Pastor Chris Harris speaks about Bright Star Community Outreach, NATAL training, the TURN Center in Bronzeville in south Chicago, and the TURN Model of coalition building to reduce trauma and build safer communities.

Judge Jeff Ford (ret.), a pioneer of problem-solving courts and past president of the Illinois Association of Problem-Solving Courts, provides an inside look into this growing approach to criminal justice and explains his experience with creating and managing problem-solving courts in Champaign County in central Illinois.

Virgia Brewer. To meet this wonderful woman today, you would have no idea she is a survivor of decades of abuse and trauma, beginning as a sexually exploited child – exploited and abused by family members no less, beginning at age seven. Now she is happy. Hear what made the difference.

Lenore Anderson discusses the connection between victims' rights and public safety, and how increasing services for victims can reduce crime.

Excerpts from the full podcast conversation: Lisa Daniels is a mother who found healing in forgiving her son’s killer. She now heads the Darren B. Easterling Center for Restorative Practices, named after her deceased son. She lives the teachings about forgiveness that Jesus taught in his Sermon on the Mount and embodies the principles of restorative justice. In addition to sharing her story of forgiveness, Lisa tells describes her first-hand experience with a criminal justice system in which the interests and views of victims are often overlooked or given little real consideration, even by those claiming to be seeking a […]

Lisa Daniels lives the principles of restorative justice as a mother who forgave her son's killer and asked for leniency at his sentencing.

On the eve of Christmas, David Risley challenges both the philosophical and moral underpinnings of our prevailing approach to criminal justice and punishment.

Part 2 of Michael Tafolla's story and his message about trauma, violence, transformation, and restorative justice.

Michael Tafolla shares part 1 of his story of childhood trauma from chronic victimization by gang-related gun violence and how as a teenager he became what he feared when he took up the gun, leading him to prison for murder, where he changed his life.

Pastor Jennifer Stephens shares her story of experiencing the trauma of victimization, self-medication with alcohol, jail and prison, support from church and family, reentry to community life after release, barriers faced because of her felony record – amounting to permanent punishment – resource recommendations for formerly incarcerated people in the Chicago area, her path to the ministry in the United Methodist Church, lessons learned, and her concluding message to the public about how to view formerly incarcerated citizens.

Pastor Jennifer Stephens shares her story of experiencing the trauma of victimization, self-medication with alcohol, jail and prison, support from church and family, reentry to community life after release, barriers faced because of her felony record – amounting to permanent punishment – resource recommendations for formerly incarcerated people in the Chicago area, her path to the ministry in the United Methodist Church, lessons learned, and her concluding message to the public about how to view formerly incarcerated citizens.

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 […]

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 […]

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; […]

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 prisonsThe impact of high incarcerationThe 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.