what they need is the sort of underlying health, or the help to address some of those underlying needs that's pushing them there in the first place. So that's been our focus. There is a lot of innovation happening. There's a lot of jurisdictions testing different approaches. And I think, maybe it feels a little bit naive to say, I think there's a willingness to try things for women. And there really is, I think maybe it's paternalistic, but there is a feeling of like a recognition anyway that women play really important roles in our community and in our family systems, and they're not getting the types of health and services that they need inside of jails and prisons. And so we places are trying all sorts of different, whether that's a women-specific docket in a court where people who understand these complexities, whether it's sort of a trauma-informed training is in prosecutors' offices. We talk to prosecutors all over the country who say, I don't need to do more digging on this case. It's clear cut, but these things line up and seem like, maybe there's domestic violence that's driving it. That's what we're starting to see, which is really promising for us, is to start to see a recognition and an ownership that there's no one part of the system that's responsible, but there are lots of opportunities to intervene differently. - And I agree with a lot of what you say, and if you talked to correctional officers that have been around for a while, some of the leaders in some of the prisons, the wardens, they'll kind of recognize that the system is broken, what they've been doing isn't working. And to varying levels of success, they're starting to change, and you're definitely seeing that. I don't go into a lot of women's prisons, but I see even in men's prisons, that the basic mindset is changing. And one of the interesting things I think and you kind of alluded to it earlier is that the risk factor with women seems to be perceived at least to be different. Like you don't have the public safety fear of releasing a woman that you do a man. And maybe that's good, maybe that's bad, maybe that's accurate, maybe that's not accurate, but I do feel like we need to change our thinking and understand that the way we treat people that are in the system is itself a public safety issue that if you can get somebody educated, you can get them to deal with their childhood trauma, you can get them skills and actually give them tools so that when they get out, they don't have to do a monkey job or don't have to go into all sorts of underground ways to make money, that that actually creates public safety because when you release the person, they're not a threat anymore. I know so many people that have gone in, they got their GED, some of them get their college degrees, they come out, they're never gonna commit a crime again. - And it's both, it's both and, like we've got to be doing all of those things to help set people up for success. We can't be setting them back to the same environments where they're sort of exposed to the same types of dynamics and we have a real opportunity to help address some of that unresolved trauma and the untreated mental health needs during this time of incarceration. So their perception, their sense of self, their identity is different coming out to and their sense of self worth is different coming out. And so it's like the deep sort of therapeutic work and changing, thinking and changing sort of mental models and the very concrete, like you need job skills so you're not reliant on an abusive partner to support you and your children. You need to be sort of set up for a path in that way. And women need that in sort of in space, really. The both end part because of the trauma and victimization and because of the lack of economic mobility and sort of unstable circumstances before they're incarcerated. - Well, we're just about how to time is there anything we've kind of missed that's kind of a big area? I know we're just scratching the surface but I just kind of want to give people, you know, an idea of why women are different than men. - Absolutely. - That's an absolutely kindergarten answer, right? - Well, I'll thank you. So for the Women's Justice Commission, we also are just starting to scratch the surface. We launched last year having incredible leadership and just released our first set of findings and policy recommendations all focused on the front end of the system. So this is all sort of arrest through sentencing. What can we do differently? We are just starting to get into conversations about what women's experiences is like incorrectional systems, like the condition, safety, services, supports. And so we'll have a second set of recommendations coming soon. And, you know, I think the like hopeful note is that we can do this, right? We have other systems that are very good at sort of seeing the individual in front of them and prescribing a course of care treatment based on that individual's need. We do it all the time in medicine. And so while we're asking what we're sort of encouraging criminal justice leaders to do is not uncharted territory for us. It is really to look at the person in front of you to ask deeper questions, to assess to get a sense of what's bringing them there. And to see if we can get them use this as an opportunity to get them on a different track and create more stable, productive lives. And so it can be done. It's possible. We have to have will. We have to be sort of tenacious and dedicated. But there are, we have all of the right people in place who are leading on this. And certainly in terms of the women's justice organizations that are in leadership roles. And in terms of the correctional leadership. And we have now more than 50% of state correctional administrators are women. There's a mindset shift of foot. And so I think there's a lot of potential for progress in the next few years. I've definitely seen progress in the last 10. I'm a little worried about where we're going in the next four. And I'll leave it at that. Thank you, Stephanie, for coming on. We've been talking with Stephanie Octor. She is the director of the Women's Justice Commission at the Council on Criminal Justice, a CCJ. That's a mouthful. This has been Everyday Injustice. I'm your host, David Greenwald. Join us again next week for more tales from the Injustice System. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING]