337-Fixing Justice System Errors With John Hollway

We talk with John Hollway about treating wrongful convictions as system errors and building a criminal justice process that aims for accuracy instead of blame. We dig into the repeat patterns behind exonerations and the practical fixes that reduce false confessions, bad forensics, and overconfident verdicts.

 
• Defining “error” as convicting the wrong person and missing the right person 
• Why single-source eyewitness identification without corroboration is a major red flag 
• How false confessions happen and why interview framing changes outcomes 
• The limits of DNA evidence and the challenge of courts judging evolving science 
• Using root cause analysis and continuous improvement like other high-stakes systems 
• Confirmation bias in investigations and why intellectual humility matters 
• Burnout and underfunding across police, prosecutors, and public defenders 
• Why certainty of punishment deters more than severity 
• Restorative justice for low-level harm and what communities can learn from it 
• Homelessness, public order, and why “prison” becomes the default tool

Follow John Hollway at ...

https://www.johnhollway.com/

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Transcript

Welcome And Why Errors Matter

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Right. So each of those things is an error. We we got the wrong guy and we didn't get the right guy. So I tend to think of this as far as like how have we designed the system? What do we want it to accomplish? And is it accomplishing those things in ways that are useful? And I think useful might um eyewitness identifications are really hard under lab conditions.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

People are that's so interesting. The way we frame and question. Welcome everyone to politically high tech with your host, Elias. This is gonna be somewhat of a new topic of this podcast. It should be a stranger, but I just didn't encounter anyone who was so not and passion is one thing, but I want someone with insight, someone that they know, you know, he, she, they know what they're talking about. I also want just some random person talking about it. Let me be that random guy rambling. Okay, let me take the easy role here. I just gotta buy job as a hoax, just introduce and get the conversation going. I don't have to be the expert of it, but I do learn a lot on a serious note because it does broaden my perspective. You know, you think you know so much until you dig deeper and deeper and get to know people that just exposes you two perspectives that you've been blind on or you didn't realize they exist. So, with that out of the way, I'm just gonna give us a brief introduction to our mammals and recurring ones. I know you like some of those, but we gotta open the door for some new people too. Because look, I don't really talk about criminal justice. I talk what so I talked to someone who's right-leaning about that. You know, he has a more traditional point of view of justice, but let's see. What do we got here? Will he be the counter? Will he be new ones? We're gonna find out. We're gonna find out. Even your host doesn't know what's gonna happen.

Accuracy Over Partisanship

SPEAKER_00 1:48

So we got John Holloway here, a leading voice for criminal justice reform and systems improvement. So definitely not traditional, because traditional people's more like, oh, you got locked up, you did something wrong, you know, and so me. I always thought maybe it's possible system could get, you know, system could have errors, just like all the systems. And then, you know, he's the senior advisor at the Quatron Center for Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania Kerry Law School, where he previously served as executive director and helped roll the censor to a national force for change. Oh, that's great. Definitely more of that because different states got different interpretations for so many things. He's also an expert at the root cause analysis. We're deaf again to that, with you know, and works with justice systems, organizations, and policymakers to identify failures, prevent errors, and create more accountable and effective institutions. Instead of just, oh, it's your fault, you idiot, and nothing gets done. You know, the blame culture is a lot of that. He also leads initiatives and turning critical incidents into opportunities for learning and long-term reform. And now for bragging rights, he is also an award-winning author of Killing Time, an 18-year odyssey from death row to freedom, a TEDx speaker and a passionate educator who teaches on wrongful convictions, criminal justice reform, and how to build more just system. I know for some of you right-leaning critics, is he woke? Does this have to be woke? Change needs to be done, okay? I'm just gonna say like that, because you know there are people that could be wrongfully locked up, and sometimes witness testimonies are not the best. Especially, come on, if you look at the night, you you don't have the best vision, especially just no street lights working. And some of them got locked up for that. Wrong person, okay? So there's definitely I lean somewhere more moderate, there's change. But am I gonna bounce the prison system? I don't think so until criminal becomes non-existent. Anyway, he's going, so let's introduce John Alwick. So, when do you want the audience and the viewers to know about you?

SPEAKER_01 4:03

You know, first of all, thanks for that great intro. And and I I guess what I would say is I don't actually think of the criminal justice system in terms of right or left, woke or not woke. I the Quatron Center looks at errors in the system, but you can define that pretty objectively as a result the system's not supposed to generate. So you've probably heard about the Innocence Project, and the Innocence Project represents people in litigation who have plausible claims of actual innocence. And I think that's really important, right? We we go into the system, we've got a system that is designed, hopefully, to get to the truth. We think that the adversarial method is the way to do that, and so going in and litigating that is a great venue for that. I think of the Quatron Center more as an accuracy project than an innocence project. So we don't represent clients because we want to gather all parts of the system together because you know the things that police officers do influence prosecutors and vice versa. The things that defense lawyers do affect prosecutors and vice versa. Judicial rules impact prosecutors, defense attorneys, and police. Like it's all part of an integrated system, and we want all parts of those systems to be going to the right place. And if I'm talking about errors, you know, an error is every time I've got a wrongful conviction, I've got two errors because I didn't get the right guy. So each of those things is an error. We we got the wrong guy and we didn't get the right guy. And so I tend to think of this as far as like, how have we designed the system? What do we want it to accomplish? And is it accomplishing those things in ways that are useful? And I think useful might be where the political parties today, you know, broad brush strokes, this is unfair. I do think as a society, and this is true on both sides of the aisle, it's become easier to dehumanize the other side. And but what our professionals do, what we ask them to do in criminal justice is to allocate blame all day every day. And so it can be difficult within that system sometimes, within an adversarial system and within a system that's allocating blame, sometimes it's difficult to step back and say, let's assume that everybody involved wants to wake up in the morning and do their job well. And let's assume that there are people who color outside the lines of the rules in our communities, and we want to figure out how to navigate that effectively and reduce crime over time. Are we doing that? If not, where should we make changes? And as you said, there are, you know, there's 50 states, there's 93 federal jurisdictions, there's 18,000 police departments, there's a lot of, it's a very diffuse, very unstructured system in some ways, decentralized would probably be a better way to put it. And so what we try to do is we try to work with jurisdictions and communities and say, hey, let's look at data about how things are working. And are you generating the results you want? And if not, how can we improve that? And so I don't view that as partisan, though it's a diverse society and people definitely have their views, and we want to navigate those to get to a consensus where I can start with those basic principles and say, okay, what's the criminal justice system supposed at? And then let's move forward from there.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

That's a very responsible take. You see, that's the guest role in here. They mean the more responsible, though. Well, the whole sometimes is a little bit of an instigator based on what he knows about the partisan trends, and especially with random issues here, but that's more me. No, more in the silly sense. I'm not trying to instigate say, oh, you know, let's check it against the scandal. No, no, it's not that podcast. Go to another one, go to the more gossipy ones that that does that garbage. This is more substantive kind of podcast, believe it or not. Do I have a little fun with it? Do I be lighthearted or silly? Yes. But that's not the same as me digging to someone's past, like, oh, why should I trust him? Because he why should I trust him? Marital advice while he cheated on three wives. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

That's a credibility. For the record, I haven't even cheated on one wife.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

No, no, you don't have to answer that. You don't have to answer that. But hey, I want to be on record with that one. He's very transparent. Extra points right there. Extra, that's bonus points. But you know, and me, I'm already married at all, so you definitely want to listen to me at that at that. So I'm putting that in the record properly. No, but uh all of all of services. So let's get to like some

Exonerations And The Biggest Red Flags

SPEAKER_00 8:29

of the basic. What is the wolf's common root cause for failure?

SPEAKER_01 8:33

I mean, let's do some basic identification for there's a terrific uh website and reference for anybody who's interested called the National Registry of Exonerations. And they catalog all known cases of exonerations in the United States, and they define an exoneration as different than a reversal or on appeal. So their definition of exoneration is somebody's been convicted of one or more crimes, and all of those charges get vacated, withdrawn, dismissed, reversed, and there's no lesser to which the person pleads. So if you or I had been convicted of murder, sentenced to 20 years, 10 years in, a DNA comes out and it that we didn't do it, often what will happen is the prosecutors that have been cataloged. So it's a pretty large database, and you can do a fair amount of analysis with that database. What I would tell you is that I think the single biggest red flag, if you're looking at a case now, if somebody comes out and say, hey, we really think Elias might be innocent, and people are like, I don't know, Elias looks pretty shady to me. I think, you know, to your point, he probably did something wrong. Biggest red flags are single source eyewitness identifications without physical corroborating evidence. Eyewitness identifications are really hard. Under lab conditions, people are wrong 30 to 40% of the time. We're not often under perfect lab conditions. You know, the there's lighting, there's, you know, people pointing guns at you or knives at you, there's all sorts of things happening. And so, first of all, if you don't have corroborating evidence, that's a big deal. Physical corroborating evidence linking to the crime. Second of all, if it's a single source eyewitness ID, that just elevates the likelihood of an error. But there are a bunch of other things that are that are challenging as well. So there are false confessions in about 12 to 15% of the database. There are issues with witness, reliable witness testimony. We use jailhouse informants quite a bit, and they've obviously got some biases. So, you know, there's a lot of junk science. If you're looking at an arson case before the year 2000, you really need to take a look at that because that science has changed around what we think is evidence of an intentional setting of a fire. Shake and baby syndrome, people getting convicted of abusing their kids, particularly in the first year to two years of their life. What we used to think was irrefutable physical evidence of that now has been largely debunked by subsequent science. And so there's a lot of things, and there are also a lot of other bite marks, for example. Bite marks are just not a thing. Scientists can't tell if it's even a human bite mark. Your skin heals, so the bite mark by the time you go look at it isn't the same as whatever mark was made on the person's body. That science has just that quote unquote science is just not. So looking for those areas is where you're going to find your pools of or your concentrations of errors. Uh, and those are things that we say to investigators and prosecutors if those things are in your case, that should be a yellow flag for you to dig deeper and make sure you're really confident moving ahead with this case because it can be easy to fall for those as evidence, and that evidence is softer.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

Yeah, that look at evidence, science is evolving. You know, I know I'm gonna sound a little more of a democrat, science evolves, but that's actually true. But they just remove the parts of flavor here because it really does. I mean, I'm sure DNA testing has played a significant role as well, especially for unsolved mystery cases happened in the 1960s, 70s. We don't know how cases happen a long time ago.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

Yeah,

DNA Helps But It Is Limited

SPEAKER_01 12:19

go ahead. Yeah, so it's pretty interesting. So DNA testing really didn't exist until almost the turn of the century. So cases that happened in the 90s and the criminal justice system, just because appeals are slow and everything, it takes a long time sometimes to get to the point where you're able to do this stuff. We're getting better now at collecting DNA and collecting smaller amounts and having those smaller amounts be testable. But for a long time, there's only about 15, 17% of the cases in the database that are DNA related. If it's an armed robbery, you may not have DNA. You know, DNA is gonna be more likely in sexual assault cases, a little bit less so in murder cases, but if it's a property crime, DNA is probably not gonna not gonna be there. And so that's still a minority. It's certainly useful, but one of the places that there are a couple of police labs, the Austin Police DNA facility, because they were mishandling samples of DNA that had more than one biological provider. So combined samples where you and your DNA and my DNA are both in the sample and how they handle that to make sure that they're assessing the likelihood that each of us is the donor, they were doing that wrong. It cost them their accreditation. Austin took a big step back and had to think about how they were going to handle a lab that wasn't handling that science appropriately in an evolving part of the field. And this is one of the challenges is you know, science is moving stepwise forward. And the courts are looking backwards to try to figure out what's reliable. So I think of it as almost uh where you go on the board, and so science is the ladder, but the courts are looking back down the chute to find the most reliable place where they can where they can then peg it. And then you have, I mean, let's be honest, I won't became a lawyer because I didn't want to take any science classes. And so now all these people who were afraid of math and science were asking them to interpret that science. It's a lot to ask of of our judges as well. So there's there's a lot of sort of structural challenges in there, even with DNA, which is as reliable.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Oh, we really listened to that. I'm gonna put my serious hat here for the my listeners. This is some interesting stuff here, people. You know, yeah, you just think, oh, the DNA could be the holy grail. Well, turns out it helps. But it's not the holy grail solving all the cases. We still got some unsolved, you know, cases. I don't want to imply that the DNA was holy grail, but I'm sure it has improved. Uh 15, 17%. Well, that's something. So, you know, something's better than nothing. You know, we we you know, and the perfection, you know, the enemy is the enemy of good here, but like it's something better than nothing. So it's you know, I'm sure we're gonna get there eventually. Probably we'll solve cases, probably like 1800s, where we didn't know anything. Everything is like pictures and colorless. Let's see. Yeah, so you know, and we can solve cases. I'm sure we solve something. We have less DNA to a great degree. DNA not really a big part. And you know, color photography, forget it was like either sepia, gray, all that stuff. I'm sure we're gonna get there, but you know, it takes time. Progress does take time for sure. You know, and I just I think it's good that people are getting um exonerated. I mean, I'm sure the states hate admitting wrongdoing because they waste their resources trying to persecute the person or even got them locked up. They had to appeal that, so it makes them look pretty bad. Federal, very rarely, very rarely they get a, you know, very rarely that they lose a case, even they have lost, I think, a case.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

Uh but that one that one I'm sort of obligated here to point out Frank Quatron, who he and his wife conceived of and funded the Quatron Center, that was a white-collar case. And it was a white-collar case that was overturned completely and actually reassigned to a different judge in the interest of judgment. The appeals court actually said, We're not going to give it to this judge, and they publicly said that in their opinion, which like never happens. So it really can happen to anyone. And the the challenge is differentiating between the ones that are righteous and the ones that are not. And we as investigators in that field, we're constantly struggling to get better at that too. So I I, you know, we're all part of the system and we all have the obligation for continuous improvement. But you know, what I will say is, I'm sure you know this, probably 90% of all crime is at the state and local level. The federal government only does 10%. And there's a difference with sort of a mail fraud or liar fraud or insider trading or those financial white-collar crimes. With the violent crime, it's like, okay, I know the crime's been committed. What I don't know is who did it. And with the financial crimes, it's okay, I know what people did. Is it a crime? And so we have a different investigation in that process. But I I I would be remiss if I didn't say that the that the mistakes that happen don't seem, they seem to follow the same trends as the rest of the criminal justice system. So to the extent the criminal justice system is biased, overly applied to people of color, the rate of error is the same as that misapplication, not greater or worse. And so everybody's kind of in the same boat as far as mistakes.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

Okay. All right. Well, let's see. What do we got here? I think we're touched on this a little bit. I don't know. He doesn't, I don't think he hears me. Let me just put it to I not. We're back. Okay. Okay. Well, thank goodness I'm a veteran. I could resolve this cleanup later. All right, so no, that's good stuff. That's you know, this is very insightful because federal, state, local prosecutions are different. It's not blanketed as one would think. Oh, and different states have different interpretations of certain crimes. I mean, owning a gun in some states are perfectly legal. New York, strict as hell. If I already get a state like Arkansas, much easier, much more relaxed. So owning a gun itself is not a crime. So that's gonna be different interpretations among two different states right there. Okay? And you know, and I'm sure, and I and I'm also sure that you know some and you don't believe in the death penalty. There's more right-ling states, the left lean states are against that. You know, that's a little political thing, but I'm not gonna get it's not gonna be no Donald Trumbers' Democrats here, but that's your that's the political reality. They tend to interpret things like that. So it's not gonna be political. Political like a secondary lens here, but it's gonna be more policy and stat based, which I actually liked because we I think we're getting to the truth here instead of just saying, oh, the right is correct or the left is correct, or they both silly. Yeah, no. So it's like to focus on the policy stuff. I just feel like we're actually making more progress as opposed to favoring a team or tribe while screwing everybody else over. That's that's what I actually like here. So that's what I'm gonna, the person I'm gonna enjoy is probably more than some of you listeners. Some of you like the arguments and all that, and Rada Rada. Don't worry, that's gonna be the paid ones where I go crazy with the other guests. They all might say crazy stuff. That's the paid version, okay? You uh Elias Unleashed Okay, you good. This is this is the free response, what is this normie section of the podcast, okay? So let me just get

Root Cause Analysis For Justice

SPEAKER_00 19:50

to the next question. We're sort of touching this a little bit. How can systems uh improve or try to prevent these errors around conviction? I think Ray touched a little bit on using improved sciences instead of just using, oh, this, you know, like the single eyewitness, which I always find that a little crazy.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

So what we try to do is educate. And I think we look at we've you you mentioned root cause analysis in my introduction, and and we try to take policies of quality improvement from other complex dynamic systems where people's lives are at stake, like hospitals or transportation. And we try to take those principles and apply them to the criminal justice system. So looking at a case right now where an individual was convicted and later exonerated, what we try to do is look at the files and go back and interview the participants and say, what did you know at the time? And what do we now know? And how could we help you get that knowledge upstream in the process so that we're not repeating this error? So for me, it's a little bit like are you a are you a football fan of that? I'm a casual viewer.

SPEAKER_02 21:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

All right. Well, give me a to pick let what since I'm from Philadelphia, we'll pick the the Eagles, okay? Philadelphians, there's some of the kind of polarized about whether Jalen Hurts is an elite quarterback, but he's one of the 30 best guys in the world at what he does. He's got talent, he's got training, they run all these practices, and they go out to run a play the way they think it's supposed to run, and the ball gets hiked, and everybody's easy, and all sorts of things are going on. And Jalen Hurts in a moment throws a pass that he thinks is his best outcome in that situation, and this time it's intercepted. Now, you and me, we've been tailgating, maybe we've been overserved, we're up in the upper deck, and we're like, we know the problem. Jalen Hurts is a bum, we got to get him out. What the Eagles do is, and what we'd like to see police departments, prosecutors, defense attorneys, we'd like to see everybody do, is then go back and sit down and instead of saying Jalen Hurts is a bum, say, why did Jalen Hurts act the way he did and why didn't we get the Result we wanted? What did everybody on the field see as this was unfolding? And how can we redesign the play for a better outcome next time? So if we come in with a report, first of all, if we come in with a report that says, hey, eyewitness IDs are problematic, lack of physical corroboration is problematic, those are learning opportunities for your department to think about how you take evidence in. And that's true as a prosecutor, as a defense attorney, anybody in the system can have that question. And then when we get to trial, everybody can hash that out and evaluate the evidence and make sure we think it's ready for prime time. If you know that false confessions are 12%, so in the UK, they had a problem with false confessions, and you know what they did? They changed their interview style. They stopped with the the there's a technique known that, you know, if you've watched CSI, you watch police law and order, you know the style that the police use. They try to break you down because they already think you're the guy. If you look at what happens in the UK, they ask open-ended questions and they've got their evidence. And if you deviate from the evidence, they'll still go, no, no, that can't be right because, but they're not trying to force you to confess. They're trying to figure out your story and then poke holes in it where appropriate. And that's called the peace technique. It's an acronym that has reduced false confessions in the UK. So the way we change asking questions can change the likelihood of a false confession. So these are the things that we try to do is to, and we try to do this. Sometimes you get somewhere by borrowing something from, you know, Detroit and bringing it to bear in Tucson, because Tucson might not know this new thing that Detroit's doing that's helping them, but they might have the same challenge. So we try to bring everybody together, ask what the problems are people are dealing with, and then look for data-driven solutions to elevate everybody and reduce that likelihood for error. And that's a you know, nobody's perfect. And by definition, we've already done that in a lot of ways. So now when a wrongful conviction happens, it's already escaped our safety mechanisms, and it's a new opportunity for learning.

Better Questions Reduce False Confessions

SPEAKER_00 24:07

Well, that's so interesting. The way we frame the question could just make such a major impact, even though one gathers feel the evidence, because you already said, and I just want to summarize this, correct me if I'm wrong here, but we did more of the adversary approach. We just think, okay, we got the guy, so all the questions are leaning towards, you know, accusation and just confirming an accusation, as opposed to open-ended, while you can get a more open-ended, leaving more flexibility, but sticking to the consistency of the evidence, which that's so wait a minute, that doesn't make sense because evidence suggests this otherwise. So those are two different approaches, um, of course, to to um justice, while the Americans are just more like, okay, we got the guy. So why you did this, blah, blah, blah. And then Wild versus what met well, you know, or we'll be more like open-ended question, um, why you commit this crime, something like this, and so what motivated you to do that, and then blah, blah, blah. And you know, that these are interesting. We we we we sometimes forget how important framing the question is. And sometimes I forget that myself when I get it done and over with. We reject the framing. That's so much thinking, so much nuance, who cares? Ah, my brain hurts. But it's so important how we frame the question because that could you know make us either deviate further from the truth or even get closer to the truth, just the way we frame it, and it could just, you know, and it could definitely move the direction of conversation. So just say, why is John looking at me like that? That's an I gotta figure out why he's looking at me like that. How am I looking at you? You know, no, I'm just obviously giving it as an example. More accusation phrase, why the heck he's looking at me like that? He wants a fight or something, as opposed to why he's looking at me. Maybe he's curious. One's more investigative, the other one's already judgment with an assumption, thinking that you want problems. You know, this it's probably not the best example, but one is definitely more investigative curious, and the other one is there's already a judgment accusation before you get to it.

Two Juries Two Opposite Verdicts

SPEAKER_01 26:15

And I think, you know, I so what I would say is the book that I wrote that you mentioned is about a guy named John Thompson. And John spent uh 18 years in prison in in uh Louisiana, 14 of them on death row at Angola. And one of the things that fascinated me about the case, this was sort of my introduction to the system making errors, because that was kind of what the way you described it. I was like, oh, they got the guy. You know, if you if I heard that somebody had been arrested, I was like, oh yeah, okay, good, they got the guy. I mean, anybody can get arrested. You can get arrested for anything. But that wasn't kind of how I thought about it. And when I look at the case, one of the things that struck me was the first jury that looked at John's case was, yeah, and the the jury's not, no, no evidence that they're particularly biased, right? They're just 12 people taken out of the population of New Orleans. 12 of them were absolutely convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that he was guilty. And then 18 years later, they got different information, but they were absolutely convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that he was innocent. I mean, they deliberated for 35 minutes in John's case, which is nothing. So, what is it that makes two different juries reach opposite conclusions? And it's a combination of how you're asking the questions and the information you have to make the decision. And so, you know, that the one thing that's kind of great about this field is when you play around with armed for convictions, it does give you a certain amount of intellectual humility. You know, it's like I don't know what I don't know. And I think for investigators and for prosecutors in particular, who don't have the benefit of being able really to talk to the defense or hear everything the defense lawyer has all the time, you know, they've got all these investigative powers, but it can be very easy to get confirmation biases, you know, pattern recognition, all sorts of things. And these are cases that may look like one thing, but actually turn out to be another. And so keeping that intellectual humility, I think, can be hard over the over time in the careers, but it's really important to try to keep as part of the system.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yep. You know, I even I do I the jury system, but you know, just like you said, they they we don't know their biases. Some of it could be obvious this day, especially the ones that are very open, but then the quiet ones, they make it through because they seem innocent, they seem fair-minded. Maybe they're sleeping, whatever. Some I've been to a few of them, but well, I only been to two. I didn't get picked for the other one because I acted crazy, pretendedly, that anything Alex Jones says is escape, um, which worked. But but the other, but and I didn't want to deal with it because I think they were very careless how they handled the process. I was looking at how they handled processes instead of just say, Oh, I want to I want to have jury duty experience. I already had that in my early adulthoods, and not that exciting. I don't know. Spoiler alert, not shocking for those of you who have done it. But man, the other one just said, Oh, yeah, I'm gonna investigate this case, I'm gonna do all this because I don't trust y'all, I don't trust anything. They let the alleged crook roam free in the hallways, which I find that pretty comfortable. And we got to reveal our names and everything. So the procedure was already a mess, and I just decided I'm gonna just get my way out of it. Yeah, so I think the procedure matters, how it's run matters, and how you pick your people matters, so how it's run. So this thing, we gotta go just beyond what kind of people that how the procedure matters. That's just my opinion, at least. When mine was a guy yelling at the mic. But, you know, I I like that. I like the example there. You got 12 people who are convinced beyond reasonable doubt, and of course, confirmation bias. That's a slippery slope that one, because I have felt for that. It's so hard to avoid because we just know pattern recognition, okay. If the person acts like a duck, talk like a duck, crack like a duck, it's a duck, right? While either, or if you want to think more critically, maybe it's just a person imitating a duck to avoid being caught and blending with the environment.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

Yeah, I mean, look, that and policing's a tough job, you know. I don't want to suggest for a second we come in and say, we know how tough this job is, we want to help you do it better. Sometimes that gets heard as you guys suck at this. And that's not generally what we're saying. What we're saying is the obligation to improve is different than saying you're bad to start with. But a lot of police officers, a lot of prosecutors care so much about the judgment and getting it right that it can be really hard to hear, hey, we think there's a way to make this better. And so, you know, like pick a Rory McElroy, right? That guy's best in the world at what he does. He's got a swing coach. You know, all these guys are, all these guys, Comey Bryant, you know, always bringing in people to get 1% better every day. And that's the kind of that's what we try to help instill culturally, because it is a really hard job for all the reasons you just said.

SPEAKER_00 31:03

Oh, yeah, no, absolutely. Look, I mean, I give very respect to law enforcement, you know. This podcast respects law enforcement. Let's say absolutely clear. You know, even if it gets wrong or something, it does respect that. It's a tough, it's a really tough job. Psychology, it's training all just by all aspects. Office job is not that draining psychologically. Police, hell yeah, it is very draining psychologically. Of course, mentally, spiritually, even physically sometimes. Yeah, it it's very it's very demanding. So I get great respect. The whole the whole system is that

Burnout Funding And System Trust

SPEAKER_00 31:40

way, though.

SPEAKER_01 31:40

Prosecutors that way. I just wrote an article for a magazine on public defenders and burnout and the you know, the sort of weight of feeling that the system is always weighted against your clients, that you're not going to get fair results, that your caseload is massive, that you're underfunded. I mean, these are problems throughout the system. I I gave a lecture to a group of high school kids a couple weeks ago. Penn has a summer camp for high schoolers. And a young woman came up to me after the class and said, Why don't we fund the criminal justice system? I said, Where do you go to high school? And she named a high school, public high school in North Philadelphia. I said, How is it? She said, old and broke. And I said, So if you're the city council and you got a dollar for the schools or a dollar for the public the criminal justice system, where do you put that dollar? I mean, these are really complex problems to solve. And we got to across the board, one of the benefits of sitting where I sit is I get to see really good, smart, thoughtful people throughout the system trying hard to create a system that we can, and you mentioned this at the very beginning, that we can have trust in, that we can trust in the in the process, the procedures, the actions, and the outcomes. And that's, you know, Republican or Democrat, then what we fight about is what should be a crime, not how are we handling the people who've broken the rules.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

Right. Yep, and that's when it gets lost for all that, you know, the right is being accused of being too harsh, and the left is being accused of being too soft. And, you know, and I mean that's just one very so simplified example, but you get what I'm saying? Sometimes if we oversimplify, yes, I get the nuances. You could you could talk crap about the nuances in the comment section. That's what the comment section is there for. You talk about the nuances. Oh, what about oh, what about this example? That's great. We we could do that. But look, me and we only got 24 hours a day. We sleep on some of them, and we gotta do adult things. So that's my nice way of saying. We ain't got time for that. I will have some, I will, I'll make some time for that. But you know, put those in the comment sections, wherever you, you know, whatever that we didn't thought of that you thought of, just put it down. Because you know, I don't I don't mind criticism, especially those that are constructive and helpful and specific. I'll just say, oh, you're stupid. Or I'm great. That's nice. Even empty compliments don't work. This podcast is great because of ABC and how you talk about this issue. Okay, I'll double down on that, as opposed to you know improving certain things. I'm not and I'm mentioning it this early because I think some of you drift off after a while. You know, improve you know, you know, your opinion does matter if you use it uh strategically. Let me just say it like that. If you're just gonna say you're dumb or I'm great, that's that's a waste. That's a waste, okay? So that's all I'm gonna say about that before I continue this conversation. Now, this has been great stuff I'm learning here because I like to learn. And since I'm a political buff, I do I won't I want to get as much versus many issues as I can, even though it's exhausting. Believe me, it is. Learn what the Republicans are saying, the left is saying, even what the center is saying, that's even extra exhausting. Because sometimes the center is the most boring part, you know, and I am in the center, ironically. I overall I'm mostly in the center because I said, okay, we can take the best of both ideas, and sometimes I lean a little to the right or a little to the left on some issues. It depends on the issues. But that's not, but I'm that's why I consider myself a political wild card, because I don't really find either box. I'm happy, I'm happy I've been that way since like 2016. Because I think both parties are equally crazy or dumb, especially if it comes to issues of immigration and freedom of speech. I don't trust either party with those two issues. Nope. We need a third way, a new way of how to do things. But okay, I broke my political promise right there as usual, and the fans love it or hate it, that you just gotta have to deal with that. That's my work. No, but I love but I love all of that because we are, despite the arguments and the challenges and the egos that's being challenged, we are still improving the you know, the criminal justice system, even though I I do feel full of the public defenders, especially, because they got jam-pack of cases, they're severely underfunded. The office, if you go to Salonia offices, it looks like you travel back to 1970. That's how a lot of their things are, and you you feel like you're back in time, you know. Poor AC, and then oh, even though AC, there you go. You won't go back to the good old days. I don't consider that good old days for millennials. I'm spoiled. I like my I like my little AC there. I would die, and especially all that dust. Oh, maybe skinny don't have an AC because maybe all that dust will go to your nostrils and probably kill you. I don't know. But that's the first world problems, first world problems. But I do feel for them. And some of the victims, too, especially those who don't have money, they're definitely challenged. I will say more than those. I mean, those were money or being challenged as well. But I think they got more leeway and opportunity, especially to pay for people because all this all of this stuff costs us money. You know, it costs money. You know, you think it's free. No, the the cost is coming from somewhere. There's no such thing as free lunch. I think it's free is coming out of somewhere. So that's all I'm gonna say about that. Go ahead if you want to chime before I ask the. No, I think that's I mean, I think that's all right.

SPEAKER_01 36:50

And I think that I think the the what we spend money on, you know, your budget reflects your values. And I think it's important to say that, you know, if we're gonna, if we're gonna take people's freedoms away, we should invest in making sure we get to the truth. And if we've made a mistake, one way of building trust into the system is to say, hey, we know we're not perfect, but we're gonna learn from our mistakes.

Certainty Beats Severity For Deterrence

SPEAKER_01 37:16

So you know, accountability is a big buzzword today. And I think unfortunately, accountability in the criminal justice system is used as a synonym for punishment. And and for me, so that the I I have a I have a very hardcore conservative friend guy I've been friends with for 40 years, and we go back and forth on the topic of punishment. And the data suggests that it's the certainty of punishment, not the severity of punishment, that makes a difference in deterrence. That if you it it's not, you know, if I say, hey, I'm gonna, if you get caught, I'm gonna punish you for 50 years, but you don't think you're gonna get caught, it's not gonna change your behavior. If I say when you get caught, which you will, you're gonna go away for a year, you're much less likely to do the thing knowing that you're gonna get caught and there's gonna be a sanction. On the other hand, an eye for an eye feels better. Like people don't necessarily want me to be talking about data. They're like, okay, pencil head, talk about something else because I know what just is. Just is that person hurt me or hurt our community, and now I want to hurt them. And the question in my mind is what's the most useful in reducing crime over time, even if it's counterintuitive? How do we have how do we have those conversations? And how do we let some things run and test? Because there was a big conversation during COVID about how crime and murders were going up. And since COVID, crime and murders have been going down. And that's true in sort of progressive jurisdictions and less progressive jurisdictions, but it can also, and this is why I think you and I are both feel the same way about immigration, neither party really wants to solve the immigration problem. It's useful for them to point to one another as being the enemy. And I think with violent crime, sometimes that's true too. It's useful to say, to use fear to stoke my base against the other side. And that's an easier political conversation to have than, well, okay, violent crime tends to tends to fall off a cliff after age 55. So do we really need to put a murderer in jail until they're 80? Even if what they did is horrible and they should absolutely be imprisoned, does it need, you know, like what's the most effective thing to do is not as easy a conversation to have as punish.

SPEAKER_00 39:35

Absolutely right. Yeah, we're gonna talk about the punishment, certainty. Some people even, and I like what you said, but certainty of punishment as a real deterrent. Not necessarily the severity. Okay, I think definitely the right, they think the more severe the better. Not just the right.

SPEAKER_01 39:52

I mean, we started with Clinton and and the and the way back saying mandatory minimums, three strikes, being I mean, this is a this is a bipartisan, this is an American issue, not a not a partisan issue. I think the question now is do we look at the data to try to solve that problem, or do we fall back on the fact that we're so pissed off at each other that we don't want to have a nuanced conversation because we've already dehumanized the conversation. Right. And and that's where I think data hopefully can help, but everybody has to want to look at the data. And if we don't agree on the data, the question we should ask is, well, how do we how do we find where we disagree and answer that question? And that's where we go next.

SPEAKER_00 40:37

Right, yeah, the Clintons, yeah, they Clintons did certainly did agree with me. Because not all Democrats were, you know, for criminal justice reform and all that. It was unison on that issue. That's true. Um, yeah, yeah. And but now, you know, especially the more progressive leading ones, they're definitely more, you know, leaning away from that. So we need restorative justice, and some even go as far as abolishing prisons, which I guess I don't agree with at all. Uh, but I do agree with, I just think, look, if the person robbed you know, five dollars worth of chips, I mean, do you think prisons really effective? I don't think so.

SPEAKER_01 41:14

Um, I mean, I I guess the way I think about that is what can we do to prevent you from committing fit future crimes and commit somebody else from copying you with that crime? And so it may be that putting somebody in prison for some period of time, you know, if you've knifed nine people and if I keep you out, you're gonna knife a tenth, I gotta have a place to put you for public safety. And it's useful for other people to see, oh, you know, John got caught. If I do this, I'm gonna get caught. I don't want to go to prison, so fine. So so there is some of that. But you're right, you know, does it make sense if I've if I've shoplifted and I'm 16 and I, you know, and I took, I don't know, 20 bucks worth of stuff. Is incarceration in a juvenile detention center, is that the level of accountability I have to have? Or is there something else I can do with that young person that's gonna that's gonna prevent that action going forward? And I don't pretend to know that those are easy in any scenario. You can give me about all sorts of things. One of the things with the criminal justice system is we kind of want it both ways. We want equality in terms of the sanction, we want justice in terms of equality of the sanction, but then we want justice in terms of like your position differently than I am, and you've got different reasons for doing things that I do, and we want justice around that as well. And there's tension in how we in how we do that. But I I just I question whether we're being thoughtful about it in the way you're describing.

SPEAKER_00 42:48

Right, true. And uh this is I'm gonna go a little outside of the box here. Maybe create more economic job opportunities, too. That definitely does reduce crime there. So, you know, go a little outside of that, you know. Data does point that out. I'm not surprised, I always, and I have said that numerous times. I don't care if it's I don't care what kind of job it is, as long as you know it that it's paying good. Well, they're all you're gonna have stress, so you know that's there's not much you can do about that. But how they handle stress, if it's someone's stress to the point that they're psychologically broken, then well, that's that's a whole nother issue. And that's where you get another crime thinking about maybe beat up the boss or whatever, you know. And then yes, I'm thinking this way because this is this is more of a criminal episode, okay. I have the right to think a little dark and cynical, okay? Let me just think let me just assume the worst of this hypothetical person. Or this person wants to rob the bank because oh, the job sucks. I rob five thousand dollars, the person gets caught. What's the acceptable consequence? What is the fair consequence for this person? I mean, that's something that I think people should have a good conversation with. Oh, I want to keep. He uh oh no, he shouldn't he shouldn't all be locked up because of I don't know, I could use him politically as a no, oh no, that one I'm not gonna say as well as I screw you. No, this is political.

Restorative Justice And Recidivism

SPEAKER_01 44:13

So let's define political though, because you know my community might feel very strongly that we should handle the person you just described in one way, and the town next door might feel very strongly that they should handle it another way. You know, that marijuana's been decriminalized, at least at the state level in Pennsylvania. Now, when I get on the subway and I go to my Sixers game to go watch LeBron James, the the the amount of secondhand smoke I'm inhaling on that on that subway is very different. And some people think that's a civil rights victory, and some people think it's just socially inconsiderate. What do we, you know? So we've got diverse communities, and we have to try to navigate that. And what I would say is in my mind, we want to trust that process, and we want that process to give people voice, and then we want our communities to define how we handle that, and then we want to learn from it. That's, you know, because I don't necessarily know where that line is for 50, like, you know, I know violent crime goes down for people older than 55. Fewer people recidivate after the age of 55 with something violent. That I know. Now the question is, how should I treat somebody who's 30, who's done a horrible thing, and we have to deal with it? And I want to do that thoughtfully, but that's going to be its own process and everybody's different. So for me, it's about gathering the stakeholders and having the community decide rather than getting to any specific result.

SPEAKER_00 45:38

That's a good point. Yeah, community input. Yeah, but you know, that's a good point. That's a very good point. So at least that's how thoughtful disagreement people, not just, oh, oh, this is a right-wing bigoted, you know, something like that's okay.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

And I think we can agree that we don't want people hurting other people in our communities. We don't want people taking other people's stuff, you know, and we do. And that's where it starts to get complicated. And restorative justice can actually be great for those conversations at a low level because the community can come together in a structured way and say, this is how we want to handle this going forward. And if the individual kind of accepts responsibility, understands more the harm they've caused, and they've built that tie with other people, you know, the more we have close relationships, the harder it is to commit crime. Not impossible, but part of the reason I think we saw so much more crime in COVID is that people were so distant from each other with shelter and place and stuff. We were losing some of the fabric of our communities. And so, you know, restorative justice is a great way to bring that back in certain circumstances.

SPEAKER_00 46:43

Yeah, no, and I agree. Like I said, like low-level crime, that one I'm admin about because I just don't I just don't think like a lot of the personal subjects for low could be, you know, uh effective. And I can speak for New York State. Sadly, some people do repeat crime, and I think the reason why they do it because they know they're gonna get out. It's gonna be very low of concept. Maybe maybe it's one of the few examples, maybe some severity may increase. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 47:12

That's a debate that these communities maybe we let you try restorative justice one second time, we do something worse. You know, we do something harsher. Because you're totally right. Recidivism is a big issue, and there are people who are doing these things over and over again, and we have to be responsive to that as well.

SPEAKER_00 47:28

Yeah, so that I can speak that confidently in New York State. I did look at some of the statistics, and some of us are disturbing. I mean, there are improvements. I don't want to be doing glue. There are improvements, but there's just certain repeat offenses that just keeps popping up and up, and that definitely needs to be addressed. And I and I'm not, and I'm definitely to not vote for getting rid of Rikers Island until you effectively address that issue. Then I would have been with the progressive. So, you know, but that's just my take. Rather you agree or disagree, there's a comment section right there. Elias is a genius, Elias is a moron, whatever. Just put it down in the comment section right there. Address your grievances to your digital therapist right there. So either way, it's engagement. Uh, I I ideally I will I would like more thoughtful engagement, disagreement allowed, of course. Um, because if you don't got all disagreement, this might as well be uh authoritarian hell-ho. And the conversation is dead. So, you know, we gotta have disagreements and all that. And yeah, and it's okay. Challenges can be a good thing. Challenge can be a good thing. That's how you get more involved, definitely wiser, so just talking to your own circle that thinks you're the next coming of Jesus. Probably a little dramatic, but they think you're great. That's my point. So that's all I'm gonna say about that. Um, we went through a lot of thoughtfulness and that. Look, follow John Harway. He has a website, um, johnholway.com. And it's spelled with a H-O, not with an A, okay? H O. O as an omnipotent, O as an O my God, okay? So you gotta get a sophisticated and a silly example. OMG, okay, not with an A. I know some of you may get that confused. It'll be in the show notes, episode description, whatever you call it. It's gonna be there as well. Fire, he's doing some good stuff. Come on now. He's make he's making criminal, you know, criminal conversations and justice very thoughtful, okay. That's all I want. Right. He agrees with me or not. I will say that I'll be an unexpected bonus. I put it like that. And that's okay, it doesn't need to happen. But the thing I would want is thoughtfulness, and this is definitely very thoughtful for sure. He's using data statistics, he's not pushing no far left. Okay, abolish all prisons, everybody out. Oh, you're not my I definitely not gonna agree to that. That's the uh no. He's definitely not preaching that kind of stuff, or or you know, or something like extreme right in Tennessee's already doing this, it's criminal to be homeless. I disagreed with that one for sure. I think that's way too harsh. You know, those people that are going through difficult times. Definitely something different needs to be done with that. Yeah, people just get locked up incarcerated just for being homeless. Yeah. Yeah, not very too too much accountability, if you want to call it that. Too much on incarceration right there. I think that's severe and definitely inappropriate, in my opinion. Something needs to be addressed. You shouldn't be homeless, but definitely put them in jail. Something needs something needs to be done. I don't know what that is, but see, that's a really good.

Homelessness Sidewalk Laws And Real Safety

SPEAKER_01 50:38

Um, it's a re it's a really tough one because you know, again, is prison helping that person to not be homeless when they get out. But also, so I I I lived for eight years in San Francisco, and San Francisco for a while had an ordinance. They passed an ordinance that said you couldn't sit on a city sidewalk. And and and I was pretty offended by that. And I talked to a friend of mine who lived in Haight Ashbury, and he said, I actually voted for that because what we're seeing is these really aggressive panhandlers block the entire sidewalk and basically won't let people walk through the sidewalk unless they give them some money, and the police had no authority to intervene. And so, for you know, for all of these scenarios, there are these sort of, well, but what about this? And lawyers love these hypotheticals because we get to play around in the details and all that. But from a real world perspective, I don't necessarily want this homeless person to go to jail, but I do want to be able to walk through my sidewalk without being accosted. And it doesn't seem like that should be that hard, but then we throw police in it, and the police are often just about like, I'm enforcing the law. Whereas the community is like, I want to be kept safe. And there's a gap between those two things where we often get into trouble, and now you start sending people that should or probably shouldn't be making my life difficult on the sidewalk, but we but the only remedy we have is like prison.

SPEAKER_00 52:02

Yeah, I mean, a lot talk, a lot to discuss, a lot to, you know, we gotta iron those details out for sure. It's not an easy conversation, it's definitely more complex one. Some of them are easy. Of course, a murderer, but that's a pretty easy one. But we gotta get it right. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, we gotta make sure we got the right person. Uh yeah, you know, and you know, and make sure, yeah, make sure we're not just doing that nonsense that I think on one, I think a few Texas counties that they did. I forget which one in particular, that they relied on one eyewitness that got it dead wrong. And that was enough to get that person locked up. I said, people get things wrong. That's gonna start thinking, you know, and sure, I could get something wrong. You know, I you know, the shadowy figure walked by, I just think it's John for some reason, maybe because I just talked to him that I didn't like the guy. So they go, that's my personal bias of not liking John. Maybe I want him locked up. Maybe, you know, maybe the eyewitness is petty. You gotta think about that too.

SPEAKER_01 53:02

You know, you're pretty careful walking around this afternoon, Liz. I'll tell you that right now.

SPEAKER_00 53:07

So, you know, no, but uh, you know, these are silly hypotheticals, but uh all of services though, you know, that's not good. That's not good methodology at all. So much flaws they gotta go through with that. And me, I I I even thought this is just me not even graduating middle school. I thought that was pretty stupid, you know, and how the heck she knows she got the right person. She's like, it was that person. I don't know, but hey, but I'm happy that we are actually making progress. So that's the right side of it. I mean, I'm just relying on just some person who don't know, or probably have a personal vendetta, or thinking to get rid of, you know, you know, achieving the air of personal revenge, you know, think something like that. So oh, I wrapped us up.

SPEAKER_01 53:54

No, this has been a lot of fun. I really appreciate your interest in the topic. I appreciate the opportunity to to speak with you and to hear from you and and hopefully your viewers in the comment section. And I want to come back for Elias Unleashed. I think I think we should do one of those.

SPEAKER_00 54:08

Oh, yeah, I'm definitely gonna I'm definitely gonna do those. And to trust that one, all I'm gonna say is you might may look at me very differently, some of you,

Follow Review And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_00 54:17

for sure. Because this is definitely more my bar, New York uncensored attitude. Definitely political, definitely politically incorrect, capitalized that one. And if you if you're too sensitive for that, you don't just don't go. And it's not about partisan either, because there's plenty of right-wingers that are woke and sensitive to get butthurt. Those things, not just the left. Yes, Israel and left, but it's both sides of all that, or too sensitive, and as we pretend to be freedom fighters, or especially with freedom of speech, and yet you've proven you have fallen short. So I don't trust either of you when it comes to freedom of speech. Once you get power, you want to take down the other side with it and just do some censorship and use the law, law fair, warfare, just to take the other side down. So I don't trust any of you on that. Um, you know, um what I yeah, what I do with John, that'll be definitely um next year, 2027. That'll be yeah, that'll be the um that's gonna be the paywall, people. You don't have to pay for that one because if I'm gonna be canceled at least, I need to mix up on money. Yeah, um, rumble's okay with it, maybe, but they all rumble got a pay thing now. So I'll give I'll definitely do, I'll definitely push Rumble a bit more on that because they're more freedom-esque. Even though it's a more right-leaning platform, I might disagree with some of their stuff politically, but hey, I gotta say they're kind of kind, they for the most part, I gotta say they're they're doing pretty good on that. With a few exceptions, of course. So all right, again, follow John Hallway, okay? Follow his stuff. He has some good stuff. If you watch his tech talks, get to know about him more in depth, go there. And then now for the true final part. If you enjoy this podcast, especially if you're reviewing an Apple podcast, give it five stars. Give a one reason why this episode is great. Not just say Elias is great. I hate empty compliments. I'll just ignore that. And people have done that and say, Oh, he's great. And if it's one to four stars, how can this episode improve? How can it improve it? Give at least one specific thing it needs to improve. Okay, at least try to do that. And I have those who gave one star and just didn't say anything. Great. I don't know what to do with that, but I received the shadowy one star.

SPEAKER_01 56:31

Can't reach all the people all the time, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:33

So that's just it's not the vast majority, it's only one reviewer that just didn't bother. Just boom, the shadowy one star. Finally got that honor. So great. Don't do that. Try not to do that either. Just give just give feedback. Okay, and then follow me on, of course, Facebook, YouTube, and Alpha Podcasts. Those are those are the sites I normally use if you want a definitely more faster interaction with with that out of the way. Whenever you listen to this podcast, you have a blessed day, afternoon, or night.