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This Radio Program is available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/?p=126
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Len Sipes: From our studio in Downtown Washington, DC this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. At our microphones today is Adam Gelb. And Adam directs the Public Safety Performance Project for the Pew Center on the States. Adam’s been around for quite some time. Adam was the Vice President for Programs at the Georgia Counseling Substance Abuse. He was the Director of the Georgia’s Governor’s Commission on Certainty and Sentencing. I met Adam, in terms of full disclosure, I met Adam when he was a Policy Director for Maryland, Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townson and from 1995 to 2000 Adam and I worked together. And he was on the staff of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and he’s a former Reporter for the Atlanta Constitution. And a graduate of Harvard’s University John F. Kennedy School of Government. Adam Gelb, welcome to DC Public Safety.
Adam Gelb: Hi, Len. It’s great to be talking with you.
Len Sipes: All right, one of the things that we want to do in terms of discussing not just Pew, and first of all, why Pew got involved in this issue, the Pew Center for the States. And I’ll give out the contact in terms of the website a couple of times; www.pew – p-e-w centeronthestates – one, basically one word dot org. www.pewcenteronthestates.org. And before we get into the full program I want to thank everybody Adam Gelbain for listening to DC Public Safety, per Google we are now the number one criminal justice podcast on the Internet. We do radio and television as you well know. We respond to all of your comments individually and we greatly appreciate your comments. So you can either log on to the program or contact me at Twitter.com/lensipes. Or email me directly at Leonard – l-e-o-n-a-r-d dot sipes – s-i-p-e-s at csosa dot gov. And, Adam Gelbain, we really appreciate the fact that you continue to set records on a regular basis. We are up to 130,000 requests on monthly basis and we appreciate your comments and we appreciate your attendance and your participation in the show. Back to you, Adam. Now, Adam Gelbain you’ve had a very interesting background. I must tell the audience that when you worked for the State of Maryland, when you worked for Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townson we, within the bureaucracy, I was Director of Public Affairs for the Maryland Department of Public Safety. We would joke about Adam, we called him the Eveready Bunny of the criminal justice system because we, within the bureaucracy, were stoic and we were careful and we were cautious and Adam had a 1,000 ideas he wanted us to consider and discuss. So Adam is just filled with energy, filled with enthusiasm, filled with innovation and I think that’s one of the reasons why Adam ended up at Pew. So welcome back to the microphones Adam.
Adam Gelb: Well, thank you Len and I guess everybody’s probably heard the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over Adam Gelbain to get a different result, but here we are many years later and in fact a lot of the ideas that we talked about 10, 12 years Adam Gelbo have greened great currency. As you see all across the country, states are taking a different look at these issues than they were in the mid 90s when really massive prison growth and very little attention being paid to the costs of the growth, or for that matter, the impact on public safety. And now we’re really seeing sort of this approach change. Right? The old approach in the 80s and 90s was from state policy makers was how do I demonstrate I’m tough on crime? More and more, not everyone certainly, but more and more we see the question being reframed as; how do I get taxpayers a better return on their investment in corrections and public safety? So I would argue that we’ve reached a tipping point on this in venues all over across the country and in actions that legislatures are taking. They are starting to ask much tougher and much more relevant questions.
Len Sipes: Well, and I think that’s probably driven, Adam, I’m not quite sure it’s driven by ideology so much as it is simply driven by the fact the states could no longer afford the level of incarceration that they have that people in Maryland and throughout the country are basically complaining that they want to give money to infrastructure, to roads, to schools, to the elderly, to medical care. And they’re not terribly happy with the money that is spent on corrections or what they consider to be enormous money spent on corrections. So I’m not quite sure it’s ideology that’s driving this so much as the states themselves are basically saying there’s got to be a different way of approaching this problem. Am I right or wrong?
Adam Gelb: Well, you’re right. There is no question that budget difficulties bring people to the table in a way that they wouldn’t be otherwise. No question about it. And we certainly see that the current economic downturn is really accelerating discussions around the sort of three pools of reform, sort of an operating efficiency doing the things that are just good government things that ought to be happening in any environment. Using videoconferencing for example so you don’t have to pay for gas or transportation to get inmates from one location to another. Then you sort of have the middle of the pool where there are certain things that can be done, maybe by policy, maybe by internal action that can, for instance, reduce recidivism. And I’m going to talk about some of those a little bit later. Sort of medium impact, medium controversy kind of measures. And the more and more states taking on the deep end of the pool which is the sentencing and releasing policy. And states doing things that, you know, ten years Adam Gelbo would have seemed very unlikely. And that’s just a reason. But I don’t think you want to underestimate the importance of the improvement in the community corrections field, particularly the research about what works. And I think Adam Gelbencies like yourself and programs like this are both reflecting the reality of better programming, better researched based programming actually taking place and getting better results. And some Adam Gelbencies are doing a better job of communicating what they do, who they are, what their role is in the state’s crime fighting strategy. You know, it’s very difficult in many states to get governors or legislatures to think of parole and probation Adam Gelbencies as, you know, part of the state’s crime fighting apparatus.
Len Sipes: And that’s one of the things that Pew did, Adam, under your leadership. I do believe what Pew did was essentially come out with one of their first documents in this series. And, Adam Gelbain, I refer everybody to their website or to the Pew website. And we still haven’t gotten around to the question of Pew, who is a huge name in terms of the foundation field, how Pew got involved in this; www.pewcenteronthestates.org. But one of the first document’s y’all came out with was a sense that what parole and probation Adam Gelbencies should be doing is measuring everything it is that they do and hold themselves to a high standard in terms of actually reducing recidivism, actually reducing crime. Actually reducing the amount of people who are returning into the criminal justice system.
Adam Gelb: That’s right. Well, this criminal justice is a relatively new area for Pew. This project started just about two years Adam Gelbo now. And Pew has a long history of working in the environment of health and human services, in public opinion, through the Pew research center and other areas, but this was a new area and maybe to you and listeners here, it’s not all that surprising to take that on given that the institution’s criteria for taking on an issue is when the facts are clear and the evidence is in and there’s sort of a compelling case that can be made for action. And this is one of those. We were just talking about just a minute Adam Gelbo there has developed over the past 20 years a really solid research base about what works in corrections. And … as well as these sort of ripe political environment for pushing forward these ideas. So that’s how Pew got into it, along with, of course, a very foresighted leadership from folks at Pew. My boss, Sudi(?) Ram and the creator of this project, Lori Grange, you know they’re able to sort of see this happening and realize that an institution like Pew could make a difference here.
Len Sipes: The bottom line behind all of this, Adam, is what? I mean, we’re going to be discussing policy, we’re going to be discussing documents that you all have put out. And there are two new ones, putting public safety first, which is a summary and a larger piece, putting public safety first by the Urban Institute, Adam Gelbain, trying to take all of this complexity and summarize it. But for the averAdam Gelbe person listening to this program today, summarize where we are. You and I have always talked about there’s got to be a better way of doing it. Even before the economic crisis hit the states, we’ve always said there’s got to be a better way of protecting the public and reducing the amount of people coming back into the prison system and reducing the fiscal burden on states. So I mean is, what is the nutshell? What is the takeaway to the averAdam Gelbe person listening to this program?
Adam Gelb: Yeah. Easy question, Len.
Len Sipes: Yep. Yes, it is.
Adam Gelb: (Laughs). No, it’s not, it’s a very complicated issue. But the bottom line is that we are at a point now where there are one in 100 adults in this country behind bars, something that we announced in a report earlier this year.
Len Sipes: But all throughout the country, all throughout the world, by the way, for the listeners, had a report from Pew that had an immense impact.
Adam Gelb: Well, it did. And it was surprising what it did. I mean, folks like us who were sort of following this for a while, you know, knew that this has been proven and I forgot what the rate was. But the reaction to that was really stunning. And, you know it just points out to people that, you know, fundamentally and to answer your question, the bottom line here is that each state needs to look at who its got behind the walls. And, you know, as a project we don’t have any position on where, you know, any particular state is on that, right? I mean, maybe a number of states don’t have enough people in prison. Maybe others that have some, you know, small chunk or even some large chunk of the prison population that could be safely and effectively handled in the community. And what this has helped do, along certainly with a lot of other efforts by other private foundations and the Federal government and the whole reentry movement and everything is to really say here, look, you know, we have got to subject corrections and prisons in particular to the same kind of cost benefit analysis that we subject education and health programs to and any other government programs. We got to see that we’re getting our money’s worth in terms of public safety. And that’s the bottom line. That’s what this issue is.
Len Sipes: You mean we should be measuring what we do?
Adam Gelb: (Laughs).
Len Sipes: (Laughs).
Adam Gelb: That’s not such a normal concept anymore, right?
Len Sipes: It’s not, it really isn’t. I Adam Gelbree. I Adam Gelbree. But I think for those of in the criminal justice system, a bit of history, I mean, we had crime stats that was initiated in the New York City Police Department about what, ten years Adam Gelbo or so? And they credited that whole sense of comstat to an overall reduction and a rather continuous reduction in crime within New York City. And I think, Adam, what you’re advocating is the fact that through Pew is that we within the criminal justice system, we within parole and probation, measure what it is that we do and be held accountable for those measurements.
Adam Gelb: That’s absolutely right. And Len, if I can, just use that as an excuse to talk for a minute about the policy framework, the strength in community corrections that we have just put together with the help of a lot of the top thinkers and practitioners in this field. It is a framework that includes five provisions; it could be legislation, some of them could be done in an executive order of a court rule, but there are provisions that particularly in tight budget times can be very important to Adam Gelbencies that are trying to stay afloat in terms of their budget. So if I could I just want to take a second to outline them, Len.
Len Sipes: Sure. Of course.
Adam Gelb: Because performance measures is one of them. And let me just start with that. I mean, we … as a thrust of this packAdam Gelbe, are really trying to focus on state legislature and Adam Gelbencies on outcomes, not that many of them are already, of course, but really here getting legislature an opportunity to say, you know, we understand the role of community corrections in public safety. We want to firmly establish the mission of these Adam Gelbencies as crime prevention and recidivism reduction. And so it’s one thing for an Adam Gelbency to develop an annual report and provide the numbers to the public and maybe specifically to the legislature. It’s a very different situation when you have a legislature saying; you know, here’s what we would like. You know, we’re going to pass a bill but we’d like an annual report, or more frequently even, reports about recidivism, about employment rates, about victim restitution, collections aids, about drug test positive rates. And so that provision in our packAdam Gelbe sets those out and uses the American Correctional Association definitions for those measures. So these can be really important in terms of helping, you know, define what the mission of these Adam Gelbencies are and get us past these sort of dichotomy of where we are in law enforcement, the social work, but what we are is about moving those four needles, moving those numbers, that’s the mission.
Len Sipes: And the numbers we’re talking about are a continuous set of numbers. We’re not talking about a yearly release of numbers. We’re not talking about a release every six months. We’re talking about a continuous collection and a continuous analysis of numbers to see whether or not, whatever strategies we put in place actually work to A) protect the public; B) reduce recidivism; C) reduce expenditures.
Adam Gelb: That’s right. I think in terms of legislation we try to be very sensitive to this and certainly the folks in the field worked with us on an advisory role, but we’re very sensitive to what’s appropriate for legislation order versus what should be done at the Adam Gelbency level and certainly the frequency within in which the data is collected and presented and whether that’s presented on paper format or whether Adam Gelbencies really do move towards those types of model where on a monthly basis you know senior manAdam Gelbers meet with supervisors and go over their numbers. These numbers and obviously any number of other measures that are important to effective performance manAda