- (female announcer)   Production funding   for Behind the Headlines   is made possible in part by   the WKNO Production Fund,   the WKNO Endowment Fund,   and by viewers   like you, thank you.

- Another look at crime and criminal justice, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by Josh Spickler, Executive Director of Just City, thanks for being here again.

- Thanks for having me, Eric.

- We'll talk about crime, criminal justice.

I mean, in some ways it's an extension of a series of shows we did through the fall.

We had a Floyd Bonner, the sheriff on, Amy Weirich, District Attorney, Jim Strickland, who the Mayor of Memphis.

And, we probably... ninety percent of the time we talked about crime, and crime fighting, and policing, and so on.

We talked a lot with Mayor Harris, right before the holidays, about these kind of issues, cause the county has a big role and we are trying to get the new police chief on, Chief Davis.

And, we've also, at Daily Memphian, done a series on it... We've been more focused on crime and that all that is the backdrop of a huge increase nationally and locally in violent crime, particularly, juvenile crime, particularly.

And, I think it's fair to say very sadly.

You all, Josh, you've been on the show before, but I'm wondering actually in case people don't know what you all do, I was gonna just summarize your... read a bit from your mission statement at Just City, which is "To advance policies and programs "that strengthen the right to counsel "and mitigate the damage caused to families and neighborhoods "as a result of contact with the criminal justice system, "to be a powerful, independent voice "to individuals, children, and families, "to advocate for strong, "consistent adult and children's rights to counsel, "and to accelerate community-driven solutions to the problems presented by the criminal justice system."

Fair summary of what y'all do?

- Yeah, we've restated our mission since then, to be a lot shorter and more concise.

But, yeah, that's...

I mean, that's it.

We want to make a smaller, fair, more humane criminal legal system that protects us all and is fair to everyone.

- When...

Does that change or does it... are you reinforced in that mission when we, as Bill Dries noted last week on the show, we hit a record number of homicides in 2020 and then broke it in 2021.

I mean, it's... people are, I think anxious.

I think some people are scared.

I think there's a...

There's this increase in violent crime, the kind of reckless driving, and all this is happening everywhere.

I mean, I think Memphis, I've said this before, but I'll say it again, Memphis started the higher level, and so Memphis' increases, that it feels that much bigger, but I... Everyone I know all across the country is experiencing some version of this in the city and the facts bear it out.

Does that sort of visceral increase in violent crime, and what feels like an increase...

Feels like, keyword, it feels like an increase in random crime, change how you guys approach things?

- I don't think it does.

I mean, I think it's important to make a distinction between where most of our program focuses at Just City, and that is on the vast swath of this system that is not about violent crime, right?

We are concerned about how we respond to this uptick in violent crime, of course, and we have thoughts and ideas about how that should work, and they are related to the other work we're doing.

But, most of the work we're doing at Just City is about the churn of this criminal legal system.

It's about the non-violent offenses that make up the vast majority of people who enter and exit this system.

And, so our work continues and we, of course, doubled down with COVID, because the jail, in particular, is a very dangerous place to be in a time of a pandemic like this.

And, so, we paid bail for more people than we ever have last year, almost twice as many as the year before.

So, our work is, we believe, as critical as ever, and it's related to the solutions that we believe are out there for us to respond to this violent crime problem we have right now.

- I will do a poor summary of some of the themes.

And, you and I have talked, and I think you saw many, many, if not all, the shows that we did on criminal justice issues and so on.

The themes that you hear across the board from the people we've had so far on are, we need more police, we need better laws from the State, because the State sets a lot of the laws, and guidelines, and so on, that whether it's the DA, or the police, that they have to follow, that gun... the availability of guns, and this was people on the left, and right, and middle, saying, it's just too easy to get a gun.

And, the legislature's got to roll some of that back if they possibly can, and we need better technology to monitor, and catch people, and so on.

Do you disagree with any and all of that or your take on those strategies that you've heard those in charge of law enforcement in criminal justice talking about?

- I don't disagree with too much of it actually.

I mean, I think it's important to step back and talk about the things that have gotten us to this, these two years in a row of... For homicides, for example, record breaking numbers, right?

And, the pandemic played a big role, right?

As a community, as a city, urban life is all about being able to live with and around other people.

And, when we withdraw from that, there's a fertile ground for violent crime, right?

And, that's everything that happened over the last two years, our library shut down, our schools shut down, a lot of other public services were much more difficult to access.

You mentioned guns.

Tennessee is one of the easiest states in the country to possess guns.

We know that gun possession nationwide skyrocketed over the last two years, that guns are so readily available.

And, then add on top of that, you've got this sort of distrust, this disconnect between the communities in this city where most violent crime is occurring, where most victims are, and the police department tasked with solving those crimes, and protecting those communities.

So, those three things just are a recipe for disaster.

And, we have disaster right now, and there's no doubt that police officers can respond to violent crime, and should respond to violent crime.

Victims that we've had more than ever, we have more victims than ever, and I know that's an important part of this conversation, need that, but at what cost, right?

We've been policing in the same way in this city for decades.

And, the costs of that are, again, back to Just City, the focus of most of our programs, right?

The low-level, non-violent offenders who sit in that jail away from their families, away from their jobs, away from their classrooms, for weeks at a time.

And, that just perpetuates this cycle.

- Costs, I assume you mean, from previous conversations, both the financial cost, but the human cost, - The human cost.

- The opportunity costs, the-- - Of having another generation of young men who feel constantly policed, who don't feel safe in their own neighborhoods, right?

Because of, not just violence from other members of the community, but violence from the police department, Not that every police officer's out there knocking heads, but police have a very specific role to play in a civilized society, and it depends on the threat of violence.

I mean, if you've ever watched someone be handcuffed, I mean, that is a violent act.

I mean, we're not talking fisticuffs and batons on the head, but like the act of putting someone in a police car is a violent act in some ways, and so you've got another generation of young men, particularly, who... do not want to participate in that, because they have not been invested in, they do not have the opportunity, they do not have the resources that we are providing other parts of this community, and that disconnect is driving so much of this perpetuation in violent crime.

- The low-level offenses, and I think we've talked about before, but it bears repeating, a lot of people look at that and say, well, it's a low-level offense, but we wanna... We wanna intercept, intercede, now at a low level offense before that person becomes a more violent offender, a more serious felon.

So, that that cycle, people will make the argument, is we want to intercede now, and that's intentional to show there are ramifications for bad acts, even if a lower-level, non-violent offense, so that somebody learns not to go farther down the road.

- I think we have to stop talking about that intercession and that intervention in terms of simply the criminal legal system, right?

There is a almost limitless number of solutions to this problem, right?

If you, for...

I'm thinking about this question, Eric, on the way on the way here, and last time I drove down to FedExForum, I drove down Vance Avenue, and I passed a big, huge lot where a middle school used to be, right?

And, I passed countless other buildings that used to have businesses.

And, I think about that neighborhood, and the people who live there, and the vacuum that that created, right?

Every day, when Vance Middle School was open, teachers, educators, janitors drove to that spot, and worked, and talked to children, and cared for children.

It's their job.

And, that's gone, it's completely gone.

They stopped at the corner market down at Danny Thomas and maybe got a cup of coffee on the way home.

They don't go there anymore.

It just creates, this disinvestment, creates a vacuum that is filled, especially in a time of pandemic where we're all isolated, of violence.

And, so, the solutions that you're talking about, the interventions that you're talking about, are not law enforcement-based.

They're not punishment-based.

They can't be, it's not sustainable.

It may work in the short term, but the sustainable solutions we need to this crime epidemic are investments in the community, schools, I mean, MLG&W.

Good lighting has shown to reduce crime, right?

It's a Medicaid expansion, healthcare, healthy people reduce crime, nutrition, Kroger, right?

This is a Kroger problem.

It's a library problem.

It's computer, it's an internet access problem.

It's everything all at once.

- I don't think that any one of the people I've mentioned who've been on the show would disagree with that.

I mean, Amy Weirich talks, and you've butted heads with DA Weirich.

I mean, you have, and that's fine.

I mean, and... she talks about other investment, other opportunities, Mayor Strickland talks about it all the time.

"We have to be investing.

We have to be investing."

We have to do all these things that we need to do.

Everyone talks about that, but then you've got the issue of somebody who was driving a hundred miles an hour down the road yesterday, and the investment didn't happen maybe five years ago.

So, what do you do about that person who's driving a hundred miles an hour, recklessly, down the road?

What do you do?

And, I'm just staying away from the violent crime, but... - Certainly, we can talk about that too, because this is not okay, right?

I have children who drive in this community, and I don't want that either.

And, accountability is a very, very important part of this system and should be.

And, that person who drives 100 miles per hour and puts us all at risk should be held accountable.

But, to say that our state laws are weak, and to say that there's a revolving door at the jail that allows-- - Which Mayor Strickland has said, and that DA Weirich kept saying.

Keep going.

- Is not factual, right?

Just City has years now of data, that show that that is just not what's happening, right?

There are people who have been in that jail for four years, five years, six years, seven years, I heard from a man not long ago.

So, it is far from a revolving door.

If there's a revolving door there, it's from the folks who are charged with these low-level offenses saddled with court debt and a conviction, and then released back into our communities with absolutely no opportunity.

There is not a revolving door.

- In the sense that the violent criminals, people accused of violent crimes are staying in 201 Poplar?

- Most of the time, the vast majority of the time, and folks who want to say, who say that the the laws are weak and this is a revolving door are pointing to a very small handful of cases where something has gone wrong, right?

And, that's a problem.

And, there's no...

But, I would say that points to this... the function of money in this system, right?

We have a system that keeps people in jail only because they don't have money, right?

Not for the reason-- - You're talking about bail.

- Yeah, I'm talking about money bail.

Money bail is the reason that the jail has the people in it that it has in it, or the people who are out who are out, and the people who have gotten out and done these things in these anecdotal stories that we're told, paid bail, right?

Because, they had money.

That had nothing to do with their risk to the community that ended up turning tragic.

- In those circumstances, 'cause they...

I mean, DA Weirich points to those.

I mean, lots of... Mayor Strickland points to those.

Should the bail have been higher then, or nonexistent for repeat violent offenders, because there are repeat violent offenders who do go through a revolving door.

Now, that maybe that may be a very small number, but doesn't that, nonetheless, point to a broken system that a repeated violent offender would be so easily, and so often released?

- Right, we need to strip wealth out of this equation completely, right?

It drives the equation right now.

It is the primary factor to determine who's in that jail and who's not, is wealth.

Seventy-five percent of the folks in there, or 75% of the folks we arrest, get a bail set.

And, so wealth is the immediate factor to determine whether they get out or stay in.

What we say is the important thing, is the risk of this community, and the risk that they won't come to court, right?

Money has nothing to do with those things.

- So, how do we change that?

- So, we get money out of there.

And, this is the letter that we sent to Shelby County recently with the ACLU and some other partners that said, this is not constitutional, right?

There needs to be a system that keeps the community safe, that keeps victims who are always... we should be concerned about, safe, by knowing that if there's someone who's been identified as a risk, and we have tools to do that, then they're not going to be right back out on the street, if they're charged with a violent offense, if they don't need to be.

Right now, many, many people can come out on the streets safely, who we... you and others might not believe can, but there is data to suggest that we can safely release people to then come back to court and answer to the charges against them.

And, they won't commit further acts.

They won't be charged with further acts while they're waiting.

That can happen and does happen in a lot of communities.

And, it has nothing to do with money.

It has to do with our ability and our willingness to assess the true risk of them not coming back to court and the risk that they may or may not have on this community.

- And, are those rules set locally or are they set by the state or is it combination?

- It's a combination.

I mean, the state law is very clear about when money bail should be set, and it's a last resort, and you wouldn't think it.

Now, if you look at the data in the Shelby County Jail, it's a first response to nearly, well, like I said, seventy-five percent of the people who are brought into that jail are given a bail.

State law says that should be the last thing we consider.

There are other mechanisms for release in the state law already, right?

The state law is okay, honestly, on this.

We're not following it.

We're going to money bail first.

And, so it's much more of a local solution than it is a state solution.

- Let's shift.

Are you gonna... We're taping this a week ago today that this is on January 6th, we taped it.

So, in case anything happened, it just...

I should note that.

You wrote that letter, are you going to sue?

I mean, the County, you're gonna sue the jail?

Are you in that process?

- We sent the County what's called a demand letter that said, here are the facts of the situation in Shelby County with regard to jail and pretrial detention.

And, we believe it's unconstitutional.

Here are the reasons we think that.

Here are other cases that have gone our way in other communities in this state.

We've sent that letter.

And, we've said, please, let's talk about solutions though.

Let's not take this to federal court.

We sent that letter a little more than a month ago now, and are in talks with the County to sit down and discuss this.

So, we are not going to file a lawsuit anytime soon, I hope.

And, maybe, and I hope never, I hope we can come together and talk about the things that are on the table, accessible to us, right now, today, in Shelby County, to change the way we use our jail.

- And, before I move on, to clarify, that is a letter to county government, or that is a letter to the District Attorney's Office, or that is... who?

- I think that's part of the problem, yeah.

- I think it is, but, okay.

So, who is... who are you talking to?

- Yeah, there are a lot of actors that sort of perpetuate this system.

And, so, but Shelby County runs the jail.

Shelby County pays for the courtrooms.

Shelby County pays most many of the judges, and a lot of the other actors, pretrial services is a Shelby County function.

So, most of this rests with the County, all of it rests with the County.

So, but we've sent a letter to judges.

We sent the letter to commissioners.

We sent the letter to the mayor, to the DA, to all the county actors involved in this.

- It is a striking thing.

And, again, I've mentioned it, not to be self-aggrandizing, but it was just a very interesting series of conversations over the fall.

All of them were online at WKNO.org, they're available as podcasts, but they were... And, not for anything I did, but had Lee Harris, County Mayor, on, talking mostly about crime.

Mayor Strickland, DA Weirich, the sheriff, a couple of people from the State House from different sides talking, because the State does set a lot of these laws.

You do get the sense that, and someone had asked me about this, one of the overwhelming sense is everyone's a little bit on an island.

It's not... maybe an archipelago, right?

It's... they're close.

They overlap in certain ways, but they're kind of doing their own thing.

And, I, there's zero chance that we're gonna get any judges on, and let alone, I mean, juvenile... We talked about juvenile crime.

We were able to get Dan Michael on, Judge Michael four years, five years ago now, and talk about some of these issues.

And, that is really, I mean, a huge concern for everyone, source of anger, sadness, frustration is juvenile crime, but everyone's kind of operating differently.

And, I would contrast that with a conversation we had about homelessness with Kelsey Johnson, from Hospitality Hub.

And, that was, again, nothing I did, but one of my favorite interviews ever on Behind the Headlines, because it was just such an interesting approach where he talks about, it isn't just us, but we work with 20 to 30 different partners to address homelessness.

So, if this is a someone with PTSD, we get veterans involved.

If they're... they have got a criminal record, we talked to the court, we don't want them back in the jail.

We want to help get them some job training.

If there's... We need police, we have great partnerships with the police, so the police don't come in and bust heads.

They work with us.

We find people on the street, we talk to them, we have volunteers, we try to get them off the street.

We try to...

It was an amazing approach to it, that is holistic, in a way that is, in my mind, and this, it's just... Not existing in criminal justice.

And, it wasn't just, I mean, I've interviewed a lot of these people over the years, and we've written about a lot over the years.

It is islands of people with some shared laws and a lot of discretion, not... And, they're all a little bit like, well, that's the State.

Well, that's the County's problem.

Well, that's the City.

Well, that's the Memphis...

I mean, they talk nice, but they kind of point a finger, and they're not maybe wrong to point a finger, because the way the system is set up.

You know this better than me, but I just... it really was striking to me in the series of conversations, how true that is.

- Yeah, that's absolutely right.

And, that's why, unfortunately, a demand letter, like the one we sent to so many officials, is necessary, because there is little coordination, and there's little accountability.

I mean, we're talking in an election year, right?

This is the big ballot that is in August, and it includes every single actor in the criminal legal system.

- Everybody on the County-- - Every judge, everybody, everybody.

And, and so this is our chance, in 2022, to talk about this issue, right?

To talk about why that is true about criminal justice, why we don't have an ombudsman, a coordinator, someone manning the helm, and making sure that it... that we can look someday, more like homelessness, because back to the conversation about violent crime, we are in the middle of this conversation about our response, and it almost is exclusively about police, which is a response, and it will have some result if we can get there, but we've never given the other responses, and the other solutions a chance.

We've never invested in them.

And, that's what's going to take us into a future, in Shelby County, that is safer, that does include us all, that is more fair to everyone.

It's one that's investing as a response to violent crime in nonprofits, right?

Who are out there doing the work, in good lighting, in nutrition, in healthcare, in the amelioration of the guns on our streets, right?

All of these things have to be done, and someone has to take the lead on coordinating them all in the right places.

We don't have unlimited resources, but we know where crime's occurring.

We know where the most victims are, and we should go there with something other than police and cameras, right?

We've got to start responding to this visibly and with a lot of resources in other ways, besides the same old, same old.

- It is interesting, and nonprofit leaders in various trying to address this issue also on islands.

I mean, you really see that, that there's some folks doing great work with trying to reduce recidivism, in people going back to jail, job training and kind of what... back into the workforce sort of thing, to reduce recidivism, but they do just feel like islands.

- Right, they do.

They do.

Hunger is another one, right?

And, there are studies out there that are very clear and very well defended that nonprofits have been responsible, in cities across America, for the unprecedented reduction in crime we've seen over the last 20 or 30 years in this country.

It has been the function of the community in many places because policing has remained this one sort of thing, this one response that we have to crime, when, really, the response should be so many other things in a coordinated way.

And, that's what our leaders need to step up and do.

- Should that coordinator be the City Mayor, Jim Strickland?

Or, should it be Lee Harris, the County Mayor?

- I think a city mayor or a county mayor could.

Resources are always an issue here, but I think that is where the solution or the response, a response like that has rested in other communities, right?

I think, of course, New York City is a very different place, but I think of the Office of Criminal Justice in New York City, and the many different things that started happening in that city in 2014 to respond to violent crime, and it went down dramatically over the middle part of last century or last decade.

And, it was violence interruption.

It was all coordinated from the Mayor's Office, right?

It was homelessness.

It was so many of the things we've talked about already and it worked.

- But, it involved, a lot of...

The critics would say "Stop and Frisk".

- Well, they stopped... That's a very good point, because when they said, one of these things is a lighter touch with cops, was a very direct thing they said to the community in New York City, lighter touch with cops, they ended "Stop and Frisk".

The predictions were, from the former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, from the former Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who has consulted here in Memphis, crime's gonna go crazy.

You can't stop "Stop and Frisk".

Crime went down incredibly.

"Stop and Frisk" was a horrible thing.

The police department in New York city still has a bad reputation in a lot of communities, but they did not use "Stop and Frisk" from 2014 on to drive down crime.

They used investments in the community, in targeted specific ways.

- Really, just three minutes left, one question, coverage of crime in the media.

You may or may not have texted me some thoughts on that, after one of the shows I did, and that's fine.

I mean, really, I actually appreciate it, but I did... And, I said, I would love to talk about that.

I think the media plays a huge role in perceptions of crime.

I mean, I've seen it my whole career in local news, in and around local news, but your thoughts.

- Well, thank you for having me on, because I think, I don't have the answers and I am not impacted by crime in a way that so many people in our community are, but I hope that at Just City, we are amplifying some voices that are rarely heard.

So, thank you for that, more of that, right?

And, more accountability when our elected officials say things like there's a revolving door at 201 Poplar.

I know that to not be true.

Reporters who work for The Daily Memphian know that to not be true, because they cover that building.

They cover the stories and the voices of the people coming in and out of it.

And, so there has to be some standard by which we...

Some standard that we apply to statements like that, and to responses that have no evidence behind them, and ignoring, continue to ignore responses that do have evidence behind them.

And, so, I know that the media, in many ways, is very different from how it was even five years ago or 10 years ago, but I think my frustration is that, that there's no accountability to some of the things we hear that just are not true, and are just destructive to this fight, where again, against violence and for public safety.

- I think in an ideal world, I do this interview with whoever I interview every, virtually every week, certainly certain things of this kind of seriousness, and detail, and so on.

And, there'd be somebody who write a story about it, and fact check everything that I said, everything that you said, and every guest said, and that isn't possible, but that's not an excuse.

I mean, but I think that that, I wish that were possible, because I do know sometimes, when people are on the show and it just doesn't ring true, and I can't...

I'm not defending myself.

It's just an interesting dynamic when people are saying these things, and it's tough, and it's a fair criticism.

I don't have a great answer to it.

- Well, and it's not completely the media's fault either.

I mean, you mentioned an elected official recently who hasn't been on a minute ago, who hasn't been on in many, many years, right?

And, so-- - Judge Micheal?

Yeah, and we've asked many times, and it's a critical role, and feel like he should be...

I mean, whatever he has to say, it's not a value judgment on that, he should be more open to the public, at least talking.

I give great credit to some of these other people.

I've expressed my frustration that Chief Davis, the new police chief, who I've seen speak, who is incredibly well-spoken and confident, has nothing to fear from me sitting at this table, for whatever reason, they have had her on a media lockdown.

I don't think that's helpful at a time.

That's not about ego.

I don't care who it is, but she should be more available to the media, not for the media's sake, but because that's a representative to the public at a time when the public's really worried about crime, and crime is a huge part of the local budget.

- Especially in a department where, again, reporters from The Daily Memphian are working day and night to try to crack open information from that department, right?

To put your director on lockdown, it just perpetuates this idea that they are not accountable and they're-- - And, not all of it is bad information.

We've tried to do ride alongs with police officers to kind of... And, we were able to do one about a year ago, that was, I thought was great.

It just showed how difficult a night on for a cop is.

And, I think that lack of transparency, again, it's not ego, it's not about Behind the Headlines or Daily Memphian.

It's about people being able to see what people are doing, how they're trying, how money is being spent, and it's not possible.

We are out of time though.

Josh, thanks for being here.

I appreciate it.

Thanks for joining us.

- Appreciate it.

- You can get the full episodes, any past episode, we've done on WKNO.org, or you can go to YouTube and search for Behind the Headlines, or you can get a podcast version on the show, wherever you get your podcasts, or the Daily Memphian site.

Thanks, and we'll see you next week.

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