“One of the things is going to be critical to flattening that curve is the ability to isolate as many prisoners who get sick so it doesn't spread, and it’s just not possible to do that.” -- David Singleton

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ROB RICHARDSON
Welcome to Disruption Now. I’m your host and moderator, Rob Richardson. On this show, we’ve been focusing a lot on the coronavirus, COVID-19, and the responses in so many ways. We’ve talked about it from the small business point of view. You’ve heard me go off, politically, on some parts I didn’t like.

We’re going to have a show coming out, actually. This is taped now. We are April 2nd. We have a show coming out April 3rd that will discuss how some actually can help small businesses and nonprofits -- part of the corona stimulus package that actually came out.

But what I haven’t discussed and what I don’t think is being discussed enough is how the coronavirus is impacting those most vulnerable in our society particularly those that are incarcerated, those who don’t have as much means -- what this is doing to them.

The coronavirus has at least let everyone know, no matter who you are or where you’re at or where you’re from, how much money you have, where you are, you can and are susceptible to this.

If we’re not careful, we might forget what I think is one of the most important lessons in that, when we ignore the most vulnerable, when we ignore those who are suffering the most, who are the most disadvantaged, we also put ourselves at risk. It’s the right thing to do to help those who are struggling.

Also, I think in the world we live in right now, what the coronavirus has taught us, I think -- at least has taught me -- is that we’re all vulnerable if we ignore what is going on with people in their most vulnerable states.

With me is David Singleton, a really good friend of mine. I am an admirer of his work. He’s heard me say that many, many times. -- I admire what you do. -- He is the head of the Ohio Justice & Policy Center.

I’d like say, David, you were into criminal justice reform before it was a sexy thing, when it was still controversial, when people were looking at you crazy -- lots of people -- when you went from a very lucrative career as a private attorney to saying, “You know, I want to go out and represent people who are in prison.” And people are like, “What are you thinking?” I’m sure some people said that to you during that that. Did it because you believed in it. Still not easy work. I’d say it’s a little easier in terms that more people are aware and eyes are opened to how much we really need to change our criminal justice system.

In a crisis, we have an opportunity to either get better as a nation or go backgrounds and I think, depending on how we treat our most vulnerable, is how we’re going to go and move forward and figure out how we can not only prevent a crisis or a pandemic like this happening again but make sure it actually stops.

So I’d like to talk to you about, in terms of your work… and we’re going to get a little into your work and other things you’ve things but let’s just kind of start off with the moment about the coronavirus.

The average person now knows about the coronavirus. They’re aware of it. It’s hard not be unless you just don’t want to pay attention to anything on earth.

We’re saying, “Well we need to pay attention to people that are incarcerated right now, people who have committed crimes.” Some people might be saying, “Why does that matter? Those people chose to make a bad decision. Why should I worry about them at a time like this?” What would you say to people when they have that type of question?

DAVID SINGLETON
Well first of all, thanks for having me, Rob, and thanks for the kind words. What I would say to a person who would say, “Why should we care about prisoners who are at risk of contracting the coronavirus…” Here’s what I’d say to that: First of all… and this is just a moral starting point for me, is we are talking about human beings. We are talking about living, breathing human beings who are somebody’s son or daughter, father, mother, brother, sister, friend, member of the community and we should care for that reason.

If you’re not with me on that moral reason, here’s why you ought to care: Most prisoners in Ohio are displaced from urban areas to rural communities where prisons exist and there are people, corrections officers, staff who have to work in prisons.

Once COVID-19 begins to infect Ohio prisoners, if it hasn’t already, those prisons are going to be vectors of disease, vectors of infection and COVID-19 is going to spread throughout the prison system. It’s not only going to impact and infect directly prisoners but also staff -- corrections officers, the social workers who work in the prisons, the medical staff. So that’s number one.

Number two, what’s going to happen is there is already a shortage of ICU beds in rural communities. And while there is a limited number of beds available at OSU to treat the sickest of prisoners who need really advanced care, that’s not a lot of beds either.

So we’re talking about infections that are going to hit rural communities really hard. Not only are you going to have prisoners who are going to need to be treated but staff members who are coming into contact with prisoners and who are going to be spreading it to their families

So we should care. We need to get out in front of stopping the spread of coronavirus in the prison system because it’s going to impact the health of the entire community.

ROB
Amen to that. So many points you made there that I want to hit on -- the humanity point. I think the language is important about how we talk about those who are in the criminal justice systems for so many different reasons, and I’m going to get into that in a minute.

What I really want to talk about is the fact that… -- So people understand directly. I wish people aspired and understood it from a point of view of morality at the beginning. We have a lot of evidence that’s not the case.

However, in the moment that we have right now where people can see how connected we really are, like… It doesn’t matter how much money you have. You’ll have the coronavirus. It really doesn’t. No amount of money… At some point, if you need to go to the hospital… Maybe some amount. But eventually, even at some point, it doesn’t matter if the system is overwhelmed. If the system is overwhelmed, we are in this together.

One of my favorite lines from Dr. Martin Luther King that I think people don’t fully appreciate is when he talks about “A threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” The whole context of that speech though is about us being tied together as one and that if you try ignore something that’s happening to another community because you just think that community is not important, that it ends up affecting you, too.

The coronavirus is a good example of that. This started in a remote part of Wuhan, China and it has infected the whole world. So if you think ignoring people can work in our global world, it just doesn’t.

So to your point, in prison, we’re telling everybody now to social distance. We have overcrowded prisons. We have people in prison that shouldn’t be in prison and we’re telling them to social distance and it’s not possible in the current environment.

So what practically needs to be done… David Singleton, you are governor of Ohio right now because this are mostly… We’ll say you’re governor and then maybe you’ll be president next. You’re governor right now--

DAVID
Don’t put that on me.

ROB
Yeah. [Laughter] Hey, we need good people there. I’m just saying. Governor DeWine who I think, honestly, has done a good job -- because he’s followed the evidence and not the politics -- he can really lead on this, too. What would you tell him to do right now with the current prison population that’s going on right now? What steps can we practically take?

DAVID
I would say to Governor DeWine, “Find a way to release at least 10,000 people right now.” We have a system… Ohio prison system that’s designed for 37,500, I believe. We’ve got close to 50,000 people incarcerated right now. We’ve got a little under 50.

One of the things that’s going to be critical to flattening that curve and stopping coronavirus from devastating the prison population and the staff who work there is the ability to isolate as many prisoners who get sick so it doesn’t spread, and it’s just not possible to do that when you’re overcrowded -- not possible at all.

A lot of the prisoners who are lower security, like minimum security, they live in dormitories where you may have several hundred people in a large space living 3-feet apart. There’s no way you can practice the physical distance or the social distance in that kind of setting. So the prison system needs to downsize as quickly as possible so that the spread of infection is not as severe as it will be without reducing the population. That’s critical. That’s the number one thing I would do.

ROB
Yeah. And you make such a great point. I should have thought about it but I didn’t think about it from the fact that you’re not talking about just affecting African-Americans, people of color, people that live in urban communities when you talk about trying to protect people from the spread who are within the criminal justice system.

You make such a great point. Most prison systems are located in rural communities and often, a lot of jobs that are there are tied there. So you’re talking about a lot of people, first of all, that are not in prison but are working in the prison system that will bring it back and continue to infect their family, their friends. And then, as you said, it will add to more people that have to go to hospitals because--

That’s the real thing, right? We’ve discussed this on the show again but I think it bears repeating -- why this is different from the flu. I hope people know that by now but let’s keep making sure we educate people over and over and over again. This is way more contagious than the flu. It is harder to contain.

And the issue is that so many people can go in to our hospital system at once, that you can’t treat people not only for corona, you can’t treat people that have any other illness or have a baby or anything like that. So you’re going to have a way where you can treat people. You can’t treat enough people and you’re overwhelming them. So everything we can do, we should be doing.

And we have people, David, in prison that not only are low-level but then… I’m sure there are people… You talked about this a little bit from Ohio’s point of view. There are people who are also in the system who are still awaiting trial, who are there because they can’t actually afford bail. So we’re not talking about people that have been formally charged… not “formally charged,” not “formally convicted,” I should say, that are caught up in a system. They haven’t even had a trial but they… We have a system that says, “You go to jail first.”

Talk about what it means for those people that… You know, just from a moral point of view, how it’s such a bad policy; how this moment, perhaps, we can do something about that as well.

DAVID
I do want to say something about the jails. If you can just tolerate me for one moment.

ROB
Sure. Go ahead. Take your time.

DAVID
I wanted to say one thing about the prison population. I think a lot of the talk often is about, “Let’s find ways to decarcerate” -- meaning, to reduce the prison population by not incarcerating people who have committed low-level, non-violent offences. I think that’s dangerous to use that kind of language because there are plenty of folks in our state prison system who are minimum security now and have committed serious crimes and had been incarcerated for decades. They paid more… You know, they more than paid for their crime and they should be able to get released, too, particularly, if they are especially vulnerable -- meaning that they’re 60 years of age or older or they have chronic [indication - 13:33]…

ROB
Makes sense.

DAVID
…like asthma or diabetes. We shouldn’t say “No” to releasing those individuals just because their crime of conviction 20 years ago… 30 years ago was murder.

To the jails, a lot of good stuff has been happening in counties across the state particularly in the large urban counties like Hamilton County, like Cuyahoga County.

For instance, in Hamilton Country, before the COVID crisis hit, we had about 1200 people at the Hamilton County Justice Center. And now, thanks in large part to the work of the Hamilton Country public defender office, we have a little over 1800 people.

The significance of that is that having 800 people at the jail, all 800 of those are in single cells right now. So if anyone were to get infected from the jail population, they could get isolated and not spread it to other people that they’d be sharing a cell with. So that’s really important.

Cuyahoga County has reduced its jail population. I believe that’s happened in other major counties. What I’m less clear about is what’s happening in the rural jails across the state.

And your point about if you are in jail and you’re not serving like a misdemeanor sentence in jail but you’re waiting trial either on a misdemeanor or a felony, you haven’t even been convicted yet. You’re presumed innocent.

So many folks who are in jail are in jail because they can’t afford to pay money bail. They’re poor. The whole point of bail is to make sure you’re going to come back to court. And there are non-financial ways that we can ensure people are going to come back to court.

At least one of the good things that’s happened, our local felony court, Common Pleas court, did was it said it authorized the sheriff to release anyone who was in jail awaiting trial held on a money bond that they couldn’t make. There are some exceptions to that rule but it allowed a vast number of these folks to be released recently and that’s a good step in the right direction.

ROB
That’s great. And to your point about the humanity of those who find themselves in the criminal justice system, more people find themselves there than they think. It’s a path that no one expects but it happens to a lot of people particularly those who end up using drugs or have that as an addiction.

Talk about how you approach the conversation of humanity with people and why it’s so important? I mean I know but I think it’s important for the listeners to understand why it’s important we understand that A] These people are human and B] How do we go about changing the language and changing the perspective of those who understand that people should not be judged by their lowest moment in life?

DAVID
People, absolutely, should not be judged by their lowest moment in life. You and I, Rob, we can say those words all we want but it’s just not as powerful as people hearing from individuals who have served time in prison, come home, succeeded and them telling their own stories about their humanity.

ROB
Yeah.

DAVID
One of the things that we started almost a year ago was a new project called “Beyond Guilt.” And the whole point of that project is to work to free people who are locked up in state prisons who admit guilt to a serious crime, who have served a significant sentence and who can demonstrate rehabilitation.

We’ve been able, in a little less than a year, to gain the release of people who have committed very serious crimes including three of our clients [who] were convicted of murder and had not even seen the parole board yet. They still had years to go. But we worked with local prosecutors to take another look at the case. In each of those cases, the folk convicted of murder, we were able to get back to court and the client pled to manslaughter, got out immediately and started rebuilding her life.

Angelo Robinson is a great example of this. He spent 22 years locked up, still had a ways to go before he was going to see the parole board. He came home last August. He’s got a great job at Meyer Tool. He is going to Cincinnati State. They’re putting him to college. He is making a difference. And when people meet Angelo, they see his humanity. They say, “We’re locking too many people up. We need to look at folks like Angelo as people who can succeed and make a difference in the community.”

So the short answer is, “My approach more now is not so much me saying it but introducing people to folks like Angelo Robinson, Michelle Robinson and others.”

ROB
Obviously, Tyra, who is part of the Ohio Justice & Policy Center, we’ve had her on before. [Louise Rey - 19:36], you know him? He doesn’t work with Van Jones group. He has a great story. He did very well for himself after being convicted of a serious crime. He was trying to shoot somebody else and ended up shooting a four-year-old girl. She didn’t die but still… He served his time and he’s done very well.

All these people are human. And then there are people all in between, too. I think it’s both end. You’re right -- to not just say those who did non-serious offenses. But even those with non-serious offenses, there are still a lot of people in jail. I think we, in this country, I think we’re going towards the right direction but we need a vast amount of Van Jones group #Cut50. They had a stat that even if we cut those in prison by 50%, we’d still be leading the world in those in prison, just to tell you how severe the problem. Is that correct?

DAVID
That’s right. That’s right. It would be great if we could cut the U.S. prison population in half. That would be wonderful. But we would still be the leader in incarcerated people. That says that something’s not right in the United States.

And it’s not that we have people who are “worse human beings,” if you want to use that phrase. I don’t like to use that kind of talk. It’s not that we are really worse in terms of people than the rest of the world, it’s that we have a different set of policies in place in terms of how we use the criminal legal system. Too many people are locked up for too long even when they commit serious crimes.

ROB
Yeah. It’s been the approach that the way to fight crime and the most effective way to fight crime is to lock people up for as long as possible. But I believe what the studies have shown is that actually can make crime worse because people know they’re going to go to jail for something no matter what level. They’ll just have no regard for the law at some point. So that doesn’t do a lot of good.

We’ve done some work. It’s been amazing to see even the First Step Act pass. Its beginning wasn’t everything but it was a beginning. It was passed with a lot of folks who normally do not support criminal justice reform.

But I found that you often need… Now I’ll just say this. It’s probably controversial for some of my democratic friends. It’s harder to get democrats to support it upfront because they’re scared about what the response is going to be from their opponents on the right. It seems to be like they will only do it when the right is willing to go along. Of course, we know the other side use it as a fearmongering tactic.

How do you navigate the politics of this to make people understand the common humanity and how do you just not get frustrated because I look at this and I get frustrated from both sides on this for the reasons I just stated.

DAVID
That frustrates me, too, that politics comes into this way too much. Often, you’ve got folks on the political left who are afraid to be outspoken -- certainly elected officials. I’m talking about the…

ROB
That’s what I’m talking about.

DAVID
…elected officials, not the base. The way that we have dealt with this in OJPC… We’ve been really effective at working across the political spectrum. We’re a nonprofit, nonpartisan office. We all individually have our political views but we’ve done a good job of reaching out to people who many hold different political views than we do individually and getting stuff done.

Tyra Patterson’s case, she is actually [an] innocent person that we were able to build a campaign to get released. We spent five years working to free Tyra after she had served 23 years for something she didn’t do. We were able to build this campaign, to get Governor Kasich to care, by reaching out to people that I disagree with vehemently on politics like Joe Deters. He wasn’t the prosecutor on her case. This is a case out of Montgomery County, was Tyra’s, not Hamilton County where Joe is the prosecutor.

Jean Schmidt, my former congresswoman, several other, we were able to build a coalition of people who we thought the governor would be more apt to listen to.

And we’ve done the same thing in our policy work at OJPC in terms of working with Representative Bill Seitz who is a lion in the Republican Party, who’s been a legislator for a number of years. He really, I think, gets the need to reform the criminal legal system and others like Bill. Of course, we work with our allies and the Democratic Party as well.

But my point is, is that you just got to do it. You’ve got to reach across the political spectrum and make your case. And it’s helpful, when we’re making the case, to expose elected officials to directly impact the people -- people who we are trying to help -- because that’s where you open eyes and open minds and hearts as well.

ROB
Congress has just passed a $2.2 trillion relief package for small businesses, large businesses and also for unemployment for individuals. You’re the president now and you want to do more to make sure you’re helping vulnerable populations for those who are reuniting with their families that are coming from the prison system. What resources should we be demanding from Congress as they are clearly handing out bills right now? What should be demanded to make sure we can obviously stop the spread and maybe do something about mass incarceration which is also a huge problem for us in this nation?

DAVID
Well the federal prison system ought to decarcerate. I mean that certainly is something I would instruct my attorney general to find every way possible to reduce the number of people in federal prisons. And some good news came out about a week ago where I think the justice department is taking a look at that. And I think that whatever they’re going to do, I would say, needs to be done even more.

And I think in terms of… I mean this COVID-19 is just devastating. I would not want to be the president of the United States at this time dealing with this. Unfortunately, I think there had been some missteps in how the administration has handled things in terms of not taking it as seriously early as it should have and could have.

I think that right now, we’ve got to be doing everything we can as a country to get the resources that we need to the hospitals that are going to be treating people because that’s going to impact… If I’m worried about my clients in Ohio prisons not being able to get on a ventilator because there’s a shortage, I want that fixed. I want there to be ventilators. I want there to be more capacity to… more hospitals constructed -- these tent hospitals that are coming up, more resources from FEMA to get things like that happening because this coronavirus don’t care. It’s wreaking havoc and we need more resources going to medical community to deal with this devastating illness.

ROB
The Alliance for Safety and Justice, one of our sponsors of the show, they’re placing demands behind Congress as they continue to move forward. One of them is same as the stuff you mentioned -- about making sure we lower the prison population by as much as possible in order to prevent the spread. It’s morally right but also there’s an urgency to do it right now.

They also talk about the fact that it’s important to give more resources to victims of crime, like folks who have been domestic violence survivors, folks like that, who already are under-resourced. And so the mental counseling, whatever aide and support that can be given should be given to that too because that’s really important at this time when people are dealing with so much.

What’s your thought to that and anything else you might consider if you would put a bill together for Congress to say, “These things need to be funded” or “These things need…” You talked decarceration. Are there some things that should be funded that are not being funded that can also help us with our current criminal justice system or just the vulnerable in general?

DAVID
Well I would say “Amen” to more funding for services to serve crime survivors. That’s really critical and that’s an important constituency and voice that often gets ignored. By that, I mean people in the crime survivor community who actually want to see decarceration. Those [crosstalk - 29:07]…

ROB
Right.

DAVID
…in the crime community often get ignored. I would also say this… I was having an interesting conversation today with a lawyer who was involved in a class action that we brought years ago and we were talking about… This was a health care class action to make sure the prison system provided basic health care. He was the one who actually monitored that case once we came to settlement.

Similar to what the Alliance for Safety and Justice was saying about more services to people who are crime survivors, he brought up a very interesting point that I had not thought of which was that prisoners who are going to be isolated in order to deal with this coronavirus outbreak, they’re going to need a whole lot of counseling services as well. I think we forget that, that these folks are going to be victims of this pandemic just like the rest of us are. It’s hard on us all, emotionally, and so we can’t ignore those needs that prisoners have as well. So that’s something, certainly, that I want to see happen.

ROB
David, you’re in an admirable line of work. It has to be frustrating sometimes though to witness the things you witness. Talk about one of the hardest moments you’ve maybe had in this business and then how you keep going despite the hard moments that you often come across.

DAVID
Very interesting that you’re asking me that question because I was thinking, not too long ago, about what’s going to sustain us at OJPC as we deal with this moment that we’re in with COVID-19.

So I will take you back to June 5th, 2012. OJPC was fighting to save the life of a man named “Abdul Awkal” who was scheduled to be executed the next day. The man was so insane that he had no idea why he was being executed therefore could not be constitutionally executed.

We thought that we were going to be able to get the Ohio Supreme Court to stop the execution. We just didn’t get any word the day before the execution. I get in the car and drive up to the death house at Lucasville to meet with him to say, “Look, we still got no word. We’re not sure what’s happening. We’re going to fight until every last second to try and keep you alive.”

When I get the terrible news from the Ohio Supreme Court that they just denied our stay and that the execution was going to go forward, I had never felt worse in that moment. This man had become my friend over the years of representing him.

I remember, it was a cloudy day. I remember walking in to the prison. My shoulders were slumped over. I went in to the area where his family was because I needed to talk to them and tell them the bad news. After I told them the news and they were devastated, I was getting ready to go walk to talk to Mr. Awkal and the warden pulled me aside and said, “I just heard what you just said to the family but you just need to know that Governor Kasich just called. He’s granted a reprieve for two weeks to allow you to get back into court to show that your client is too mentally incompetent to be executed.” We, just this past year, celebrated Mr. Awkal’s seventh year of being alive since that fateful time back in June of 2012.

So that lesson teaches me that in difficult times, we just have to keep going forward. None of us knows what the next few weeks and months is going to bring but we have to find a way to stay hopeful. Even when we thought we were at the end of the rope with Mr. Awkal, we knew we were going to still work all night until the last second to try and stop the execution.

So we got to have hope. We’ve got to believe that the sun is going to come up and that we’ll be able to come out of this crisis maybe even stronger. I mean my hope is that this crisis becomes something that wakes us up to a lot of problems in our country including mass incarceration.

It would be a beautiful thing if, as a result of this crisis, we never had more 800 people at the Hamilton County Justice Center again, that we don’t go back to the numbers that were before, that we can reduce our prison system as a result of the crisis and keep it there.

So that’s the way that I look at hard moments. Hard moments are often opportunities.

ROB
Amen. “Hard moments are often opportunities.” I think there are always opportunities, it’s just a matter of how you proceed to move forward. We can go and become stronger, work together, become more united or go further down to dis-unity, to distrusting one another, to seeing each as the other.

My hope is that we go the direction that you’re saying. And I will continue to have hope. I had to make sure I’ve kept myself up in good spirits

Well it’s good to have you on the show. It’s been a really challenging time in terms of just the whole political environment, and the whole environment in general. It’s very important to keep hope and to see the humanity in others including people you strongly disagree with. So you got to pull yourself back and realize that people can rise above who they are.

And the hope is that when people see this moment, David, that we will become better forward. That is the opportunity in the moment. It’s opportunity for us to reset and to really understand that we all are human and we’re in this together. We’re going to either pull each other up or tear each other down. There’s really no “in-between.” So I thank you for all of your work.

The Alliance for Safety and Justice has a link they want people to sign about how to stop the spread, to reduce mass incarceration and to give support to the most vulnerable as Congress is in the midst of trying to deal with this crisis. It needs to deal with this crisis across the board including those who are most vulnerable in order to make sure that we both stop the spread and also work to have a better America and go on to perfect our union.

Until next time, I’m Rob Richardson. I’m glad you listened. If you get a chance, please subscribe. Please listen on YouTube or you can subscribe on anything you listen to podcast. Thank you so much and see you next time.

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