-: Hi everybody, I'm Joey Eto.
I'm the director of the MIT media lab.
And for those of you watching the webcast,
you can use the tag #sharpmltalks
to send those questions.
We'll have a Q & A towards the end
where we'll be interacting
But we're gonna start out first, let me first introduce
our two guests today.
Martha Minno is the dean and professor of law at Harvard
and is among other things, works on constitutional law,
international criminal justice and has written
a book called Between Vengeance and Forgiveness.
Martha's also on the board of the MacArthur Foundation
with me and so we get to hang out there
and we're working a lot in this space.
Shaka is a director's fellow at the media lab,
but I first met Shaka in Detroit when we were
trying to, we went there to try to do good.
This was funded by the Knight Foundation
and the Knight Foundation rounded the useful suspects
of people that we wanted to work with.
And Shaka, I think you were on the Be Me program
at Knight and had received an award from Knight.
And so Shaka was there and I think, Colin
you were there too, Jess, you were there.
And we made this presentation about how the media lab
was gonna come to Detroit and connect and do
all this great stuff and innovate.
And we called it the Innovators Guild,
and I think Shaka stood up and sort of said,
well if you are here for the kind of romantic
sort of tourist do good photo op thing,
you can do that or you can come and see the real Detroit.
And so we took him up on his challenge
and Shaka showed us the real Detroit
and became really the spiritual leader of the movement
of work that we did in Detroit.
And we got to know Shaka and Shaka got to know us
and he's become a pretty important member
of the media lab community.
But he also has a amazing story which connects
to some of the work that I think Martha's working on,
so I'd like to get Shaka to give us
some of his thoughts and then maybe segway to Martha.
-: Well I'm really excited to be back at the lab,
as always I have a great time,
a really inspiring time being out here
with so many wonderful people.
My journey started, unfortunately, like many
of the young men and women in our community
and in the city of Detroit.
I grew up during the crack era.
Grew up in a home that was somewhat disfunctional.
I ended up running away at the age of 13, 14,
somewhere around there and got caught up
in this really,
really wicked drug culture and started selling drugs.
Within the first six months of selling drugs
my childhood friend was murdered,
one of my older brothers was shot.
Eventually I became addicted to drugs.
Fortunately I was strong enough to escape that addiction,
but within a year or so
I just saw all of the,
everything imaginable, horror you can imagine
growing up in that culture.
I was robbed at gunpoint, I was beaten and left
for dead in the back of a crack house.
And it was those processes that began to,
that I began to internalize and really didn't understand
how that was impacting me as a child, basically,
in this very adult, real evil sub culture.
At the age of 17 I ended up getting shot three times
standing on the corner of my block,
in the neighborhood called Bright Morn, Detroit's west side.
And when I got shot,
I went to the hospital and basically they patched me up
and kicked me back out.
Nobody never stepped in and said, you know,
you're gonna develop these feelings.
You're gonna develop these fears, these paranoias,
and so my reaction was to go back to my community
and start carrying a gun everyday.
And so I literally slept with it,
used the bathroom with it, ate with it.
No matter what, I made sure that I had a gun with me
everywhere I went because there was this fear
that somebody could take my life at any moment.
What I got shot over was so trivial,
but the reality is this was everyday life
growing up in the hood in Detroit.
And so within the 14 month time span
I got into several conflict and in each conflict
I decided to shoot first.
And 14 months after I was shot, I tragically shot
and caused a man's death.
I was subsequently sentenced to 17 to 40 years in prison.
I had just turned 19 years old when I stood
in front of the judge and accepted that sentence.
It was one of the
hardest moments in my life, just to stand there
and know that there were things that could
have been in place that could have prevented that
from taking place.
And then when I went to prison I was very bitter,
I was very angry.
I got into a lot of trouble.
Within my first five years I accumulated 25 misconducts,
which ranged everywhere from disobeying a direct order
to assault on inmate and staff.
In the first couple of years I served a year or so
on solitary confinement.
And then eight years into my incarceration
I was sent to solitary confinement
for an indefinite period of time,
but it turned out to be four and a half years
of 23 hour lock down.
And arguably one of the most insane environments
in American society is one of what I've considered
solitary confinement is America's greatest shame.
Largely because of the high levels of mental illness
that's evident in that environment.
The high levels of mental illness that is accumulated
when you're in an environment where you don't
really know how to cope with those
who have been diagnosed with psychiatric illnesses.
So for four and a half years that was my world,
23 hour lock down.
I got three showers a week in a cage.
They basically put handcuffs on you
that's attached to a dog leash and they walk
you down a tier to a cage.
You're supposed to get technically a 10 minute shower,
but they count the time that they transferred
you back and forth.
There's no privacy.
Whatever officers, males, females.
It doesn't matter who's transporting,
you just stand there naked and do your shower.
You can get out to the,
you go out to what's called the yard or recreation
which is basically eight dog kennels on both sides.
And so you have men who diagnosed with mental illness
out there throwing feces on each other.
So a lot of times you forfeit that opportunity
to get out and get some fresh air
because you don't wanna be exposed to hepatitus
or whatever thing, other diseases you can get
from having somebody throw feces on you.
And so that was my world for four and a half years.
But what I utilized that space as,
it was during that period which was
arguably probably the hardest part of my incarceration,
but I had an epiphany that if I was ever
to return to society, I had a choice
in how I would return.
And so I started setting my days up like a college campus.
So in the morning I would get up and study
political science and philosophy.
In the evenings I would study African history,
culture, literature.
I read consistently, like literally everyday
I read something everyday.
Part way through that part of my journey
I began to write.
And I start of writing journals and what I did is
I had questioned myself like how did I go from
wanted to be a doctor to ending up
in solitary confinement serving a prison sentence
for second degree murder.
And I started charting whenever I would get angry
and what my immediate response was to the anger.
And when I did that, it was like the most
awakening experience I had ever had
because what I realized is that I had become
a product of the environments I grew up in.
When I was in the streets, I was like the guy
who always tried to avoid the conflicts
or keep the conflicts down.
I made money, I hustled in the street
but then I took care of people in the neighborhood.
But eventually, the softness of who I was as a
human being got eroded by the harshness
of the realities that I was dealing with.
And when I began to write about that,
that's when I began to become a lot more aware
of what was really happening with post traumatic
stress disorder, which we don't call about
in urban centers where kids experience
very high levels of violence akin to what's
going on in war torn countries.
And as I began to write that, it allowed me
to process the anger out of my system
in a way that was healthy.
And so I was able to tap into different aspects
of myself, I wrote my first novel while I was,
while I was in solitary confinement because I realized
through journaling that I had never
completed anything of substance.
And so I challenged myself to write a novel in 30 days
and I completed that.
And I felt pretty good about it and I shared it
with guys up under the...
In order to share it, and I wrote my novel on anything,
back of envelopes, old paper, whatever.
And then I would attach it to a fish line
and slide it under the door for other guys to read.
And I was just astounded by their feedback.
They were like, man this is one of the most
interesting books they've ever read.
But I was also kind of balanced out by the fact
that they were in solitary confinement.
They didn't have much else to do so.
(laughing)
I could have just sent you anything,
it would have been the most entertaining part of your day.
But I started sending my work to people in free society
and then once I started getting that consistent feedback,
that really inspired me to do more.
So I ended up writing another novel.
And then I started a third novel, but midway through
I was struggling with trying to get out
of solitary confinement.
And the thing about being in there, when they give
you an indefinite sentence, you never know
when you're gonna get out.
And it's something about not knowing that literally
was driving me crazy.
Because it's like you would go see the panel
and you gotta go through this three tier process to get out.
And you'll get all excited because one person may be like,
man it's time for you to really get out.
But then the second level person may say,
eh we needed him to sit a little while longer
and I had gone through that process like three times.
And after a while I went into this real deep depression
and so I couldn't quite write.
But eventually I was released from solitary confinement
and at that point when I got out,
I just continued to study and read
and prepare myself for life after prison.
At that point I honestly didn't even think
I was really going to get out of prison.
But I was like, if I am given an opportunity
to ever be free again, I wanna maximize it
so I'm going to do everything that I need
to do to prepare myself.
And I ended up going to the parole board three times.
Got denied the first two times.
The second time I got denied I had made up
in my mind that I wasn't going back because it was
so hard watching my family get their hopes up high.
At that point I had 18 years in
and I figured I could do the rest of my life in prison.
I was pretty good at doing prison time.
And I just didn't feel like my family deserved it,
the up and down rollercoaster.
But they encouraged me to keep going.
And June 22, 2010, one day after my 38th birthday,
I was released from prison and at that point
I had spent half of my life in, half of my life out.
And as you can imagine, I came out
to a very different world.
When I went to prison our cell phones were about this big.
They came with a duffle bag, so I got out
and my first phone was this little Blackberry.
And I was just amazed and astounded at technology.
Cars that can talk to you and everything was like,
you got to touch this, you gotta kind of prompt this.
And I was also overwhelmed by it.
And more so I was overwhelmed by the thought
of the men and women who were coming home after me
who didn't have the level of intelligence that I had,
and ability to adapt.
What would their life be like once they got out
of prison and they had to adapt to this very new world
where you need emails for everything.
You have to figure out how to text and how to communicate
through this new form of technology.
And that really challenged me to start doing
stuff differently and really raising awareness
and figuring out different ways I can help
the men and women who came after me.
And so ended up meeting Joey in Detroit,
Joey and Colin and we started talking about
this whole idea of the intersection between
technology and men and women who are returning citizens.
So that's how I landed here in this very interesting space
and met this awesome woman.
-: Wow.
Well an honor actually to be here with you
and as a dean of a law school, I guess I'll say
something about the role of the legal system
in the experiences that you've had
and then something about my own work.
So we're living in the most incarcerated civilization
in the history of humanity.
And we have a legal system that actually
is fragmented, so there are many different actors
who have their roles and they play their roles.
But then there are very few people who stand back
and say what have we done.
And so unfortunately, we have a legal system
that actually produces the environment
in which it's almost impossible to have
the life that you've now had, to make a different
life for yourself.
And instead we create a process, a criminal justice process
and a prison system that actually produces
permanent incarceration.
One of the ways this happens is actually
even inside of schools.
And so the school to prison pipeline has now
become a phrase that people talk about.
But it's a reality.
Kids get labeled in schools as a bad kid
and then they get disciplined and then the
criminal justice system gets involved
and they may never finish their education.
We have a program at Harvard Law School
that actually identifies trauma in kids,
just what you're describing.
And in many urban areas, basically 90% of the kids
could be identified as having
post traumatic stress syndrome because they've either
witness violence, they themselves participated in violence
and it's like war time.
So what we do in that program is we actually
represent the kids who are identified often in school
as being trouble makers and we find that actually
they were victimized and we try to create,
not just advocacy for them as individuals,
but also trauma sensitive schools.
Schools that prepare the adults in that environment
to understand what's going on for those kids.
And I think there's a very different trajectory
that can develop.
My own work actually predates my role as dean.
I was very interested, very concerned with
what happens in societies that have had mass violence.
And how do people recover from that.
I started with my work in South Africa.
I was very intrigued by the truth
and reconciliation commission, which grew from
research that had already emerged in South America,
in Argentina for example, but really came to fruition
in South Africa, where in the middle of negotiating
the transition from a part tide to the democratic regime,
the people developing the interim constitution
looked at each other and they said,
but how are we gonna make a bridge
from our past to our future?
And they stuck in something that they actually
invented a word for, they call it the postamble.
Instead of a preamble.
They said we need a postamble to this interim constitution
and it simply said, we will need to create
a bridge to the future and the Parliament
is now authorized to create some kind of a bridge
that will deal with reconciliation.
They didn't know what it was gonna be,
but they used that as a context to interview
a lot of people, go to the townships, churches.
Everyone participated.
And what emerged was a truth and reconciliation commission.
I'll describe it briefly and then I'll describe
how knowing about that has affected
the work that I do in the United States.
So the truth and reconciliation commission
had three parts.
The first part was to take the testimony of victims.
And it provided a forum for people to tell stories
that no one had heard.
And for many people that was therapeutic for some people,
it was very upsetting but it was set up
not like a court room.
There was no one who could interrupt,
no one could cross examine.
And there were then broadcasts daily of this material,
that at least cracked the denial in South Africa
about what had gone on.
The second part of the truth and reconciliation commission
was an amnesty committee.
They could hear applications for amnesty
from people from any side of the conflict.
But the applicants had to demonstrate
that they were politically motivated,
that the violence they used was proportional to their ends.
And many people who applied did not get it,
but in the course of it there was this surprising
experience, I think, for many people in South Africa,
realizing that rather than punishment,
there could be acknowledgment.
An acknowledgment of wrongdoing which would then
lead to these private exchanges between
the surviving victim families and the wrongdoers
who at times would actually engage in forgiveness.
And the third committee was a reparations committee,
which frankly did not succeed.
The goal was to come up with a concrete
tangible reparations for people whose lives
were interrupted and destroyed,
and they really didn't succeed in persuaded
the Parliament then or anyone to come up
with substantial reparations, that are modest reparations.
Well after I did work on this, I came back
to the United States and I talked with people
in schools and other settings about and I was overcome
by how many people in the United States said,
gosh we need a truth and reconciliation commission
right here in Garry, Indiana.
Right here in this school system.
And so I've continued to be very intrigued
by the possible lessons that we have,
not just from that experience, but others
on how a restorative justice approach,
an approach that says how do we restore
the human connections here rather than lock
people up for the rest of their lives.
How might that be a resource for everyone?
And in the course of doing this, I've discovered
that forgiveness is just a very powerful concept
and self forgiveness is a very powerful concept.
What does it take to forgive someone?
What does it take to acknowledge that there was wrongdoing?
How can you forgive without forgetting?
How can you forgive yourself when you've done wrong?
And my work now focuses on what kind of armeture,
I use that word from the sculpture context,
what kind of structure can we build
within which kinds of human interactions could occur.
And can the legal system, can government,
can education, can other resources support it?
The interaction between the international
and the domestic continues to be very fascinating to me.
So just as an example, and I'll end here,
one element of my work right now focuses on child soldiers.
You know, in many countries, particularly
in Central Africa right now children as young as
15, 12, eight, are recruited to carry guns
and be part of really horrific ongoing battles
and many of the girls turned into sex slaves.
And then many of them stay involved in the militia
and then, in Sierra Leone, for example,
there have been massive trials of individuals
who became perpetrators, but they were originally
abducted as child soldiers.
And in asking the question, should forgiveness
play a role in their treatment, I couldn't help
but thing about juvenile justice
and criminal justice in this country.
And the ways in which the child soldiers in Africa
are awfully similar to Shaka.
People who got absorbed in the drug trade
or the street hustle.
One of the things that's happened is the development
of guns that are lightweight enough
that a young child can handle it.
And also a similar pattern in the war situation
and in the United States, adults manipulate children
because they know the children won't be punished
as harshly and draw them into these kinds
of terrible, terrible worlds.
And so I'm trying to see, are there ways in which
we can learn back and forth between how
we respond to juvenile justice issues in this country
and child soldiers.
-: Thank you, so I would personally into that
the international war conflicts.
A lot of these are not just coming out of,
cascading retribution.
Like Syria, when it first started,
some people criticize Obama for having taken
the stand against Assad, but when it was first starting
I knew a lot of people in the resistance.
They were doctors and lawyers and cab drivers.
And it wasn't until the killing started
that you started getting this very charged,
sort of situation that we have now.
And I think the Palestinian conflict,
all of this can be solved by,
and Simone Perez talks about this a lot,
but really is kind of when the history is written in blood,
the only way to move forward is to focus
on the forgiveness part.
-: It's so powerful and when you describe
what it was like to be shot and then to just need
to have the gun with you,
I don't think people who do terrible things
get up in the morning and say,
I'm gonna do a terrible thing.
I think that,
and for me it was a revelation to discover
that the people who created the South Africa
part tite regime, they thought they were victims.
They were acting out of their own experience
from the Bore war and there were concentration camps,
and how do we break that cycle
where people have an experience of being victimized
and then they become aggressors and then it just cascades.
-: And Shaka, maybe you can talk a little bit about,
you talk about this in your book about how you
reconciled with your victim's family and some of the work
that you're doing at University of Michigan
and in other places.
-: Yeah, it's interesting just to hear your perspective
about forgiveness and acknowledgment part.
One of the things that I've discovered
through my own writing was how important that role,
that that acknowledgement part play
in actual self forgiveness and how important.
One of the things that I recall is when I was
getting sentenced, my lawyer was like,
you need to apologize, you gotta apologize
and make the judge have leniency.
And I mean, if you can imagine being 19 years old
standing in front of a judge getting ready
to get sentenced to what's probably
the rest of your life in prison,
the furthest thing from your mind is a sincere apology.
And so I gave the family probably the most
superficial apology because I wasn't even
there emotionally or mentally.
And so what I've discovered through my own process
is that there was some levels and so like
I started working on this atonement project.
And what I realized that it was three very
important things that I had gone through
and that I felt like was really necessary
to make a successful transition.
And the first thing was acknowledging.
You know, acknowledging that I had caused
somebody's family devastating experience,
very, very hurtful experience.
A very traumatic experience.
But I didn't stop there.
I had to think about other ways that I had hurt people.
Being incarcerated, when a person is incarcerated,
their family is incarcerated.
My family had to shoulder the financial burden
of taking phone calls and traveling and things like that.
But one of the elements that I felt was really missing
was actually acknowledging within myself,
like how I had hurt myself.
How I had reacted to things that had harmed me.
And it's something that we all do in society.
We can beat up on ourselves, we're usually
our toughest critics and we begin to internalize
the things that we say to ourselves.
So when I got shot and I got kicked out of the hospital
I felt worthless, so I started telling myself
in my head that I'm worthless.
I didn't feel like anybody cared.
I started telling myself that didn't nobody care.
And what happened is I manifested that as,
since nobody else cares, I'm not going to care.
The second stage was apologize
and apologizing to those I had hurt.
And a sincere apology.
And I was blessed and fortunate that the victim's family,
one of the victim's family member had reached out to me
and we began this conversation around forgiveness
and hers came from a very spiritual place.
She was a very committed Christian and she was
really about forgiveness within the context of her faith.
But she also was a human being who understood
the difference between being a vulnerable child
and being an adult who was consciously committing crimes.
And so began to extend that apology to other people
I felt that I had caused harm,
whether directly or indirectly was really important
in my personal development.
But then the flip side was apologizing to myself
and just really acknowledging and apologizing
all the hurtful things that I did,
whether it was taking drugs, carrying guns,
putting myself in a position that compromised my freedom.
And then the third step was atonement
and really making a sincere effort to actually
right my wrongs and which is why I ended up
titling the books that.
And it looks different for everybody.
For me it was how do I reach young men and women
who have a great deal of potential,
who are growing up in these very tough environments
that nobody really can relate to or understand.
And so when I got out of prison I went to work
immediately going into schools,
talking to kids, talking to kids in the neighborhood.
I found myself in some very,
could have been compromised positions,
kind of helping them with some conflict resolution.
I'm the type of person that I trust my inner instinct
and my voice and my standing in the community
to reach those who people have written off.
And I've been just astounded at the men and women,
the young men and women I've been able to connect with
in that way.
And then the other part was atoning with myself.
How do you become at one with yourself
when you think about the word atonement,
it's really at one-ment.
And that was really learning the value
of who I was as a human being and what I had to offer
and not limiting myself to society's definition
of what a person getting out of prison should be
or what they can be.
And the barriers that we face, in a lot of instances
insermountable for most people.
And it's largely because they've bought into the idea
what everybody tell them that they should be like.
Once you serve your sentence people think that you
get out and just go on with life is merry,
but that's not the reality because out socieity
isn't set up like that.
We live in a very unforgiving society
when it comes to people who have feelings
of very discriminatory practices,
but however when you
are strong in who you are you don't allow
those barriers to stop you from being
what you have to be.
Instead you look at them as a challenge
to how do you change this.
So the work that I've started at the lab
with Civic Media Group is really about raising
awareness about the millions of men and women.
We think about this. 2.5 million people incarcerated.
A lot of times we don't think about how many people
who have felonies, which is probably double
or quadruple that.
We don't think about how many men and women
get out of prison everyday and come back
into a society that can be very unforgiving.
And so with Atonement Project, the idea is to,
I feel like, I personally feel an ownership responsibility
for whatever your life turns out to be is on you
and however I think it's a collaborative effort
where you can interact with the community
in a way that's helpful toward a man's or woman's
transition back to society.
And so the idea behind Atonement Project
is to facilitate this conversation
around acknowledgement, apology, atonement
between victims of violent crime, violent offenders,
but also in an overall context of society as a whole
because the reality is 90% of men and women
who are incarcerated will at some point return home.
And chances are they're gonna be in your workplace,
in your neighborhood, in your social network,
whatever the case my be.
And we have to decide, do we want healthy human beings
returning to society or do we want barbarian
and animalistic primitive men and women
returning to society.
And I'm always very transparent about who I am
and the reality is this, had I not had that epiphany,
I would be no different than any other man and woman
that comes back to society and starts committing crime.
Because at the end of the day you gotta survive
and because I understood what prison life was like,
I probably would have been even more extreme
because the end, the consequences were that
much higher that if I get another felony,
I know I'm never getting out of prison.
And so we create this very violent environment
by not opening and creating space for forgiveness
or atonement with the 90% of men and women
who are returning to our society.
And so the challenge is, what do we do about it.
And the way that we approach that is look at areas
where we're working in forgiveness, atonement,
the work that's being done at the lab.
I also do this work at the University of Michigan.
And then in the community, so we have to create
this paradigm shift in the conversation
because we're all being affected by it in a real way.
-: You know, when I started my own work on this
I went to the library, this tells you how long ago it was.
I went to the library.
And I even went to a card catalog, so this was a while ago.
And the only resources I found were in the divinity school.
And now you know, this is almost 25 years later,
there is an explosion of interest in forgiveness,
atonement across fields, across disciplines.
This is why the Media Lab is such a perfect
place to be talking about this.
Psychology, philosophy, sociology.
People talking about architecture forgiving spaces.
And the elements, Shaka, that you describe that are
acknowledgement, apology, and then doing
something about it.
Those seem to be absolutely central for the person
who did wrong, but they also are essential
for the person who was victimized.
And one of the things that strikes me is really
very, very important is even across different
religions traditions, certainly now with the
insights now from psychology and other fields,
we're finding that carrying around the
emotional burdens of not forgiving,
is itself very warying.
And a definition of forgiveness that I find
very pretty helpful is letting go of the resentment,
even if it was justified.
Even if your resentment was warranted by wrongdoing.
But carrying around the resentment is a big burden.
For many people, they can't let it go
unless they have that apology, unless they
can have some sense of, there was an acknowledgment,
I was wronged.
Though some traditions support people forgiving
even given that hasn't happened and that's remarkable.
I think we could use that more in the drivers
in Boston who don't seem to know how to forgive.
But finding a way to give that sincere apology,
how do you do that?
How do you help someone give a sincere apology
that can be heard is meaningful?
-: I think it starts with
really understanding what's the worst that can happen.
That's my philosophy, what's the absolute worst
that can happen.
And as simple as it sounds, it's really complex
because, like I said, we live in a society
that's so focused on punishment, punishment,
punishment, punishment and so we're countering,
we're trying to counter a culture
that's been prevalent for so long
that most people's instinct is not to forgive.
It's to lock up.
And a lot of times when you don't forgive,
it means you don't have to think about it.
You don't have to give any consideration,
any critical analysis.
And the hardest part is actually forgiving yourself.
For me, and I still struggle with this today, is that
when you take somebody's life that's permanent,
that's a permanent decision.
You can't go back and fix that.
If I rob you, I can repay you.
If I crash your car, my insurance can take care of that.
But that's such a permanent experience that
it took me a long time to really come to terms with
forgiving myself on the most deep level.
But I think what happens is the reason why
some people find it so hard to forgive others
is because they find it hard to forgive themselves.
And when we can tap into the power of what that means
for the self, it's not letting me
I don't want nobody to let me off the hook.
I served my time and I do the work that I do
because I'm passionate about it and I believe in it.
I wanna ensure that other men and women don't
fall through that path and I'm very conscious
of the decision that I made 20 something years ago.
So the awareness is still there.
But freeing myself from the pain of reliving it
over and over in my head, that was important
and that's what allows you to live and be your best self,
is when you can liberate yourself from that
because this is say somebody do something to you.
And this is how our society is set up.
It's like, okay this person committed a crime.
We're gonna lock them up and then once we lock them up
we're gonna beat them, we're gonna torture them.
The reality is, it's not going to change
the quality of your life if you hold on to that.
It's just not.
We think about the death penalty and how absurd that is
that you right a wrong by killing somebody else.
It's like really ridiculous, it doesn't help the family,
it doesn't help the victims.
It may give them a feel good moment,
but what happens the rest of their lives?
And when we think of forgiveness from that thing,
it's not about freeing somebody from responsibility
or accountability, it's about freeing yourself
emotionally and mentally in a way that allows you
to live a healthy and productive life.
So it's--
-: I'm incredibly moved by the organizations.
There's several of them of families of murdered victims
who are against the death penalty,
and who make the argument that you're making
and also talk about how they've gone on a journey
to try to understand, well what produced the situation
which their family member was killed.
And it can be a very enlarging journey
for their own understanding of then society and themselves.
Yeah, I'm fortunate to work with a,
-: I work with a lady in Detroit named Andrea.
She started an organization called
Mothers of Murdered Children.
And me and her, we talk often.
Her organization is the toughest people
I ever had to talk to because they're all,
their family members have been murdered.
In some instances, their children.
But it's important that I talk with them
because it's important for them to have somebody
to talk to to help them understand in a larger scope.
Like Detroit is by far one of the toughest
cities to grow up in.
Last year we had basically a murder per day.
You think about a city of 700,000,
we had almost 400 murders last year.
By comparison, Chicago has three million people
and they had 500 murders.
So you think about that per capita,
Detroit can be a very tough city.
And so violence is normalized in our community,
so it's not as shocking to us as it is
to the rest of the world who don't live in that environment.
The reality is it should be just as shocking.
So her and I have been really working hard
to raise awareness about the far reach impacts
of gun violence, but also the systematic,
the systems that are in place
that have allowed this to exist for so long,
which is, again this is probably another one
of America's great shames is what's happening
in the inner cities.
And it goes back to the deep rooted racial dynamics
that we don't like to talk about.
And those are areas where we have to reconcile
ourselves around and be really honest about that.
A 13, 14 year old kid getting shot,
that should be alarming to anybody, no matter
where you come from and that shouldn't be normally accepted.
So it's just so many different levels to that
type of healing that has to take place.
-: I'm gonna ask the two of you just a little bit,
because you said that the court told you to apologize
so there's a policy in place for apology.
But clearly, that wasn't the right time
or the place to do it.
And I guess the question that I have is is this a,
how do we get this to be more a thing?
Because in Africa various countries came up
with their own reconciliation process,
but it has to be genuine.
Probably not everyone's gonna,
and so the question is is this some sort of movement,
is it spiritual, is it a law?
I think what I'm convinced that the benefit
of Shaka doing what he did for himself, then for others
is positive, but how do we scale that to two million people?
I don't know if you have any ideas.
-: It is, I think those are the critical questions.
I'm convince that law can't make someone forgive.
Law can't make someone apologize.
But law can make spaces where that can happen
or can make it impossible for that to happen.
So let's leave this context and simply go to say,
medical malpractice.
Right now in most of the states,
if someone, if a doctor or a nurse apologizes
to a patient, that can be introduced into a civil trial.
And then lead to large money damages.
So that deters people from having the normal
human conversation about, I'm so sorry about what happened.
Massachusetts has adopted a law that says,
we will not punish anyone, we will not admit
as negative evidence as such in a policy, apology,
but that's not encouraging apology,
at least it's just not punishing it.
So law can make it very difficult
or it can make it possible.
I think then, there are other resources.
I think the arts are really important.
I think creating different kinds of communication
settings where people can, through either the arts
or in a personally or by looking at someone else's story,
fiction is so important to you, you're own writing,
reading other people's work.
I am very interested that in some countries,
they actually dance has been a context
to explore forgiveness.
It is striking to me that in South Africa,
in the amnesty hearings, the designers of the hearings
said we should not require an apology.
When people seek amnesty, they should have to admit
what they did, but they shouldn't have to apologize.
And I asked some of the commissioners why.
Wouldn't an apology be really important?
They said we wouldn't trust any apology
if you had it required.
None of them would be genuine.
And from that I really learned that what you wanna do
is create the setting so that there's a proximity
so that people could have the chance.
And again in South Africa, outside the formal hearing
there were these private conversations
where something much more genuine could happen.
-: I remember John Von Consuelos who's a
California state senator, I think,
he had this whole self esteem movement which was,
I think, and this was while ago.
When love was back in fashion.
And he actually went to the prisons and I think
he did a bunch of work in trying to rebuild self esteem
rather then focus on punishment.
And I think it was relatively successful
but when the politics swung against the hippies,
it sort of went out of fashion.
But it seems like there was some interesting
work done back then and this feels like
self esteem is also, because even in your book
it's the writing that kind of gets you
into that frame of mind.
And it seems like the atonement and forgive
is a self esteem, I really related.
-: Yeah, I think one of the things,
one of the biggest steps we can take
is normalizing the conversation around the human experience.
When you think about the conversation about
mass incarceration, it's typically budgetary
or statistically driven.
Such and such numbers, et cetera.
We don't really talk about the human element
and the human experience.
And part of the atonement project, we added this
art component because we personally believe
that art makes it easy to have very difficult conversations.
And we live in a society that's very entertainment driven,
very artistically driven and art has been proven
to create some of the biggest social changes in society.
And I think that when we tap into our artistry,
and whether that manifests through writing,
visual art, dance, or whatever these other
artistic expressions are, it helps us have
this very genuine conversation.
Actually recently, when I was looking for a publisher
for my memoir, and I met with a guy and he read,
he read the book and he was like,
man this is a very well written book, a very deep story.
He was like, but I can sell it if you fictionalize it.
And it was, and that was deep like as an artist,
you can be kind of, I'm kind of tend to be
sensitive about my work.
And I just felt like I would do it an injustice
by fictionalizing, but I did understand
where he was coming from because from an art perspective,
it's easier for people to digest than it is
for them to digest as this is my real life story.
And I've had people read my story and just talk about
how emotionally destraught they became
in realizing that I was 13, 14 years old,
having these very horrific experiences.
But the flip side of that is that it's necessary
for us to have those hard conversations.
And we have to be honest and just part of living
in America's society is we are so superficial.
Rarely are we honest because you can't be
politically correct and be honest at the same time.
Financially there are so many things attached
to being dishonest that people are frightened
to have these honest conversations.
And what I love about my work at MIT Media Lab
and the University of Michigan is that
it's created a space for me to be very honest
and very transparent.
I think when we can have those conversations,
that's when we create the paradigm shift.
And just to have you here and being able
to just talk with you and Joey, said in the sub,
this is where it starts.
We have the ability to influence the culture
in a very positive way and hopefully at some point
we can bring artists on board.
I think that's important.
You think about hip hop artists who come from the hood.
Their communities are still being impacted by this
so I would love to have them as part
of the conversation because they can normalize it
in a way that maybe we can't.
But they can help create some normalcy around
how we have this conversation.
-: And think kind of at another level,
a lot of foundations and others are not talking about
the mass incarceration issue.
And there's the new Jim Crowe and there's a lot of talk
about it and to your points, it's often very
theoretical and statistics and one of the things
in new Jim Crowe, Michelle Ivander talks about
is that it's very difficult for a politician
to back felons or murderers.
And I think one of the things that's important
about you and your story is that
anybody, any of us could have been that kid
that wanted to become a doctor.
And that story just plays as a narrative.
And think one of the most difficult things
is you can't really have movements without
sort of a story or a face behind it.
And no one gets excited about statistics.
Whether you're talking about starvation in Africa,
or whether you're talking about mass incarceration.
And so I think what's important as we start
to work on policy in this space is for you
and other people like you to start to become
public speakers or public figures because I think people
when they think about, they think about
they categorize felons and people who have been incarcerated
as sort of a category of person that we have to work on,
but they don't really know that they're actually
people that could have been us.
And you were talking to me about how in your neighborhood
just about everyone becomes incarcerated.
So it's not like you have a,
most of the kids in your neighborhood had a choice.
It's statistically very difficult not to end up in jail
if you grew up in this neighborhood.
But if you grew up in this neighborhood,
it's statistically very unlikely
that you're gonna go to jail even if you're bad.
I think that that requires a story
and I think writing is great thing.
I think the arts is a great thing.
But I think we have to figure out how to,
you used the word normalize, but to make
everybody part of the conversation as well.
-: You know, you described, Joey,
a dynamic that I think is really central here
which is the production of the other,
the creation of a person or a group of people
as they're not us.
We can't imagine this being us.
And there's a danger that the policy analysis does that.
Just the way it talks about a problem.
And that's where narratives are so important
and reconnecting the people.
I do think that the dynamic that's involved
in apology and forgiveness is fundamentally about that.
It's recognizing the humanity in another person
and that's true for the person who is apologizing
enough to say I see that you're wounded
and I wanna reach out to you
and it's certainly true for the one who's
considering whether or not to forgive.
Because you have to forgive a human being
and the goal is to actually reconnect,
it requires energy on the part of each,
but it makes each a bigger human.
-: Yeah, I really agree about the human component.
One of the things that we've kind of lost touch with
is what does it mean to be human
and human towards other people?
Because of the practice of tough on crime,
we've got away from the human aspect.
We've got away from taking care of those who are
incarcerated, and not in coddling way,
not in a you baby these guys
and you baby these women, but in a real
honest human way to understand where they come from.
I'm a firm believer that you get out of people
what you pour into them.
And if you're getting people who come from broken
environments that has a broken infrastructure
and they're incarcerated, then you further add
to those fractures by dehumanizing, degrading,
what is the end result you're expecting.
And if the ideas about justice,
justice is about doing what's just
toward all who are involved, not just those
who have been victimized, but those who
are incarcerated as well and really understanding
the full context from which they emerge.
And how do we really deal with that
in a real human level, on a real human level?
Without devastating the rest of our society?
And what I found is for example,
wit murder, people who have been convicted of murder
has the lowest recivitism rate.
And it's largely because that's such a heavy thing to bear.
And then you think about the age, prison is a,
we call it a young man sport.
Most of the young men that I was incarcerated
went in when they were kids, 16, 17, 18, 19 years old.
And so you think about this, these are kids
and when they emerge from prison,
obviously they're gonna be adults, but you can't forget
that when they went in, that's what they were.
They were kids who just made very poor decisions
for whatever reasons.
And they shouldn't be punished and penalized
for the rest of their lives.
And I think we can only do that when we can actually
see ourselves in them.
If you think about some of the bonehead stuff
you've done as a juvenile, would you really
wanna be held hostage to that for the rest of your life?
And being convicted of a crime isn't the only way
that you can determine the stupidity of youth.
We do dumb stuff all the time.
Sometimes we just don't get caught for it.
But if you think about how impactful that is
to hold somebody hostage for the rest of their lives
for a decision they made when they were
in their most vulnerable state, I just think that's tragic.
And think that what we have to do is we really
have to humanize that and it starts with telling
those narratives and really being transparent.
And the thing about, when I came home people told me,
they were like don't, don't, just go on with your life.
Don't talk about your crime.
People are gonna judge you.
And I was like, you know, I've dealt with
some hard things in my life, I can handle that.
And I was able to handle it because I realized
how important it is for somebody to have transparency
because typically in these spaces,
it's usually somebody who's been exonerated,
who's been wrongfully convicted and they can't
really tell the story about mass incarceration
because that's not the reality of mass incarceration.
It's one part of it, but it's a small percentage of it.
I'm the reality of mass incarceration.
I was convicted of something I did
and that's the reality, I've accepted that.
I've dealth with my punishment
and now I just wanna move on and transition
into a normal, well I can't be normal now, just with Joey.
(laughing)
But I just wanna transition back into society
in a healthy way and make sure that other
men and women, that we create a space
to where they can transition back in a healthy way.
-: And that's what atonement, that's what's so great
about focusing on that because that's a human process
about transition, that's about letting go of the past.
And the danger is, and we've flipped wildly between
these narratives of, individual responsibility
and blame and punishment.
Versus social responsibility and that we don't
know who to blame.
And we're not good at that.
And the legal system in particular is not good at that.
Someone's gotta be responsible.
Somebody got shot, somebody's responsible.
And yeah, we hear the story about the background
and everybody in the neighborhood, but we still
have somebody shot so what do we do?
So what seems to me so powerful about the projects
that you're engaged in and the narrative,
the role of the taking responsibility,
I take responsibility.
I take responsibility, but then there should
be an end to the punishment because now I'm
living my life in a different way.
And you commented to me before we started
about the problems even for people who serve their time
in making that transition in a society that says,
well so what, you are are a felon,
therefore you're labeled, therefore you can't live here,
therefore you can't do this.
And I think that that's a really important
question for society.
Can society forgive those who actually
have done their time?
-: Yeah that was one of my biggest challenges coming home,
I was like, I can be hopefully optimistic sometime,
I'm a writer so obviously I had these romantic
ideas about life, but when I came home I felt like
I've acknowledged what I've done, I've served my time.
I'm gonna come out, I'm a pretty smart guy.
I'm gonna be a great asset to any company
that will be willing to hire me so I was
really, really excited about that.
And I got out here and I was just slapped in the face
with a very brutal and unforgiving reality is that
people don't, they don't care.
When it came to employment, I would go in
and I would have killer interviews and know
I had a better interview than the guy who
went in and ended up getting the job.
And how can you prove that your felony was
one of the reasons why you didn't get the job.
I've actually had somebody tell me that they
really wanted to hire me, but the rest of their
company just wasn't comfortable.
But the housing thing probably troubled me more
than the employment thing because they're very clear
that they're gonna discriminate against you
if you have a felony.
And when I first explained this to people
it kind of goes over their head because again,
we have this tough on crime mentality
and it's hard for people to be empathetic.
But if you go to a place and say I wanna rent,
rent out an apartment and they say,
well you're white, you can't rent an apartment here.
You can file a lawsuit for racial discrimination.
Or if the say you're black, you can file a lawsuit.
Or they say you're handicap, or if you're a homosexual.
Those are grounds for lawsuits.
If you go in and they tell you that you can't live there
because you have a felony,
there's absolutely nothing you can do.
You can't file a lawsuit.
So they're legally discriminating against
a class of people.
And if you think about this, again this is not
just one individual, this is millions of people
who have felonies who are being told
that they can't, no matter how much money they make,
no matter how much they accomplish,
that they can't rent apartments or townhouses
where they want to and live in a healthy
and safe environment.
And it leads a lot of men and women to go back
to environments where they shouldn't be at on parole.
It's so many different things you can get violated for,
why would you want somebody to go to the projects
or to the hood, where chances are
just walking down the street you're gonna be walking
somebody that possibly have a gun.
You don't know that.
Whereas if you're living in an environment
that's a little bit safer you know you can be
a little more conscious.
So those are things that we don't think about
in terms of the impacts.
Some men and women can no longer vote, like ever
because they have a felony.
Different states have different laws.
But yet they can pay taxes.
So here it is, I can pay taxes, but I can't live
where I wanna live and in some states you can't vote
for the people that you're actually funding
their employment, so those are the areas where,
when we get into the whole idea of forgiveness
and transition, where we really have to have
those honest conversations about what
discrimination looks like.
And that's what, when you think about Michelle Alexander's
the New Jim Crowe, that's what she's really getting at,
is these discriminatory systematic,
systematic discriminatory practices
that impacting millions of people.
And then even going one more step further than that,
if you think about it, it's not just a felon.
They have children, that impacts their children's
quality of life, that impacts their husband
or wife's quality of life.
And so it ends up quadrupling those numbers
and is really a devastating thing
that we experiencing right now.
-: You know another impact you told me about,
about the impact on families is the phone calls in prison.
So I didn't know that.
So would you tell why does that hurt the family?
Family has to pay for the phone calls.
-: It's been proven that the majority of men
and women who end up in prison come from poverty.
Most of the crimes are committed based out of hustling,
us trying to make money to survive.
And the prices that we were charged,
when I was incarcerated we pay eight dollars
for a 15 minute phone call.
And as you know, you can't get much done in 15 minutes,
so usually we make calls after call after call
and end up having these ridiculous phone bills
that most families can't afford to pay.
And so just think about this,
one of my jobs, I worked in prison,
I was a unit porter and I made nine dollars a month.
And I'm paying eight dollars for a 15 minute phone call.
So basically I was making, one phone call
is my month's salary.
And that's the reality of the majority of jobs.
Some guys may work a job where they make a dollar a day
or they my 30, 40, $50 a month,
but that's five phone calls.
Five 15 minute phone calls, not unrestricted or unlimited.
And this is what happens in prison is that they take
advantage of the most vulnerable
because you have to communicate with your family.
You have to figure out ways to connect
because most prisons are so far away that phone calls
are their most immediate way of connected.
And even to this day, I have to put money
on my personal phone for my friends
that's in prison to call because their families
can't afford to take their phone calls all the time.
And typically ends up a guy may have one phone call
a month where he's trying to split that between,
let me talk to mama real quick, let me talk to my son,
let me talk to my daughter or my girl.
And you know, that's just really unfortunate
because human connection is one of the most
important rehabilitative tools, period.
I was fortunate as being a writer,
I was able to connect with people who made me feel
like it was okay to be loved
and okay to have hope and that I should
aspire towards something great and positive.
And without that connection, it's really hard
to get to that space by yourself.
Especially when you're dealing with educational levels
where the average education level
of somebody incarcerated is third grade,
it's hard to get to a space of healing
and comprehend what that means without external
people. -: Support.
-: Yeah, support.
-: I think it's important to identify that that
phone system is not a technical problem.
It's a corruption problem.
And whether you're talking about human rights
or just good old fashion corruption,
they always take advantage of the vulnerable
and if the vulnerable have no one speaking for them
they can't vote and are seen as others.
It's never gonna get fixed.
And I think that that's, and so,
Cindy's here, she's working on getting tablets
into prisons and there's a really interesting,
sort of technical thing that maybe at the
Media Lab we can think about.
But where, and maybe be have to pull in Larry Lesnick
for this, but a lot of,
and it's not all of it, but a lot of it
has to do with the way the prison systems work.
And the thing is that these are phone companies
that are basically messing with you.
And I'm sure there is like, you can find probably
in every piece of the system somebody who is
making money at the expense of the people in there.
Is that something that,
Martha I'm giving you all the hard questions,
but where do you attack that?
-: It's a really crucial question and what's
the political economy of prisons in America?
Why have we produced the most incarcerated state
in the history of humanity?
It seems to me you can't separate it out from
the interest that people have in having prisons.
Prisons being built, getting federal money
to help build the prison.
The ways in which a prison is actually
a job creator in a community.
Then you have a group of people who oppose
any kind of changes because they're invested
in the prison.
When you have publicly traded companies that
are running prisons, then you have investors
who want the return on the dollar.
We'd have to tackle it by looking at that
entire political economy.
What is the interaction between the economics
of prisons and then the political support
that grows around that economics.
Unless you tackle that, we're not gonna make a change.
-: Yes, prison is definitely,
and this is probably some harsh language,
but it's definitely modern day slavery.
You have a labor pool that's consistently exploited.
And when you think I was actually watching
this documentary the other day
and this guy was talking about how he lost
his job and he ended up selling methanphemines
to compensate and he ended up getting a life sentence.
But while he was in prison he was actually
working on the yard and it just made me think,
it was like one of those moments where I was like,
90% of the men and women incarcerated are employed
while they're in prison.
But these are the same men and women who can't
get a job when they aren't incarcerated.
And so just the contradictions that exist
in that overall system.
And it's companies that make sure that they're employed
because it's a free labor pool
so some of these companies who used to outsource
to Mexico and all these other countries,
now they do it, they're basically insourcing it to prisons.
So they create this job pool where,
so prison jobs pay, like when I was incarcerated
in the kitchen, you start off with 17 cents an hour.
Then it goes up to 23 cents, then it's 34 cents.
And this is in the current economy.
And so 34 cents an hour was a good job.
That's like, man you're balling.
You're making almost $100 a month.
And so what happened is that these other companies,
they was like, well we can pay these guys a dollar a day,
a dollar and some change a day.
And that becomes a good prison job
because you're making almost $200 a month.
But the reality is these are companies
who don't wanna pay their employees
out here working wages, so they've tapped into
this free labor pool because the 13th amendment
basically justifies you not charging,
you can't unionize in prison.
The 13th amendment abolished slavery
except for those duly convicted a crime.
So there is no legal grounds by which you can sue
when you're being exploited because the 13th amendment
has allowed the enslavement of those
who are currently incarcerated.
And so these companies, because they know that,
they set up shop in these different prisons
and they exploit this basically free labor pool
so it's become the new plantation.
And that's the part of the conversation
that's hard to have that conversation
without looking at the history of America
in terms of slavery and things like that.
And that's why the conversation very rarely
gets beyond the statistics because once you start
getting into the real inner workings of prison,
now you're dealing with a history
that we're not comfortable talking about.
But I think we have to get comfortable talking about it
if we wanna change it.
-: Oh in fact, one of the places where people have talked
most explicitly about forgiveness
in recent years is slavery.
Where is the national conversation about slavery
and until we have acknowledgement and actually
dealing with it, you know, there's debates
about reparations, people don't wanna talk about it.
But that's the big thing that is the
elephant in the room in America.
-: So we have a couple questions from the Twitter stream
and we can also open it up here.
One of the questions, which is actually
kind of a hard question is,
I'm all for restorative justice,
but who determines who is restorable?
Have any?
-: I think, I mean it's very relative.
And actually, when I thought about my own transition
sometime when people want you to forgive,
one of them who would want you,
wanna acknowledge of them forgiving you
is they want you to become an angel.
You're gonna have to be this flawless human being.
And that's a lot of pressure to have,
especially when you've been convicted
of a very serious crime.
And I struggled with that coming home, it was like,
people want you to wanna see you in this certain light,
you can't have an argument without people
saying oh you're not reformed.
No, I'm a human being, I get mad and I get upset
like any other human being.
Or you can't go out and have a drink.
Or you shouldn't be doing that.
You shouldn't have these rights as a human being.
And I think as relative as it is,
that we have to be a lot more honest
about the humanity aspect of it.
And when you connect with people from the most
humane level, I think a lot of that takes care of itself.
And you're always gonna have, I have people
that's naysayers and people that's gonna judge me
and people that's probably stand on the side line,
can't wait for my first mistake or whatever.
But I think my work speaks for itself.
And I pretty much just leave it in the hands
of those who have been impacted by that work.
-: You know, I think it's such an important question.
If there is a setting,
as many criminal justice institutions in this country now,
prosecuters create a restorative justice conversation.
And the victims are sitting there with someone
who's accused with other members of the community.
One thing that's gotta be clear is that the victims
don't have to forgive.
That if there is some view that they
have to forgive them, they're being victimized twice.
So it's gotta be their own choice, their own volition
otherwise it's not forgiveness.
It's another kind of performance.
So that's one thing I'd say is,
when it comes to whose world should be restored,
some of this depends on the victims
and are they persuaded that there's something genuine.
Or even if there's a genuine movement by the person
who committed the crime, maybe the person who suffered
isn't ready and you have to respect that.
But a second thing that I'd say is,
we created over a time a criminal justice system
that says the response to crime is not only
in the hands of the victim.
If it were we'd have a private justice system.
We'd have vigilante justice.
Instead we've created a state and the state takes
the responsibility for punishment.
So while the victim has to preserve
the ability to say I forgive or I don't forgive,
the state has its own separate responsibility
and the state can set up punishment
and still, the victim can forgive.
The state can also say, here's the right punishment.
The state can learn to be forgiving.
Those are separate tracks.
We should just recognize that.
-: And it seems, I mean, putting my ventric capitalist
hat on, it seems to me that
without taking advantage of the felons,
looking at for instance housing,
if I can do a private assessment that this person
is no longer a risk and they need an apartment,
because I think a lot of the housing places,
I know we talked about a little bit,
it's almost like just a rubber stamp.
If you've got a felony, you can't rent.
But if you created a separate assessment process
that said, okay well we have a process.
We're gonna talk through this thing.
These people seem fine.
They're as fine as anybody else we'll find
in the neighborhood to rent.
And it's just, I think people haven't looked at,
this is something I think foundations might
even wanna look at.
-: The security line like the TSA in the airline.
-: And actually there's a lot of learning in
micro lending around this, where they lend
people money. -: They vouch.
-: And that you have the local elders
or the local community basically vouch for people.
And then take responsibility for enforcement of that.
And similarly, when there are things like jobs
or renting, which is really, I think a key thing
because it's prohibiting the person from actually
recovering and pushing them in a situation
where they're more likely to commit crimes.
But I think there's different ways to work on that.
I've got more questions here, otherwise anybody,
Nate, Ethan do you, Mike will come.
-: So thank you so much for being here
and it's wonderful to hear the two of you
in conversation about this.
I wanted to come back to something that Dean Minno
was talking about quite early in the conversation,
which is the idea of truth and reconciliation commissions
and this notion of restorative justice.
And TRC's really do have an impressive record,
but they rely on the end of a conflict.
They rely on the end of a system, a moment in time
where we decide as a society that we wanna
evaluate what had come before.
I'm interested in how we have that moment
about incarceration in America.
How are we going to bring about a moment
at which we can actually have a society wide conversation
about these deep, corrosive effects
that come from one out of three African American men
ending up in prison at some point in their lifetimes.
Do we have to have this sort of conflict
that led to TRCs in South Africa, Liberia, Sierra Leone,
et cetera, is there a way we can have
restorative justice without having that level of trauma?
-: So Ethan, it's such a important and well framed question.
It's interesting even in the international conflict
situation, there have been efforts to have
truth and reconciliation commissions in an ongoing
conflict with mixed results.
I do think that we've reached a moment in this country
of a political opportunity that actually
is precisely what you're asking for.
When you have conservative republican governors
saying we can't continue on this way,
linking arms with ministers and social reformers,
I think we're at a moment where it's possible to say
we've had the war on drugs and that failed.
It's time to now say it's time for
truth and reconciliation.
I think on that one in particular, you have the
attorney general of the United States taking a lead on
we gotta change some of these policies.
They don't make sense.
You have the mayor of New York settling a long
standing law suit on stop and fisk rules.
I think there is a moment of people now saying,
we went so far down the punitive road.
That didn't work so well.
How's that going for you?
And so I think if more groups, more institutions
start to demand this is the time, this is the time
for a different kind of approach,
a different kind of conversation,
I think that there's more hope about that now
in this country than there was 10 years ago.
It was 50 years ago, honestly.
-: Adding to that, I think recently
they changed one of the laws,
the disparity between crack cocaine and,
it was like 500 to one, I think it's down to 18 to one now.
Which is kind of like, you pulled a nine inch knife
six inches out of my back.
We still gotta get that other three inches out,
but I think it's a step in the right direction
in terms of how the conversation is being framed.
And I think that the bigger context is, you know,
really the narrative around what mass incarceration
really looks like because for years,
we didn't, we had nobody who was articulating
the intricacies of the system in a way
that allowed people to connect on a human level.
Again, we had all the statistics.
We had all the people who speak for us.
One of the biggest arguments that we have right now
is you look at the people and you think of
mass incarceration and you look at the spokespeople
who are the current national spokespeople
for mass incarceration, none of them have served time.
And so there's a reality that they can't speak to
that's not, that's the impediment between
how human beings connect, is if you can't speak
to that reality, it's only so far you can go
in compelling somebody else to see
what's horribly flawed in the system.
And so adding that very personal narrative,
and I'm not the only person who's come out of prison
who was articulate and intelligent,
I think I'm intelligent.
It's questionable, a little questionable.
I know other men, I have friends, I have friends
who just came home named Calvin Evans.
He did 24 years for a crime he didn't commit.
And he, to me, he is the embodiment of forgiveness
because he's not bitter and angry.
Like me, I would be mad as hell if I didn't do the crime.
Let's be honest with you, I would be.
And I have another friend who did nine years
for a crime he didn't commit.
And so, but these guys are so compassionate
and have such big hearts and they're able
to speak to the issues in a very insightful way
and that's what we have to add to that conversation,
but I definitely think we're in a very special time
and I think that people are really starting to get
that this war on drugs is absolutely ridiculous.
But that's just the start of the conversation.
It's gonna extend much further than that.
-: You know as we deal with mourning the loss
of Nelson Mandela, I think it's created some space
for people to look at someone who everyone admires,
on the whole planet.
Well he engaged in violence and he was convicted.
So why did he become such an admiral figure?
And part of it was because he modeled
a response of forgiveness towards the society
that had produced his own circumstances.
And I think that there's a hunger in the world
for leadership of that nature.
-: That's a great point.
Was it Eliott?
-: Thank you.
Hi, my name's Eliott Hemen, I'm PhD student
here at the Media Lab.
This talk, I think this is one of my favorite talks,
I'm just really excited, well not excited,
but energetic about this issue.
But at the same time here at the Media Lab,
it's a ton easier for me to go redesign
the retail space or remake a product
than it is to reform prisons.
But this is something I care a lot about,
but I have never had any opportunities,
no one's ever come to me and said, hey Eliott,
how do we redesign prisons?
How can I help?
How can the Media Lab help?
How can people who have skills
who care about this actually have an impact?
-: Well actually I've been having a great time
over the last, actually it's been over a year now,
working with Ethan and the crew
and the Civic Media Lab.
That has been Earhart and Ed,
we've been really work so join our conversations
and just figure out different ways.
Recently I did a talk, and it's just talking about
prisons as a tech desert and the absence
of technology information in there.
Again, I came out into a very different world.
Fortunately, I pick on things relatively quick,
but figuring out, working with Cindy,
we were talking about this collaborative work
on how we deliver information that allows men and women
to be successful in their transition back to society.
So it's a whole range of ways that we can
figure out how to work and we're gonna be having
a conversation later on today and tomorrow
about some of the things that we can do.
So I'm definitely looking forward
to talking to you further.
-: It's great to hear your response.
I have two immediate thoughts, but clearly this is
the beginning of a conversation that can get much larger.
One is how could the resources of the town,
the people at Media Lab actually improve
the life for people inside of prisons right now?
And immediately I think about communications
and access to education,
which are so sorry right now.
And yet, outside the prisons there's all the possibility
of the digital world, why can't we figure out
a way to bridge that.
And then the second is the public education piece.
If we think there's a, this is the moment
for a national conversation.
Media Lab has ways to think about how do you get
a civic engagement, how do you use media
to have a national conversation.
So those two tracks seem to be very promising.
-: There's a Twitter question that helps tie in
maybe Harvard as well because it was,
what is the role of lawyers in addressing
some of these challenges in our justice system?
What is Harvard Law School doing about?
And then another question is whether there's,
whether there's a relationship between lawyers
and nerds that helps this.
-: Well I love the idea of lawyers and nerds
getting together, especially since the lawyers
secretly wanna be nerds.
I think it frankly is something that I feel
an enormous personal responsibility to address
as the dean of a major law school.
And as recently as yesterday, I'm meeting with
faculty members, we have an initiative that
addresses issues of criminal justice.
We're trying to improve it and deepen it.
One thing that we do absolutely, is we try to
recruit talented people to go and become figures
inside our criminal justice system
rather than turn their backs on it.
But another thing is, we have a prison legal
assistance program that provides one on one
assistance for people who are currently in prison.
Because there are lots of legal problems
for people who are already in prison.
How to actually deal with child custody,
how to actually deal with the debt issue.
And in doing that, there are three things that happen.
One, we actually help some people.
Two, the law students who do that are transformed.
They wanna work on prisons for the rest of their lives.
And three, I mean I think that there's a possibility
and we try to work on this, we identify patterns.
And by identifying patterns, looking at one on one,
we might be able to do more large scale reforms.
But I think if we join arm and arm with the Media Lab
we could be that much more powerful.
-: And maybe we'll rope Ethan into this
because I think that he has the monopoly
on lawyer nerds at the Media Lab.
(laughing)
Are there any other questions or comments from
this audience, I have a few more from Twitter.
Okay, Ros.
We'll get you a mic.
-: Yes.
I'm really struck by how you've both been
talking about the power of forgiveness
and I wanted to hear a little bit more about
what you see as the barriers to that
and how our community similarly can play a role
in bringing some of those down.
-: I just think one of the biggest barriers has been
just the whole approach to being tough on crime
and everything is about toughness.
And I think, to me, really toughness is being
vulnerable enough to forgive and love
because it takes a certain type of strength
to make yourself available for that to take place
and then create the space for that.
So I just think, I think that's the biggest barrier,
is like the overall,
how we communicate as a society.
Whether it's through out music, through our entertainment,
in our personal space, in our work spaces.
We're taught to kind of get everything done,
back to back to back.
We don't really talk about the most,
one of what I think is one of the most
important parts of our human development
which is our emotional growth.
And just having these real genuine conversations,
I think helps change that creates a shift
that opens up the door for that type of conversation.
But I think that our biggest barrier,
especially as it relates to incarceration has been
the tough on crime.
To me that was arguably one of the best
marketing campaigns ever because it's extended
for like 30 years and it's been consistent
and nobody has been able to really break through it.
But I think the time is now where,
it's a fracture there and now we just gotta
kick the door in and reshift that conversation.
-: Well everything he said, I agree with.
But I guess I'd also add I think that we are
remarkably immature in our abilities
to forgive and also to apologize.
I think that there's a learning to be had
about how do you apologize in a way that's genuine.
How do you acknowledge for yourself.
And literally too, it's something that I think
children should actually practice and learn.
What's a genuine apology?
We know our politicians don't know how
to give genuine apologies.
The use of passive voice is extraordinary
in public apologies, right?
Wrong was done.
I'm sorry if anyone was upset about this.
I mean, what?
So we're so bad at that and I think until we actually
build a richer vocabulary, better examples,
what does it look like to really forgive?
What does it look like to really apologize?
And I agree, I think a lot of people feel like
if I forgive, then I'm soft, I'm weak.
Well actually it takes enormous strength to forgive.
It's also an investment to forgive.
And I don't know, but I was just thinking
on the way over here, are there ways in which
different kinds of media might help?
Not only in offering people examples,
but also giving people a way to connect
with other people who are going through something similar
or an ability to connect say between
the divide between victims and wrongdoers.
You don't have to look at people directly,
but maybe you can have another channel of communication.
I think that it's just very vulnerable making
to engage in any of these conversations.
And media might offer some resources here.
-: And I would add that there's a sort of parallel
mirror in the media that you were talking about in law,
which is the media is about being tough on people
and most journalists are about investigative journalism
which is really trying to find people's weaknesses.
There are few journalists who write about good things,
but the good stories don't sell very well.
And I think that, so there's that.
And then at the national level, I mean the Japanese
are always trying to figure out
how to apologize to the Chinese.
And the Chinese are always having trouble hearing it
and then there's the local Japanese that don't want.
But even the whole apology thing for Japan is a big,
big issue. -: Big, big, yeah.
-: And you know, there's Wikipedia page
of every Japanese apology so whenever we have
this conversation, the Chinese always first start out,
so well the Japanese have never apologized.
And I'll say, well here's the list of 100 things,
times we've tried, clearly they didn't get through.
Some of them are not well worded, but that whole...
And it's interesting because, and just to,
there's a Japanese, there's two Japanese regions
that had a problem 120 years ago or something like that.
And one governor, I was at a conference
and one governor said to the other governor
right in front of, in the public town hall, this apology
and it said maybe our two states should start,
our prefectures start working together again.
And then the, it was 120 years old feud.
And the governors looked at his people and they said,
we're not gonna forgive yet.
And I told them, I got up and I said,
well if you're mad that the Koreans and the Chinese
aren't forgiving us yet for World War two,
but you can't forgive a fellow Japanese
for something that happened 120 years ago,
that's kind of a, and I think that's the other problem
when we get into, and this Shimon Perez
talks about this a lot, but when it becomes the children
of the victims, they are not even capable
of forgiving because what you're doing
when you're asking for forgiveness is turning
over a legacy and so this is where these blood feuds
and gangs have similar versions of this,
but when it scales to communities rather than
an individual, the forgiveness process
becomes very, very difficult.
And then it can last a long time.
-: This is so, so true.
So Micheal Natty of who's a scholar
of great terrible conflicts writes about
how in the former Ugoslavia you can listen
to people talk about how they were wronged
and you can't be sure whether the incident
they're talking about is something that happened
last year or 200 years ago or 500 years ago
because they learned from their parents
and their grandparents and their schools
about these wrongs, and you're right.
Then identity is forged around this sense of victimization.
So to forgive is to let go of your identity
and nobody wants to do that.
So we have to find ways to actually forge identities,
allow people to hold on to their past,
be proud of it and not hold on to the resentment.
And find a way that you can forgive and turn a corner
and build a new constructive future.
Again, we're immature about this.
We're immature as individuals.
We're immature as countries.
-: And I heard Shimon Perez sort of half jokingly,
but half seriously saying we should stop teaching history
because history is written in blood.
And raises to children to be angry.
Because you do look at the educational systems
of countries that do have these feuds
and they're really build around these narratives
of being victims.
-: I did a little project for the UN commission
on human security, which was called Toxic Textbooks.
Just looking at textbooks around the world
where parties to different sides have of course
their own version.
Each of the versions have truth to it,
but they tend to be one sided.
And then it's passed on to the next generation.
And then you've laid the rounds for the next
round of conflict.
So here again is where I think arts and other
kinds of resources can make a big difference.
We had a museum that addressed the conflict
allowing people with different perspectives to present them.
Then you don't feel like you're giving it up.
Here it is, it's represented.
-: And I think the problem with museums,
because I've seen this.
I've seen the Japanese museums are terrible,
they're very one sided.
Anything that's controlled by politics
gets very one sided and even the Smithsonian.
I don't know if you know the story, but they had
to take down the Manila Gate because on the plaque
it said that the numbers that were used
to decide dropping the bomb
were inaccurate. -: Were false.
-: Were false and congress, I think,
said that we need to sensor the Smithsonian.
-: It's very tough.
-: And even in the Mori Art Museum in Japan
had some artwork that was controversial
and they got a lot of pressure.
So it's, I think you're right,
but we need to protect them as well.
-: I have a couple of arguments.
-: Do you have anybody, okay.
-: Phil Gare from MIT Sloan.
On this question about media and technology,
we've seen this child from top down media
to bottom up grassroots civic media in the last few years.
And it might be interesting think about this
in relation to prison systems
which were one of the first forms of media technology,
the idea of the panocticon and surveillance
originating in the early designs of prison systems.
In what way do you think maybe the principles
of collaborative media, social media, grassroots media
can kind of turn some of these processes
of incarceration upside down in the same way
they've done to a lot of other industries.
-: I think that's a really great question.
Actually the work that we're doing on the
Atonement Project is really incorporating the media
to actually have those narratives told,
both from the victim's standpoint
as well as from defender's standpoint, excuse me.
But we're also utilizing that platform to introduce art,
which again, it makes these very difficult
conversations a lot easier and really wrapping up
our efforts to utilize social media to drive
people to that platform.
And also to allow people to engage themselves.
One of the things we realized that everyone
would bring all types of perspectives about
what atonement looks like and what it should look like
in terms of victims of violent crime
as well as violent offenders.
But creating this platform to allow for that conversation
to take place is like one of our first steps
in terms of utilizing media to counter
some of the culture of tough on crime.
-: Two small thoughts.
One is your use of the penocticon is such a perfect
connection to the example of solitary confinement
because its origin was an idea of the penitent
by being alone would turn a new leaf.
But we have just many, many years now of research
that shows that being alone for those many hours
produces mental health problems.
So we don't do that anymore in religious contexts.
We don't send people off to be alone in order
to find their souls.
And we should figure out a way to bring that
research into the prison world, it would seem to me.
But the second thought in relation to what you said,
I'm very taken by the research that shows
that a lot of games, like Spor, kids are more
interested in using the tools to make their own worlds
than they are to play the games.
And I think there's such an insight there.
The digital tools that allow people to make stuff,
people are dying to make stuff.
And if we could find a way to connect some of that
resources to people who are in prisons,
but also to kids who have a risk of being
drawn into the prison world and have the chance to be,
to have that as an outlet to make stuff, to make worlds,
I think that that, then there's no limit to possibility.
-: We have time for one more.
-: I'll be quick.
So I'm Cindy McLoughlin.
I'm from American Prison Data Systems
and we're building Android tablets to bring into prisons.
What's so exciting to me about the work Shaka's doing
and sort of something that Joey said
triggered this idea, I love having,
the idea of a central repository where apologies can happen.
And they can be anonymous and they can also be specific.
And having that central repository is cathartic in a way
because victims will keep coming back
to see if they have been apologized to
and they can hear all the backstories.
If you can include a place for the victimizers
to tell their own stories about how they've
been victimized, it sort creates a cycle of forgiveness.
It can be incredibly powerful,
so I'm really excited to be working with you.
-: Yeah, I'm excited as well.
I'm looking forward to it.
She have a question?
-: Do we have time for one?
-: Good afternoon.
So I hear a lot about education and on the minds of kids
and restorative justice.
As a graduate student for cycle,
what am I doing?
Counsel and psychology, I'm going to school to be
a licensed mental health counselor in trauma.
Here in Boston and Cambridge, does anybody have any
leads or any thoughts of right here in the city,
what we're doing as a whole?
I actually heard Shaka on the radio, that's why I'm here.
I heard you on the radio so also the media piece is huge.
A radio station that you can only get in certain
areas too so I lucked out and heard you on the radio.
And I was like, wow he's actually coming
so I have to come check him out.
But on a graduate level, I actually do some work
at an urban high school now, I'm there two days a week.
And I work with students, anxiety, depression, PTSD.
So I'm kind of interested in more about that
right here in the city that we live in
and that we work in.
What's happening here as far as wrap around services
and connections and just kind networking.
Thank you.
-: Well it's awesome that that's what you're working on.
The ten point coalition was one of the turning points
in the city of Boston, coalition of ministers
who actually said, we gotta turn this around
and I think that continues to be a wonderful group
and a touchstone for reforms here.
Reforms in Boston have gone up and down.
There was success and then there was failure,
so that's why we need a new generation
of people who are energetic, but let's talk afterwards.
-: I think we're basically out of time,
but we'll be around here for a little while afterwards
and hopefully this will be a first collaborative effort
with the Harvard Law School and with you, Martha.
Thank you. -: Awesome.
Thank you. -: Martha rocks.
Thank you.
(applauding)
(chattering)