00;00;02;20 - 00;00;19;16
Charles Newsom
Sometimes some people need to be incarcerated. I needed to... this is bad to say, but I needed to be incarcerated because the direction I was going in life, that weren't going to get it. You know what I'm saying? It was very disruptive.
00;00;20;01 - 00;00;24;16
Ed Lowry
Our podcast narrator Charles Newsom sharing from his own experience.
00;00;25;10 - 00;00;50;14
Charles Newsom
Sometime people need to be locked up to go in and get it back together. And so once you get it back together, once you get out, how are you going to go about the plan that you put together in there? You understand what I'm saying? And the most... your first thought need to be family. Because your mother does time with you.
00;00;50;21 - 00;00;55;18
Charles Newsom
Your brother, your sister, uncle. Your father. You're not the only one doing time.
00;00;57;06 - 00;01;05;25
Ed Lowry
This is season one, episode three of the Smart Justice podcast. Incarceration, Justice and the Family.
00;01;07;00 - 00;01;13;13
Paul Chapman
Crime and Punishment are hot topics. Are there solutions different than what we're hearing about at national level?
00;01;13;20 - 00;01;20;19
Andrew Baker
We led the nation and all the wrong categories, especially when it came to child welfare and recidivism. Like, Why are we dead last?
00;01;20;29 - 00;01;28;11
Kirk Lane
Now we're saying illicit fentanyl was the number one drug threat in our state back very closely with methamphetamine.
00;01;28;12 - 00;01;35;01
Mischa Martin
If you really want to focus on the kids, stop acting like you're going to use foster care to punish parents.
00;01;35;09 - 00;01;40;18
Paul Chapman
There is a different way to approach justice that has better return on investment.
00;01;40;24 - 00;01;47;11
Mischa Martin
Working with families on the prevention is more cost effective than placed in foster care.
00;01;47;23 - 00;01;56;06
Paul Chapman
That seems to strengthen both law enforcement and courts and tie that together with community resources.
00;01;56;15 - 00;02;03;11
Andrew Baker
Justice has to be served for civil society to exist, but the place of mercy falls in the hands of the people.
00;02;03;11 - 00;02;14;29
Paul Chapman
And then track the impact to communities and better outcomes. And we're calling this approach Smart Justice.
00;02;14;29 - 00;02;33;19
Ed Lowry
Smart Justice is a work of Restore Hope and partner organizations. Restore Hope is a software and services organization that helps communities achieve better outcomes for justice in child welfare efforts. Smart Justice is focused on optimizing the system by improving the relationships among its parts.
00;02;36;00 - 00;02;54;29
Paul Chapman
Thanks for joining us for this interview. I've got two friends of mine here with me and I had the pleasure of working with these men for the past couple of years, trying to help communities here in Little Rock trying stop the violence and bring opportunity to it. But I'd like to introduce Charles Benson and Charles Newsom.
00;02;55;02 - 00;02;55;22
Charles Newsom
How you doing?
00;02;55;29 - 00;02;58;13
Paul Chapman
So Mack and Rock.
00;02;58;16 - 00;02;58;25
Charles Newsom
Me.
00;02;59;13 - 00;03;27;21
Paul Chapman
Their nicknames. So anyway, we wanted to take some time and really talk about incarceration and the impact of incarceration on families. And if a lot of folks are incarcerated in a particular community now that starts to have even bigger impacts. But if you would, just shortly, let's talk about kind of incarceration and maybe any personal experience that that you've had with that and directly, as it kind of impacted your families?
00;03;29;04 - 00;04;08;25
Charles Benson
Well, I was going in and out of the county jail and prison since I was like 21. And it just especially on my family, it was like a disappointment. But as well as well as a loss -- a loss of a person, a loss of a personality, loss of a family member. Okay, our communities are poverty stricken communities. And that's just the truth of the matter. And my going to prison and jail was taking a toll on my family's finances as well, because as well as them working and paying their bills, they were taking care of me in prison because I had no job.
00;04;08;25 - 00;04;11;23
Paul Chapman
How does that work, Mack? So what do you mean, taking care of you?
00;04;11;24 - 00;04;27;19
Charles Benson
Well, you have to... In prison, the food selection and the meals is not up to par. It's not the best. And to survive, you have to have order commissary. And commissary comes from your own money, the money that's on your books.
00;04;27;24 - 00;04;29;29
Paul Chapman
Does everybody do that, commissary?
00;04;30;12 - 00;04;32;07
Charles Benson
Yeah, everybody does commissary. Right, Rock?
00;04;33;01 - 00;04;34;19
Charles Newsom
Majority the ones they can afford it.
00;04;34;19 - 00;04;34;29
Charles Benson
Right.
00;04;35;00 - 00;04;38;17
Paul Chapman
What kind of things would you buy in commissary?
00;04;39;18 - 00;05;07;09
Charles Benson
Buy food, soups, chips. But you also buy t shirts and clothing and deodorent and things to write back to your family. Pen and paper envelopes, stamps. Yeah. And those things are very precious in there because it allows you to contact other people out there and let them know how you feel, what's going on with you. So with me being locked up, I'm taking away from my family income, their base income.
00;05;07;13 - 00;05;28;21
Charles Benson
So they're losing out to help, to assist me so I can have deodorant, so I can have t shirts, so I can have letters and stamps. So that was my... I was I felt guilty. Like I'm in here. I knew I knew better. I'm going to have to do the time for the crime. But also where's the humanity in it?
00;05;28;25 - 00;05;56;01
Charles Benson
You know, everyone makes mistakes. Everyone makes bad seasons. But we can't just we can't just keep piling on these things on it, on a community that's already having problems, not just being poverty stricken, but just other elements in society and making it rougher and tougher. So yeah, I feel like I let my family down when I went to prison because I took took out of my family's mouth and it made me look very selfish.
00;05;56;08 - 00;06;15;26
Charles Benson
And it's a mental thing. You're in there all day with your thoughts of what you've done wrong and you're constantly replaying in your head. What I did wrong, what I... It doesn't help to think about these things all day long because it has a negative aspect on you’re mental state.
00;06;15;26 - 00;06;25;17
Ed Lowry
On this topic of incarceration, what are the main things that our society, we the people want out of incarceration?
00;06;25;27 - 00;06;55;18
Paul Chapman
Yeah. So traditionally the things that we want from kind of punishment or justice or and then that would include incarceration. The first one is just deterrence is if you know that you'll be punished for speeding, for hurting somebody, then you're less likely to do it. And so deterrence is the first one, I'd say, specifically with incarceration. The second thing that we want out of punishment is incapacitation.
00;06;56;00 - 00;07;24;02
Paul Chapman
If you're robbing and stealing, you're scary, you're hurting people. We can put you in jail and or prison, and then we've removed you as a threat to the to the community. And so incapacitation is something that is is a value and is needed when people are hurting people. And then we start to get into a series of things that that we want from justice.
00;07;24;11 - 00;07;45;09
Paul Chapman
And so one of those things would be rehabilitation is if you're behaving poorly, then we want as a part of our our approach to justice is we want you to start behaving well in a way that's pro-social. Sure. So it's beneficial not only to you, but to the rest of the community in which you are a part of.
00;07;46;13 - 00;08;03;28
Paul Chapman
And so rehabilitation has a whole series and depth of approaches that include cognitive behavioral theory, criminal thinking, addiction, mental health. All those things would fit kind of in how do we do education, how do we rehabilitate there?
00;08;04;16 - 00;08;53;03
Billy Inman
My name is Billy Inman, and currently I work for Restore Hope and I'm the program manager for their... for the Restore Hope Reentry Program in the Pulaski County Jail. Recently in November, retired from the Department of Correction. 27 years there, the last 7 years a deputy warden. Now, of course, it's a difficult environment for rehabilitation and incarceration because you have so much that's going on within an institution, whether it's the jail or prison and so many influences, that it's not like maybe being at a treatment facility where you are immersed in a treatment environment, in a jail or a prison. You have all kinds of things hitting you that you would really like to protect folks who are in treatment from.
00;08;53;22 - 00;09;02;01
Charles Benson
To be honest, when you go into prison, you're not rehabilitated. You go in and you're actually trying to it looks like you're becoming a better criminal
00;09;02;01 - 00;09;02;22
Paul Chapman
How so?
00;09;02;22 - 00;09;11;10
Charles Benson
You're around other guys who committed different crimes. Everybody's talking about how good they were at their crime. Yeah, no, we're talking about rehab, rehabilitation and getting there.
00;09;11;10 - 00;09;12;16
Paul Chapman
No bad hustlers, right?
00;09;12;18 - 00;09;12;26
Charles Benson
Yeah.
00;09;12;28 - 00;09;14;20
Paul Chapman
Everybody’s talking about their greatest hits.
00;09;14;28 - 00;09;43;00
Charles Benson
Everybody the best hustler, thug, gangster, everybody every thing. But no one's talking about how I can better myself while I'm in here. So it trickles down to when I get out. Everyone's trying to be better at being bad. Then trying to change from being as bad as they were, to being better at being good or better at being a father, better at being a good uncle, a better brother, a better son, a better husband.
00;09;43;11 - 00;09;54;02
Charles Benson
So those are the things in society that are needed to make human beings better. So if you're in an environment where everything is bad, you're going to continue to do bad things.
00;09;54;21 - 00;10;08;00
Ed Lowry
What are some of the unintended consequences that come out of incarceration? I mean, we have those things we want out of it, but maybe there are some things that are coming out of that that aren't what we would have hoped.
00;10;09;01 - 00;10;28;09
Paul Chapman
You break into my house and you steal some things from me. You know the direct consequence. We can put a number of value on the stuff you stole. You took $10,000 worth of my stuff. It's felony level one, and I'd be mad at you. The unintended consequences start to be the number of victims that are in my house.
00;10;28;22 - 00;10;50;29
Paul Chapman
A lot of kids, we feel unsafe. My neighbors feel unsafe. Starts to impact our behavior in the way that we feel. Could impact the children's achievement at school and the way that they're acting could impact our spending habits. You know, all those things. The neighborhood suffered a wrong by you coming in and breaking in my house and taking my things.
00;10;51;09 - 00;11;11;12
Paul Chapman
But when we incarcerate you, we catch you and we incarcerate you. You have children at home also, and you've got people that are depending on you. So now we've we've taken you out of the community because you were a threat. And and we put you in for on average in Arkansas, you'll serve just over four years, which is at $25,000 a year.
00;11;11;12 - 00;11;36;14
Paul Chapman
It's about 100 grand of direct cost, but the unintended consequences are the impact that would have on your family and if you're employed at all, the employer that's there. And so while I'm not saying that we shouldn't incarcerate you because you were a threat, you're breaking into people's houses and scaring folks and basically being a menace in the community.
00;11;36;14 - 00;11;59;14
Paul Chapman
I'm saying that there is more than just the direct cost of three hots and a cot for you for four years and a 50% likelihood that you're going to return within three. There is impact to your children and their future outlook. How likely are they to actually graduate high school, to get a job, to have meaningful relationships and kids of their own and and that's degraded quite a bit.
00;11;59;14 - 00;12;18;06
Paul Chapman
How likely is it that your wife and your kids are going to go on public support because you're missing now? And she bears the full brunt of of having to keep it all together while you're gone. How likely is it that that relationship survives? And so we start to go down the complexity hole pretty quick.
00;12;18;06 - 00;12;20;03
Paul Chapman
Now, you did your time in state?
00;12;20;09 - 00;12;20;24
Charles Benson
Yeah, I did state time.
00;12;20;24 - 00;12;25;09
Paul Chapman
You did some jail and some state time. And Rock, you did yours in fed time.
00;12;25;09 - 00;12;27;02
Charles Newsom
Yes, sir, federal prison.
00;12;27;06 - 00;12;34;23
Paul Chapman
What was your experience as it relates to kind of your ability to stay connected with family? Or was it similar to Mack’s?
00;12;35;02 - 00;13;19;26
Charles Newsom
Very similar. And then just to piggyback off Mack, not only economically, but thought wise and with the psychosis you would say, because your mother does time with you, your brother, your sister, your uncle, your father, you're not the only one doing time because they're constantly worried about you. They're constantly going to going to be thinking about you, how they doing and being in the feds, you don't do time in your home state all the time. So I was always here, there, I was in California, I was in Oklahoma, I was in Tennessee. So they have to travel. It costs to travel.
00;13;20;10 - 00;13;22;05
Paul Chapman
Travel to come see you on visitation?
00;13;22;07 - 00;13;35;26
Charles Newsom
Right. And then they make it so hard for me to get in. You’re not wearing this. Your’e not wearing that. So they may have to come, then leave, go, redress, come back. So it's a lot that goes on emotionally.
00;13;36;05 - 00;13;43;19
Paul Chapman
So what are just practically some of the things that that you need when you're coming out of prison?
00;13;43;26 - 00;13;44;25
Charles Newsom
Everything.
00;13;44;25 - 00;13;45;23
Charles Benson
You do. It’s a start over.
00;13;45;23 - 00;13;57;04
Charles Newsom
Yes, it’s like rebooting. You know, it's a two way street because first of all, you're happy, you're happy to be with, then you're scared. Also, like,
00;13;57;04 - 00;13;58;25
Paul Chapman
What are you scared of?
00;13;58;25 - 00;14;01;07
Charles Newsom
What are you going to do? Who's going to do?
00;14;01;07 - 00;14;03;08
Charles Benson
Times have to changed too.
00;14;03;08 - 00;14;33;07
Charles Newsom
You have to reconnect. If you had children before you were in, how long were you in? Like, Charlese was what 13, 14, when I came home? When I left, she was two months. And when I come home, she was 14 years old. So how do you rekindle that relationship. Now, you’re a father, so you got responsibilities off the top. So those are the type of things that you have that you're thinking about. That's that's the scary part of, you know, who's going to have
00;14;33;07 - 00;14;36;16
Paul Chapman
Did you feel prepared for that?
00;14;37;27 - 00;15;35;03
Charles Newsom
Uh, no. Because, you know, every every parent, you know, the first child you mess up, you know. It's a huge thing when you finally get it right. But when you coming out of prison and it's your first time coming into like full fledged father who might not get it right. Yeah. So and then the child might have feelings of abandonment, and “you left me.” So you have to deal to those issues. Your mother's older, your father's older. Your grandmother might have passed while you were in there. And that's another major thing about being incarcerated to, Paul, you lose family, and then you're not able to connect with the family. And then it turns you into a cold hearted person. So you have to rebuild emotions because once you incarcerated, man, you have to totally disconnect from the free world.
00;15;35;09 - 00;16;00;12
Charles Newsom
So you have to reconnect to the free world. And if you don't, then you are institutionalized and you have that much danger of going back into the institution because you have no... How can I put it? You have no desire to be free because you have adapted to this incarcerated environment.
00;16;01;03 - 00;16;19;02
Ed Lowry
On the topic of children and also on the topic of the unintended consequences of incarceration, what are we looking at as far as generational incarceration? I mean, is it is that a common thing that we're seeing in Arkansas? Is that an issue that is part of what we're hoping to address in the concept of Smart Justice.
00;16;19;27 - 00;16;51;24
Paul Chapman
The statistics show that if if you're a child and one of your parents was incarcerated before you hit 18, then you start that's actually one of the traumatic factors. So you'll get one at least on an adverse childhood experiences score, and that starts to show predictive outcomes for you both medically, so physically and behaviorally. And your outcome started to diminish greatly and you being able to achieve self-sufficiency and happiness in those things.
00;16;52;14 - 00;17;21;24
Paul Chapman
And so yes, what we do see is if incarceration is common in the community that you grow up in or live in, in that environment, if that's a part of your family history, then you are more likely to experience incarceration as you age. So yes, there is a cyclical nature to the environments that you grow up in, whether that be good or bad.
00;17;22;22 - 00;18;38;17
Billy Inman
I spent most of my career at in Newport at either the Grimes or the McPherson unit. And so McPherson, it's a women's prison and Grimes unit’s a male prison. So a lot of times we may have the wife at McPherson, the husband at Grimes, maybe one of the children at Cummins. I fielded a phone call from a woman one time whose husband was a Cummins. Her son was at Grimes, and she's trying to figure out... Imagine that visitation issue having to go from North west Arkansas to Cummins to visit her husband. Then on a different day, having to go from northwest Arkansas to Newport to visit your son. And so you do see a lot of that generation. We said we have entire families locked up in prison. And so there is a generational aspect. For some folks that's all they know. And and that's the cycle we're trying to break in the jail. That's one of the things I tried to help folks understand in prison is there is a better way than what you’re doing. And just try to get them to that point where this is where that cycle breaks because it's got to break somewhere, or as a society we’ll never get past it.
00;18;39;22 - 00;18;59;15
Paul Chapman
I do want to talk about the impact on the community because, you know, from what y'all have shared a lot of folks in your community at the time that you were doing time, a lot of other people were doing time too, not not just men, but a lot of the men were doing time. So what kind of impact does that have on a community?
00;18;59;22 - 00;19;06;14
Charles Newsom
There is no male figures, so that leads them to the gang quicker
00;19;06;14 - 00;19;08;11
Paul Chapman
Why’s that?
00;19;08;11 - 00;19;13;13
Charles Newsom
They looking for a brotherhood or they looking for a father, father figure or uncle.
00;19;13;15 - 00;19;14;25
Paul Chapman
So the gang will.
00;19;15;00 - 00;19;16;11
Charles Newsom
The gang will take over the family.
00;19;16;11 - 00;19;28;26
Charles Benson
Masculine alpha men, teaching another man the wrong things to do instead of them, teaching them the right thing. So he's growing up thinking, I'm doing... I'm a man, but I'm doing the wrong thing as a man.
00;19;29;00 - 00;19;39;15
Paul Chapman
So one of the unintended consequences you're telling me is more crime because the kids that are left behind are more likely to find their way into a gang.
00;19;39;15 - 00;20;02;02
Charles Newsom
It’s going to be a rotating door into that penitentiary, because now you’re left... And then the men that you did see go to prison, that influence is left on those children coming up. So now Charlie Mack and Charlie Rock gone, the only memories they have are bad memories. Horrible memories. They’re shooters, they're drug dealers.
00;20;02;02 - 00;20;13;06
Charles Newsom
They're so they're going to grow up to be the shooters and the drug dealers instead of going to college. And they don't have anything with their mother there. And she may have to work all day.
00;20;13;25 - 00;20;43;25
Charles Benson
So she's not in the home talking to the child because he's out in the street while she's at work. He's in the streets, but he's in the streets getting his lessons from the streets, the streets are teaching... He's not going to school. He's not learning anything in school. And if he is in school, it's probably for the girls. But it goes back to the man who left the family man. And it's a lot. And then he's like... I will say, I felt guilty when I was in jail. A lot of us feel guilty. We left something behind. We left so much behind. And our children, what are they going to do?
00;20;44;08 - 00;21;27;24
Charles Newsom
It goes back to the first question that you asked, how does it affect the community? Because now a father has left a household and he didn't leave a good impression before he left. So now you have a community full of fatherless homes and it's just going to keep our rotating. The young man going up is he feel like he don't have to support a family. His father wasn’t there, so if he out making babies, he's not going to have the thought process of being a father to that child. A lot of men being incarcerated out of a community is very dangerous for that community.
00;21;27;28 - 00;21;46;12
Ed Lowry
So I'm a businessman listening to this podcast, and so I'm a numbers guy. What does it look like from the perspective of what's the return on investment for the taxpayer, for our community as far as incarceration is concerned? In Arkansas?
00;21;46;24 - 00;23;01;12
Paul Chapman
What we'd say is incarceration is the most expensive form of punishment that we can exact and and has a fairly low return on investment. As far as recidivism, recidivism is the measure of someone that gets out of prison, you know, typically within a three year period of time, do they come back or not? And in Arkansas, as well as many other states, you know, about half of everyone that gets out is going to be back within three years. And so you've got you know, you've got three hots and a cot and safety and all the other things that you provide when someone is locked up. And that's, those are direct costs. There are indirect things that happen. And and what we're saying is we can move upstream from incarceration and think that we can spend less money and impact the number of people that we need to incarcerate. And then downstream from incarceration, there are certain things that could happen that could increase the likelihood of someone that's done their time getting out and staying out.
00;23;01;12 - 00;23;08;24
Charles Newsom
John Felts, Chairman of the Arkansas Parole Board, has seen thousands of people transitioning out from incarceration.
00;23;08;24 - 00;23;49;20
John Felts
Parole Board primarily our main involvement deals with the release of individuals who have been sentenced through a court of law to a term in the Arkansas Department of Correction or the Arkansas Division of Community Corrections. Once they have been incarcerated and they become eligible for parole, then they come before our parole board and we make a determination about their release back into society. We look at a lot of different variables as far as a determination about release, and then once they're released, what type of conditions do we place on those individuals while they're under supervision.
00;23;50;00 - 00;23;58;10
Paul Chapman
You'd also mentioned there was a distinction between where you might do time between the ADC and the ACC. What's the difference?
00;23;58;10 - 00;24;47;06
John Felts
The difference is that ADC, I guess you could look at it if the catch all. It has everything from someone that passes hot checks all the way up to capital murder ACC is a facility where the judge has to specifically sentence them to ACC. It's low level crimes, no violence, short sentences. And the main thrust of ACC is the drug alcohol rehabilitation. So it's a more of a therapeutic, different from prison where they go out and do a lot of manual labor. With ACC, it's pretty much class time and completion of drug alcohol programing.
00;24;47;23 - 00;24;51;16
Paul Chapman
Think your ACC facilities, do they have a license to treatment like?
00;24;51;18 - 00;25;08;18
John Felts
Yes, they do. Yes, they do. Absolutely. And there's about five of those around the state, both men and women. And they have a pretty good success rate, a little bit better than the Department of Correction does on recidivism.
00;25;08;18 - 00;25;16;02
Paul Chapman
How many folks every year in Arkansas on on average actually make parole? How many folks leave our prisons?
00;25;16;14 - 00;25;54;00
John Felts
I think it's probably somewhere between about 8500 and 9500 a year that are released out on parole. We probably see somewhere in the neighborhood of about 15,000 a year that we look at for parole consideration. So it's a it's a a rather large number, but that just is a reflection, I think, of the recidivism issue that the state of Arkansas has are the repeat offenders. Again, those and you define.
00;25;54;00 - 00;25;54;21
Paul Chapman
Can you recidivism?
00;25;54;21 - 00;26;18;13
John Felts
Rate recidivism is where a person's return back to incarceration after three year or less period. And so we you know, look at, take that to consideration. How many times have they been incarcerated? Is this your first incarceration? Have they been a repeat offender for many, many times? Those are the things that we look at.
00;26;18;29 - 00;26;21;03
Paul Chapman
And what is the recidivism rate in Arkansas?
00;26;21;06 - 00;28;30;14
John Felts
I believe for the Department of Correction, it is probably somewhere around 47.5%. And for the Department of Community Corrections, it's about 35%, I believe. You know, one thing that has really been a positive for me in my time on the parole board has been the reunification of families. When a husband or wife or son or daughter again have spent time in the penitentiary and they've been released back out and they come to that place, maybe it's the second or third time they've been incarcerated. But they come back out and that light comes on, that proverbial light and they realize, you know, I'm... my mom and dad, they worked all their life to support me, to, you know, get me to the place in school or whatever it may be. And I've kind of made a record of it again. When dad goes to prison, most of the time that's the breadwinner and that may be leaving a wife and two, three, four kids at home that suffer the consequences of that. You know, I've heard it said many times before when husbands incarcerated, the family is, too. Because it's such a, again anvil around their neck. They just can't seem to break that cycle that's out there. And it's, again, great to see again that like common for individuals, you know, they come out with a different attitude than they've ever had before. They seek employment. They understand what... how precious life is. I mean, to have the opportunity because they will see many times repeated hundreds of times over individuals that have not come to that place and just continue to recidivate back to the the penitentiary in Arkansas.
00;28;31;10 - 00;28;40;15
Charles Newsom
Scott McClain leads Pathway to Freedom, an organization that works with incarcerated and recently released individuals to find success in life at the prison.
00;28;40;27 - 00;30;32;01
Scott McClain
Some of the things that we want to see happen is change the way they think and how they see life, giving them other alternatives to look at other than the way that they were brought into prison, thinking on a false belief. So we want to be able to change and let them know that that belief may not be a fact. So change the way you think in so that you can change the way you live your life so that you can find common ground somewhere and live more healthier and productive on the outside. What the state has done is given us a 200 bed facility that we can accommodate these particular prisoners inside those walls located there in Wrightsville at the Hawkins unit for males. So excited about the opportunity we have to see lives transform not only in the prerelease section, but also once they've been reintegrate back into community, into the post-release sector of the program. Once guys reintegrate back into the community, then we will provide wraparound services for them, which could include mentoring, you name it, trying to find them employment and developing skills and prior to them leaving prison, also working with them in the community while meeting their crimogenic needs, whatever those needs may be, so that they don't recidivate and create more crime victims and go back to prison. When we talk about the prerelease program, they will go through an assortment of post-release prerelease program classes, life skill classes that could be from family, parenting, substance abuse, computer classes. We have an entrepreneurship class that they would go through. We have a mentoring classes that they go through. When you talk about prison culture, we understand what prison culture is. It’s not conducive to growth.
00;30;32;15 - 00;32;07;14
Scott McClain
And we think about the golden rule. The Golden Rule says love your brother, do good unto others. Well prison culture don't speak to that. Everything opposed to that. So we want to change culture in order to change behavior. When we talk about love, we talk about serving. We talk about developing better skills so that you can one day become the model that your son or your daughter needs you to be or your family needs you to be. And so we're excited about those factors there. So when we look at the structure of the program, the thing that we know we want some change made. When we look at the history of it right now, roughly 80,000 adult offenders are incarcerated on probation or parole in the state of Arkansas. What do we do about it? They're coming, but they're getting out. Not all people are staying in prison. Roughly about 90% or so that will be released within time. And so it's all of our issue when we talk about community that we have to deal with and try to provide those support systems in place so that they won't recidivate, create more crime victims, because at the end of the day, we're left to deal with it. Cost. When you look at cost to house someone like that $23,000 a year, we can't continue to do that and build more prisons. We can't keep up with the cost. Inflation is great right now. And so we're trying to save money so that we can all live and not having to deal with the inflation and rise of costs and everything because we can't afford it is too high. It's too high.
00;32;08;14 - 00;33;14;04
Paul Chapman
So when we incarcerate someone, if they're going to get out and most the vast majority of everyone that's incarcerated is coming back. And so I'd say in the simplest view, as a member of the community with kids and hopefully soon grandkids running around the community, if we incarcerate someone when they come back, we want someone better. What we want back is someone who's prepared to be our community member and so enter the complexity again. You need a good needs assessment and a psychological assessment and then you build a plan for that person. I'd say from day one of incarceration to get out. One of the things that we did in 1994 and the big crime bill that was passed as violent crime was kind of surging around the country was we we started incarcerating people longer.
00;33;14;04 - 00;34;11;09
Paul Chapman
But one of the things that was really shortsighted of us, I think, was we stopped paying for Pell Grant. The federal government will give you a grant to go to higher ed. And and so we stopped doing that inside of jails and prisons. And as a part of that crime bill in 1994, realizing that most folks that we lock up are have educational needs that need to be met, they maybe haven't completed high school. And in today's technological society, there are certain things that we just we need you to have a high school diploma, GED, so that you could even go on to earn a technical certificate. We are in the process right now of reinstating Pell. During the Obama administration they picked some exploratory or experimental kind of schools. There were two that were selected.
00;34;11;27 - 00;34;40;11
Paul Chapman
And next summer, summer of 23, my understanding is the US Department vet is going to make that widely available to any title for school. So now all of a sudden we have the ability for a school to access Pell on behalf of of an inmate and we can start to teach school for folks that are locked up. And the last study I saw prior to the 94 bill was at every educational attainment.
00;34;40;23 - 00;35;37;02
Paul Chapman
So someone that didn't have GED, that got GED, someone that got an associate's degree, a bachelor's degree, a master's degree at every one of those achievements, recidivism went down. Those that were in the group that had to earned a master's post incarceration had a 0% recidivism rate. If we can redo that kind of with modern data, you could almost just say, all right, get a master's, you're out. Yeah, you know, you would be a good community member. Now that's not all that's needed. There is something that's called cognitive behavioral therapy. And so some folks actually have criminal when addicted thinking. So if someone's high risk to recidivate and there are these risk scores that are out there, then you need somewhere between 200 and 240 hours of CBT quality, CBT engagement, and that will significantly reduce their recidivism rates on the outside.
00;35;37;02 - 00;35;39;03
Ed Lowry
Cognitive behavioral therapy?
00;35;39;29 - 00;36;33;21
Paul Chapman
Correct. You know, the factors that that occur in recidivism are lack of job opportunities, lack of transportation, housing problems, addiction problems and behavior problems. And so we need when someone comes in to one of our prisons, when we need to do good assessments on them and then kind of build this plan for how is it when you get out? Because almost everyone gets out, how are you going to be a good community member? I've got kids still at home. And if you don't, if you maintain a five year kind of addiction, you're strung out for five years prior to us incarcerating you and you didn't have any job skills and you moved and you got out on parole after four years inside and you moved next to me and you're sitting out on your porch as I'm driving to work, leaving my wife and kids there. You know, I'm not comfortable with that.
00;36;34;07 - 00;36;34;16
Ed Lowry
Right.
00;36;35;22 - 00;36;50;23
Paul Chapman
But instead, if you came out and you had been actually through work release program and had been working for several years and had some educational attainment and and I wave to you because you're getting in your car, going to your job too... I’m good with that.
00;36;51;02 - 00;37;35;15
Charles Benson
I got out running. I wanted I knew I was intelligent. I was always reading in prison. I always learning more, learneing more, learning more. But I knew that if I got a degree under my belt, it would improve my way of life. It would improve my income rate, it would prove a lot. And I think I read a statistic that a bachelor's degree or any kind of degree, adds $10,000 extra to your income capability. And I wanted that. I wanted to go farther. So I got out my my one of my best friends and my business partner, Turtle Antoine Jones, told me about Arkansas Baptist College, and I didn't think I could go because in the stories in prison was when they were telling me that if you had a criminal felony background, you couldn't get in school.
00;37;35;15 - 00;37;59;26
Charles Benson
So I asked Turtle, and he was like, No, man, look at me. I've been locked up before. Look at me. I'm in school. So I took his I took his advice registered and God opened up doors and it just kept improving. And what we don't understand is when you want to do right by yourself, you can call whatever you have in whatever your higher power is.
00;38;00;10 - 00;39;08;16
Charles Benson
But He sees that and he reaches out and grab you. If you take if you take one step he takes to tip with you. He helps. And that's what I kept doing. I kept going to church. I kept going. When Charlie Rock got out, I was still hanging around my guys in the neighborhood, but I knew that I had to focus on something. Don't get me wrong, I love my neighborhood. I love my my homies and my friends. But they also understood Charlie Mack doing something bigger than this. And they supported me. They didn't talk down on me or disrespect me or whatever, bully or whatever. They didn't. They supported me 100%. And you know what happened after that? Turtle and I influenced other guys from my neighborhood to go back to college. So we have several college graduates in our neighborhood now and I'm not tooting my own horn, but beep beep, because our influence helped other men and other people in community said they saw those some bad guys I remember but if they can change their lives, they can make a difference. If they can make mental changes and become stronger. I can do.
00;39;10;21 - 00;39;40;25
Ed Lowry
And so on the topic of incarceration, as far as the work that the the Smart Justice approach that we're trying to talk about here, what are what are the steps? What are what are steps that can be taken? What's the order of those steps to try to, as you often say, go upstream of the problems of incarceration, get ahead of it, not just react, but hopefully prevent, if possible.
00;39;40;25 - 00;41;17;26
Paul Chapman
A Smart Justice approach would start to look at the system of systems that exist in all of our communities, and we would start to to go upstream and say, what are the factors that are present in the majority of people that are being incarcerated in jails and prisons? And are there ways that we can find these individuals before they've they've gotten into the state that they are now, where we must incarcerate. So are there indicators through the schools with their children? Are there indicators through a misdemeanor court, like an unpaid fee or fine that we have to issue a warrant, suspend driver's license? Are there ways that did they come into a DHS office and ask for help or into a church and ask for help? If so, there's probably a set of very complex needs that they have, and if we can figure out how to engage there, then it's much better money, time and effort spent. And instead of watching the slide into multiple areas of crisis and the damage that's done not only to the person but to their family and to community members, I think there's all kinds of opportunities for the group that is has been coming together in Arkansas to try to do some things on the front end of the felony being committed.
00;41;18;15 - 00;41;44;07
Paul Chapman
That would be a much better spend and assets if we can help divert some from ultimately committing violent crimes or being scary in the community. And so those dollars on the prevention side or the alternative side I think are well spent. That's the argument that that we're trying to make and and trying to show through demonstration projects.
00;41;44;23 - 00;41;46;07
Ed Lowry
Demonstration projects like what?
00;41;46;18 - 00;42;06;02
Paul Chapman
Well, there are several communities that are actually enacting what would be community diversion or alternative sentencing programs, their police departments that are engaging in things that are instead of making the arrest. Right. Diverting the individual.
00;42;06;10 - 00;42;29;07
Danny Baker
My name's Danny Baker. I'm the police chief at Fort Smith Police Department. The number of years that I've been in the criminal justice system, we've been doing it pretty much the same way for a long time, with no appreciable gain on what we're trying to fix. And in fact, if anything, it's gotten worse. And so for that reason alone, I would say we need to be looking alternatives.
00;42;29;07 - 00;43;34;15
Danny Baker
We need to be looking at new solutions. People generally understand that there are folks that need to be removed from society for, you know, for a period of time, sometimes permanently. I think that there's an understanding of that. But I also think that people are beginning to realize that maybe we've used incarceration as a tool to solve a lot of society problems, that it wasn't the best tool to use. And I think that, you know, that's resulted in a lot of folks that have been put into a system that is not designed to fix them or support them. I think, you know, we need to be looking very hard at trying to fix the underlying problems. It seems that the answer to any crime issue or in any way that the bad behavior manifests itself in our society, the go to response is to build more prisons, to build more jails, to expand jails, to make it possible that we can put more people in jail, incarcerate folks.
00;43;35;10 - 00;44;22;19
Danny Baker
It's interesting that we don't have that same mindset, that's not the automatic go to when we have a public health issue, when we have, you know, for instance, the pandemic, the recent pandemic, COVID 19, our automatic response to that was not let's build more hospitals. Our response was, let's figure out how we can combat this this problem, this virus, and prevent it and stop it. Not, you know, let's build more hospitals so that we can put more people in hospitals. And so I think if we maybe looked at some of society's issues and some of the problems that we're experiencing and things that we've dealt with through incarceration is in those terms. And how can we how can we solve the problem? How can we go to the root of the issue?
00;44;22;19 - 00;44;50;26
Danny Baker
How can we fix the person? How can we fix the problem that's manifesting itself in behavior that we don't like to see and in society? And so we reduce the need for incarceration and we wound up with a better society overall as a whole, criminal justice, you know, or law enforcement. We seem to be the ones most poised to be able to do the most effective and immediate intervention just because of the nature of what we do.
00;44;50;26 - 00;45;16;22
Danny Baker
I mean, we're the first ones to respond when someone calls for a problem. And I'm not saying that that's necessarily the best answer either. And we're starting to figure out that, you know, sometimes there's options other than sending a cop I think that the community as a whole has to be working together. I think that, you know, silos are are easy sometimes it's it's easier to work in a silo, but it's never the best option.
00;45;16;22 - 00;45;46;08
Danny Baker
And so when when folks when when everybody in the community works together toward the the singular goal of trying to improve the individual and thereby improving the community, that the individual lives, then I think that's how you get ahead of and get upstream. And for every person that you can do that with, you're having an incredible impact on so many other lives in the community.
00;45;46;21 - 00;46;40;05
Danny Baker
The long term benefit of investing in people and investing in their issues and trying to make them whole. The gains are far greater, the long term gains and they're much quicker as well. We're seeing that daily in Fort Smith is becoming common knowledge, I guess that we've reduced our cost conservation rate for the last two years over 40%. So we've cut nearly in half the number of people that we’re taking to jail, and our our crime rate is not reflecting negatively the impact of that. In fact, last year we saw a 5.6% reduction in overall crime. You know, many areas of the country are seeing marked increases. There is a connection, I believe, in the way that we're approaching.
00;46;40;05 - 00;47;34;19
Danny Baker
And it's it's diversion done right now. You can't just, you know, just say we're not going to just we're just not going to deal with the problem. We're just not going to arrest people. We're just not going to make contact with people. That's not a solution. But diversion done, right. Where you empower your police officers and empower, you know, those that are out there on the front lines to have alternatives, to look for alternative solutions than just taking someone to jail. And so we've tried to do that at Fort Smith. We tried to provide opportunities and options that the police officer can exercise that discretion in a positive way and not just saying, I'm just going to walk away and not do anything. No, I'm going to take a vested interest in you and who you are. And that starts with our vision at the at the police department to make sure that, you know, for one, that we use every encounter with another human being as an opportunity to improve them.
00;47;34;28 - 00;48;03;15
Danny Baker
And we're working toward a day when we're not needed anymore, when our services as police officers are no longer needed, that folks are able to take care of themselves. We know we're going to get there in this world. There's always going to be a need for police. There's always got a need for first responders. There's always going to be that need to put those really bad people in jail, those that just refuse to make right decisions or, you know, for whatever reason, just can't function with the rest of us without endangering us.
00;48;03;15 - 00;48;34;07
Danny Baker
So we don't we don't think that we're going to ever reach that day, but we're going to shoot for it. And that's what our vision is. It gives us direction. And so, you know, we just we look for those opportunities and we in I, as the administrator of the police department, my command staff, those that are here, they make sure that we empower our police officers to take the time to invest in people, take the time to find alternatives.
00;48;34;07 - 00;48;40;18
Danny Baker
If you can do something that's going to improve them and you don't have to take them to jail, then let's do that.
00;48;40;27 - 00;49;27;07
Paul Chapman
Chief Baker told the story one time. A few of his officers, they got a call and some young kids were outside close to a street. And and so they got called in and both the parents were asleep inside. And there was a door whose lock didn't work. And so they could have called DCFS because the children were outside. They could have been hurt by walking into traffic and street. Instead, officers went down to the Walmart, bought a lock and installed it with their own money and installed it themselves. You know, it wasn't necessarily a crime that was committed, but now there was a positive in this community. There was a positive interaction with law enforcement that happened. And they they addressed the problem that allowed the children to get outside the house in the first place.
00;49;27;13 - 00;50;39;07
Danny Baker
But it was this this intentional, deliberate effort to work with this family to try to find solutions, solutions other than just well, you're just a bad parent. And if you can't figure this out on your own, then you know the state needs to get involved and we need to take the kid in foster care. It's just... I mean, story after story after story of that kind of thing. I have said many times that, you know, officers have always had discretion, but they never had the means to exercise that discretion. And so we try to provide that here. You know, our pre-arrest diversion program, that's that is one of the ways that they can exercise their discretion. We've implemented a mobile booking station and actually had legislation changed so that we could fingerprint and photograph someone in the in the field for a minor misdemeanor. Class A misdemeanor was before that they had to be taken to jail. They had to be booked in the jail and processed. Got the law changed. And now we have this mobile booking. We just book them there in the field. And, you know, we issue a signature bond and release them. And so completely, you know, we completely divert them from the incarceration.
00;50;39;15 - 00;51;33;15
Danny Baker
When we announced publicly that we were, you know, implementing a crisis intervention team, their job was going to be to address mental health and folks in crisis in a new way. People in the community, the providers, faith based organizations, hands went up all over the all over the place saying, hey, you may not know I'm here, but I am. And here's what I offer. Here are the services that I offer. And so they became a hub, you know, a network hub of services in Fort Smith. And just recently, we also, we being the Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee and in Fort Smith, the county judge and several others, district judges within the criminal justice system got the legislation changed so that we could do sobering facilities.
00;51;33;15 - 00;52;28;11
Danny Baker
Before, we really had no choice if somebody was intoxicated in public to the point that they were a danger to themselves or others, we had to take them to jail. Well, now we can take them to a sobering facility. If we're able to get one person out of a, you know, addiction and diverted from the criminal justice system instead of constantly being picked up and arrested for public intoxication or disorderly conduct or, you know, all the other things that are associated with that, again, that's going to have such a monumental impact on our our community as a whole. And then I think our community policing efforts in general, they help with the just the overall health of the of the community. The community trusts us. They believe that we're really there to help them and they want to work with us. They want to partner with us to do that.
00;52;28;23 - 00;52;42;25
Danny Baker
And so we find ourselves not running into roadblocks like we used to. You know, folks are willing to work with us. They're willing to talk to us, they're willing to help us solve crimes. And that has a, you know, an impact on on your crime rate.
00;52;43;06 - 00;53;17;06
Paul Chapman
And so we need to go upstream and impact the communities in which poor outcomes are coming. That's the place to invest. And and if we do that, if we can invest in the families and we can try to keep the families together and we can make them stronger and we can provide opportunities up here, then it's going to prevent a lot of people from getting in to kind of the prison pipeline, if you will, that’ll prevent a lot of misery and will stop a lot of the cyclical nature of this.
00;53;17;10 - 00;53;34;25
Paul Chapman
That's not to say that we don't continue to help people all along the way. I'm saying that focusing just on like a release from prison program is is short sighted. We need to push back all the way as far upstream as we can get.
00;53;35;04 - 00;53;36;04
Ed Lowry
Steps have been taken.
00;53;36;05 - 00;53;36;23
Paul Chapman
Engage.
00;53;36;25 - 00;53;42;21
Ed Lowry
Engage people ahead of time. But stuff still happens.
00;53;42;21 - 00;53;43;03
Ed Lowry
Sure.
00;53;43;03 - 00;53;48;07
Ed Lowry
Someone gets arrested. What what are what are steps that can be taken at that point?
00;53;48;24 - 00;54;35;18
Paul Chapman
And so you know, I've had judges and law enforcement tell me that that they have certain discretion, but they don't have options. And so what we need to build to be able to offer law enforcement and prosecutors and and judges kind of these options is they need to know what they would be sending someone to. So you need a good assessment. You just don't need to send everyone down to to school. Maybe that's not the right thing for everyone and maybe it's definitely the right thing for some people at the stage that you meet them. They have some other issues before you can go to school. So you need a good holistic assessment on social determinants of health and then you start to build a a plan for that individual that the judge is fully aware of.
00;54;35;18 - 00;55;08;29
Paul Chapman
So the court knows about it or the prosecutor knows about it and is brought in. And as long as the person's working that agreed upon program, there's encouragement. And if they don't work the agreed upon program, then you ratchet it up. And that's what's happening in in part in a lot of these district courts is you can go to school and get a job and we'll count that as good to some fines and fees and community service and even some jail time, because that's a... you're investing in yourself and your family and you're you know, that's a community good.
00;55;08;29 - 00;56;16;29
Paul Chapman
If you don't do that, then we're going to start to ratchet things up. Maybe you will do jail time, maybe even get some additional jail time. And so it's not a an ignoring of bad behavior. It is taking a holistic look at what's the best money that we can spend. And I always think giving our law enforcement and judges and the individuals options is the best thing that we can do. Now, to do that, you've got to be able to have the aligned help that someone might need, like substance abuse and mental health and housing and job and employment and schools. You you've got to be able to have those folks partnered together and you've got to have a software system in which you can track. So the judge with these huge dockets and the prosecutors, they just need to be able to see who's performing, who's not performing. What do I need to do now? And to be able to to know that that justice is being carried out.
00;56;16;29 - 00;56;26;18
Paul Chapman
All right. Let's talk about personally what it was like when you were reentering the community from prison, specifically with your family?
00;56;26;25 - 00;57;11;00
Charles Benson
Well, I had a good support system. And let's be clear that one of the key things to successful reentry is your support system, who you get out to, who you hang around when you when you first get out. It's very essential. It's very important because it can make or break your reentry program, your reentry process. If you don't have a strong support system, you don't have people out there encouraging you, helping you put you in a place to win, in a successful place. It's not going to work. My support system was amazing. I had family, I had church family, I had friends. I had I just had people that were willing to put their neck on the line to help me succeed.
00;57;11;11 - 00;57;53;02
Charles Newsom
But here before we go, Paul. This is the major decision, right here. You're free. Are you going back to... You gonna get this easy money or are you going, hey, let’s straighten up. We got to do it this way. You know, it’s work time now. You have to get a job. Now you got to get a career. Do you want to go to school like Mack did? Or what are you going to do on the positive side? Are you going to run back with this gang or are you going to let that part of your life go? Are you going to become a family man? Things like that. So that’s the first major decision, are you going to hit those streets? Are you going to do it right this time.
00;57;53;07 - 00;57;54;11
Charles Benson
Decisions decisions.
00;57;54;22 - 00;57;56;04
Paul Chapman
How’s the family play into that.
00;57;56;29 - 00;58;32;24
Charles Newsom
Majorly. Yeah because that’s why you come to the crossroad because, am I going to be with my family or am I going to go down this road again. And I can end up being incarcerated or I can be killed and I'm gone for good. Now you leave them forever. And then this next time you might get that 40 year sentence, you might get a life sentence. So no more coming home. So that decision is the most imporant decision right there, and that a highly effects your family.
00;58;33;16 - 00;58;54;21
Charles Benson
Like with me, family was so important I didn't want to let them down again. I didn't I couldn't I couldn't take that letting them down again. I've been to the penitentiary once, and I only served like two years at the most. And when I got out, I just had a new lease on life. I feel I felt like God gave me another opportunity and I'm not going to lose this opportunity.
00;58;55;00 - 00;59;08;00
Charles Benson
I'm going to make my people proud. I'm going to I'm going to make them I'm going to pretty much make them forget that I was ever locked up.
00;59;13;05 - 00;59;42;05
Charles Newsom
Thank you for listening to Charles and my story. We hope that you learned something from it and you could take something from it. Thanks to Paul Chapman and 100 families and Restore Hope. In our next episode, we discuss child welfare, foster care and ask the question, what about the kids? Thanks again for joining us. You know, always remember, there's always hope.
00;59;43;03 - 01;00;06;06
Ed Lowry
Charlie Mack and Charlie Rock are part of Empowering My Environment. A group of leaders working to reduce the violence and increase the opportunities in their neighborhoods. Check out their weekly show on their Empowering My Environment Facebook page. Special thanks to this episode's guests. Charles Benson. Charles Newsome. Billy Inman. John Felts, Scott McClain and Danny Baker. Thanks also to our sponsor, Churches for Life.
01;00;06;25 - 01;00;59;23
Ed Lowry
Musical credits include “H2O” by Lee of the Stone, “K Carrico” by Jump Scare, “Old Soul” by New Alchemist, “Legends Never Die” by Ghost Beats, “Wander” by ILO and “Thought Work” by New Alchemist. Smart Justice is a work of Restore Hope. Please consider helping us produce more work like this by becoming a donor at www.smartjustice.org. Thanks again.