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Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/?p=172

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Len Sipes: From our studios in Downtown DC, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Tara Lihn Leaman, who is the Deputy Director of Our Place DC is by our microphone today. We’re here to talk about part of the request by the way of several listeners, we’re here to talk about not only Our Place DC, which I consider to be one of the best all purpose wraparound places for women offenders in the United States. It is an extremely comprehensive program with a stellar reputation, but also to talk about the status of women offenders throughout the country who are called up in the criminal justice system. And Tara, welcome to DC Public Safety.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Thanks, Len, for having us. And good morning to all of our listeners out there.
Len Sipes: Okay. Our Place DC is the telephone number and I’ll be repeating this throughout the program 202 548 2400; 202 548 2400. The website, www.ourplacedc – one word – ourplace.org. And Tara, one of the reasons why we wanted to have you on the program today was to talk about the status of women offenders, but first our usual commercial that our regular listeners are quite familiar with; ladies and gentlemen, thank you, we continue to go upwards in terms of the amount of requests that we get on a monthly basis. We’re way beyond the 120,000 now, and we really appreciate all of the suggestions, all of the comments that you make and please keep them coming. It is DC Public Safety at media – m-e-d-i-a.csosa.gov. You can get in touch with me via Twitter at lensipes twitter, slash lensipes or my email directly at Leonard.sipes@csosa.gov. And back to our microphone with Tara Lihn Leaman. One of the things that we talked about before the program, Tara was that there really is a difference between male and female offenders, especially when they come out of the prison system. Women offenders have higher rates of substance abuse per U.S. Department of Justice research. The same research, women offenders have higher rates of mental health problems. Women coming out of the prison system are not just on their own. They have, in probably 70 to 80 percent of the cases, children that they are responsible for. So they’re not just reentering for themselves, they’re reentering for their children. And finally the research showed – what was that final point that I was going to make? Completely slipped my mind. So we’ll go ahead and discuss what we have thus far and put it in context of Our Place DC, which I really believe is a wonderful opportunity for offenders coming out of the prison system to get all these wraparound services that you offer. So we’ll start off with what is My Place DC? I’m sorry, Our Place DC.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Thank you. Well, Our Place DC is the only community based support and resource center for formerly and currently incarcerated women from the District of Columbia. The mission of Our Place is to support women who are or have been in the criminal justice system by providing the resources they need to maintain connections with the community, resettle after incarceration and reconcile with their families. We help women remain drug and alcohol free, obtain decent housing and jobs, gain access to education, secure resources for their children and maintain physical and emotional health in an effort to lead women and families to self sufficiency.
Len Sipes: And the bottom line behind all of that is that all of the issues that we talk about for reentry, people coming out of the prison system, whether it be mental health, whether it be substance abuse, whether it be finding a place to live, whether it’s being reunited with her children, with talk about being in a safe place, all of that happens at Our Place DC, right?
Tara Lihn Leaman: It absolutely does happen and since 1999 we have served over 5,000 women needing those services. First and foremost the employment and housing services are often the biggest hurdles to women and families that we serve, must leap over coming out. So we have a substantial employment program that includes employment counseling, employment assessment, employment follow up and also, of course, employment job placement.
Len Sipes: And the women that I’ve talked to from your center that I’ve encountered throughout the years, one of the things that I hear consistently from them is that they, at Our Place DC, they feel safe. They feel safe, they feel embraced, maybe for the first time in their lives. And people listening to this program, if you’re not familiar with reentry, everybody needs to understand that we ordinarily send a former offender to over here for job placement and we send them over there for mental health treatment and we send them over there in terms of housing. So the person has got to be traveling from place to place to place. You have a comprehensive wraparound service.
Tara Lihn Leaman: We do, Len. And it really begins at our nerve center, which is our drop in center. And the drop in center is safe, it’s drug free and it’s a nurturing place. When I say safe, because most of the women that we serve are also survivors of domestic violence, it’s a women only safe space.
Len Sipes: It’s a sexual – and that’s the issue that I forgot when I was doing my introduction, the majority of women, again, per U.S. Department of Justice research, has basically stated that they were sexually abused in their younger years. Or they’ve been sexually abused at some point throughout their lives. Now, think about that. A lot of the women that I’ve encountered in my 40 years within the criminal justice system, they’re pretty hard. They’re drug addicted. They’re struggling with mental health issues. They’ve been on the street doing a lot of crazy things. And that’s something else I want to talk about because some of the women I encounter are not a danger to society at all. They got caught up in drug transportation at the “request of a significant male figure”. But we’ll talk about that a little bit later. And the point is that hard edge that comes with many of them, I think the basis for that is sexual violence at a young age. So they don’t trust anybody. They don’t trust – Lord knows that they don’t trust the system. But they trust Our Place DC.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Well, some of the women have absolutely been survivors of domestic violence. And I would go to say that the majority of the women at some point in their lives have been abused quite often by someone that they trusted. And so absolutely the women know about Our Place and we are fortunate to have wonderful relationships with folks actually working inside the prisons. So we go to the prisons and we do pre-release workshops, both at the prisons where there are the highest number of DC women.
Len Sipes: Right. And they’re involved in federal prisons through the Federal Bureau of Prisons. So for those listening outside of the District of Columbia, there is no District of Columbia prison that was closed down. It’s now, as of 2000, the responsibility for incarcerated DC offenders is now the purview of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Right, Len. And you touched upon a really good word which is trust. And because we have these positive relationships with folks working within corrections and we’re able to go in and actually start building bonds of trust with the women that we serve while they’re still in prison. So we hold prerelease workshops, usually there’s a couple of days that we spend, the staff, our program staff go in and do, we have a prerelease packet that we share information, women coming out – what they need to know in terms of housing, in terms of HIV services, in terms of, you know, the drop in services, that could be something as simple as getting an ID or getting police clearance. And so we’re able to start building those bonds of trust with the women on the inside so when they, upon release, they come to Our Place and we already have a good deal of information about what their needs are, what their concerns are and we’re able to address that then and there.
Len Sipes: Now I’m going to go out on a limb here because you and I before the show we were talking and I’ll get emails saying, you know, Leonard, you left leaning liberal you, in terms of talking about the issues dealing with female offenders or with male offenders in general. And I’ve always said, and I’m looking at my watch now and it is 25 of 12. I keep saying, all I’m doing is saying it’s 25 of 12. I’m not leaning right, I’m not leaning left. I’m simply stating what is in terms of the statistics. And they’re good, solid U.S. Department of Justice research in terms of the status of women offenders. But the other thing is that they do better under treatment than males. One of the correlates, or one of the predictors of doing well is being a female offender, not a male offender. I remember when I taught a Job Corps class that the bulk of my really good students were women. Were women, people called women, women offenders caught up in the criminal justice system. You know, women seem to be more willing to cross the bridge to a drug induced lifestyle, a criminal lifestyle, they seem more willing to cross the bridge than male offenders. And that just seems, I’m going by the research, is that right or wrong?
Tara Lihn Leaman: Well, it depends. And the reason why it depends is that most of the women that we serve have been charged with non violent drug offenses, that’s correct. And the majority of women are mothers. And so it’s really important for us in our services, which the woman lead and carve for us, to be very mindful of gender specific approach to our services. And so by that I man, for example, if a woman that we’re serving is a mother then ,
Len Sipes: And most are.
Tara Lihn Leaman: And most are, I would say over 80 percent are, grandmothers as well.
Len Sipes: Right.
Tara Lihn Leaman: When we’re looking at, for example, legal services, we’re going to more than likely be dealing with family law issues. Whether it’s child custody, it could even be divorce, that’s something that we are, that we are addressing within a gender specific frame. In terms of employment, our employment services, we want to place women who are often mothers at placements where they offer living wage and also benefits.
Len Sipes: Sure.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Health benefits for their children, flexible hours, because if you are a mother you often are going to be the primary caretaker of the kids. So we really want to ensure that the woman’s’ experience, quite frankly dictates the services that we’re able to provide. And we always want to provide services that any one of us on staff would also use. There is not a distinction in our services.
Len Sipes: Now, let’s get down to what I consider the chip on their shoulder the size of Montana, that’s how I describe so many male offenders. And there’s a lot of female offenders that fit that description as well, they don’t trust life. The overwhelmingly majority of, let’s say male and female offenders together, they grow up in households that were dysfunctional. They’ve been, a lot of them have been raising themselves from a very young age and a lot of them, they were very early age of entrance to drug use, alcohol use, very early entry to a lifestyle of crime or being involved in criminal activity. And if you raise yourself and if you associate with your peers who have also raised themselves, you come out of it with this joint sense of it’s me against the world. And so many of the women offenders that I’ve talked to over the course of time they also had this sense of, you know, I don’t trust you Mr. Government Man. And that’s fine. I understand that. How do you break through all that?
Tara Lihn Leaman: Well, before we break through it, we are always mindful that we are, we have all made poor choices in life. There’s no a person that I’ve met, and I include myself there, that has not made a poor choice. Often the difference lies in the types of support systems we have in place. For example, I was fortunate enough to have a cushion. I was fortunate enough to have someone say, that just ain’t right, you don’t do that.
Len Sipes: Right.
Tara Lihn Leaman: And so when you look at the choices, what we try to model is yes, we’ve all made poor choices, some of us were dealt a worse hand than others, and we want to always be accountable for our behaviors. And mindful of the need to make healthier choices. And that’s what Our Place is about. It’s not – we don’t care where you have been prior to walking through our door. The fact that you made a choice to walk through that door is the first step out of many to making better choices.
Len Sipes: But my question remains, how – I understand all that, and everything you’ve just said is extremely logical. But that doesn’t cut the mustard in terms of taking an individual male or female, who feels that life has not been kind to them and that they survive by this extraordinarily harsh exterior. Breaking through that extraordinarily harsh exterior involves what?
Tara Lihn Leaman: Well, breaking through that harsh exterior of which most of the women that we serve have that harsh exterior, begins by creating trust.
Len Sipes: Right.
Tara Lihn Leaman: It’s by treating someone that you may, on its face, feel like you have nothing in common with. But after sitting down and talking to them, you actually realize there is more things you have in common than not. And so that’s the trust.
Len Sipes: And that takes how long to break through?
Tara Lihn Leaman: Well, we have worked with women since the beginning of Our Place, since 1999, who have been serving extended sentences. We accept collect phone calls so we can still have a relationship with a woman who has a sentence of 20 plus years. When the women come, because we’re doing prerelease workshops inside the prison, when the women come out, they know about us. Their bunkee has told them about Our Place.
Len Sipes: There you go.
Tara Lihn Leaman: And so it’s all about those trusts, those bonds of trusts that we work so hard to create while the woman is still on the inside.
Len Sipes: Because you know she’s sitting there for the first week, the second week, the first month, second month saying, all right, but sooner or later some, they’re going to do something. Sooner or later they’re going to do something that’s going to violate my trust. I know that. Nobody, I can’t trust anybody.
Tara Lihn Leaman: That’s , I’m laughing as you’re saying that, Len, because there is this wonderful sister that we met at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia. And we were giving a prerelease workshop there and there were about 75 women who came to our workshop, DC women, and , this one woman got up in the middle of our presentation and was basically, c’mon, Tara, you guys ain’t for real ,
Len Sipes: That’s right.
Tara Lihn Leaman: , I mean, what’s really going on here?
Len Sipes: What is your game?
Tara Lihn Leaman: Exactly. What is our game? What are you not telling us that as soon as I walk into Our Place you’re going to be like, no, we can’t help you. And I said, when you come into Our Place you ask for me. I’m telling you we are going to do to the best of our abilities help you legal, HIV services, we have transitional housing. We have a sixty day transitional home. Healthcare, employment, our scholarship program, our family transportation program, our children services. We, there is no game. And I’m happy to say that once this young woman got released, she came to Our Place, she came our employment, she came to Our Place, she got her police clearance that she needed, her form of official ID that she needed, a voucher, a transportation voucher. And we helped her get her resume together. And she is currently enrolled in a job training program.
Len Sipes: Mmm. I’ve talked to one woman who basically said that Our Place DC is her home.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Well, we like to think that ,
Len Sipes: It’s their emotional home. They’re in an apartment now. They’re working. They’re reunited with their kids, but Our Place DC, and the people in Our Place DC are her real home, not her second home. It’s her real home because it is the only place, according to her, that she felt safe and comfortable.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Well, that’s really wonderful to hear. And that’s why we exist. And that’s just certainly a tribute to our staff. But I have to tell you, Len, unfortunately not every story is a success story for us.
Len Sipes: Of course not, it can’t be.
Tara Lihn Leaman: And what we do say is we understand that relapse is a part of recovery. We understand that. And as long as you are sober, you are welcome at Our Place. So it doesn’t matter if for some reason you have been re-incarcerated or if years have gone by and you haven’t come to Our Place, you’re always welcome.
Len Sipes: Tara Lihn Leaman, the Deputy Director of Our Place DC, I’m going to give the telephone numbers now and at the end of the program; 202 548 2400, 202 548, 2400. The website is www.ourplacedc – one word dot org. www.ourplacedc.org. I want to continue, Tara, for the second half of the program the – we talk about all of the isms in terms of women offenders. In terms of the research saying that they do have higher rates of substance abuse. They have higher rates of mental health problems. They bring the uniqueness of having other human beings to deal with and be responsible for when they come out of the prison system. And we talk quite frankly and openly about the fact of sexual violence being directed towards so many of these individuals. Now let’s shift gears a little bit. I was with the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services for 14 years as their Director of Public Information. And I remember we were talking about the women’s prison in Jessup. And somebody said, you know what? Here’s my opinion, that a third, up to 30 percent of these women, possibly more, could be safely released from the prison system today, as long as they had continuing services; mental health services, employment services, or even GPS monitoring or whatever it is from the safety, a public safety point of view, that if they have the right services they could be released today, it would save the taxpayers of the State of Maryland an enormous amount of money. Women offenders would get the assistance that was necessary for them to make that transition. And it would be a huge win/win for everybody, but politically we can’t do that. But they said that these women were not a danger to society. That these women that they are talking about were acting on the request of a male figure who requested “that they carry a substantial amount of drugs from point A to point B” when they came into Maryland and they were found out and they were arrested for transporting a truckload of God knows what, some illegal drug. So the woman ends up in prison for a long period of time but she is not a danger to society. She was basically told by this male figure, take this from one point in the State of Maryland to another, or take it from Georgia to New York or I’m going to hurt you bad. Now, again, I’m not making excuses for these individuals. I’m not. But that’s true. That happens a lot which, and so many people, so many of the women caught up in the criminal justice system fit that description. They’re not a danger to public safety. They were basically almost a victim, if you will, of this person who said do or I’m going to hurt you.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Absolutely. I mean, and you basically summarized the Kimber Wood story which who I believe President Clinton pardoned several years ago, but yes, some of our women were in that same situation where they were given a choice, you either do this by someone that they thought they loved or something harmful would happen to you. And what their situations have informed us is our need to really examine what a healthy relationship looks like. When we get caught up in that situation do we know what a healthy relationship looks like?
Len Sipes: People who have been abused a lot of times end up with abusive people.
Tara Lihn Leaman: There is a definite cycle, absolutely. And there’s lots of studies that confirm that. Mm-hmm.
Len Sipes: Right. So they end up with this abusive person out of some sense of love. And this person understands that he is just manipulating the individual and sends her out to do his bidding. Generally speaking not a violent crime, generally speaking transporting drugs.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Right.
Len Sipes: Or hiding a gun.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Non violent drug offenses. Absolutely. And I also want to make sure for our listeners that these types of relationships involving domestic violence abuse are not just heterosexual in nature. We also work with women who are in same sex relationships that also have been survivors of domestic violence. More than likely wouldn’t do the same things that we’re talking about. Do this or else.
Len Sipes: Right. Right. So it is , there’s a certain point where it just paints a sad picture. And, again, I’m totally, for the people who are going to write in and say that I’m leaning too far left, I understand that you do the crime, you do the time. I understand people need to take responsibility for their own decisions and I support that. And I believe that people should, under certain circumstances, serve long and harsh terms of incarceration. But nevertheless, you know, in the State of Maryland, we said we could let a third of the people in the Maryland prison system for women out tomorrow as long as they have the right services, they would probably not present a public safety issue. Now, it’s inevitable that one or two or three or ten or twelve or a dozen are going to go out and get right back involved in the lifestyle, I mean, that comes with the territory when you make those sorts of decisions. There’s nothing bulletproof, foolproof about dealing with offenders, former offenders, and taking risks. But nevertheless that was our assumption.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Absolutely. And DC being Maryland’s sister jurisdiction right now the council, I think, council member Phil Mendelson, who is the chairman of the Judicial system of the Public Safety Committee, they are entertaining an idea of releasing some folks earlier that have participated in programs preparing for their release.
Len Sipes: Right.
Tara Lihn Leaman: But let me just get back also to the numbers, because you mentioned the numbers, recently the peer center on states talked about how in New York, I believe that one dollar of every 15 dollars is spent on correction. In New York $40,000 dollars a year is spent on corrections, $15,000 dollars a year is spent on treatment. So in this environment of the so called scarcity of resources, where folks are being incarcerated instead of getting treatment, even the numbers favor getting treatment.
Len Sipes: Well, right. What they’re saying is that if we invest enough money, the research teams should be pretty clear on this from a cost effective point of view, and we have the PEW(?) foundation to thank for this and Adam Gelb’s organization as well as the Washington State’s Public Policy Institute where they’ve been able to prove, conclusively, that these programs save taxpayers an enormous amount of money. And probably do a better job of dealing with public safety than simply incarcerating them without services, right?
Tara Lihn Leaman: Absolutely. And I was reading an article, Gene(?) Healy, who is one of the Vice Presidents of all places, the Kato Institute in the Washington Examiner yesterday talking about how he thinks reforming the drug policy, particularly as it relates to decriminalizing certain substances, makes a lot of sense.
Len Sipes: And Kato, by the way, is a conservative think tank.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Exactly. So getting back, this is not a left or right issue. It is reality.
Len Sipes: Well, I get the newspapers clippings every day throughout the country. And the states can not afford to do what it is they’re doing. And they’re looking for a “better way” which is one of the reasons why PEW is involved in the business and the sentencing projects are involved in the business. But there is, the states are basically saying we can no longer afford to do this level of incarceration. We’ve got to look for alternatives. And again it’s not a political philosophy, it’s the state’s basically saying we can not afford to do this. And just in case the listeners don’t know, and the listeners throughout the world, I don’t know if they’re going to have a frame of reference here, but for the first time in my 40 years we’re laying off police officers, we’re laying off correctional officers, we’re closing prisons and we’re laying off parole and probation agents because the states simply can’t afford to keep these people on. So we have a fiscal crisis at the state level. The states are trying to cope with this by making better decisions in terms of how they manage their offender population and that’s why I brought up the Maryland situation of years ago, but we simply said, ah, we let 30 percent of the women offenders go and if a couple of them go out and do something wrong it’s our heads on the chopping block, why take that risk?
Tara Lihn Leaman: Right. And not only are those cuts being made at that level, but then you also have cuts being made in terms of the services being offered to women and men who have spent time in prison or are currently incarcerated in terms of employment services that are being cut as well. So it begs the question, what does rehabilitation look like?
Len Sipes: Well, that’s one of the reasons why I wanted you on the program today, because Our Place DC is probably the only entity that I’m aware of. I’m quite sure there are more out there, that even for male or female offenders, it is a complete wraparound service. You walk through that door, you know, you get all the services you need. Not necessarily at that physical location, but it’s all right there. I mean that doesn’t even happen here. To my knowledge it doesn’t happen anywhere but Our Place DC does that and there are so many hardened women with considerable criminal backgrounds that I talked to that are now taking care of their three kids and they’re now tax burdens, I mean, now a taxpayer, not a tax burden, and those three kids are now being loved and taken care of by their mother. Now that is a huge win/win for our society at large.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Absolutely. I mean, we’ve worked with several mothers to help them regain custody of their kids that they were obviously not with while they were incarcerated. So the services that one can get at Our Place include, but are not limited to the following: the drop in center, as I mentioned earlier, we have clothes. Clothes for women that again, anyone on staff would wear. We’re not going to give you something that we wouldn’t wear.
Len Sipes: Right.
Tara Lihn Leaman: ID, birth certificates, police clearance, tokens. We also have a phone, fax and computer for women who would like to set up an email account, check email. Our HIV/AIDS services includes onsite counseling, testing and referral.
Len Sipes: Which is a real problem over here in the District.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Absolutely.
Len Sipes: And throughout the country.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Absolutely. You know, probably a lot of folks have seen some of the abysmal statistics coming out of DC regarding HIV/AIDS, AIDS and the fact and the reality is that African American women primarily through heterosexual sex are ,
Len Sipes: Are catching HIV.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Exactly. At an extraordinarily high rate. We also have housing. I mentioned our transitional housing program we have, speaking of HIV/AIDS, three beds are reserved for women who are HIV positive, one bed is not. It’s a sixty day transitional housing program. We also offer housing case management. Our health care, we provide mental health services and substance abuse treatment through our consultants that we have on staff. Licensed nurses on staff. Legal services, direct representation, community based legal education groups and also not just a direct services, but also the advocacy part. For example, we are the only organization that is tracking and monitoring the conditions of release of DC women from the correctional treatment facility. Employment, as I mentioned before, career planning, placement assistance, training and education ,
Len Sipes: That’s an amazing list.
Tara Lihn Leaman: , scholarship program. We have a scholarship program for kids whose mothers are currently incarcerated or have been formerly incarcerated.
Len Sipes: But all this is on the website, right?
Tara Lihn Leaman: All this is on the website, exactly.
Len Sipes: We have to close the program.
Tara Lihn Leaman: Okay.
Len Sipes: We’re running late on the program. Tara Lihn Leaman, she is the Deputy Director of Our Place DC, 202 548 2400. These numbers and contact points will be in the show notes; 202 548 2400. The website, www.ourplacedc one word, if you will dot org. Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety. We are extremely appreciative of all the feedback that you’re giving us and all the suggestions for the show. We got three suggestions for the show for women offenders and that’s why we’re sitting here with Tara Lihn Leaman. You all have yourselves a very pleasant day.

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Meta terms: Police, law enforcement, Cincinnati, criminal justice, leadership, crime, criminals, criminal justice

Welcome to DC Public Safety-radio and television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts.

Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/?p=167

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at twitter.com/lensipes.

- Audio Begins -

Len Sipes: From our studio in Downtown Washington, DC it’s DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. The program today is the Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence and one of the things that we have, yet another in the series for the National Criminal Justice Association, and focusing on exemplary programs is a program within Cincinnati, Ohio that’s produced a 55 percent reduction in group member involved homicides over an eight month period. And I think what we’re doing there is talking about gangs. We have three principals with us on the show today. We have Karhlton Moore, the Executive Director of the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services; Doctor Robin Engel, the Director of the University of Cincinnati Policing Institute; and we have Greg Baker. Greg is the Executive Director of Community Relations for the Cincinnati Police Department. And to Karhlton and to Greg and to Robin welcome to DC Public Safety.
Greg Baker: Thank you very much.
Robin Engel: Thank you.
Karhlton Moore: Thank you.
Len Sipes: All right. Greg, Greg Baker. You’re going to start. Give me a sense as to what the Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence is all about.
Greg Baker: Okay, Leonard. The Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence goes by the acronym of SERVE and it’s a multi agency collaboration that we began back in April of 2007. And it’s designed to reduce gun related homicides and associated violence with sustained reductions over time. Our focus deterrent strategy is loosely modeled after the Boston Gun Project which began in the mid 1990s.
Len Sipes: And was very successful for a good amount of time.
Greg Baker: And it was, and that’s why we emphasize the sustained reductions over time. And that’s one of the problems with the Boston Project is that it began to lose its effectiveness after a period of time and we don’t want to model that part of the initiative as well.
Len Sipes: And as somebody who has spent ,
Greg Baker: The program ,
Len Sipes: , Department of Justice , as somebody who has spent ten years in community crime prevention earlier in my career, that was my common finding of community crime prevention programs was that whole sense of deterioration over time. But continue, please.
Greg Baker: Well, our partnership involves multiple law enforcement agencies which is pretty much mirrored after the Boston Project, but where we took some liberties in the model in Cincinnati, we included a social service component as well as a community component. And we used those two components to deliver a clear message to violent street groups that the violence must stop.
Len Sipes: Okay. And the whole concept here is to what? Target specific offenders within a particular area that targets specific offenders in terms of their crime backgrounds?
Greg Baker: Well, as you know, Carl(?), back in 2001, the Cincinnati Police Department was subject to a Department of Justice memorandum of agreement as well as a settlement to raise the profiling lawsuit which culminated in a collaborative agreement and in both of those documents the department was committed to utilize problem solving as its chief strategy in reducing issues of crime and disorder. So SERVE has actually been built on a problem solving model and back in , well, when we began this initiative, we looked at homicides that occurred chiefly during the period of 2006. And determined from that about 75 percent of those homicides involved either as a victim or the perpetrator an individual that was participating in a group of individuals that were conspiring to commit violence or otherwise known as a gang.
Len Sipes: Right.
Greg Baker: So as we looked at that commonality we developed the strategy that would impact those individuals.
Len Sipes: Okay, but what we’re talking about is gang members. So that’s the operative concept here.
GG: Gang members not necessarily in the former sense of the word, though we do have some gangs operating in Cincinnati and just recently had an enforcement action against a group that probably would meet the former definition of a gang. However we actually kind of lowered the definition somewhat to include any individuals that operate in a group that conspired to commit crime.
Len Sipes: That’s right. Robin, you’re trying to come in?
Robin Engel: Well, I was just going to say that one of the things we realized pretty quickly in Cincinnati is that are our offenders are really loosely knit, loosely organized in these types of violent groups. And so you might have a very organized gang, in fact one of our most recent gang crackdowns, there were 96 known members of that very structured organized gang, but we also have individuals, three, four, five individuals that hang out together, that commit crimes together, they engage in violence together. And so the beauty of this initiative is that it spans across these different types of gangs, groups, clicks, sets, whatever you’d like to call them. But the idea is that it’s based on a handful of very active chronic offenders commit the majority of violence in our city. And that’s, we’ve been able to demonstrate that empirically as well.
Len Sipes: And that’s a common finding throughout the country. We go back to the RAND(?) research back in the 1980s where they said that a minority of offenders commit the majority of crime. So I think what you’re doing is targeting a high rate violent offender. Is that it?
Robin Engel: Yes. That’s exactly what we’re looking at. But here we believe that the violence that they’re involved in, we can impact that violence through group pressure and support. Pressure through the police departments, support through our social services in our community and that if we have a sustained communication with these offenders and with the streets, we can ultimately reduce that violence over time.
Len Sipes: I’m going to read a little bit more from the message that I have in front of me. The anti violence message is powerfully communicated through a number of different mechanisms including call in sessions with probationers, parolees, direct contact with street workers, advocates police problem probation and community outreach. The core enforcement step is to tax groups for violence through any convenient legal means such as drug enforcement and create conditions within the group that members will control each other’s violent behavior. So the whole idea is to reach out to the group structure in terms of enforcement and in terms of programs that can help them, yet at the same time delivering the message that the violence must stop. And that they are going to be held responsible for each other’s behavior in one way shape or another.
Greg Baker: And part of our message is that we actually set the bar of homicides. So not so much the drug enforcement, but we communicate to those individuals that the, on very clear terms that the next body that falls, not only will the shooter be aggressively pursued, but each member of the group that he hangs with.
Len Sipes: Right. Because it’s just not the shooter, the shooter is with a network of individuals who sell the gun, rent the gun, hide the gun, provide the transportation, know of the actions, know of the actions beforehand. And so they all, in one way shape or form, are involved in some sort of criminal conspiracy, right or wrong?
Robin Engel: Yes and no. I think part of it really is about that peer pressure that they, that the influence that they have over other members of the group. And that’s really what we’re trying to tap into here. A lot of the violence that we see is really not associated with drug business per say, but it’s about disrespect. It’s about norms and narratives of the street, what it means to be a man and how you respond to acts of disrespect. And so if we can tax these groups in the sense that, hey, if their buddy is going to go out and shoot someone and they know that law enforcement is going to come down on them too, then they’re more likely to say, hey, put the gun down. C’mon, don’t bring attention to us.
Greg Baker: It’s really an approach that, you know, in that society operates in general. That we try to get those individuals to police themselves.
Len Sipes: And I think that that’s a powerful message and most of what we’re discussing here I would suggest applies to other cities throughout the country as well. Within the city of Washington, DC, that loosely structured group of individuals that we refer to as crews, and Baltimore has exactly the same problem, I find that when we talk about gangs we talk about organized criminal conspiracies. It’s not as stereotypical as most people think. And in some cases, I think as Robin Engel just pointed out, that they’re pretty much loose groups of individuals who do crimes together. Am I right?
Greg Baker: That’s exactly the case. That is exactly the case. And that’s why we focus on those individuals, the loose knit, low lying crimes that often have some dramatic effects.
Robin Engel: And as Mr. Baker said before, 75 percent, three quarters of the homicides in our city that we looked at were group member involved, either the victim or the suspect or the circumstances indicated to us that there was, the violence was associated with these gangs or groups. So three quarters of our homicides are based on this very small group of individuals at the street level and we know their names.
Len Sipes: And with a 55 percent reduction in group member involved homicides over an eight month period obviously you were able to successfully get involved with these individuals and convince them that this is something that they should not do.
Robin Engel: Well, you know, it’s an ongoing process. Our numbers has changed. We’re looking now at 15 months of a 15 month pre-imposed where about a 40 percent reduction in group member involved homicides at this point.
Len Sipes: That’s a huge reduction.
Robin Engel: It is. It’s an ever evolving and changing strategy though. And what we also realize is that there’s constant change of the groups on the streets and the needs for continued intelligence and updates. And really just to find out what’s happening on the streets, it’s a continual process. And it’s a lot of work, a lot of moving parts on this project. And we’ve been very fortunate to have the support from the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services, Director Moore has been very instrumental not only in our city, but also bringing the strategy to other cities in Ohio.
Len Sipes: And Karhlton, that’s where it goes over to you. You were able to provide Department of Justice money. I know it’s JAG funded in terms of those within the criminal justice system, but basically it’s the U.S. Department of Justice seed money to get this thing up and running, correct?
Karhlton Moore: Well, we were able to provide some funding to the city, mainly to the University, so that they could provide services. They have some technical services that are a big part of this initiative. Most of the money for this in the city of Cincinnati though, those are City of Cincinnati resources that were put into this. We have a larger project where we’re trying to take the success that Cincinnati is seeing and spread that throughout the state. And that’s where we see more of a state investment. And those with the Department of Justice, JAG funding.
Len Sipes: Right. And I can say the only point that I’m trying to make because the more Federal funding that we have for these innovative projects, the more we can do in terms of this sort of, what seems to be an exemplary program in terms of the 40 percent reduction over what period of time again, Robin? A 14 months period did you say?
Robin Engel: Fifteen months.
Len Sipes: Fifteen months. And that’s pretty dog gone good considering the homicide problems that we have throughout the country.
Greg Baker: Exactly. As far as impacting that targeted group of active offenders we’re making some substantial reductions.
Len Sipes: What are the takeaways , I’m sorry, go ahead please, Robin.
Robin Engel: We’re also seeing record numbers of folks actually signing up for services as well. And I was one of the first, I was a naysayer, I didn’t believe that individuals that were so heavily involved in the criminal element and violent lifestyle would be willing to take an opportunity to get out of that lifestyle. And I’ve been proven wrong here in the city, actually to the delight of my team and to city residents and everyone else in the city, we have found that now, you know, over 300 would be violent offenders have made that call to our social services team and we’ve been able to provide job readiness training, getting lots of folks through that and providing opportunities for jobs and second chances for these individuals. And I’m really thrilled at that outcome as well.
Greg Baker: That’s one of the beauties of the program is that in addition to reducing our homicides, you know, among this group of offenders, we also are able to improve police community relations. And by using the HOPE arm which resonates very soundly within the community, the police department along with the collaboration of other agencies are able to extend itself in not just the traditional law enforcement means but are also actually able to provide individuals with alternatives to the lifestyles that they have committed themselves to.
Len Sipes: And whenever I do these radio shows, what I do is look for the takeaways from the other agencies you can use throughout the country and considering the fact that 20 percent of our listeners and viewers to the program are not in the United States, they’re spread out all over the world, to offer everybody an opportunity to learn what are the takeaways, what are the key issues. Because there’s a lot of things here. I mean, the Boston Gun Project in the mid 1990s did deteriorate to a large degree. It was extremely successful but it’s that deterioration I would imagine that it takes a lot of effort and a lot of, oh, I don’t know, breaking down the bureaucratic barriers for the University of Cincinnati to come together with the police department. To come together with the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services, to come together with community groups and to offer what is basically a multi-faceted program, a clear message to those people who are involved in violence, enforcement actions, targeted enforcement actions if necessary, but at the same time social services for those people who want to escape a life of violence. And I would imagine community outreach at a fairly significant degree. I mean, that’s a lot of different moving parts.
Greg Baker: A number of the moving parts, but one that you omitted is in the police community relations arena. We’re able to, as Robin defined it, we actually know we have somewhere over 1,000 identified group members in Cincinnati. And we know them by name, address, control number, et cetera. When we actually have to move into an enforcement mode, we’re able to strategically go after those individuals, which is somewhat of a change from the traditional approach where you have saturation and suppression within a neighborhood. The traditional approach is that if there is some type of high level of criminal activity going on in one specific geographic area, the normal mode is to saturate that area with police officers, set out the net. And then what happens is, particularly in the African American community, a lot of individuals get caught up in that net that aren’t really any violent offenders. And that’s very abrasive against the community. You know, therefore you start getting into racial profiling, a lot of other things that really have an adverse impact. Where as with this initiative, we’re able to strategically go in after specific individuals, extract them from the community and leave the community intact.
Len Sipes: One of the most powerful messages I ever heard is when our people were working, and I represent the Federal Parole and Probation Agency in Washington, DC and our people are working with the U.S. Marshall’s Office and the Metropolitan Police Department. And we’re in the community. And we’re serving warrants. And a woman who was powerful in the community came out while everybody was there. And in essence said; take the ones who are causing us the most problems, but help the ones who really do want to be helped. And I think that that is the essence of so much of what we’re doing today is to target individuals, not communities, and to help the ones who do want to escape the life of violence.
Robin Engel: Leonard, getting back to your point about the significant number of moving parts, David Kennedy, who is formally at Harvard and is now at John Jay College in New York has been really instrumental in helping our team as a consultant. He was involved in the Boston Project and has subsequently worked in lots of different agencies and communities across the, around the world, actually.
Len Sipes: Yeah. And Baltimore when I was there. Go ahead, please.
Robin Engel: Right. Well, one of the things that he said to me that I thought was so profound that we know how to control the bad guys. It’s the good guys we have trouble with. And what he meant by that, of course, is that we know what works and we know what we need to do to make it work, the problem is sustainability, the problem is the moving parts getting everyone to operate on one page and speak in one voice.
Len Sipes: Yep.
Robin Engel: And why I think SERVE is very unique is that we have been fortunate enough to have some executives from Procter & Gamble that have volunteered their time to help us set up an organizational structure to help coordinate that team. And we talk about corporate principles of objectives, goals, strategies and measures. We have a systematic data collection approach. A comprehensive services plan. And most importantly we have executive level involvement and leadership from our city, from our political leaders, our mayor, our city manager and council members as well. Our police chief. We have a high level commitment to the long term here in Cincinnati and I think that’s going to help us push through.
Len Sipes: Robin, I think that that is exemplary but that is, the bottom line question is can you sustain it? Now, you just told me that you’re in it for the long run. But what is the long run? Is it a matter of months? Is it a matter of years? Is it a matter of the next decade? Because, again, all of that requires a lot of energy. All of that requires a lot of money.
Robin Engel: Well, one of the things that we’ve said here in Cincinnati is that Cincinnati has a new way of doing business. This is literally a change in philosophy. It’s not a program. It’s a new way of doing business here in the city. And so as the leadership changes, as people come in and out, we believe we set up a structure that will accommodate those changes over time. And I know also that the Cincinnati Police Department has said, if SERVE goes away tomorrow, Lt. Colonel Waylen always says this, if SERVE were to go away tomorrow, we would still police in this fashion. Because it makes sense to target groups and to think about our law enforcement strategies in terms of groups.
Len Sipes: We’re well beyond, just for a second ,
Greg Baker: What comes from our chief of police is that we can not arrest our way out of this problem. And what he means by that, particularly in this climate of dwindling resources is that arrest is not always the best and the only option. So we have to look at how can we be proactive in trying to prevent some crimes from occurring? And that talks about the help and the hope component when we get individuals that normally would participate in these groups without any other avenues for supporting themselves and then putting them into gainful employment.
Len Sipes: We’re well beyond our half point in the show where I ordinarily reintroduce the guests; Karhlton Moore, the Executive Director of the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services; Doctor Robin Engel, Director of the University of Cincinnati Policing Institute, so those people not involved in the criminal justice system is well known as one of the really great research institutions in terms of criminal crime and justice issues. And we have Greg Baker, the Executive Director of Community Relations for the Cincinnati Police Department. For those people interested in learning more about the information, go to the show notes in the program and I’ll provide Greg Baker’s email address. It’s gregbaker – greg, – g-r-e-g dot b-a-k-e-r at Cincinnati dash ohio dot gov. And I’ll repeat that one more time at the end of the program and it will be in the show notes. And, Robin, I guess that’s the issue of sustainability because this concept is not unique to Cincinnati. Cities have tried this concept to one degree or another, and found it difficult to maintain.
Robin Engel: Absolutely. You know, we’ve seen successes across the country, but we’ve also seen those successes dwindle over time. And there are, you know, there could be two things going on here, it could be that the focused deterrents approach is just simply a short term, it has short term outcomes. That could be one of the possibilities. But more like in what we’ve seen I think from some of the other cities is that the breakdown becomes the teams stop doing the work. They get away from what worked for a whole host of reasons, political reasons, changes in personnel, whatever it may be. And they just literally stopped doing what worked. And so that’s what we’ve been able to guard against here. We believe we put in a structure in place that will make sense for us long term. But addressing the first possibility that this is really just, it has a short term impact, that’s why we’ve embedded heavily into the services area as well, into the community components of this, so that ultimately we can turn this over to the communities and help them police themselves.
Len Sipes: All of you suggested, in essence, that this is a different way of policing. And I think that is probably the most exciting part of this concept. It’s a different way of doing things, it’s a different way of conducting business. Greg, I think you’ve really made that strong point. That the concept is that we within the criminal justice system, if we’re really going to have a sustained impact on violence have got to do things differently, have got to join together with the community. And we just can not march in like a paramilitary force and conduct our business. It’s got to be done within the community and the community wants the bad guys out, but the people who are marginal and are trying to make it, they want the system to try to assist them.
Greg Baker: You know, of course, the community organizing is probably the most important element, but likewise it’s probably the most difficult to actually achieve. So to that, on that note what we’re doing is working with some community organizations to really target on those 1,000 individuals that we have identified as being the most violent offenders. And then identifying who within the community, or what individuals would have influence over them? Is there this kind of community, informal community leaders? Are there elders? Members of the faith based community? You know, grandparents, uncles, whoever it is that might have some influence and then helping those individuals carry our message that the violence must stop. And then we’re working to really provide the words to say as well as different printed medium so that they could actually assist us in providing, or resonating our stop the violence message and then providing those individuals with the connections that they need to get out of that lifestyle.
Len Sipes: Is the message here that the community needs to basically manage its own problems that we, in the criminal justice, are obligated to get in there to help them, but we in the final analysis have a very limited impact, that it’s really the community coming together, coalescing and controlling itself. Am I right or am I wrong?
Greg Baker: You’re absolutely right. It’s kind of rolling things back to the 1960s where my mother would go out on the porch and if someone was throwing a bottle on the grass and it broke in front of the house, she’d go and chastise that individual and get them to pick up the glass. We don’t have that type of community control anymore. Everyone is operating in a state of fear. What we want to do is empower those community members and let them know that they are in the majority and that it’s just a small group of individuals what are perpetuating or perpetrating these crimes that we want to target and go after.
Robin Engel: And I might add that I don’t really think that it’s just a community issue and that we turn it back over to the communities per say but rather a partnership of law enforcement. One of the most powerful things that I’ve seen is at these call in sessions where we bring in folks that are on probation and parole that we believe are involved in violence, or likely to be involved in violence. And to see the community stand together with the police department, with law enforcement, with the street workers and the outreach, all again in one voice speaking together. It’s a very powerful message that’s being sent. And if I can also add, one of the things that I love about this initiative and the assistance that we’ve been receiving from the Office of Criminal Justice Services is that we can now there are other communities in Ohio that are doing similar work. And we can compare notes together. And we talk about what’s working in other places and we learn from one another as we’re moving through the strategy. Now, Cincinnati has been held up right now as the model, but the truth is we have a lot to learn. And as we’re, you know, hitting little bumps in the road, we’re learning from the other cities in Ohio and around the world that are doing these strategies as well.
Greg Baker: And that’s important as we look at being able to sustain these results. There’s a lot of ways to approach this. Probably one of the reasons that some of these other cities were not able to maintain those results is that you have to keep that message fresh. The traditional approaches that we have used, a courtroom and we call individuals in and we actually go through a formal presentation to those individuals in communicating this message from the law enforcement as well as the services and the community component that these things have to cease to exist. What we’re looking at now is looking at different ways to communicate that same message. Possibly going into prisons, having volunteer call in sessions. Having sessions right in the community itself to call these individuals in and to provide them this information.
Len Sipes: Because in essence it’s the community that’s ,
Karhlton Moore: On Robin’s point, I think – and this goes to sustainability, I think the fact that we have multiple cities around the state, we don’t have a situation where a city feels like we’re in this on our own. It’s a, what we’ve tried to do is take the success of Cincinnati and use that as a model for other cities around the state. And we have a fair number of cities around the state who are at different stages of implementing the model that Cincinnati has already implemented. And to allow them to share ideas, share experiences, share knowledge and there’s this sense of, it’s almost like a synergy there that we’re all responsible to each other. And so maybe in some of those instances where you’ve had individuals in a city who just decided for one reason or another that they weren’t going to continue the work, to do the work that allowed them to get the results that they were getting, I don’t think we’ll see that here. First of all they’ve gone into it with the idea and the understanding that sustainability has been an issue from the very beginning. And as a funder, that’s one of the things that we really focus on, programs are short term. But they went into this with the idea of saying, hey, we’re going to make this long term and we’re going to build the sustainability into the program. And that was very attractive to me as a funder. And then I think, when I talked about before, about this kind of we’re all in this together I think will help make sure that it won’t just be someone decides one day we’re not going to do it and everything falls down like a house of cards. But that this is going to be the way that law enforcement throughout Ohio and those cities who decide to implement this program, the way that they’re going to do business.
Len Sipes: And Karhlton, you’ve got the final word, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve been talking about the Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence. What do we have? A 40 percent reduction in group related homicides over a 15 month period, 300 individuals receiving social services who are trying to get out of this whole issue of a continuing cycle of violence. We’ve been talking today to three individuals, Karhlton Moore, the Executive Director of the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services; Doctor Robin Engle, Director of the University of Cincinnati Policing Institute; and Greg Baker who is the Executive Director of Community Relations for the Cincinnati Police Department. I’m going to give Greg’s email address as the contact point; greg – g-r-e-g dot b-a-k-e-r at Cincinnati – oh dot gov. Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety and we are averaging about 120,000 requests at the moment for the radio and television and blog and transcript, a part of our social media service. We really appreciate all of your suggestions. We read every suggestion. We incorporate many of them into the shows. We use your idea in terms of new show topics. So please keep them coming in. And everybody have yourselves a very, very pleasant day.

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