The School to Prison Pipeline with Katie Byrne

How might we redesign the juvenile justice system so it is antiracist, developmentally appropriate, and transformative? We spoke to Katie Byrne who works for the Department of Youth Services as part of the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI). JDAI has made significant progress in decreasing the number of youth in juvenile detention over the past 10 years, but when you break that down by race and ethnicity, some groups have decreased more than others.

Learn more about JDAI here.
Take a look at the Anne E. Casey Foundation
More on Bryan Stevenson.

Transcript for this episode

KATIE BYRNE: Re-imagining a system that works for everyone really requires everyone's participation in re-imagining that I think we often put ourselves in silos and say, Oh, these agencies that are in charge of these decisions, these systems will reimagine, this will reform this, but it would really require a groundswell of participation from community to reimagine what this particular system, the juvenile legal system could look like that would work for everybody.

 JOSHUA CROKE : Hey listeners! Welcome to episode 2 of Public Hearing, our podcast about systems and people using a community-centered mindset to fix the broken bits of them, which we know there are a lot of. Last week in episode one, we talked to Jennifer Davis Carey of the Worcester Education Collaborative about the landscape of public education and how so many of the systems that impact people’s lives “play out on the grounds of the public schools” (that’s her quote). Today, we’re focusing on the juvenile justice system and how we might address the challenges many youth face within it. 

Before we dive in, I am obsessed with this new-to-me concept of audio letters, and I’d love for our team at Public Hearing to hear more from you, our listeners, in this way. Simply use your Voice Memos app or whatever comes on your device and tell us your thoughts about an episode, share some of your expertise on some of our content, or ask a question you’d like to hear discussed on the show. Send audio letters to publichearing@actionbydesign.co — I can’t wait to here from you!

Also, for full transparency, our next guest is a client of mine — I’ve been working with her team to facilitate one of our Community Design Sprints — a way to bring together stakeholders to tackle community challenges, identify opportunities, and take action through prototyping and project design.

Okay, here we go! This is the Public Hearing Podcast.

JOSHUA CROKE: So let's introduce you to everybody. Yeah. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

KATIE BYRNE: Sure. my name is Katie Byrne. I am born and raised in Massachusetts; work in Massachusetts now. I started- really started this career path through a master's program at Clark University in Community Development and Planning. I was interested just on a personal basis there of, like, what would criminal justice reform look like? And I just kind of felt this, maybe pull toward becoming involved in that work. And through the work in the grad program, got more involved in that- saw what was happening locally and in a state level with juvenile legal reform, juvenile justice reform and started more actively pursuing that as a career path. And I work now in the Department of Youth Services, as part of the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative, it's a national initiative. We have a state wide, I guess chapter, they're not really called chapters, but a statewide initiative. And I work on the County level and on the state level kind of coordinating that effort.

JOSHUA CROKE: So what has been some of the focus of JDAI's work historically and how has that had what are some of the outcomes that you've seen from that work?

KATIE BYRNE): Historically- so JDAI- the way I like to describe it as it has this national the Annie E. Casey Foundation has the national kind of lead on this and 25, 30 years ago with overcrowded juvenile detention population. The foundation, we instituted a model for juvenile justice reform knowing that this, this trajectory of really over-incarceration and crowded detention units across the nation wasn't, was not what we wanted to be striving for as a society. And each state kind of through their own volition chose to adopt this model as part of their practice. So we've done, we've been doing this in Massachusetts for about 13 years or so. And we've seen through an effort, not just through DYS, but through all of these cross collaborative systems coming together a decrease in our juvenile detention population, drastically decrease something like 55% between a 10 year period.

KATIE BYRNE: And that is a national trend as well. We've seen this decrease in crime and detentions and commitments across the nation and that's certainly impacted Massachusetts. And so that's been one positive outcome of, of this work. And I think it's through pushing a philosophy of really positive youth development and that positive youth development philosophy wasn't easy to come by for a lot of folks kind of buy into it. But I think it's largely been now the way that we've, we're doing business within DYS and within a lot of the kind of partner agencies. So though I think those two kind of go hand in hand and the, maybe the third most noticeable outcome of our work has been a, the creation of alternatives. So 10 years ago, every young person who was detained was in one secure setting. So you could have a lower level person who has a lower level offense with somebody who has a higher level offense in the same, in the same facility. And we've elongated that continuum so young people who have lower level charges aren't intermingled with, with young people who have higher grade level charges or higher level charges. So that's been another positive outcome of, of our work.

JOSHUA CROKE : Great. And so one of the things that I want to talk about relative to this work, cause I know that JDAI does a lot of communication across different stakeholder groups. And so could you talk to me a little bit about the dynamics of relationship building between different departments, different organizations and different people within these systems that are impacting young people and how you kind of navigate the relationship side of this and how that how relationships really impact this work?

KATIE BYRNE: Yeah, I would say that's a great question. And I think this work is largely relational when we're thinking about progress and we're thinking about achieving the goals that we have as as as JDAI, I come back to the importance of building positive relationships with stakeholders and with other people who are engaged in this work. And I would say that's because this is really when we think of a system it's agencies or the way I would describe it in this case is agencies that are one piece of a larger decision making process. So a young person who is with us in DYS has gone through many other agency level decision makers, and that creates this system that's pretty hard to reform on its face because there are component parts of that that need to be kind of part of that, that process of envisioning what we would need to do better to meet the needs of young people.

 So the relational piece of it comes in when we're creating space for the folks who make decisions in probation and the trial court and the child welfare system that all have influenced over a young person's outcome. And really thinking about how are we creating a shared goal, a shared mission, and a shared vision with that. And it can become, should I say territorial maybe territorial, it can become maybe adversarial is the best word for that. If we think that, you know, if a young person is with us, but they really need to be with DCF or DCF thinks, "Okay", or the child welfare system has a young person and they're like, "this kid is really is a hard kid. They should be in DYS", and it creates a kind of this like us versus them thing. Or it's like that kid is just lost in the mix there at that point when we're arguing over where's the best place for him. So if we can get to a point where we're kind of thinking beyond these boundaries of like an institution and thinking, what do we actually want for this young person? What is, what are the goals and the things that we're striving for and what does this young person want for themselves beyond just like, where does this kid sleep? And that's important where the kid sleeps, but we get lost in that sometimes. And at the end of the day, the kid gets lost in that.

JOSHUA CROKE: Right. And I was going to ask like, what, at what level is the youth- are the youth engaged in the conversation about what's going on? Cause you know, even in our work together over these past few months, it's been looking at you know, myself becoming more educated in the system itself. And there are so many checkpoints and departments and different touch points that a young person seems to have within what's a very complex system for, for many reasons. But how has the youth voice and the family and the community voice centered in some of this work and some of these conversations?

KATIE BYRNE:It's something I asked myself recently on the daily, because currently it's there and I'm talking locally and kind of on the state level that they're not. And that's a huge problem and I don't want to speak for any other, I guess, faction of this work that puts the goal of justice reform at its core and also engaged, as you said, there are, there are agencies, there are places within the country who are doing that very well. So answering your question, getting to like our context in Massachusetts JDAI, we don't do that. And I think that is, that is a major problem because when you have a group of stakeholders who are very agency heavy in a room talking about what needs to happen without a balance of community voice, without a balance of youth voice, without a balance of family, voice, those segments of our population who are most affected by these decisions, we have a totally unbalanced out of whack kind of decision making process going on that we might think, Oh, we know because we've had X number of cases over the years and we can assume, and we can make decisions because we know what's best.

But I think we have to get out of that mindset of that. We know it's best just because we have experience making decisions and seeing families kind of come through our door and knowing this and knowing that. But, really at the end of the day, we don't have most of us around these tables don't have that lived experience or aren't affected negatively, or don't, aren't traumatized by these systems to know what would need to change. And often we don't push the envelope far enough because we don't have that balance in the room. So the envelope is kind of the boundaries aren't pushed as far as they can be as far as they should be. We're not challenged enough by that voice. So we're kind of just getting comfortable in these symbolic reforms. And we're not making changes that I think the community would be happy with actually.

JOSHUA CROKE: So I know your work and the work of JDAI centers, a lot around education as well, like educating people on the disparities of the system. Could you talk to us a little bit about what some of those disparities are?

KATIE BYRNE: When you say disparities, the way, you know, it shows up in our system is really racial and ethnic disparities. And this isn't something new. This isn't something that's just shown up. This is a problem that's persisted for centuries. And it's clearly not going away. And it is one of the principles of the work of JDAI, reducing racial and ethnic disparities. That is, I would say the hardest conversation to have and the hardest place to make progress. And there are a lot of different theories behind why that is and why we get stuck in that, but it is so hard to ignore it when you see how youth of color are impacted much more harshly by the system than white youth. And we, we know in Massachusetts over the last, I would say a 10 year period, not the last 10 years, but a period of like 2007 to 2016 or so that ten year chunk detention admissions reduced about, I think I said like 55% over that 10 year period for white youth that decrease was 70% for black youth it was a 53% decrease and for Hispanic youth, it was a 32% decrease.

So yes, our numbers have been decreasing at a positive percentage rate for all of those groups, except it's still disproportionate. And over that time we have reformed, we have thought about how we can do business differently. We have reduced the reliance on secure detention, but it has not impacted all racial and ethnic groups equally. And we see that youth of color Black and hispanic youth are five times more likely than white youth to be detained in Massachusetts. And that can be hard for people who we educate to actually realize, or I've heard time and time again. Wow. I didn't know that it was happening. I thought we were more progressive. I thought Massachusetts was ahead of the curve on these issues. But, we're not. And when you dig down into the data, you will see that we have a lot of work we need to do as a system and as agencies in that system to acknowledge that this is a problem and to name it and then to say, how do we reform? How do we, how do we turn the tide on this? And then the community voice is so important in that conversation.

JOSHUA CROKE: And you know, this- to me is such a glaring example as to how various systems need to be more closely working together to identify the root causes of these challenges, right? Like when you're talking about, you know, detention rates going down 70% for white kids, but 32% for Hispanic kids, we look at numbers that jump into my head for my work in the education space of, you know, in our Worcester Public School district right now we have a large majority of, out of school suspensions are Brown boys, right? It's kids in our school are being suspended at a much higher rate. And we know that the school to prison pipeline exists. And so we could almost, I imagine, layer the data of detention rates over suspension rates and see the trend lines cross. And, you know, this is one of the things that as we're talking about it, it's like we gotta call it out racism, right. And the impact of systemic racism. And so many people don't like to talk about racism and the people who majority don't like to talk about it, or the people that need to talk about it the most. So what are some of the other ways we see systemic racism at play in the juvenile justice system and how are we tackling that?

KATIE BYRNE: It rears its head and in every decision point that a young person goes through. So we see really from, I think you mentioned that the school piece of this where the school and the community are kind of like those systems, so to speak before any kind of involvement in what I'm talking about, kind of like the delinquency trajectory. So I would say first contact with police is kind of like what I would consider like the start of trajectory into potentially DYS, at least the courts. And you have that touch point of like police involvement before that, you know, the community and the school. And we know of the disproportionate suspension rates and expulsion rates and discipline rates in schools for kids of color. And that is the school to prison pipeline has been established and is probably the point that's lacking for us here is like that overlay of data. Like how do those, how does those data points overlay with our even detention DYS detention data points? And are there worse outcomes for young people who are suspended and what point in what suspension, and can we start to put some statistics behind this? Not that that would help validate that this is a problem. It is, and we know it might help give us some idea of like where the intervention points are. 

In the community, there is a, I mean, I would kind of consider like community trauma, one piece of this too, where that, where racism really shows up. And we see this in now and in really like our segregated communities- communities that have been disinvested in and that have been marginalized and that those like social determinants of health are not as easily accessible. And that's really not an individual problem.

That's kind of a more of a problem with access and with kind of the root causes of, of where criminality kind of can stem from. And when you have communities that are disinvested in and largely communities of color, racism is prevalent in that. And that kind of all manifests into what we see in the juvenile legal system at the point of kind of police contact over-policing of neighborhoods. You get into kind of that being reified when you get into the court system and you see a disproportionate number of Black and brown young people in the court system. And then you see in DYS a disproportionate number, so it builds on itself. And I think you can look at it through the lens of bias, everyone having bias of, you know, that what I would kind of consider something that I've learned from Bryan Stevenson, a civil rights lawyer who kind of calls this the "narrative of racial difference". Um and when we believe the narrative of racial difference, that bias is even stronger. And we start to draw conclusions about somebody's character based on their race, instead of seeing the more of the root causes of where is this coming from.

 JOSHUA CROKE : Josh jumping in here in the present because I want to really highlight what Katie is bringing up here. “The Narrative of Racial Difference” as she mentioned is talked about by civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson. During a November 2019 opening plenary of the Association of American Medical Colleges, he’s quotes saying, “I believe the true evil of American slavery was the narrative of racial difference, the myth that black people aren’t fully human, and because of that I don’t think slavery ended in 1865 — it just evolved.” He goes on to talk about how one can be a talented physician, leading researcher in their field, or a great nurse or social worker then says, “but if you’re black or brown, you will go places where you still have to navigate the presumption of dangerousness and guilt.” (AAMC)

KATIE BYRNE: And so we can see kind of questions pop up for practitioners and stakeholders in this system who buy into the narrative of racial difference, because we all kind of that's that's around us, it's surrounding us. And these practitioners kind of thinking that it's okay, like, yeah, it's okay. That there's, I don't know, wouldn't want to say, okay. But it's we would expect this is, I guess the kind of, some of the response we get is we would expect that we have more young people of color because that's where the crime is happening. And that's such a dangerous path to walk down, a dangerous narrative to start weaving, because then you see is it's okay that these communities are over policed because that's where the crime is happening, and it reinforces this narrative of racial difference to say that, oh, well, the crime is happening there because people of color live there. And that is just what we expect, but that's not in fact the case we see, I mean, it's in fact the case that there are, there is crime happening in those neighborhoods, but our response shouldn't be, oh, well, let's just overflow. Let's just police them. And then it's okay that they come down to the court system, that's neglecting larger systemic issues at play. And of course we know that in affluent communities of people of- white, young people, there's also crime happening there. People selling drugs, young people, selling drugs in school. And the response there is not the same as some, a young black kid selling drugs in a, in school. And we see even through some statistics that drug use for white young people can be higher than, than youth of color. So when we break down some of the data, we can see where maybe we've gone wrong in our thinking about racial and ethnic groups in the response to them.

JOSHUA CROKE: Yeah. Well, I mean, for anyone with some conservative white family, myself being one of them, we've heard the conversation of like, well, "look at the numbers", you know, I'm using air quotes, right? Of like, look at the numbers of more crime is happening in these populations. The more of this is happening, you know? Well, let's look at why is there a disproportionate amount of black and brown kids in detention and not white kids. Right. And it at surface level can allow people to justify their own biases, whether they acknowledge them or not because the watchful eye of government and police has been on nonwhite communities, you know? And so the other thing that I think is really powerful about this conversation is, you know, yes, where, where the eyes are. Right. I was having a conversation the other day relative to our Worcester Public Schools and out of the like 42 schools in our community seven, have we have five, have full time school resource officers, SROs in the schools. And they're the high schools. There's five of the high schools, not all the high schools, five of the high schools and two of the SROs go between elementary, middle schools. Okay. They kind of float around. And one of the justifications of someone in this conversation was, well, police are in schools to “prevent outside threats from occurring”. And you look at that argument and you say, okay, wait a minute. Then why aren't there police in every school? And why is it the school with this certain demographic majority? And I mean, Worcester has a lot of diversity. We have a hundred languages spoken, right? And like we're experiencing this in districts across the country, right? People making these same arguments as to like why police officers are here, what their function is and what their purpose is. We actually looked up what the job description of a school resource officer was, and we couldn't find one. And, you know, these are positions that are being approved by our school committee and by people in, in the city. And so it's asking that question of like, hmm, maybe this is not what is so, you know, advertised by the white majority council and school committee and families who, for some reason have a level of leadership and involvement, you know, in the decisions that are made for our youth and for our kids. The other piece that you and I have talked about in the past that is really fascinating to me is, is as you work with different agencies and different community organizations, you ask the question of "what is the purpose of detention". And I'm interested to hear some of the different responses that you get to that. Cause I think that's a great question when we're talking about systems change and the interconnectivity between systems, we have like juvenile justice where, you know, at the face, a lot of people are like, well, it's handling kids with challenges or are committing crime. So how do we solve—you know, of course it's about detention, but I want to get deeper into that and like really talk about what is the purpose of detention and what you've heard from different partners or players that you've had conversations with about that

KATIE BYRNE: Sure and I'll start by saying, there's a statutory purpose to detention in Massachusetts. It's on, anyone can really kind of look, look that up and it's a long statute, but essentially it it's, it's favorable to youth, to young people who have come in contact with the courts. And it really says, you know, risk of flight. Like if you're at risk of not returning to court then detention is a plausible option. There are other, other kind of considerations when we think about safety—risk to the community or dangerousness that requires another hearing. But at its core, it's really keeping that young person in a place where they would be where they would return to court. That's it, that's the Bail Statute at, at its core. And what we see, how we see that play out you know, it was kind of interesting because young people, unlike adults don't have custody really of themselves, or they don't have independence in the way that an adult would. And so there's always another person or another entity that needs to be responsible for that youth. And what we see is kind of young people being impacted by that external decision maker, whether it be their, their parents, their family, the unit, their community, another system, like a child welfare system. And so when we think about like what the purpose is, is, is of detention, we get a range of responses really based in that the person who was answering kind of their role, what they've seen, what they, and really their, their opinion of it, it's really, you know, you never get somebody really referencing that bail statute. Sometimes I would say all people kind of know what that is and, and, and, and really do show deference to it. But at the same time, there are kind of proxies that, that are used to like maybe this young person won't return because their family unit isn't there's transportation issues, or there are there's a question of like where this young person is going to sleep.

And so if that's on my mind, cause I'm making a decision, I'm like, well, if I can ensure the safe return- and maybe it's, you know, it's really like a kind of paternalistic view that the court takes of, like, "I need to keep this young person safe". And that's definitely one response we hear is like, I need to keep this young person safe. And it's a very legitimate one because if I have, if I'm making a decision and I see that there's potential for a young person being unsafe to themselves, either, you know, through self harm or you know, sexual exploitation or something like that, or being- that wouldn't be something that I would do to myself, but something that I'm involved with in the community that's potentially unsafe. Then that's a reason sometimes for like, Oh, I like there's no other place. There's no other alternative here. So sometimes those external issues get the negatively consequenced on that young person and detention becomes that only option because there's not another place to keep the young person safe. So safety is a big role for that detention plays, keeping a young person safe. Sometimes it's, you know, the old school thinking is like teaching the young person a lesson that still comes into play. But I would say there's some time with this, you know, philosophy of positive youth development that's been ingrained in a lot of our thinking over the years and this move to really like reduce the reliance on detention since it's been this decade long quest, I think there's some peer pressure that comes into play with that. Like, Ooh, if I say teach him a lesson, like three people are going to be like, Oh no, that's, we don't do that anymore. So I think that there's a little bit of that happening, but there's still, I would say in some cases like this tendency to go there, especially if there's a history with this young person and they might have had chances on probation or chances in this or that, and they just haven't been successful. There's a tendency to kind of blame that person and say, well, now we're going to teach you a lesson in detention as the option- the only option here sometimes I would say even I've heard parents will take that line of thinking to like teach my young, my kid, a lesson. So there's education there too. Like there's negative consequences of this young person being in detention and being removed from their community.

JOSHUA CROKE: Right. Well, and they get pulled out of school. They are, you know, there are so many different impacts there. And then as soon as you get any type of record, right, the likelihood of being re-criminalized in your future is heightened. Correct?

KATIE BYRNE: Yeah. Yeah there have been some, I would say one, I don't want to get too kind of academic, but there's one study that is referenced in some of our education that we do. It was a Montreal- it was based in Montreal longitudinal study of a few thousand young people who had had one detention. And through that analysis, those young people were seven times more likely to be involved in the adult system. And so there's, there's some academic studies that try to suss that out. Like what is the likelihood that there's more negative consequences, but I think like we can also think beyond just academic studies of this and just kind of understand that the institutional nature of these systems is not beneficial for young people. Like we can just know that like some, I think there's this desire to have, like, let's just show this through data that like one- this is bad for kids.

Like we know it's bad for kids like taking a young person out of their community, out of those supports, putting them in an institutional setting, even if it's for their own safety, it's still like, there's still chaos happening in that community that we're not addressing. And that young person is going back. So that's, there's nothing good about that. And I don't want to undermine the, I guess the, the people who work in these systems who have the best of intentions and do very good work with young people. So it's not about them. It's about the nature of how the system is built and that we're not actually addressing root causes through our, our solution.

JOSHUA CROKE: And it's, it's interesting because it's like goes back to that kind of surface level of the data conversation, which can be like, Oh, well, you know, if all of these young people who had one detention are seven times likelier to be involved when they're older, that means we got them, we found the, you found the people that are the challenges in, in our society. And that is not looking at all of the associated information as to the who, what, when, where, why, and how.

KATIE BYRNE: And I think we can get lost in that data too, because people with the most, the most acuity for data and analysis will pick apart that even if you show that to them and it's like, okay, well, what's the control and how you're doing this. And well, what does that actually mean? How do you control? Like if someone's not in detention, then they're just a different, there's not apples to apples there, so you can pull that apart. So I don't always think that the data is the best way in, even though it feels like it might be, I think, appealing to other facets of, of this problem through like looking at what we would to envision for a community. What does community health look like? How do we increase social determinants of health so that there isn't community strife and looking at that instead of like, Oh, let's just look at the data to see how bad this is.

JOSHUA CROKE: Something that you've said to me that really stuck with me is like place-based reform versus people-based reform. Could you talk to us about that?

KATIE BYRNE: Sure. And I think it probably kind of gets to that issue that we were just talking about too. And I would say, you know, in our current system we focus the way I would frame it, like focusing on like people based reforms. So we tend to individualize the problems. We tend to put a lot of responsibility on, on young people for their behavior. We tend to kind of fund programs and fund initiatives that focus on like getting a person to a job, to have an education, to kind of be responsible for the things that we want them that we think make a good citizen. And those aren't unworthy tasks. That's, you know, we, we, there's a good argument for how jobs and education. I mean that those are things we would, we would strive for. But also puts all, all of the responsibility on that young person to do that thing that we're asking of them, because we think that's going to kind of create this like economic actor, so to speak in our system that we want.

JOSHUA CROKE: Well, and then when you add the factor of race and you look at the challenges of, you know, employment still in this country of, you know, all those things that we're trying to connect young people with jobs, et cetera, et cetera. And you factor in the fact that we still live in a system very strongly governed by racist, overtones, undertones, and everything else in between that I'm sure presents an additional challenge.

KATIE BYRNE: Yeah, it definitely does. And I think the people based reform is the easiest way to garner support for public funding or funding going to kind of like social programs. When you still through that funding like individualize and put the responsibility on individuals to kind of pull themselves up by their bootstraps, like that kind of trope that we hear that is kind of racist, racist at its core. And we neglect to look at how the funding could support places and could support place-based reform and not fall into, you know, what I would consider like that neo-liberalism of individual accountability or individual production. And we think about this funding going toward communities and going to our places that increased social determinants of health, like healthcare and, you know, education, that's not like you should get a GED, but like how do we fund public schools properly or access to positive supports in the neighborhood and just economic context. So things that would support people in in their own wellbeing.

JOSHUA CROKE: Right. Absolutely. So since we're asking hard questions here and, you know, systems change, work is complex, do we need to completely abolish and reimagine juvenile justice or is reform enough.

KATIE BYRNE: Personally? Yeah, we need to, we need to abolish and re-imagine juvenile justice. There's this theory of transformation that speaks to kind of this idea and these four R's that we can see transformation through and there Reform Resist Reimagine and Recreate. And those four R's are interesting to think about in terms of this work, because we're kind of stuck in this reform mindset where you're really working within the system and changing things within the system, but that really doesn't get us to where we need to be. And if we see this work fundamentally through the lens of racial equity and really liberation reforms within the system are not enough. And when we think about resist, that's kind of like, where do we need the community voice to come in and resist resist some of these structures. And, and not that they're not, but like in this work, in this specific JDAI work some of the reforms that are proposed because that kind of principle says in power concedes nothing without demand, and I can demand it, other actors within systems can demand it, but we're really not getting anywhere. If there's not a public uprising to demand racial equity and the other two, Reimagine, Recreate, I think where we need to be as, as a system how do we reimagine what this is? What, what our systems look like and how do we actually recreate something that works for everybody. And I would kind of look back to, to think about our reforms that we've made and they have been largely positive, but there's, you know, in, in thinking of like this abolitionist movement of that would really fall into the reimagined and recreate lens there's this phrase of like, we, if we're doing reform, we should do, we should strive to have non reformist reforms. And I would credit Merriam Kaaba with that, who is an abolitionist activist, who I've learned a bit from about like what that movement actually looks like.

And non reformist reforms are things that get us to a place eventually of liberation. Reformist reforms are like, kind of like, you know, what we're going to do is elongate our continuum and say, we're still going to kind of sustain this structure except we'll reform it. So young people with lower level charges aren't with the higher level charges, but they're just, you know, in another place, well, that actually really isn't doing anything to liberate ourselves and to break down the oppressive structures in our society that are keeping kind of this maintenance of power. So thinking about it in that way, when we go forward in this work, if we're doing reforms, I believe they must be in the lens of non reformist kind of structure. So we're able to move to a place where we can be reimaginative and, and recreate the systems that currently affect us.

JOSHUA CROKE: Right. And we're working on a project together right now that is putting a survey out to the community to really try and tap into what general community perceptions of justice are. Right? And one of the things that I think stand out really strongly in the, in the work is asking people to consider an antiracist approach to re-imagining this system, asking people to consider a developmentally appropriate, you know, approach to this reimagination, and also asking people to consider antiracism, developmentally appropriate, and restorative justice lens on this work. 

What do you feel some of the responses might be when we're asking people about justice and their perceptions of it, and we're asking it in the way of how would you describe justice to an eighth grader, right? Because from this conversation, we've, we've kind of determined the importance of engaging young people and their families in the process. Like if we are, for all intents and purposes, incarcerating people in the eighth grade, how much of that process should they know about and understand, I would argue the whole thing. Right? But, so how might people talk about justice in a way that is understood by younger, younger kids impacted by this system?

KATIE BYRNE: I think we need be educated by young people about what justice is. I want to say that we can get there, but it's so hard for me to see currently, like how we could become that humble as a system to say, you tell us what you need and we're not going to make any assumptions. And I wanna, I want that to be part of this like, how do we reimagine what justice is? When we think about a young person's understanding of the current system, it almost feels like purposefully chaotic and purposefully complex, and I don't know what the reason for that is, but when we ask families, you know, "did you understand what was happening?" I mean, no one has said, "Oh, exactly. I knew exactly what was happening". Somebody explained to me, you know, fully, actually I heard one per one young person say there was a lawyer who stood out to him because he explained to his mother everything that was happening to his brother's case. And like, to him, that was amazing because no one else had taken the time to say, this is what's happening, these are the steps we're going through, this is why, this is why, this is why. Until this one lawyer did that. And that is rare. That is something we don't see. And I think that's necessary in our current structure to ensure that like young people and families going through this system, understand why, and are able to ask questions and are able to actually challenge it. And I think we need to get to a point where we're being educated by them about what justice is.

JOSHUA CROKE: I loved talking to Katie and that last quote from her was totally stellar. After we wrapped up the like “official” interview we kept chatting and I just had to feature this. Partially because I love this next idea (let me know if your org wants to do something like this) and there’s some great, additional, fire comments from Katie. 

JOSHUA CROKE: I'd be really interested to see what an outcome of a, let's bring a bunch of young people, you know, eighth to 12th grade together for a day long summit facilitated by them and have them build a justice system. Yeah. And see what would come out of that. That'd be a really fascinating exercise.

KATIE BYRNE: Yeah, exactly. That, and I think, you know, when I was what I was thinking, the train of thought I was kind of trying to explore earlier is there's also this flip side that I think kind of turns people off from thinking that self determination and that like, we should get our, get our information from young people. We have one debate about adolescent brain development, and we want to have a developmentally appropriate system knowing that like young people don't, you know, we know this now, like frontal lobes, aren't developed you know, foresight and future planning and like impulse control aren't fully developed in young people. And so if we're saying on one hand, we want to take our direction from young people. And on the other hand, we're saying but you know, maybe you don't have a fully functioning brain to like, tell us exactly what you need.

KATIE BYRNE: Like, how do you balance that? But I think it's beyond that, like, that's, that's too simplistic of an analysis of this. It's like, really exactly what you said, like how, when we think about re-imagining these systems, that's the conversation we want to be having. It's not like, just in the moment, what do you want? Like, yeah. That's always going to kind of create this debate of like, well, why would I, why would I listen to this young person telling me that what they want is like to live in this place? That's like, isn't right for them, but they're like, okay. Yeah. Maybe we should be listening to the young person. More like, understanding why that's the case for them and really deferring to them and what their wishes are, but like bigger than that. So we don't get lost in this debate of like, well, is that good for them? Or is that not like, let's think about how we're using the knowledge base and this like really keenness for justice that young people have to help us reimagine what the system looks like. So we don't get into those debates of like, Hmm, do I listen to them or do I not like, well, that's not a good debate to be having,

JOSHUA CROKE: Right. I have this conversation with people about public participation in local government all the time, right? It's like, we've created this system where you get your two minutes to talk at a city council meeting, and then they say, thank you, sit down. And there's no back and forth. There's no engagement. Other than like someone getting to a point where they have to frustratingly voice their concerns in front of a forum of a lot of people, which is inaccessible. It's horrible for people with any type of speaking or social anxiety to get up and like express something that should be able to be addressed in a much more comfortable and, you know, intentional conversation. And so, you know, I started my work in hosting community think tanks, just because I had started a nonprofit organization trying to strengthen the Worcester community. Right. And so I said, I'm relatively new to the Worcester community. I was educated here. I am now a small business owner here, but I've only been here for a little bit about, you know, a small amount of time. I am a white person. I am a queer person. There are these different factors of my identity that intersect with, and don't intersect with many other people here. Right. And so it's always made sense because I'm a design thinking facilitator, right? To bring people into the conversation. And it's amazing to me when you ask someone what their challenges are, and then you ask them what their solution is, how much more constructive the conversation becomes. And so that's, you know, what motivates me to do this work. And I think, you know, as we continue this conversation of justice and reform and systems change or reimagination completely I'm glad to hear more people are out there in the world, working on community-centered, work like this and, and elevating those voices. 

End Credits

Thanks for listening to Public Hearing. I’m Joshua Croke—you can follow me on Twitter @JoshuaCroke (c-r-o-k-e). Our Creative Producer is Myka Papetti, our Audio Producer is Giuliano D’Orazio who also did our awesome show music—check him out on IG @musicbygiuliano. Special thanks to Wyle Schumaker, our stellar summer intern from Babson College! Public Hearing is created by Action! by Design. Action! by Design is a community design and innovation studio that helps organizations tackle systems change through facilitation, community design sprints, and coalition building. Learn more at actionbydesign.co and follow @ActionDesignCo on Instagram and Twitter to follow Public Hearing and for more community-centered projects.

If you liked the show, the best way to keep it moving is to share it with your friends and coworkers and rate and leave a review where you can. If you share about the show and tag @ActionDesignCo, we very well may send you a little something :) 

Oh, and also, don’t forget to send us an audio note to publichearing@actionbydesign.co! Looking forward to hearing from you.