Justice Voices

Eddie Bocanegra of READI Chicago. Overcoming a youth filled with violence and the trauma of violence, and after serving 14 years in prison for a gang-related murder committed at age 18, he is now driven by a sense of duty – a covenant sense of mission – to prevent violence. With a master's degree in … Ep. 12: Eddie Bocanegra of READI Chicago Read More »

From a public safety policy and justice reform standpoint, this is one of the most important episodes of Justice Voices published to date. Richard Lovett, who prefers to go by the name Reality Allah, is the Reentry Coordinator for READI Chicago and a board member of the Fully Free campaign of Heartland Alliance. After Reality was originally sentenced to serve 85 years in Illinois state prison, that sentence was later reduced due to the reversal of one of his convictions on appeal, so he ended up spending 22 years in prison. Now, he works to prevent others from following the path he did. His story, experience, and his voice regarding lessons learned and wisdom gained are important. If you are wondering whether to invest an hour listening to the full conversation, listen to the excerpts in the first five minutes. Even that will be a valuable investment of your time.

Willette Benford is Board Chair of the Fully Free campaign of Heartland Alliance. In this episode she tells the story of how she was convicted and sentenced to 50 years in prison, developed a transformational relationship with God, worked while in prison to improve her life and the lives of others around her, was released early after serving two decades in prison due to a change in the law, and after release faced – and overcame – illegal denial of housing due to her past record. She is now a passionate advocate for removing legal and social barriers to successful reentry to community life after people are released from prison.

Cedrick Frison shares wisdom gained from the hard lessons of living life on the streets of the west side of Chicago, including the effects of drug use, the trauma of living with violence both at home and on the street, and going to prison nine times before breaking free from that cycle and becoming the man he is today. A former high school dropout, he is now completing work on a bachelor's degree, is a nationally certified addiction recovery specialist, has a home and family, and serves as both a board member of the Fully Free campaign of Heartland Alliance and outreach specialist for the READI-Chicago anti-violence initiative.

The Fully Free campaign of Heartland Alliance aims to end “permanent punishment” for people seeking to lead law-abiding lives after release from prison. Campaign manager Marlon Chamberlain (whose personal story was featured in Episode 7) shares his personal experience and describes examples of laws creating barriers for employment, housing, education, and professional licensing, which he describes as “prison after prison.” Co-host Lynard Joiner shares his own experience with permanent punishment and expresses bewilderment as to why society continues to punish people even after serving their sentences in full and having supposedly “paid their debt to society.” Host David Risley adds his perspective as a former career federal prosecutor. For more information about the Fully Free campaign, visit its website at https://fullyfree.org and its parent organization, Heartland Alliance at https://heartlandalliance.org For further information about Justice Voices and other episodes, please visit our website at https://justicevoices.org For the video version of this and some other episodes, visit our Justice Voices YouTube channel.

Marlon Chamberlain manages the Fully Free campaign of the Heartland Alliance in the Chicago area. In this episode he shares his personal story and insights gained from serving over a decade in federal prison, returning home to community and family life, and following the path that led him to where he is today. Mr. Chamberlain is a serious student and teacher, always as he says being one or the other. Among the many insights he shares in this episode is his observation that in prison there are three tracks: (1) crime college; (2) just passing time to do the time; and (3) self-improvement to prepare to live a happy, productive, law-abiding life after release. He maintains that which track people choose while incarcerated is dependent on both their mindset and choice of associates while in prison. He tells of how his most influential mentors and teachers while in prison were other incarcerated people, many of whom became like family to him and who continue to support each other after release. He maintains that effective reentry programs will draw upon that positive power and subject matter expertise by placing returned citizens in key roles in designing, leading, and delivering reentry support services. He also shares a brief introduction to the Fully Free campaign, which is explored more fully with him in our next episode. Subscribe to this program to be notified of that and other future episodes.

In this episode of Justice Voices, you will hear from guest Sam Dent, who served a mandatory minimum 20 years in prison in a case host David Risley prosecuted around the same time as the case he prosecuted against co-host, Lynard Joiner. Mr. Dent was one of Mr. Joiner’s early clients in his Shifting Into New Gear (SING) program for helping people successfully reenter community and family life after release from prison. Mr. Dent tells us what a difference it made after returning to the community to have the support he received from Mr. Joiner and his SING program, including assistance finding employment. Mr. Dent shares his backstory of how he ended up going to prison and tells us about his experience in prison. Most importantly and most interestingly, he shares the story of who he is today, of what he has made of himself after prison. You will also learn a lot from the exchange about criminal justice policy issues. As Mr. Risley told Mr. Dent and Mr. Joiner during that discussion, they are subject matter experts speaking from lived experience giving them a perspective of great value to those who have never seen our justice system from the inside out, rather than the outside in.

This episode provides a big picture overview of why our criminal justice system needs improvement, especially regarding our overuse of prisons, by exploring the gold mine of information and perspective in the 2016 report of the Illinois Commission on Criminal Justice and Sentencing Reform. The primary focus of this episode is on the background information of the report, which is divided into four subsections: The role of prisons The impact of high incarceration The resource question (or what I refer to as the resource riddle) And finally, guiding principles and operating assumptions. Among the most important points we hope you take away from this episode are: Overuse of prison as a solution to crime problems is not only ineffective and hugely expensive, but also counterproductive, resulting in more crime, not less. We can't punish our way out of our crime problems, especially in high crime communities. Therefore, rather than persisting in our currently dominant punishment approach to criminal justice, we need to pivot to a problem-solving approach. A problem-solving approach leads naturally to replacing overuse of prison with more effective and ultimately less costly solutions best delivered at the local level. But, increasing the capacity of local communities to scale up and effectively implement those local solutions requires funding on a scale that meets the need. To think those additional funds can come from savings from sending fewer people to prison not only gets the cart before the horse, it is also mathematically unrealistic, given the deep reductions in our prison population that must precede any substantial reduction in the costs of running the prison system. That is the resource riddle, and solving it is essential to public safety and community health. With that background in mind, you'll be a much better informed listener for our upcoming episodes featuring interviews of remarkable people who have been to prison and returned to build new lives, people whose stories need to be told, whose voices need to be heard.

The root cause of violentization is trauma from chronic exposure to violence, usually beginning in childhood or adolescence. Victims of violence become victimizers. Why? Because at some point the victim of chronic violence makes the decision that this is a violent, dog-eat-dog world and that to avoid being a victim of violence one must become more violent and dangerous than potential abusers or attackers – to essentially fight fire with fire. In part 1 of this episode, we explored the five-stage adaptive process of violentization described by criminologist researcher Lonnie Athens. In this part 2 we turn to the all-important question of prevention and interventions to interrupt and even reverse the violentization process at both the individual and community levels. A disease model is used for practical perspective. To reduce serious criminal violence, reduce and effectively treat violent trauma. Host David Risley maintains the solutions to serious criminal violence fall into four buckets: trauma, jobs, incentives, and educating the public. At the highest and most difficult end of the violentization scale, ultraviolent and predatory violent people are so dangerous, resistant to de-violentization, and malignant in their effect on communities that there is rarely, if ever, a practical intervention alternative to long-term incapacitation through incarceration. But even then, treatment of violentization is sometimes possible. At the lower end of the violentization scale, interventions include: Multi-systemic therapy (MST), an example of which is the Greater Bronzeville Community Action Plan being implemented in Chicago's historic Bronzeville neighborhood through a partnership between the University of Chicago's Chicago Center for Youth Violence Prevention and Bright Star Community Outreach, a faith-based community service organization delivering trauma counseling and other services to individuals, households, and even local police officers. Schools, often best positioned to observe the early symptoms of violentization such as defiance and aggression, and sometimes also to deliver trauma-informed therapy and other support services, especially when the trauma arises from domestic violence or other abuse. Parenting education, especially for children raising children. Trauma-informed counseling, an example of which is the TURN Center, a program constituting an element of the Greater Bronzeville Community Action Plan. A notable feature of the TURN Center program is it is largely modeled after the program and services delivered by the Israel Trauma Center for Victims of Terrorism and War (NATAL), representatives of which have trained TURN Center personnel. Antiviolence group resocialization, which Lonnie Athens recommends for adolescents and adults in the middle stages of violentization, perhaps conducted in settings such as a youth hostel, ideally led by former violent offenders hired due to their credibility with the target audience and trained to conduct such programs. Restorative justice programs and community and problem-solving policing are also important, but deserve fuller discussion in their own episodes. In the meantime, more on those topics is found on the antiviolence strategy paper published on David Risley's personal website at https://david-risley.com. Finally, what may be the knottiest problem of them all: the resource riddle.

What makes violent people violent? The short answer is violentization. Dangerous violent people almost invariably choose to become violent to survive physically and emotionally in what they perceive as a dog-eat-dog world, a perception rooted in the chronic trauma of being the victim of repeated acts of violence, usually beginning in their homes and neighborhoods as a child and adolescent. According to Lonnie Athens, a criminologist at Seton Hall University who studies violent criminals primarily through in-depth personal interviews. “When people look at a dangerous violent criminal at the beginning of his developmental process rather than at the very end of it, they will see, perhaps unexpectedly, that the dangerous violent criminal began as a relatively benign human being for whom they would probably have more sympathy than antipathy. Perhaps more importantly, people will conclude that the creation of dangerous violent criminals is largely preventable …. Therefore, if society fails to take any significant steps to stop the process behind the creation of dangerous violent criminals, it tacitly becomes an accomplice in creating them.” As a result of his research, Athens describes five stages of a developmental process that he calls “violentization,” starting with repeated traumatic experiences of being brutalized and then being coached to decide that in a world of violence the only way to protect themselves is to fight fire with fire, to become more violent and feared than those who would otherwise victimize them. (08:49) Successful experiences with using violence to gain power over their environment can progress to the point of being, in effect, addictive. It can even become dangerous to abandon a violent persona due to the resulting vulnerability to retaliatory attack by past victims. (22:56) In short, through the process of violentization, victims of violence become victimizers in a spiral of violence that can spread throughout a community like a virus. In part 2 of this episode, we will explore Athens' observations and thinking regarding violentization of communities and his recommendations for interventions at both the individual and community levels.

Unless we understand the psychological impact of chronic abuse on victims, we can fail them. Even worse, we can misjudge them, including misjudge them in court. That's why this part 2 of Donna Lomelino's story is so important and instructive.  This second part of this episode has five sections, each of which is important and packed with insights.  Please stick with us and hear Donna out, even if that means listening to her story and hearing her voice one segment at a time.  The first 12 minutes includes some highlight excerpts from the full interview, followed by comments by host David Risley about understanding the psychological impact of chronic abuse on victims, including the development of a strong protective attachment by victims to their abusers as a variation of the so-called Stockholm syndrome, an attachment Donna later describes as an addiction. In the first segment of the full conversation (12:09), we pick up where we left off in part 1 and hear more of Donna's experience being in the psychological prison of abuse as she struggles to describe what she was thinking and experiencing when she received the news that her abusive fiancé had beaten her 8-year-old son to death while she was away living and working in another state. Even today she struggles to understand and explain why back then she felt near panic to avoid losing her fiancé even though he had just killed her son, a reaction that was among the most damning evidence of a complicit mental state when she was tried and convicted as an accomplice to her son's murder. Donna next (30:35) shares her experience while being in physical prisons of concrete and steel, including her surprising reflection that, for her, despite its traumas prison was a sanctuary, a place where for the first time in her life she felt safe. She describes how that freed her to, over time, break free from her psychological imprisonment.   She then (58:07) relates her experience reentering community life after release from prison, including struggling to find employment as a convicted felon, followed by a conversation about what Donna is doing and what she has become now. Next (01:20:48), Donna shares her insightful, first-hand observations about needed policy and practice changes regarding victims of abuse. During this segment, Donna and co-host Lynard Joiner reflect on parallels between their prison and reentry experiences and Donna passionately shares her views about the need to rescue children from abusive households much sooner and more aggressively than is typically the case. The episode ends (01:37:20) with Donna's touching and deeply reflective message from the Donna of today to the Donna of her childhood and youth. We again thank the Illinois Public Health Association for its support for this program.

This episode of Justice Voices will be emotionally intense.  Facing realities involved in criminal justice policy sometimes is, including facing the reality of what a lifetime of abuse and exploitation can do to people. Some prisons are physical, made of concrete and steel. Other prisons are psychological. People in physical prisons know that they are imprisoned. People in psychological prisons, however, including women and children trapped in abusive domestic relationships, may not only deny their imprisonment to themselves and others, but even fight off efforts by family, friends, police, and prosecutors to rescue them from a dangerous, sometimes even deadly situation. It's one thing to observe the psychological imprisonment of victims of abuse from the outside. It's quite another to have the opportunity to see it from the inside, through the eyes of a victim of a lifetime of abuse. Today's episode of Justice Voices will give you that inside opportunity.  In this part 1 of a two-part episode, you'll meet Donna Lomelino, of Springfield, Illinois, who works with a faith-based organization helping homeless women and children who are victims of abuse. Ms. Lomelino is a wonderful, compassionate woman with a strong sense of mission.  Talking to her today you'd likely never suspect that she, herself, was a victim of a lifetime of abuse from her childhood until the time as a young adult when she was sent to prison for a horrific crime committed by an abusive boyfriend, a crime committed while she was absent and had been absent for a couple of weeks while working out of state, a crime that ripped her heart out, but for which she was nevertheless held criminally accountable under Illinois law as interpreted and applied by a prosecutor and judges. How could that be you may ask? Indeed. Good question. Part 2 of this episode will cover Donna's experience in prison, including how she was one of many women incarcerated there who are victims of abuse, some of whom were also being punished for crimes committed by their abusers.  Most importantly, part 2 will cover who Donna Lomelino became, who she is today, and what made all the difference. In this and hopefully many future episodes, host David Risley is joined co-host Lynard Joiner, one of Mr. Risley's former defendants, whose own story is told in episodes 1 and 2 of this program. * Justice Voices website: https://justicevoices.org* SING website: https://ShiftingIntoNewGear.org

In this update to Episode 1, host David Risley, a former career federal prosecutor, has a conversation with one of his former defendants, Lynard Joiner, founder and CEO of Shifting Into New Gear (SING). Mr. Joiner discusses what he sees as the five key factors involved in successful community reentry by returning citizens after prison: MindsetEmploymentHousingSobrietyResource support. He points out that effective reentry programs are a win-win solution to the problem of recidivism (return to prison for new offenses). Mr. Risley discusses the need for a shift in our criminal justice thinking from a punishment paradigm to a problem-solving paradigm. * Justice Voices website: https://justicevoices.org * SING website: https://ShiftingIntoNewGear.org

“Going to prison saved my life.” That is what guest, Lynard Joiner, said during this conversation with host, David Risley. It is also the subtitle of an autobiographical book written by Lynard Joiner, titled, LJ's Cocoon. Mr. Joiner and Mr. Risley first met on opposite sides of a federal courtroom, on opposite sides of the law. Mr. Joiner was a defendant. Mr. Risley was the prosecutor. Mr. Joiner was convicted and served 17 years in prison. Now, he is founder and CEO of a reentry program named Shifting Into New Gear (SING) providing mentoring and resource navigation services to people returning to the Springfield, Illinois, area after release from prison. He has provided services to hundreds of returning citizens, including many who are former defendants in cases prosecuted by Mr. Risley. Today, Mr. Risley and Mr. Joiner are friends and colleagues. In this episode, recorded originally in 2019, Mr. Joiner describes what led him to end up in prison; his prison experience; the transformation while in prison that he describes as coming out of a cocoon; his experience after release, including being taught how to use a cell phone by a 4 year-old child; the mission of SING; and SING’s remarkable success in enabling returning citizens transition successfully to community and family life after release from prison. When Mr. Risley shared the earlier YouTube video version of this episode with a friend who is a retired Illinois State Police Major, the friend called him the next day and said he had already watched it twice, describing it as “impactful,” something that should be watched by everyone, including police trainees. Mr. Risley is a former career federal prosecutor and former Director of Public Safety Policy in the Illinois Governor’s Office. He founded Justice Voices after leaving the Governor’s office, convinced that the best way to change public policy regarding criminal justice issues is to change public opinion by sharing the stories of people with lived experience with crime and the criminal justice system. Some future episodes will feature conversations with other people who served prison time in cases prosecuted by Mr. Risley. Others will feature conversations with people with subject matter expertise in criminal justice issues, including restorative justice. Episode 2 will feature an more recent 2021 conversation with Mr. Joiner in which he shares what he sees as the five keys of successful reentry to community life after release from prison. Stay tuned for that and many more “stories that need to be told, voices that need to be heard.” * SING website: https://ShiftingIntoNewGear.org* Justice Voices website: https://justicevoices.org

That is the first of three doses of criminal justice reality described in this introductory episode by Justice Voices founder and host, David Risley, former career federal prosecutor and former Director of Public Safety Policy in the Illinois Governor’s office.Reality dose #2: Prisons do only one thing well — incapacitation of dangerous criminals. But, in FY 2018 half the Illinois prison population (for example) consisted of people in Department of Corrections custody for only 8 months or less, at a true cost of almost $70,000 per inmate per year. The huge cost of imprisoning low-level, non-dangerous offenders is taxpayer money that would be far better spent on more effective local solutions to local crime using local resources, supported when necessary by state funding. Reality dose #3: In Illinois, 43% of people released from prison return to prison within 3 years (lower than the national average) at a true cost of over $150,000 for each such event of recidivism. Recycling people back to prison is far more expensive than the cost of investing in proven in-prison programs and local support systems to enable returning citizens to successfully reenter the community after release from prison without returning to criminal activity.We need to shift from a punishment paradigm of criminal justice to a problem-solving paradigm.When Mr. Risley left the Illinois Governor’s Office as Director of Public Safety Policy, he had reached the conclusion that the best way to change public policy regarding criminal justice system reform is to change public opinion, and the best way to change public opinion is by sharing the stories of people with real-life experience with crime and the criminal justice system.Real-life stories have the power to illuminate reality far better than facts and figures – and to change hearts, as well as minds.That's what Justice Voices is all about – to share stories that need to be told, voices that need to be heard regarding crime, criminal justice, and related issues.Justice Voices website:  https://justicevoices.orgDavid Risley’s background: https://david-risley.comFinal Report of the Illinois State Commission on Criminal Justice and Sentencing Reform (Parts I & II) December 2016:  http://www.icjia.org/cjreform2015/index.htmlIllinois Sentencing Policy Advisory Council:  https://spac.illinois.gov/ David E. RisleyDavid E. Risley–Making democracy workDavid E. Risley professional website. Expert in Egyptian judiciary, Egypt legal system, Egypt law, Iraqi High Tribunal, Marsh Arabs of Iraq, rule of law, judicial training, prosecutor training, national security law, international humanitarian law, and developing core institutions of democracy. Illinois State Commission on Criminal Justice and Sentencing ReformWelcome to the Illinois State Commission on Criminal Justice and Senten

Lynard Joiner almost died from COVID-19 and even 8 months later still suffers from long-term lung and heart damage.  He shares his experience and a message: “COVID is for real. Do the right thing, wear your mask, stay safe and help keep others safe.” He adds, “Your mask is not only to protect you, it’s also to protect others and just keep us all safe, and that’s the only way we’re going to get over it, it’s working together to keep us safe.” * Justice Voices website: https://justicevoices.org * SING website: https://ShiftingIntoNewGear.org