S1: Welcome in San Diego. It's Jade Hindman on this episode of KPBS Midday Edition. A new book looks at youth who've encountered the justice system and the collaboration required to get them out and on to a better life. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. When you think of America's criminal courts , what comes to mind? Well , for many , the idea of the criminal justice system might be shaped by what they've seen on television or movies. But for America's public defenders , they see the ins and outs of the court system every day. And while they work within the institution , they're often fighting against it and the powers that be. Attorney Emeline Galvan , Armond Almanza knows the system well , and how it can touch nearly every aspect of a defendant's life. Her book , The Price of Mercy , draws from her own experience as a former public defender , revealing what goes on behind the scenes of America's criminal courts and presenting solutions that could lead to , in her view , true justice. This week , she'll be in San Diego to discuss the book with pillars of the community , a local nonprofit serving communities in southeastern San Diego. The event will also honor public defenders in the region. Emily is also the co-founder and executive director of the nonprofit partners for justice , which aims to support public defenders across the country. She joins me now. Emily , welcome to the show.
S2: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so thrilled to be here.
S1: Glad to have you here. This is a really important discussion. And before you became a public defender , you were a young person who needed someone in the court system to see your future. What happened? And what did Judge Leslie Harris understand about you that's often missed when so many youth encounter the system?
S2: Yeah , I mean indeed , before I was an attorney , I was a kid who needed to be defended. I went through a really rough period in my teenage years and ended up standing in front of a judge , um , not knowing what was going to happen next. Um , and that judge was Judge Leslie Harris. I should acknowledge that. I walked into that courtroom with a lot of other privilege. Right. I had the privilege of the only white kid in the entire courtroom. Um , I had really involved parents who were doing their best. Um , I had a great education. Uh , but most importantly , I had a judge looking at me who was himself really unusual. He had come to the bench from a background that was professionally really different from many of his peers. There's a lot of studies showing that most judges come from backgrounds where they represent big interests or government. They don't usually represent individuals. But Judge Harris had been both a prosecutor and a public defender. Um , also , there's not a lot of diversity in the law or on the bench. Judge Harris was a black man who grew up on the South Side of Chicago. His own lived experience had involved meeting a lot of kids who were going through rough stuff violence , drugs. He had experience seeing past the behavior and seeing the actual human underneath. So by the time he ascended to the bench , he was already breaking new ground , and he made it his mission to see potential in every single kid who came into his courtroom. Um , which meant that by the time I was standing in front of him , I like thousands of other kids in that jurisdiction at the time , had someone looking at me who was not looking at what threat I might pose , not looking for some reason to to to punish me harder. He was looking for what I was capable of , and he called me up to the bench and he asked me , you know , what I was doing there? And I don't remember what I said because I was a teenager and I probably said something really stupid , but he told me that he was going to make the case go away. Basically , he was going to dismiss the case and expunge the record so that I wouldn't have my college acceptance rescinded , because had he done anything else , I wouldn't have been going on to college. And he said he never wanted to hear from me again unless I'd done something good with my life. Wow. And so because of him , I had not just the ability to go to college , but the time I needed to sort myself out and to really find my way. And two years later , as a young public defender , write him and tell him I'd done something good with my life.
S1: Grace changes lives , uh , for sure. And you did reach out to him , as you mentioned , because you wrote this book and you interviewed him for it. What did you learn about the decision he made in your case?
S2: You know , I use him in the book as an example of why we need a wider variety of people on the bench , because a perspective like his and most importantly , courage like his , doesn't come without effort and without learning and struggle. Um , we live in a world where judges have incredible power. But there's really troubling studies about what happens when you throw a person into the position of being a judge. You know , making these life or death decisions about the fates of strangers. And we give them so little support , we give them so little training. And the result is that we get , you know , studies showing that judges sentence people more harshly when they're hungry or when their preferred sports team has recently lost , or when their electoral opponents ads are running more frequently because judges are human like everybody else , and they need time to make good decisions , they need a lot of information about the people in front of them , and they also really need training to overcome their own implicit bias and sort of human perspectives that we hold without even knowing it. And yet they're rarely given that they are often put in a position where they are under pressure to do what's called move the calendar , meaning process cases as fast as possible , and they are also given very little information about the people in front of them. One thing I've noticed in my work at partners for justice , where we we work with community members to help get them the support they need and then present stories of their success in court , is that judges are so grateful to know what a person is doing outside of the four corners of this criminal complaint. Who is this person in their regular life and what are they capable of? So to me , Judge Harris is this really brilliant example of a person who had what it took to be brave and measured and to demand what he needed to make good decisions in the incredible position of power in which he was placed. I wish more people had the natural fortitude and life experience that he had. I think we need more , more , more people like Judge Harris , more people from a diversity of backgrounds on the bench. But we also need to support the judges we have in a very different way.
S1: And in understanding all of that and in having that experience. It's shaped how you practice law. When people picture a public defender's work , what do they tend to imagine and what kinds of cases actually filled your days?
S2: I think people picture there's some awful stereotypes , right? Like , if I'm lucky , people are picturing Better Call Saul. Oh , there's there's the horrible like , there's memes about , like , if your lawyer shows up looking like this , you're going to jail , and it's somebody in , like , a bad suit with their tie not on you. But the truth is , I often tell people , if you if you want good representation , you should either pay $2,000 an hour for a lawyer , or you should get a free lawyer , because public defenders are this group of people , often extraordinarily accomplished professionals , who go into a really hard , high trauma , high caseload , low paying line of work because we actually want to make a difference. And we care deeply about our community , and we care about liberation , and we believe in second chances and third chances and fourth chances and so on and so forth , and we're there because we want to be. We're not there for any other reason other than that we want to be. And we're also experts in the jurisdiction we serve. You know , we appear in front of the same judges every day. We get to know them really well. We know all the prosecutors. We know how the system works. So often we're able to shepherd people through with , with greater expertise than a person who might just be occasionally present in that jurisdiction. But I think one of the most important misconceptions is this idea that most of what we handle is really scary stuff , because I think when most people picture a crime , they picture like a guy in a balaclava coming into your house at two in the morning. And in fact , 80% of the cases in our criminal courts are misdemeanors. Like most of what's clogging our criminal courts is like , you know , people shouting at each other , kids trespassing , um , someone peeing on their neighbor's doormat. Um , you know , like a scuffle. Somebody slaps someone's butt on the bus. You know , these are the cases that we're so often using precious system resources and time on. And what happens is you get a world in which the caseloads are so high because we live in a country that processes every single social ill through our criminal courts , including a lot of stuff that's actually medical , you know , behavioral health challenges , mental health challenges , substance use issues. So a lot of what public defenders are doing is trying to give good constitutional legal representation on the cases that need it , but also figure out how to help the huge volume of people whose primary concern is not actually legal , but social service related.
S1: That's an excellent point. Um , you know , I want to talk to just about the gravity of of having to interact with the justice system because you've described young clients arrested for something as simple as being at a friend's house. Walk us through what an arrest or a misdemeanor charge can set in motion , even when a case ends without a conviction. Absolutely.
S2: Absolutely. So , you know , I grew up in in the Midwest , and when I was a kid , you could go over to your friend's house , you know , run across three neighbor's yards and knock on the family's door and say , hey , is Eva home? And she either was home or not home. And , you know , I'd see my friend or not. When I got to the Bronx , I found myself representing so many kids that had done exactly that. They'd gone over to their friend's house , except for their friend lives in a big apartment building in New York City , which is often patrolled by the NYPD. And that meant that if they went over to their friend's house and they knocked on the door and their friend wasn't home , they didn't have anyone who could vouch for them to affirm that their presence in the building was invited , which opened them up to a trespassing arrest , I couldn't believe. As an attorney in the Bronx , how much time I was spending representing teenagers who wanted to see if their friend could come and hang out. It was a ridiculous waste of resources pursuant to a policy called Clean Halls , which New York has since adopted. But , um , the problem is all of these kids , by the time I met them , they had been arrested. They had gone through a booking process. Some of them were brought to court same day or given a desk appearance ticket , meaning they could come back to court , you know , at a specific time. But some of them had had to sit through a night in jail , waiting to be arraigned in front of a judge for anybody , not just for these kids , but for anybody. 24 hours in holding is incredibly disruptive. You miss your shift at work. You might lose your job. I can't tell you how many people I'd meet them. I'd say , hi , I'm your lawyer. You know , here's what you've been charged with. Let's talk about it. And they say , well , before you do , can you call my boss? Can you call my colleague? Can you get my shift covered? Can you like I don't want to lose my job over this. Um , in addition , we underestimate how many people take really , really life altering , necessary medications , right? Those are not provided in holding. And in fact , when people are sent to jail , often the jail will say , hey , we've got to re diagnose and re prescribe every person who comes in here so people can suffer. I mean , there are people who have died in these short term jail stays because they weren't given , for example , an anti-rejection medication for a transplant. So people can be decompensated and they can be getting sick. They can be going through withdrawal. They can lose their job. If they lose their job , they can lose their housing. Oftentimes I had people saying , you know , the babysitter's got to leave , so you got to find someone to take care of my kid. Um , I need to pick up my kid. Or even just I have a dog in the house. And if I'm going to be in here for three weeks , somebody's got to take care of the dog. So what we often forget is that that one night in jail can be life altering. If the person is held in the days that follow , not only do multiple studies show that they can make a person more likely to commit crime in the future , because exposure to jail is criminal , they can cause a person to lose everything , even if the person is ultimately completely exonerated , utterly innocent , and I have represented a lot of innocent people. It is not uncommon in the legal system for people to be innocent. Um , even innocent people can have everything taken from them. Wow.
S1: Wow. Things that I don't think a lot of people consider when they think of of the harm , really , that can come from interacting with with the system. Um , say , someone here in San Diego is facing a charge and is about to lose their housing , or a child needs to get back into school after release. What can a collaborative defense team do alongside that person's lawyer?
S2: I'm so proudly happy you used that term. Thanks. So at partners for justice , we practice what's called collaborative defense. And actually we do work with the public defenders in San Diego. So lucky you guys. You got a partners for justice team there in your wonderful county. What we do in collaborative defense is think about the whole person , um , basically acknowledging everything we just talked about , right. That either a person might have issues in their life driving them into contact with the court system , or simply because of an arrest. They may have all of these issues that are sort of fallout from that arrest. And we provide what we call client advocates to work with people on meeting their underlying needs. So that can be finding people housing , getting people on emergency shelter , getting them on housing lists , find helping people find jobs or other forms of income , benefits , health insurance. It can be navigating care , getting people substance use care or mental health care. It can be helping kids get back in school and working on educational issues and educational adaptations that those kids might need. Um , literally everything down to transportation to court dates and other necessary appointments that the court says , hey , you got to make it too. So what we really try to do is give a person everything they need to stabilize in that moment and move forward , and then we assist the legal team in coming back into court and delivering what's called mitigation , which is the story of success , the story of here's this person's context , here's how they got here , here's what they're working on. And if you give them a chance , here's the fantastic things they could do next. That work is very , very effective at getting people. Chances that are not incarceration. So we actually did a study with the University of Pennsylvania that showed partners for Justice's work in in Delaware County , Pennsylvania , was increasing non convictions. So dismissals diversions by nearly 50%. And collectively that means that all across the country and all of the locations including San Diego where we've been working since 2018 , we've eliminated over 12,000 years of incarceration. Wow.
S1: Wow. You know , the book The Price of Mercy really looks towards solutions. Um , as you've laid out. So what will it take you think , to transform the system? What does true justice mean to you?
S3: We have to stop thinking.
S2: About punishment and start thinking about problem solving. And , you know , in writing The Price of Mercy , which for your listeners like this is a book that I wrote to make anyone the smartest person at the dinner table on this topic. Like if you would , if you would like to trounce your , like , annoying Uncle Fred , these holidays are coming. Please read the book. I think you really enjoy it. But to to do that , we need to get pretty granular about the solutions. And one thing I love about my subject matter is once we reframe things we say right now , what we have is a bureaucracy of punishment. It is a system that processes people towards punishment as fast as possible. But guess what? Punishment doesn't actually fix problems. You cannot punish your way to safety. You can actually. Change.
S3: Change.
S2: The thinking and start thinking about , okay , what if we were dealing with the actual underlying problem? Why is someone committing this type of crime? Why are they on this block at this hour of night? What is going on? The second half of the book takes us through a ton of really feasible , actionable solutions. Stuff you could actually do tomorrow , some of them with no funding whatsoever that would meaningfully make us safer. So just to give you some examples , we're always wondering about how to keep our kids safe and out of out of involvement with , with crime after school programs , particularly after school programs that have Wi-Fi and stuff that kids actually want to do. Drop youth involvement in violent crime by 50%. That is a huge gain. Um , other programs that are similarly effective , you know , community violence interruption actually stops crime before it starts. If we invest in credible community members to resolve problems that are brewing , we see markedly less gun violence. That's how Chicago and Baltimore and other similar cities have really dropped their gun violence rates in recent years. Um , one program I really love that takes no money at all is what was called Dads on Duty. It's addressing the problem that a lot of kids are getting arrested in schools because their schools often have police officers in them , and police officers aren't doing a lot of problem solving. But this group of dads decided to set up a volunteer schedule where the dads literally got t shirts that said Dads on Duty. And they just patrolled the halls. And when kids were doing like , knucklehead stuff , the dads would like to give them the dad look and the knucklehead stuff would stop. And nobody got arrested and nobody went into the school to prison pipeline. I love that you could do that tomorrow. It doesn't have to be dads. I am convinced that grandma's on duty would actually be the most effective program.
S4: Um , but it's about the village. It's about the community.
S2: Yes , it's about the community and also what we give the community. So a lot of different urban investments. So greening neighborhoods , making neighborhoods beautiful , building community gardens , fixing up a dilapidated house. Each one of these interventions can markedly reduce crime 20 to 30%. Increased access to health care. Same kind of results. One great example is that the city of Philadelphia painted some sidewalks , added street lighting , dilapidated properties , dropped crime by 75%.
S1: That is amazing. And as you can hear , they're playing that music. We got to leave the conversation there. Um , of course you'll be continuing this , though. I've been speaking with Emily Galvin Almanza , author of the book The Price of Mercy. She's also the co-founder and executive director of the nonprofit partners for justice. This Saturday , she will be at the fourth annual Pillars of Dignity and Justice Award ceremony hosted by pillars of the community. The event is going to be at the eSATA Freedom and Liberation Center. You can find more details on our website , KPBS. Emily , thanks so much.
S2: Thanks for having me.
S1: That's our show for today. I'm your host , Jade Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
