Josh interviews Julian Adler the Director of Policy and Research at the Center for Court Innovation and the co-author (with Greg Berman) of the book Start Here: A Road Map to Reducing Mass Incarceration.

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My Guest

My guest this week is Julian Adler, the Director of Policy and Research at the Center for Court Innovation.

He is also the co-author (with Greg Berman) of the book “Start Here: A Road Map to Reducing Mass Incarceration” (New Press) which is pictured above.

In fairness, this episode started because Tom Decker, my buddy from high school (we both attended Tulsa’s Booker T. Washington High School in Oklahoma), mentioned that he knew Julian and that I should check out Julian’s new book. So I am going to give Tom some credit here too. Tom is the owner and operator  of Chicago Green Insulation, Inc. Not only does he provide a more environmentally friendly insulation foam but he also hires formerly incarcerated folks.

Notes From Episode 31

The News

This week, Kathy and I discuss Season 6 Episode 5 “Mischief Mischief” of the Netflix television show Orange Is the New Black.

Tom Tyler

Julian mentions the work of Tom Tyler. You can watch a video of Mr. Tyler talking about procedural justice if you are interested in learning more about this concept.

John Pfaff

I have often called John Pfaff the ghost in the machine of this podcast (and he has sworn to me that he will be a guest at some point. As always, you should read his book “Locked In” if you want to understand mass incarceration.

Sonya Starr

Sonya Starr is a Law Professor at the University of Michigan. In yet another strange coincidence, I knew Sonya for over a decade before my own arrest and we used to be at least casually, friends (I have no idea where we stand now). Anyway, Sonya has done very important work in discussing racial bias in both risk assessment tools and in other criminal justice reform policy areas like s0-called “ban the box” legislation.

California Senate Bill 10

Senate Bill 10 is a bail reform bill in California. To get a feel for the opposition to California’s Senate Bill 10, here is the most recent statement by Just Leadership USA asking for Governor Jerry Brown to veto it.

John Rawls Original Position and Julian Adler

Of course one of the problems with Rawls theory is that it presumes that imagining an objective positions means you are actually occupying an objective headspace. You could make the argument that ALL racism and disparity starts with someone imagining that their position is objective (just saying…imagining objectivity is part of the necessary process of creating hegemony).

I suspect if we challenged ourselves to be accountable for starting from a place that wasn’t disparate (when we define what objectivity would look like) Rawls theory might operate better. In a sense, this is what we talk about when we refer to algorithmic accountability, which is some of the work Julian does in terms of risk assessment tools in Start Here.

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