The Courage of Compassion with Robin Steinberg
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I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words that I've said like in my head for like 16 years.

Listen to Miss Spelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I am Lacey Lamar. And I'm also Lacey Lamar. Just kidding. I'm Amber Revin. Okay, everybody, we have exciting news to share. We're back with season two of the Amber and Lacey, Lacey and Amber show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network. This season, we make new friends, deep dive into my steamy DMs,

Answer your listener questions and more. The more is punch each other. Listen to the Amber and Lacey Lacey and Amber show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just listen, okay? Or Lacey gets it. Do it. Every now and then, a person comes along with ideas that we really, really need. Robin Steinberg is that person.

Her ideas about how to find compassion for people with whom we disagree, even vehemently, are absolutely essential for this divided world that we live in. This may be the solution we need. Robin learned her lessons as a career public defender where she had to learn to see her clients as human. There's no way she could mount a vigorous defense if she saw them as monsters.

And that's what she learned. And her lessons, it turns out, are universally applicable, which is why I asked her to come write about it for Optimism Press. I'm so proud to publish this book. This book is so important. It'll push you. It'll make you uncomfortable. It'll probably make you cry. But the lessons contained in that book are so important for us in this modern day and age. It's why I also asked her to come on the podcast to talk about some of those ideas that we so desperately need.

This is a bit of optimism. Robin, this is a real treat for me to have you on the podcast because I am a huge admirer of you and your work. And I'm also so, so proud to be the publisher of your book, The Courage of Compassion. And I want to start with a question that I know is a question that you get asked a lot, and it's a question that starts the book.

which is as a public defender, you had to very often defend people who sometimes had committed heinous crimes. How did you defend these people? How can you defend, quote unquote, these people? It's a great question. And you're right, Simon, I get asked that question at virtually every party event or family gathering I've ever been to during the course of my 40 years in the field of criminal justice and as a public defender.

And it's a bit of a complicated answer. There are the easy answers that public defenders give, myself included, depending on the audience, which is, I believe in the vital function of the defense function in our criminal justice system as part of our democracy. I believe in the presumption of innocence. I believe in all those things we wrote in the constitution that we provide the accused to make sure that we are behaving in a way that is fair and puts the burden on government to prove somebody guilty. Those are sort of the easy answers.

For me personally, this work has always been about defending each individual client and

And really leaning into trying to understand the context, the story, the larger picture that answers the question, how did this person find themselves here in a jail cell sitting across the table with me as their public defender? And what I learned over 40 years was that the charge that somebody comes into the criminal justice system with is just the beginning of the inquiry.

Sure, there's a criminal charge and it could be scary and it could be not scary. But the real question is what lays behind the charge and who is that person?

And what can I learn? It's very important. And let's we should get this out of the way really quickly. As a public defender and as a criminal justice reformer, this doesn't mean that you do not believe that people shouldn't be held responsible for their crimes if they have committed a crime. You do believe in accountability and you do believe people should be held accountable for their crimes.

But you also believe they should be treated with dignity and respect as human beings as they go through the process of the criminal justice system. Yes, I think, unfortunately, what happens all too often is our emotions take over and retribution and vengeance become the powerful forces that act upon us when there's been a crime committed.

I absolutely believe that people should be held accountable for harm they cause. I think that is the only way to find a road back for that person. I also think it's the only way to heal the person who's been harmed, right? So accountability is critically important. But I also believe that no matter what somebody is charged with, that that is maybe the worst thing they've ever done in their life. They cannot be judged by that solely.

That one moment cannot be the entire story. And so as public defenders, what we do is we really try to understand the larger forces at play. And frankly, the world of experience that this person brings into the criminal justice system when they find themselves there. And to really remember that the person sitting across that table from me is a human being and that we are connected as human beings, no matter what the worst thing they ever did was or the worst thing I ever did was.

When we were editing the book together, I remember you asked me the question, how would you like to be judged? How would you like your entire personality? How would you like everybody to know you by the worst thing you've ever done? If we take my entire life, I've been an asshole. I've said horrible things to people and

to have my entire life be judged by that incident would be horrific. And unfair. And again, that doesn't mean I shouldn't be held responsible and I can't be accountable and I can't learn and have remorse for those things. But to have my life judged by that single incident, as you said, is just as grossly unfair. And especially for violent crime, we, for some reason, have a different standard because the crime was so violent that we ignore the fact that there's an entire person here.

Sure. And partly that's because of fear, right? And that's a legitimate human response to hearing about violence or hearing about a scary crime, right? We get scared. And when we get scared, we tend to forget about curiosity, forget about the fact that the person we're talking about is still a human. We tend to forget that

that things happen, but that there's a life that came before it and a life that will go on after it. But fear is so overwhelming that it almost shuts out everything else. And we have to train ourselves to really move through that fear, to really try to understand and to connect to another person. And that's such a great little insight, right? Which is when we are out for blood, when we want

revenge or retribution, it's not for what we think it is, which is because we want justice administered. The system provides for that. It's because we're afraid. Our imaginations get the hold of us about this could have been my family or this could be somebody else's family. And as you said, it's fear that is the driver, not justice, which is such an

which is so hard to parse out. It is very hard. And the forces of retribution and vengeance are played out most clearly and most extremely in our criminal justice system. But those forces are played out in our everyday lives outside of the criminal justice system. Somebody who hurt us, somebody that we read about, somebody that we disagree with politically. We tend to demonize them and forget that they are also part of our human community. And we stop

thinking about them that way and ask ourselves the question about why do they think the thing they think? Why do they say the thing they say? And to lean into that experience, which is really at the end of the day, the only thing that connects us as people, right? That ability to lean into the curiosity, which I would argue can get you beyond somebody's worst moment or beyond the worst thing they ever said or beyond the worst mistake they ever made, whether it's in the criminal justice system or not.

And compassion really only is going to be able to begin when we accept that people aren't their worst moment. I want to go back to the beginning. At what point in your legal career

career, did you decide you wanted to be a public defender? I went to law school thinking I was going to be a women's rights litigator. I was not only did I think I was 100% convinced that's what I was going to be. And I spent my second year in law school involved in something called the Women's Prison Project, because it was the only course in the law school that had anything to do with women. And so I began to travel to Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, which is the maximum security prison in New York and work with women who were there, who are incarcerated, but who needed some help with civil legal matters.

As I got to know those women and listen to their stories and hear the way that the criminal justice system had acted upon them and their beliefs about it, I was shocked and stunned and could not imagine why these women were doing all this time in jail and why they felt that the system had railroaded them and that their public defenders didn't care. So I decided to, my third year in law school, join the criminal defense clinic, and I began to represent individuals in New York City's criminal court.

I have to say from the moment I stepped foot into a criminal court, I knew this is where I had to be. It was watching in that courtroom what passed for justice in America.

That was so shocking and so different than what I had read in the books about what our criminal justice system looks like that I could not look away. It was degrading and dehumanizing. Walking into my first criminal courtroom as a law student, I expected to see, you know, heady legal arguments and passionate defensive clients and, you know, people really engaged in trying to mete out justice.

And instead, what I saw was long lines of predominantly black and brown families waiting outside the courtroom to come in to see their loved one who would come out from the back in handcuffs. Almost nobody talked to the person who was the accused. They usually stood at the table while the lawyers went up to the bench and spoke to the judge in private. There weren't any brilliant legal arguments. There was barely any recognition that there was a human being standing at that table who was called the accused.

It just was a line of one person after the next, after the next, that felt so much like a machine that I was stunned. And the pain and the suffering, not just in the family sitting in the courtroom, but of the accused standing at the table alone with nobody recognizing them at all, that I just felt like this can't be justice. This can't be what justice looks like in America.

And it was shocking. And it was in the 80s when I started and we were in our get tough on crime years and we were arresting people for ever more minor offenses. And when I say people, really predominantly black and brown communities, low income communities. And so everybody was overwhelmed and it had lost any shred of dignity, humanity, and frankly, and anything that even looked like justice to me.

me that I had that moment, right? I don't want to be a part of this. I'm sorry I became a lawyer or I can't believe what I saw. I can't unsee it. And the only way for me to live with myself was to throw myself headlong into it and try to make a difference and try to change it. How were you able to respond differently if the workflow or the workload was

the same. So I probably cried myself to sleep the first three years of my life as a public defender from sheer exhaustion, from the sort of emotional toll of watching what was happening to people in the criminal justice system, and also just from the magnitude of work we were being asked to do. You know, you want to give your time and your effort to each individual client that you have, but when you have 100 clients, it was virtually impossible. And so like everybody else, I struggled.

I wondered if I was doing the right thing. Was I just being a cog in this huge machine? Was I making a difference? And then you look in the eyes of the person that you're representing. And even if you're exhausted and you think you can't do it,

That connection with that person, that vulnerability that somebody brings to the relationship when you're their lawyer and they're in a jail cell and you are the only person in the system to defend them, to get to know them, to honor them, and to protect their rights and their dignity, that relationship and that connection fires you up to just want to continue. But at some point I did, after many years of doing individual representation of clients, I

really begin to think about what could I do to challenge the system at the broader level, or at least to think about how public defense was being delivered in a way that actually might be more humane, more relevant and better for clients. And that led to a career helping build Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, but then more importantly, the Bronx Defenders, which I founded in 1997, which really set out to try to change the paradigm of what we mean when we say what it means to be a public defender.

From what to what? In that experience of getting to know your clients very well, what you began to understand was there were all these interconnected systems that were impacting their lives.

So if you got arrested, you might get evicted, right? If you got evicted, you might lose custody of your children. If that happened, you might lose your job. There were these other consequences of even a minor arrest that were happening to clients that before the Bronx Defenders really took this on at a broader systemic level of turning it into a model of public defense.

kind of went off the radar screen to public defenders. We were just charged with defend the person in the criminal case. That's your job. And it took me a while to realize that those deals or results that I thought were so good for my clients in the criminal courthouse might actually explode their lives outside the criminal courthouse. AI might be the most important new computer technology ever. It's storming every industry and literally billions of dollars are being invested. So buckle up.

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For 25 years, Brightview Senior Living has been dedicated to creating an award-winning company culture so residents and families receive best-in-class services. Across our 50 communities, Brightview associates help deliver peace of mind, safety, security, transportation, daily programs, delicious food, and high-quality care if needed.

Discover how our vibrant senior living communities can help you live your best life. Visit brightviewseniorliving.com to learn more. Equal housing opportunity. Can you give an example of a real case?

where you may have thought that as a public defender, you were getting them a good deal, but you were maybe blind to the ripples and how the Bruggs defenders would have done it differently. When I was early on in my career, I was representing a young woman on a rather serious robbery case, and her case was going to trial. And I was so focused as a young public defender on getting the defense ready, preparing her for her testimony, preparing my cross-examinations,

that right before the trial was about to begin, I said to her, you know, hey, Lisa, let's meet early in the morning and we can go over what's going to happen and we could talk about your testimony. And there was a little bit of a hesitation. And I said, what's the matter? And she said, well, I'm living in a shelter and the hours that I can come and go are curtailed by the rules of the shelter. And when I can get access to showers and make sure that I can show up. And I had no idea that she was in a shelter.

Zero. I'd been representing her for a year, just did not even recognize that the arrest had caused her to lose her apartment, which had caused her then to lose her job. And she was now living in a shelter. And it was a stunning moment for me when I thought, oh, wow, I had no idea this was happening because I never asked the questions. Exactly.

Because I focused so solely on the criminal case that I didn't ask what was happening in the rest of her life and did not even understand, frankly, had never been trained on. We'd never talked about that then, what the other systems were that might come into play once you've been arrested.

And it was a humbling moment for me. And I realized that to prepare her and help her really get ready for her case, I needed to address the housing issue so that she would be someplace stable and secure while she was going through the experience of having a trial. So how does it work now? If Lisa were to come through...

the Bronx Defender's Office now, how those public defenders would manage it differently? Sure. So the first thing that we would explain to her would be, we're representing you on this criminal case, but any legal issue that comes up or any other area of your life that you may need representation, let us know right away. So if the arrest had then triggered an eviction notice, Lisa would be able to reach out to me and I have a housing lawyer on my team who would defend her in housing court and try to keep her in her home.

Right. If she was about to lose her job. Right. We might have somebody who can intervene there. And so it really is about providing access to those kinds of resources and representation that traditional public defense never envisioned.

I mean, honestly, it's what every rich person knows. If somebody who's very rich gets arrested and charged with a serious crime, the first thing they start telling their lawyer is the co-op board is trying to throw me off the board because of this arrest. My wife wants to divorce me because of this arrest. I need a divorce lawyer. I need somebody to help me with the co-op board. Wealthy people have always had access to those things that they needed.

Or how about just support for the experience you're having going through the criminal justice system, right? I need therapy. I need to get to a counselor. Those are the kinds of things that I think the wealthy have always been provided and their lawyers always knew to look at the other areas that they might need help. It's so fascinating. As soon as the minute we talk about wealthy, we're immediately thinking, oh yeah, of course, get the divorce attorney. Yeah, yeah, you should defend yourself against the co-op board. And like, we've completely forgotten that they committed a crime that got them arrested in the first place.

or they're at least accused of committing a crime that got them arrested in the first place. But when we're dealing with somebody of low economic status, too many people think, but hold on, they did commit this crime here. The judgment shows up so quickly. The double standard is so egregious. We see people differently and we have compassion for one group that looks more like us and no compassion or less compassion for somebody who doesn't look like us. And it plays out in the actual system.

It's also just a matter of not just sort of how we see people, but also who has the resources to get the help they need. One of the things that developing a model of holistic defense did was it began to really shine a light on what were some of the larger systemic issues that were also impacting our clients most. Bail came on my radar screen very, very, very quickly. Give us an example, because I think most people don't understand, unless you've been through it, I think most people don't understand how bail works.

I don't even think a lot of people know the difference between a bail and a bond, for example. So you can just sort of give us like a little primer and then sort of show us how it's not working. So bail was actually created originally to be a form of release. And here's what I mean by that.

The theory was if you get arrested and you're brought into the system, a judge would set an amount of money that you can pay, that you as the accused would then pay, and that would guarantee that you were going to come back to court each and every time. Because if you did at the end of your case, whatever happened, whether you were found guilty or not guilty, the money will come back to you as long as you make your court appearances. That was the theory upon which bail was created. It was supposed to be a form of release.

What happened over time is bail has actually become the thing that holds people in jail, not that actually facilitates their release. So what we know is that the majority of people sitting in our 3,000 local jails in this nation are there not because they've been convicted of crimes, not because they're serving a sentence. They are there because they don't have enough money to pay their cash bail.

So a judge sets bail when you come into the system. It could be $500. It could be $1,000. It could be $2,000. It could be any amount the judge has discretion. But what people fail to remember is when most Americans don't have $400 in their savings account for an emergency, a $500 bail can be what holds you in a jail cell for weeks or months or years before your case gets to trial.

So what you see is the majority of people sitting in jail cells across the country are there because they don't have enough money in their bank account. So it's created a two-tier system of justice.

justice, one for people that have the money to pay their bail and go home and fight their case from a position of freedom, and one for people who can't, who then have to experience the sort of terror and degrading circumstances of being in a jail cell. That experience of being in jail also pushes people to plead guilty, whether they did it or not.

So it has another impact, right? If you're sitting in a jail cell, you'll pretty much plead guilty to anything to go home to safety. That's just true. You'll have to take my word for it. But if you've been in a jail cell or been close to a jail cell or know somebody who's been in a jail cell, what you begin to understand is that the experience is so horrifying that you would rather plead guilty to go home to safety, back to your job, back to your kids, back to your community, rather than try to fight out your case, which could take months or years to get to a trial.

And you'd have to be in a jail cell the whole time while, by the way, your life is falling apart outside.

So cash bail not only creates a system of justice, it drives racial disparities. It's much more likely to impact black and brown, low-income people. And frankly, it's been the driver of mass incarceration. Cash bail has been responsible for 99% of jail growth over the past 20 years. We know from our work at the Bronx Freedom Fund and then the bail project over the past five years is that when you put philanthropic dollars up

When you pay somebody's bail and they have no skin in the game at all, that 95% of people will come back to their court dates. And what that does is put to bed the myth that it was cash all along that provided the incentive to come back to court. What's true is people will come back to court because they're supposed to come back to court. And all they need are effective court reminders and transportation to get there. And 95% of the time they will come back to court.

Even that 5% of people that miss a court date, it's almost always the result of a life circumstance that got in the way. My boss said if I miss another day of work, he's going to fire me. I couldn't find childcare. My mother was sick and I had to take her to the hospital. It's almost never, it is the rare extraordinary exception where somebody intentionally doesn't come back to court because it's not in their best interest to do that. So the cash bail system is built upon a myth. I'll give you a silly example.

That proves out your case as well. So there is an app that you can download on your phone called Apple Store. And you can go into any Apple Store and except for computers and watches and phones, pretty much anything else, including like a $300 speaker, you know, from cables to speakers to headphones, you can take out your phone, scan the item, pay for it on your credit card and just walk out of the store without a bag and walk out without talking to anybody else. No receipt, no nothing.

And when Apple implemented the system, I remember I went into one of the stores and I used to do it all the time, would go in, scan something and walk out. And I called over the store manager. I'm like, I have to ask when you put the system in, what happened to your shoplifting numbers?

Because anybody could just pretend to scan and just walk out. He says our shoplifting numbers remained exactly the same. And he says, people who steal, steal. And people who don't, don't. And most people don't steal. Interesting. Yeah. Most people show up. Right. Most people show up. And the other thing is once we pay bail, it's the number of cases that get dismissed. So a third of the cases get dismissed entirely once we intervene and pay somebody's cash bail.

which tells you a lot about how many people are coming into the system that should not have been there to begin with. The minute the bail is paid, shortly after the case is dismissed. Cases are dismissed. So in some jurisdictions we're working in, the dismissal rate is as high as 70%.

And in other jurisdictions, it's a little bit lower. But the national average is one third of our clients have their cases dismissed entirely when we pay bail. And you know, if they had stayed in that jail cell, they would have pled guilty to go home eventually. So that's the other part of cash bail, that it creates this incredible coercive lever to push you to plead guilty, even when you didn't do the crime. And you have data. Our theory...

Our theory of change of the bail project has been from the beginning that you can collect the national data set, which we've done over the past five years, which proves that cash bail is not necessary and unjust. Cases get dismissed when you intervene. People have better results when you pay their bail. But it's also about telling the stories of the people who've been impacted by cash bail, because I agree, data can change some minds, but human stories will change others. And we're really out to change hearts and minds if we're going to change the system at all.

So you have to do both things. Give us a real life example of where this system, as you've described it, destroyed someone's life for something that they may or may not have done. And even if they did, it was a minor offense. I can give you an example of a young woman I represented in night court one night who was charged with a petty larceny. She was a young woman. She was charged with going into a CVS and stealing something from the drugstore, a relatively minor offense.

And I thought she had a good defense. I thought we could have won the case. She was there with somebody else. She wasn't the person who actually did the theft. The person with her was the person who did the theft. She didn't know. But she got arrested together, as is often the case. And we stood in front of the judge. And I tried to argue to the judge that she should be released. And the judge said $1,000 bail.

And she turned to me and she said, I don't have a thousand dollars. And I was like, no, I understand that. But I think we can win this case. You weren't involved. You didn't know. We can we can beat this case. She was like, I can't go to jail. I have kids at home. I have a job. I can't go to jail. I can't stay here. You have to do something.

The judge then said, well, if you want to plead guilty, I'll give you time served and you can go home tonight. In my shoes, my perspective, desperately didn't want her to plead guilty to a crime she didn't do, but she needed to go home, right? Or her life was going to fall apart.

And so she pled guilty. And here's the problem with that. They may sound benign. Now she has a criminal conviction that will follow her for the rest of her life, that will create obstacles for her for the rest of her life. It is not a benign experience, even if it's for a quote unquote minor offense. That will create barriers for her forever.

And it was all because she didn't have enough money. If she had paid the thousand dollars bail that night and gone home, she could have continued at her job, taking care of her kids, fought the case side by side with me, and we would have gotten it dismissed. But she didn't have that choice or that option because she didn't have enough money in her bank account.

I mean, I think that's such a powerful thing that I think most of us don't realize, which is the desire to go home was more powerful in that moment than to be found innocent of a crime I didn't commit. I think there is a general idea that people say, oh, nobody would plead guilty to something they didn't do. They must have done something if they pled guilty.

And, you know, no matter how many times I say it's like for 40 years, I stood next to people pleading guilty day in and day out to things they shouldn't have been pleading guilty to because going home to safety and preserving your life and preserving your health and preserving the life you built and your family's life is just more important. And unless you can try to slip into those shoes and understand that dynamic,

It's very easy to sit back and judge and say, oh, they wouldn't have pled guilty if they didn't do it. One of the things that you mentioned, you said this sort of almost blasé, which is, you know, you'll sit in jail for days, weeks, months or years. And our Constitution guarantees every person the right to a speedy trial. The fact that we put someone in jail for years potentially doesn't.

or even months to wait for trial is patently unconstitutional. It's unfair. It's unjust. I think oftentimes it probably is unconstitutional, although there's all sorts of ways that actors in the system figure out a way around that, but that's a different conversation. There's also a prohibition against excessive bail. So if the constitution prohibits excessive bail from being set,

judges ought to be taking into consideration how much money a person does or does not have in setting bail. I was always fascinated that I stood in court all the time and bail was always set in increments of $500, 500, 1,000, 15, 25. I never understood it.

That is just culture and the way judges are trained. There's absolutely nothing that mandates that bail should be set in those increments. So you should see bail set at $23, right? If that's what somebody has in their account, right? But you never saw it. It was always done in these very rote ways. And I think, look, judges are a very long distance from the people that they are judging from that bet.

I think it goes right past them that people don't have $500. And the other thing I also think is that judges, for whatever reason, don't really take in what the experience of being in a jail cell is like, even for a short amount of time. If it was their own child, I promise you. So I remember a judge very specifically saying to me as I was arguing for a young man's release who was a teenager in criminal court one night.

counselor, I don't know why you're getting so worked up. It's only a few days in jail. And I remember looking up and saying, and if it were your son standing here, would you believe, oh, it's only a few days in jail, a few days on Rikers Island, a few days in the notorious hellhole of a jail that that is. If it was your son, would that be the perspective that you had? And again, it's like really hard to get people to try to put themselves in the shoes of the person, right, who's facing that.

For 25 years, Brightview Senior Living has been dedicated to creating an award-winning company culture so residents and families receive best-in-class services. Across our 50 communities, Brightview associates help deliver peace of mind, safety, security, transportation, daily programs, delicious food, and high-quality care if needed.

Discover how our vibrant senior living communities can help you live your best life. Visit brightviewseniorliving.com to learn more. Equal housing opportunity.

I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa, I said the words. Yeah.

that I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Some of the cases you've shared about how we can learn to have more compassion and understand how broken the system is are clear cases of injustice where the system failed. But very often the system does work. There are cases of justice where someone did commit a crime. They were rightfully convicted of their crime. And I

I'm very curious because the reason I wanted to publish your book is because you have learned to have compassion for people in extreme cases and extreme examples. And if you can do it, then any of us can learn to have compassion for somebody we disagree with or even find morally repugnant so that we can find common ground to move the greater good forwards. I mean, that's

really what we're aiming at. And so this is why I think your lessons are important. Can you share with us a case of somebody who really took themselves on because you saw them as a human being, though they were rightfully convicted of their crime? So here's what I would say, Simon. I would say that I had many, many clients who were charged with horrendous crimes, who either pled guilty or were found guilty after trial of those crimes, who held themselves accountable from the day I met them.

Really, I can think of lots of stories like that. And the question was in developing a relationship with my clients, what could we bring to light that would help explain how they got to this moment, would help understand the experiences that got them there. And that then my job was not necessarily about guilt or innocence, but to humanize that client's experience and bring that to light to the judge and to the prosecutor in an effort to mitigate

Whatever the sentence would be, not escape accountability, not use accountability, but mitigate what the sentence should look like. Right. What retribution would be enough, which is what we all wanted. That's right where we started this podcast, which is I am more than the thing that I did.

As you know, I founded an organization called the Curve Initiative to help modernize policing, to affect change in policing and modern policing from the inside out.

And in the discussions I've been having with some of the most forward-thinking police chiefs and sheriffs from across the country, when we talk about dignity and respect, there's a very simple example that we talk about, which is that even if somebody is arrested, you can still treat them with dignity and respect. And I'll give you an example. Pull over somebody and they're driving a car with expired registration or maybe there's a warrant. What the cop has to do is arrest that person. They have no choice. If there's a warrant, they have to arrest them. And then procedure is to then call a tow truck,

and have that car towed. But as you said, there were ripples. If somebody has no money, when that car gets towed,

That's the family car. Or now the debt starts to mount because that car is sitting in impound. And we talk about when you can see somebody as a human being and treat them with dignity and respect, you're arresting them and you say to them, is there someone you want to call to come pick up this car? I have to tow it. But if you want to call a family member to come and get it, we can wait here for them to come and get the car. And that's treating somebody with dignity and respect, but not being quote unquote soft on crime.

And I think that's a very simple example of what treating somebody with dignity and respect looks like that I think most of us would view as perfectly good. And you're just dealing with it on the other side of it, where if somebody is convicted of a crime, and maybe it's a crime that they have done, that you can still treat them with dignity and respect and help people see them as people because that's what they are. Yeah.

And I don't know where this got wrapped up. And I'm very curious to understand how you've come to understand fear. Fear is the most powerful force, I think, that is activating our criminal legal system. And I think the thing that really prevents us from taking in information, from making good decisions, right, from understanding what the data tells us and doesn't tell us,

And I say to people all the time, like when we're afraid, we will do the worst things to each other, right? When you scare us enough and we will justify doing terrible things to each other, right?

And that's the cycle that we have to stop. There are people out there that will exploit that fear. They will, right? And try to continue to pass tough on crime measures or bail systems that continue to set high bail, even in the face of data that would prove that the way our system has been operating does more harm than good. Right.

But our response to fear is to just fight back. Our response to fear is to be harder and harder and harder. When I think about it, I think if incarceration was the thing that made us safe, we would be the safest country on the planet.

We incarcerate more people than any country on this planet, and we are far from being the safest country. So we keep doing the same thing over and over and over again, thinking that throwing people in jail and jail cells and patrol cars is the way to solve what are fundamentally social problems. Incarceration creates its own harm and its own violence and its own damage.

And we're sort of caught in this cycle, but the cycle is driven by fear and people that would exploit the fear. And we have to take it upon ourselves to understand that fear, to try to step back from it a little bit or lean into it, whichever way makes it easier for you to see it, to really get under it and understand what's driving it to make good decisions. What about when you didn't follow your own compassion? You're teaching us compassion. You're human. When did you catch yourself doing the thing that you're railing against? Yeah.

Oh, I probably catch myself almost every other day. I mean, like you said, I'm human. I am completely flawed like the rest of us. I find myself all the time, whether it's watching, you know, something on the news and I throw a sock at the television, you

You know, because I get so mad at what somebody's saying and I will call them something or label them something. And I have to catch myself constantly leaning into, OK, this person is more than that terrible thing that they just said that offended you. Let's try to remember that, that there is some way to think about they're part of my human family, even if I really hate the thing they just said.

I got to witness one of these incidences not too long ago.

where I introduced you to one of the police chiefs who's a part of the organization, The Curve. I introduced you to Colonel Joe Gasper, who's chief of the Michigan State Police. And I think you have probably been trained to hate each other. Well, at minimum, to be very skeptical of each other. Yes. I'm very curious when I said, Joe meet Robin, Robin meet Joe. And by the way, this is what Joe does. I'm very curious what went through your mind and then how it changed. Well,

Well, the first thing that went through my mind was I can't believe that somebody sat me next to him. And I am now sitting in this environment for the next two hours with only each other to talk to. And so at first it felt like a little bit of a bad joke.

And then, you know, as I began to talk to him and he began to talk to me, we had a tremendous amount of experience in the criminal justice system. He from his policing experience and me from my experience as a public defender. And what we actually found in talking to each other was a lot more in common that we saw in a similar way than we saw differently. And yes, of course, we saw things differently, but there was a lot there that we were able to share and understand.

agree upon. And I was honored to actually be seated next to him and would be honored to call him a colleague and a friend. But it took me a long time as a public defender, partly because the criminal justice system, it's the way that it's created in every social system, it's us and them.

period. And it's not a fair fight. And all of the resources and the power are on the other side. And the defense has the accused and they have their public defender and everybody else in the courtroom is trying to take their liberty, take their life and fight against them. Right. So it's a very hard system to maintain some kind of equilibrium at all, because it just feels like it's a war. There's a line and I'm on this side and that's how it feels. Sitting in that room with Joe, though, you know, you have to remember that's

"Hmm, it's actually not a war. He's a person, I'm a person. We have a lot in common that we could talk about." And really reaching across the aisle, so to speak, to really try to understand each other and hear each other out. But it did take me a while to recognize that every mom that I know in the South Bronx, when her young son went to school

and was late coming home, feared that something terrible had happened to him, potentially at the hands of the police. It took me a long time to recognize that those families of police officers that go out into the field when their loved one doesn't come home on time, they also fear that harm has come to them as well. And it's that understanding that is really far away from each other.

You know, there's a couple of things I've learned about you. You are a patriot. You love this country. You believe in the Constitution and you've worked your entire life trying to reform the system because you want it to work as our founding fathers intended it, I think is often missed. I think it's one of the surprising things about me, right? I think people are surprised about a bunch of things about me, but that's certainly one of the surprising things.

I believe very deeply in the promise of this country. And maybe I look at the country the way I do clients and the way that I'm trying to do in my everyday life, right? Which is I look at the whole, and I think to myself, we have done some horrendous things

some things that might be unforgivable, some things that have caused genuine harm to entire communities and people. And still there is this incredible promise that's embedded in our constitutions. There's this incredible promise that is embedded in the diversity of the people that live here, in the freedoms that we at least aspire to holding out as what we're all entitled to,

And there's just like a gorgeous promise of what this country can be. We don't always live up to that promise. Our criminal justice system is founded upon incredible principles that I believe in. And when I read them in law school, I thought they were gorgeous. You're presumed innocent until proven guilty. Government can't take your freedom away, right, until they have proved it in an objective way in a court of law.

equal justice under the law. It's embedded in all our courthouses across the country. They're beautiful principles and concepts and promises, but sometimes we fail to live up to them. Often we fail to live up to them. And so my idea of patriotism is to continue to work to make sure we're living up to the promise of America.

And that we're living up to the promise of what we say about our criminal justice system is that we provide equal justice under the law to everybody and that we treat people with humanity and dignity. And we fall short, but I see it as my patriotic duty to continue to challenge us to do better, to live up to that promise.

Robin Steinberg, you are an inspiration. There's not a time where I've ever spent with you that I didn't walk away smarter, more compassionate, and more inspired. And today is no exception. I am so grateful and impressed by how emotionally invested you are in your own work. We're simply talking about the work that you do

You not only can give yourself goosebumps, you can not only make yourself cry, but you can shake your own foundation with the importance of the work that you do. Very few people are that emotionally invested in their own work. And I think it's one of the things that makes you a force of nature is just how much you care. You care so much about people.

I'm proud I got to know you. I'm proud to call you friend. For what it's worth, you know, you've inspired me to hold myself to a higher standard because I can be pretty quick to judge sometimes. And I, too, now catch myself thanks to your work and thanks to knowing you. Thank you. That's really very, very generous and really appreciate it, Simon. It's been so great.

great to do this with you. And yes, I consider you a friend as well. And you pushed me, like you pushed me through that whole book, right? So I appreciate that too. I'll tell you that I had a funny conversation the other day. Somebody wants to do a book event and it was like, we're going to bring in all the social justice warriors. And I basically said like, this book is not for them, right? This book was intended, as you know, Simon, because you really, really helped me get there to really sort of talk about this work in a broader way to a broader audience.

And he said, well, what would you say about it? And I said, well, I would sit in front of the room and I would basically say, all we ever do is talk to each other and we never talk to anybody else. And we can't make real change if we don't talk to people outside our own choir, because we're just talking to the choir. This book is trying to talk to your mother and your grandmother who are not part of our chorus. And he said,

And what makes you think that's not a powerful thing to say in front of that room to all those people? It's like, oh, fair. Okay. All right. I'll give it a whirl. He's like, just sit up there and say, you aren't going to like this book because it doesn't bash people over the head.

and doesn't tell them they're a bunch of terrible people because they can't see the world the way we see the world. It tries to open them up. So we'll see how that works. I don't know. I mean, that is the single best description of how you should describe this book. On both sides of the political aisle, they love to get together and talk to themselves. Yeah. And if either side wants to accomplish anything, they're going to have to learn to talk to the other. And what you do in your book is

is show us a path of how that's possible. That is fantastic. Well, that's incredibly generous. And I feel the same about you. So thank you. It's been a pleasure. I really want everybody to check out this book, The Courage of Compassion. It is rich. It is powerful. I guarantee you there will be a story in there that will make you cry because it is compelling. It is hard to read at times, but it is an important book.

I think for all of us who, to your point, who believe in this country, who love this country, who want to see this country live up to its promise and be the best version of itself, I think compassion is one of those essential characteristics that all of us need to actually help that happen. I also think compassion, it's in that moment of that connection with another person that will also force us and inspire us to act, to make a difference and to make a change.

Amen. And let that be the final word. Robin, thank you so, so much for joining. I can't thank you enough. Thanks, Simon. I appreciate it. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts. And if you'd like to learn more about the topic you just heard, please check out the Optimism Library at simonsenik.com.

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