Translator: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Cristina Bufi-Pöcksteiner
When you walk into a jail for the first time,
I don't care who you are, it's a rather tense experience.
On my first day, I had the advantage of being on the civilian side,
trained as a mindfulness-based counselor
and filled to the brim with altruistic intentions
about the transformative work I was about to do.
And as someone trained in stress reduction,
I was a little surprised by the physical tension I was feeling,
by the sluggishness of my thoughts and my difficulty speaking to people.
And I'm embarrassed to confess to you
I had an inner battle not to just stare at my future clients.
My nervous system had completely called my bluff
because I was scared that first day.
Jails and prisons are extremely challenging environments,
no matter what side of the bars you're on.
Vital to you understanding how all human beings react to situations like this,
I'm going to give you very quick crash course
on how trauma impacts the human brain.
When a stressor is overwhelming to the extent that our safety is breached,
trauma is occurring.
Consider abuse to a child.
Most people know that physical violence to a child is traumatic,
but what some people don't know
is that even the imagined breach of safety can also be traumatic.
Now, when trauma is occurring,
we react with one of our three go-to survival mechanisms:
fight, flight and freeze.
And when danger's there, our normal human thinking is hijacked.
So we're either going to fight our way out,
we're going to run like hell, or we're going to remain frozen and numb.
This catalyzes our brain to change rapidly.
Our brain is programmed to learn all it can when danger is present.
Our brain becomes more malleable and more adaptable
in direct response to this experience.
Henceforth, it is more sensitized to this danger,
and from now on,
our survival mechanisms are going to be triggered into action much quicker
in response to any similar stimuli.
I want you to imagine somebody who's had a lifetime of abuse,
where they felt like their power was taken away,
and imagine how they might be sensitized and in turn triggered
by spending time in an environment like this.
For the last five years, this is where my work begins.
As a little disclaimer about my career choice,
what you should know about me is I have a little bit of a hero complex.
I've had a calling for a long time now to work in the hardest of places
and to serve those that are hardest to save.
And if you really knew me,
you would know that on any given day of my childhood,
I was dressed like this.
(Laughter)
What I need to own is that this heroic fantasy
didn't actually serve me in the beginning,
because I had this idea that jail is where criminals go,
and criminals are the bad guys.
But after years of working inside of a jail
and witnessing so many desperate people getting vulnerable with me,
I no longer see bad people.
I see a lot of hurt people.
I see a lot of people who are struggling to get better
in the incarceration system as it exists today.
Because incarceration is traumatic
and trauma makes people worse,
and healing trauma requires compassion.
Now,
before I go on, I want to acknowledge that this subject and my stance on it
can push some pretty sensitive boundaries for people.
If you're the victim of any crime,
I am not asking you to forgive
and I am not trying to throw away accountability to offenders.
If you're a police officer
working in a jail or prison, or in this system in any way,
I'm not here to argue against what hard work you do
and how much respect you deserve.
And for everybody here,
you might just notice what arises for you when you look at this picture
or when you hear the words "compassion" and "inmate" paired together.
Do you feel any tension or emotion?
Whatever you might be feeling as I speak,
I ask that you just notice and honor these feelings.
Now, I want you to imagine sitting in this space,
or you could imagine a loved one.
Do you feel any tension or emotion?
Whatever you might be feeling as I speak,
I ask that you just notice and honor these feelings.
Now, I want you to imagine sitting in this space,
or you could imagine a loved one.
For many, this kind of confinement is excruciating.
And in some places, when they're too full,
a space like this might have a bunk bed and a bed on the ground
to accommodate three people.
This kind of confinement causes a lot of stress.
Your heart is going to pound.
Your thoughts are racing as you're sitting in this space.
Imagine how your body might shake
as you're trying to get some rest on that bed.
You have entered a paramilitaristic environment.
There's a rule in regards to every aspect of your life.
There's bright lights, loud sounds, there's people shouting.
There's often a tension in the air,
or a feeling that violence could break out,
and sometimes it does.
And even if it's skillfully broken up in under 30 seconds,
you would be surprised how bloody and brutal 30 seconds can be.
Now, most of your choices are out of your control,
but if you try to fight it,
you can have even more freedom taken from you.
I know from experience
that guards and deputies are actually very well intentioned
and can be very friendly,
but when all of these primal instincts are being triggered,
there's often a lot of thick tension between the jailers and the jailed.
And whether you spend a period of days, months or years
in an environment like this,
I think we can agree that this is traumatizing.
What you should know and might be surprised to hear
is that 75% of the people in jails and prisons
are there for nonviolent offenses,
and the majority of this population
have already experienced physical, emotional or sexual trauma
before they came to be incarcerated.
And remember how I talked about trauma creating sensitization and brain change?
Well, I want you to consider the amount of sensitization and triggering
that happens in spaces like this,
from having their breach of safety over and over again.
There is a considerable amount of brain change that takes place.
And some studies will suggest that people are 50% more likely,
after being incarcerated for just two years,
to commit a violent act, to have a mental health disorder
or to have a substance abuse problem.
And now, for the most surprising fact that you might not have considered,
nearly all of these people have a release date.
Of the estimated 2.2 million incarcerated people in the United States,
95% of them are eligible to walk out those doors.
Who do we want to walk out those doors?
Are they going to be more violent and maladapted people,
or could there be another way of walking out those doors?
This is a cell from Halden Prison, Norway's maximum security facility.
This prison has programming, social services, healthy food,
and the deputies are trained to treat people politely.
People passing through this facility are treated like clients,
and thus it's geared toward service rather than punishment.
Now, the idea behind this model is that if you reduce the traumatic elements,
people are less triggered,
and in turn, you have a safer holding facility
and a more successful rehabilitation.
The US has begun to experiment with this model as well.
This is a relatively new facility built in San Diego.
This is a women's facility.
The architects wanted it to be pleasing to the eye.
They wanted it to be spacious and to have lots of natural light.
They wanted there to be artwork on the walls,
particularly of outside environments.
They wanted it to be a nice place
for children to come and visit their parents.
Now, you might be thinking right now,
"If we put people in places like this, why would they ever want to leave?"
I have one simple argument to that.
Imagine the nicest hotel room in the world,
and now go into the bathroom of that hotel room
and lock the door for six months, for two years or for 20 years.
Humans really don't like to be locked up and to have their control taken away.
Scandinavian countries have been experimenting with this model
for over 50 years now.
The aftermath: their recidivism rate is much lower than the United Sates'.
In Norway, it's as low as 20%,
and in the United States,
76.6% of the people released
are rearrested within their first five years.
The US cites the price of incarceration as costing $ 80 billion,
and that's just the price of running those facilities
and keeping people in those cells.
A recent study at Washington University in Saint Louis
estimated the cost to be actually closer to $ 1 trillion,
when you factor in the families
and communities and the children that get impacted.
Now, wherever it falls in that spectrum,
I feel rather safe saying that that's a very steep cost
for something that fails to correct 76.6% of the people who go through it.
And if the Department of Corrections wants to own the word "correction,"
I think we need to give this more thought.
Now, consider that jails and prisons are not always required in the justice system.
In fact, many local governments have begun diverting offenders
to court-supervised treatment
before they go to jail and hopefully before they get to prison.
And more and more places are beginning to adopt this model
because it's shown to be more effective than locking people up,
it's shown to be safer,
it saves a lot of time,
and the cost is the best part.
For the same price as building one prison, we can build 30 programs like this,
and for the same price as locking up one person,
we can actually send four people through supervised therapeutic treatment.
As somebody who works on the fringe
of what's normally acceptable to the mainstream,
the problem isn't convincing county governments
whether or not this is a good idea.
The problem is often that the public don't find this a very popular idea.
Now, I believe that we all have a shared goal:
we all want safer communities and to live in a safer world.
But sometimes our ingrained core beliefs about how people should be punished
can get in the way of hearing the facts.
So, if we suggest building one of these near your neighborhood,
you know, people understandably get pretty passionate about that.
And you know what? I understand.
As someone with two young kids,
when I imagine something to be putting their safety in jeopardy,
my rational thinking begins to shut right down.
But I have had some time to think about this long-term investment
and to challenge my imagined breach of safety here.
When we build one of these in your community,
it's helping the people who are already there
or who will be released into it soon enough.
Now they have a place to actually heal.
Consider the long-term impact
of changing how we address the incarceration problem.
Compassionate incarceration has the potential
to offer all of us safer communities
because, inevitably, the people being released into them
are now more nourished and whole human beings.
It has the potential to free up billions or perhaps $ 1 trillion
for our government to spend on healing rather than harm.
Imagine a system where if people are arrested,
they have the opportunity
to get physically, emotionally, mentally or spiritually healthier.
And if people are getting all of that, when they're checking out,
it's not assumed that they're going to be checking back in.
Imagine how the whole world changes
when the revolving door of incarceration begins to slow to a halt.
If what you want is a safer community, a safer country and a safer planet,
we must consider extending compassion
to the people we might think deserve otherwise.
The public has the power to decide who walks out those doors.
Who do we want it to be?
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheers)