so money my journey you know I’m
criminal justice started when I was a
junk child about seven or eight and my
mom worked in the probation department
and Lawrence mass she worked as a
probation clerk collecting fines and
stuff from probationers after school
during school vacation I used to visit
her spend time with the court officers
spend time with probation officers so
growing up in Lawrence mass I learned to
appreciate the work that was being done
by a lot of um a lot of our officials
from the criminal justice system but one
thing that I saw was a power dynamic
there was a power dynamic between the
poor and the people that were actually
doing the work right in Lawrence over
60% of the population especially at that
time were born outside of the country on
top of that is one of the poorest city
in the state so then what we saw was a
lot is what I saw as a young child was
this population that didn’t have a lot
of political or social or economic power
being governed and being prosecuted by a
system that has historically had excuse
me historically has been designed to to
prosecute the poor the vulnerable and
the ones with the less power right with
my education and with time I came to
think about is this concept of critical
values right critical value with the Big
C and when we think about critical value
or at least critical is what I’m talking
what I’m talking about is the power
dynamic between the people that have and
the people that don’t have and the
knowledge how how the knowledge get
processed between those two groups right
so if you’re if you’re poor if you’re a
minority and you’re first-generation
student in this country you have less
access to information about how to get
through the system and how to advocate
for yourself and whatnot right and the
second half of of that phrase critical
value is the value part is how do you
connect emotionally to that gap right so
when you say you want to help people as
a police officer as a probation officer
as a social worker what is it about the
values your belief in your norms that
drives you to do your
right so in essence unlocking critical
value is talking about how do we explore
the the power dynamic that exists in our
country and combine that with with the
values the norms and the beliefs that
drove us to do that work so to start we
first have to kind of define what
criminal justice is right a lot of
people think about policing and whatnot
but it also includes the prosecution
part the sentences part so you get like
this three C’s of criminal justice crime
courts and correction so for today I’m
really gonna focus on the education
piece right criminal justice as a study
as an education and how can it impact
the students critical values how how do
we better prepare students to go out
there in the field understanding that
there’s a power dynamic between you as a
police officer as a probation officer as
a lawyer and the people that you in the
that you’re either working with arrested
and prosecuted to first get a glimpse of
criminal justice do a brief history
before the 1960s a lot of a lot of law
enforcement was coming out of law
enforcement training small vocational
schools it was a lot localized where
local governments kind of decided how
they want to train their their law
enforcement officers right so in the
1960s when a lot of policy discourse on
on anti-poverty laws and policy started
with LBJ’s Crime Commission and they did
a sweep of courts and law enforcement or
whatnot and that was the kind of the
beginning of what we see today as
criminal justification it continued to
evolve with the Rickson with the Nixon
administration in the war on crime the
war on drugs tougher law CENTCOM
sentences laws were were enacted and
then that transitioned into the ronald
reagan era with a crack epidemic and
again the the policing of of urban
spaces of black bodies brown bodies to
the Clinton administration when we
started to see when you started to see a
transition between the military
equipment kind of going into these local
police departments there’s also the rise
of
as a conservation with the privatization
of jails so with with this timeline you
were able to see kind of I started at
the local level and slowly became kind
of like the this natural federal kind of
movement to try to centralize from the
Justice where the students actually go
into classrooms sit in there hoping to
to also become either police officer
probation officer and a lot of these
students are working-class blue-collar
rights it’s a tough job there are ten
public colleges and we also see in the
last 20 30 years an increase of racial
and ethnic minorities along with women
and we also see kind of this banking
model of learning right so when you when
you look in the classroom it’s similar
to the way that we’re sitting now where
it’s dependent on lectures and whatnot
and it’s interesting right because these
are people that that signed up to work
with people but yeah all you really do
is just kind of listen and take notes
and write papers with the instructor in
front of you and there’s not real
conversation where your neighbors and
your and your colleagues a lot of
students also have a legacy of public
service so they they’re interested in
public service because either their
parents or their siblings are also in
public service kind of runs in the
family most students don’t sign up to
kind of uphold like white supremacy
right they they do it so they could help
others out there they’re motivated by
their need to help and Moe and a lot of
students also are into are hoping to get
into law enforcement right I think it’s
all more over 50% of criminal justice
students hope to get into law
enforcement the problem tends to be that
we have a limited perspective of what’s
actually the picture of criminal justice
right and what it looks like on the
ground in the classroom we have this
this curriculum that kind of focuses on
administrative pieces on police and
court procedures as well as in the
individualized ethics all right what I
mean by that is when I was studying
criminal justice are at this class
tended to be about about that one bad
apple and and and how not to be like
that person and it wasn’t about what the
what the
what the with the kind of like that blue
line but Brotherhood right like you
don’t you don’t you don’t tattletale on
your fellow officer and and how
systemically that’s upheld in in
departments right so it kept it real
individualized and that’s that’s kind of
what we tend to do when when we talk
about power and identity we tend to say
well you know I’m not a racist so there
shouldn’t be a problem we we fail to
kind of zoom out and look at the larger
issue so what I’m suggesting is in order
to kind of fill that that void
I think liberty occasion could could
provide that void given the the certain
aspect that it has particularly the way
that it centers the learner in the
classroom but I’ll get I’ll get more
into that just a brief history of
liberal education it kind of started
with kind of the elitist era if you
think about kind of Wellesley in Smith
and those small liberal arts colleges
kind of started there obviously we could
see the the limitation with that right
where access not everybody has access to
that type of education and then with
consumerism era we have this college
student with a bunch of um degrees and
with that deliver education was a drove
higher ed into more of a vocation
setting right how do we how do we fill
the void in in the workforce right so it
turned into kind of like a black and
white education more more transactional
you you you pay tuition you show up to
class you get a degree what time it
really it is more recent I turned into
more of a social justice kind of
component how can we kind of deconstruct
the classroom from the standard banking
model and actually use our identity and
what we bring to the table as a way to
kind of make sense of of the discipline
in this case criminal justice so the
main facets that our focus on is student
centered self awareness and critical
consciousness so Student Center is more
of an instructional piece of it so it’s
about again it’s stuff explanatory it’s
about putting the student in the center
of the problem and and working with
their critical thinking skills as well
as the knowledge that they bring to the
table as
as a starting point to make sense of new
concepts this kind of triggers into a
kind of the self-awareness piece right
understanding what you bring to the
table but but where that came from right
the socialization that that came with
making sense of of your job right if
anybody member of cops a lot of time all
we saw was either black or brown men
being tackled by cops or that was more
frequent with just poor people being
tackled by cops right so what does that
do to your job when you want to be a cop
but yeah everything that you see on TV
tends to pin you against the people that
you that you’re hoping to serve right so
that self awareness piece where you’re
no longer just trying to do your job
you’re trying to understand how you do
the job all right so then that trickles
into kind of this critical consciousness
piece where you’re no longer looking at
yourself but now you’re connecting with
the bigger picture and you’re looking at
politics you’re looking at laws how laws
are created policymakers how money is
involved economics who has power to to
to knowledge and to access and and and
the way of knowing as well as how
identity impacts right how do groups of
people become aware and mobilize of any
in Justices and actually you know and
make a difference and it seems like a
lot but we make these decisions all the
time so this this might seem kind of
like oh man you can do this in a
classroom and my answer is yes I mean
this is this is what you do especially
if you are part of a institution and the
only institution that has power to take
your freedom away right like I could
legitimate just like use my firearm
shoot you and find a way to kind of
justify that right for more of a reason
for that reason alone it should be we
should be positioning ourselves to kind
of make sense of the different elements
of society that that comes into play
during those decisions I was a police
officer right out of our college up in
New Hampshire for two years and I spent
three years three and a half years a
social worker as well one of the one of
the eye-opening tamil catalysts one of
the eye open and experienced
I had as a social worker was when I had
to testify against a mom of what was
working with saying pretty much
testifying saying like I think her drug
problem is too much of an issue and I
don’t think that child should go back
home
the worst part was when I got off the
stands was that I was still required to
work with that mom right so how do you
come off the stands after you tell
somebody I don’t think you you you’re
home it’s out to go home oh by the way
are you gonna go to like an A and a a
and and and how often are you going oh
and can I do a home visit right that
power dynamic was was huge right I mean
I mean I pretty much have her in my
hands right and in these classes a lot
of Education a lot of training doesn’t
even focus on like that self-awareness
and that power dynamic that critical
consciousness so this isn’t a necessary
anything new purse a critical
criminology is something that exists in
the criminal justice studies but is
extremely under study and it’s not even
really part of the curriculum anymore
referring to the to the timeline as as
as liberty’ keishon became less of a
less of a thing in the quran and higher
ed you saw criminal justice kind of
pulling away from sociology from
political science and it turned into
more of a vocation just for criminal
justice right it took away the
subjectivity away from me and kind of
turn it into like a black and white like
this is what we do this is this is your
job this is how the system works one way
that we see I want to show critical
criminologist to the war on drugs and
the reason why I refer to presidential
administration because that’s part of
critical critical criminology right you
uh you have done this you have to name
the people that actually write these
things into law or what not right so
during the Clinton era especially in
especially during the Clinton era and
started with the Reagan era right the
concert was if we knock doors down and
we get rid of drug dealers there will be
no more drugs right and I’m not an
economist but it doesn’t
cutting the supply doesn’t seem to stop
the demand right and that’s what it was
it was it was just knocking on doors
right kids being traumatized by SWAT
teams coming in any type of criticism of
the justice system of cops makes you a
cop hater right all right my mom’s
husband is a cop right been caught for
35 years I did police work myself right
the the the least thing that we are the
people that actually stand up here and
criticize it it’s actually it’s the
opposite right we don’t hate cops it’s
the opposite we love the criminal
justice system so much that we’re
willing to sacrifice our friends and
whatnot to say I don’t think that’s I
don’t think that’s the right way to do
it but it takes time right so so once
you start once you start taking into
these like warned drugs and the politics
and state violence you start filling up
these gaps and other areas of study that
that could that could help our criminal
justice and in terms of being more
critical is how we think about victims
crime is not a crime without a victim
and yet less than 10 percent of of
courses revolve around victims right we
don’t even do we don’t even talk about
it I didn’t take one victim class we
don’t we don’t talk about in the police
academy it was never a thing in the
police academy
how to abstract information from victims
of crime again you start filling up the
gaps when she starts talking like this
right you start talking about
socialization you know as a cop as a
male what your shows have you been
socialized to look at domestic violence
when you show up to a house right
domestic violence domestics are one of
the most frequent calls right so what
happens when you show up and the woman
is with sometimes tends to be a woman
it’s crying and sobbing but but a lot of
times we used to go back into the either
the police department on one night and
what you hear is well she’ll be back in
no time right just get back right so
then you just hand a pamphlet and hope
that they’ll eventually leave but what
happens is that they don’t leave and we
don’t know why they don’t leave because
we don’t even study them right so we get
we get caught up in this vicious cycle
of of are we helping are we not helping
I don’t think so
but you don’t really know how far you’re
not hoping because you’re not really
getting into the nitty-gritty stuff
right police academy again we never
talked about these these things as the
same thing were meant to help you never
ever talked about the impact that mental
health has on criminal behavior right
and some of the things that are missing
is we’re not hundred percent sure just
because there’s no courses there are
there are professors and our teachers
that talk about these topics in the
classroom but we don’t know to what
extent so that’s also that’s also
missing but one thing I think that we
have to ground ourselves and is what the
number one answer that that cops say in
interviews about why you want to do this
job is because I want to help people
it’s such an answer that when we coach
other people before they go into
interviews that we tell them don’t say
that right it’s too much it’s just too
general everybody says that don’t say
that
but it’s interesting is that we want to
help people but we don’t even know about
the people we want to help we don’t know
what makes them take we don’t know why
they’re in the situation that they’re in
we don’t know how to get them out right
and it’s not because the answers are so
complicated it’s because we haven’t even
taken the time to even listen we haven’t
even taken the time to actually sit down
and and and and listen to victims kids
who see domestic violence are more
likely to to also
continue the cycle of violence with
their intimate partners right and we
have and we’ve never really got into the
Nitty and the Gritty of what exactly
it’s happening – um – these kids aren’t
during those times right and my
suggestion is the sooner we get on the
ground and understand these issues it
could serve as a catalyst for it for
criminal justice on preventing this from
going on so if I leave it where anything
is when you say you want to help people
you ask yourself are you really do you
really know about the person that you’re
helping thank you
[Applause]
criminal justice started when I was a
junk child about seven or eight and my
mom worked in the probation department
and Lawrence mass she worked as a
probation clerk collecting fines and
stuff from probationers after school
during school vacation I used to visit
her spend time with the court officers
spend time with probation officers so
growing up in Lawrence mass I learned to
appreciate the work that was being done
by a lot of um a lot of our officials
from the criminal justice system but one
thing that I saw was a power dynamic
there was a power dynamic between the
poor and the people that were actually
doing the work right in Lawrence over
60% of the population especially at that
time were born outside of the country on
top of that is one of the poorest city
in the state so then what we saw was a
lot is what I saw as a young child was
this population that didn’t have a lot
of political or social or economic power
being governed and being prosecuted by a
system that has historically had excuse
me historically has been designed to to
prosecute the poor the vulnerable and
the ones with the less power right with
my education and with time I came to
think about is this concept of critical
values right critical value with the Big
C and when we think about critical value
or at least critical is what I’m talking
what I’m talking about is the power
dynamic between the people that have and
the people that don’t have and the
knowledge how how the knowledge get
processed between those two groups right
so if you’re if you’re poor if you’re a
minority and you’re first-generation
student in this country you have less
access to information about how to get
through the system and how to advocate
for yourself and whatnot right and the
second half of of that phrase critical
value is the value part is how do you
connect emotionally to that gap right so
when you say you want to help people as
a police officer as a probation officer
as a social worker what is it about the
values your belief in your norms that
drives you to do your
right so in essence unlocking critical
value is talking about how do we explore
the the power dynamic that exists in our
country and combine that with with the
values the norms and the beliefs that
drove us to do that work so to start we
first have to kind of define what
criminal justice is right a lot of
people think about policing and whatnot
but it also includes the prosecution
part the sentences part so you get like
this three C’s of criminal justice crime
courts and correction so for today I’m
really gonna focus on the education
piece right criminal justice as a study
as an education and how can it impact
the students critical values how how do
we better prepare students to go out
there in the field understanding that
there’s a power dynamic between you as a
police officer as a probation officer as
a lawyer and the people that you in the
that you’re either working with arrested
and prosecuted to first get a glimpse of
criminal justice do a brief history
before the 1960s a lot of a lot of law
enforcement was coming out of law
enforcement training small vocational
schools it was a lot localized where
local governments kind of decided how
they want to train their their law
enforcement officers right so in the
1960s when a lot of policy discourse on
on anti-poverty laws and policy started
with LBJ’s Crime Commission and they did
a sweep of courts and law enforcement or
whatnot and that was the kind of the
beginning of what we see today as
criminal justification it continued to
evolve with the Rickson with the Nixon
administration in the war on crime the
war on drugs tougher law CENTCOM
sentences laws were were enacted and
then that transitioned into the ronald
reagan era with a crack epidemic and
again the the policing of of urban
spaces of black bodies brown bodies to
the Clinton administration when we
started to see when you started to see a
transition between the military
equipment kind of going into these local
police departments there’s also the rise
of
as a conservation with the privatization
of jails so with with this timeline you
were able to see kind of I started at
the local level and slowly became kind
of like the this natural federal kind of
movement to try to centralize from the
Justice where the students actually go
into classrooms sit in there hoping to
to also become either police officer
probation officer and a lot of these
students are working-class blue-collar
rights it’s a tough job there are ten
public colleges and we also see in the
last 20 30 years an increase of racial
and ethnic minorities along with women
and we also see kind of this banking
model of learning right so when you when
you look in the classroom it’s similar
to the way that we’re sitting now where
it’s dependent on lectures and whatnot
and it’s interesting right because these
are people that that signed up to work
with people but yeah all you really do
is just kind of listen and take notes
and write papers with the instructor in
front of you and there’s not real
conversation where your neighbors and
your and your colleagues a lot of
students also have a legacy of public
service so they they’re interested in
public service because either their
parents or their siblings are also in
public service kind of runs in the
family most students don’t sign up to
kind of uphold like white supremacy
right they they do it so they could help
others out there they’re motivated by
their need to help and Moe and a lot of
students also are into are hoping to get
into law enforcement right I think it’s
all more over 50% of criminal justice
students hope to get into law
enforcement the problem tends to be that
we have a limited perspective of what’s
actually the picture of criminal justice
right and what it looks like on the
ground in the classroom we have this
this curriculum that kind of focuses on
administrative pieces on police and
court procedures as well as in the
individualized ethics all right what I
mean by that is when I was studying
criminal justice are at this class
tended to be about about that one bad
apple and and and how not to be like
that person and it wasn’t about what the
what the
what the with the kind of like that blue
line but Brotherhood right like you
don’t you don’t you don’t tattletale on
your fellow officer and and how
systemically that’s upheld in in
departments right so it kept it real
individualized and that’s that’s kind of
what we tend to do when when we talk
about power and identity we tend to say
well you know I’m not a racist so there
shouldn’t be a problem we we fail to
kind of zoom out and look at the larger
issue so what I’m suggesting is in order
to kind of fill that that void
I think liberty occasion could could
provide that void given the the certain
aspect that it has particularly the way
that it centers the learner in the
classroom but I’ll get I’ll get more
into that just a brief history of
liberal education it kind of started
with kind of the elitist era if you
think about kind of Wellesley in Smith
and those small liberal arts colleges
kind of started there obviously we could
see the the limitation with that right
where access not everybody has access to
that type of education and then with
consumerism era we have this college
student with a bunch of um degrees and
with that deliver education was a drove
higher ed into more of a vocation
setting right how do we how do we fill
the void in in the workforce right so it
turned into kind of like a black and
white education more more transactional
you you you pay tuition you show up to
class you get a degree what time it
really it is more recent I turned into
more of a social justice kind of
component how can we kind of deconstruct
the classroom from the standard banking
model and actually use our identity and
what we bring to the table as a way to
kind of make sense of of the discipline
in this case criminal justice so the
main facets that our focus on is student
centered self awareness and critical
consciousness so Student Center is more
of an instructional piece of it so it’s
about again it’s stuff explanatory it’s
about putting the student in the center
of the problem and and working with
their critical thinking skills as well
as the knowledge that they bring to the
table as
as a starting point to make sense of new
concepts this kind of triggers into a
kind of the self-awareness piece right
understanding what you bring to the
table but but where that came from right
the socialization that that came with
making sense of of your job right if
anybody member of cops a lot of time all
we saw was either black or brown men
being tackled by cops or that was more
frequent with just poor people being
tackled by cops right so what does that
do to your job when you want to be a cop
but yeah everything that you see on TV
tends to pin you against the people that
you that you’re hoping to serve right so
that self awareness piece where you’re
no longer just trying to do your job
you’re trying to understand how you do
the job all right so then that trickles
into kind of this critical consciousness
piece where you’re no longer looking at
yourself but now you’re connecting with
the bigger picture and you’re looking at
politics you’re looking at laws how laws
are created policymakers how money is
involved economics who has power to to
to knowledge and to access and and and
the way of knowing as well as how
identity impacts right how do groups of
people become aware and mobilize of any
in Justices and actually you know and
make a difference and it seems like a
lot but we make these decisions all the
time so this this might seem kind of
like oh man you can do this in a
classroom and my answer is yes I mean
this is this is what you do especially
if you are part of a institution and the
only institution that has power to take
your freedom away right like I could
legitimate just like use my firearm
shoot you and find a way to kind of
justify that right for more of a reason
for that reason alone it should be we
should be positioning ourselves to kind
of make sense of the different elements
of society that that comes into play
during those decisions I was a police
officer right out of our college up in
New Hampshire for two years and I spent
three years three and a half years a
social worker as well one of the one of
the eye-opening tamil catalysts one of
the eye open and experienced
I had as a social worker was when I had
to testify against a mom of what was
working with saying pretty much
testifying saying like I think her drug
problem is too much of an issue and I
don’t think that child should go back
home
the worst part was when I got off the
stands was that I was still required to
work with that mom right so how do you
come off the stands after you tell
somebody I don’t think you you you’re
home it’s out to go home oh by the way
are you gonna go to like an A and a a
and and and how often are you going oh
and can I do a home visit right that
power dynamic was was huge right I mean
I mean I pretty much have her in my
hands right and in these classes a lot
of Education a lot of training doesn’t
even focus on like that self-awareness
and that power dynamic that critical
consciousness so this isn’t a necessary
anything new purse a critical
criminology is something that exists in
the criminal justice studies but is
extremely under study and it’s not even
really part of the curriculum anymore
referring to the to the timeline as as
as liberty’ keishon became less of a
less of a thing in the quran and higher
ed you saw criminal justice kind of
pulling away from sociology from
political science and it turned into
more of a vocation just for criminal
justice right it took away the
subjectivity away from me and kind of
turn it into like a black and white like
this is what we do this is this is your
job this is how the system works one way
that we see I want to show critical
criminologist to the war on drugs and
the reason why I refer to presidential
administration because that’s part of
critical critical criminology right you
uh you have done this you have to name
the people that actually write these
things into law or what not right so
during the Clinton era especially in
especially during the Clinton era and
started with the Reagan era right the
concert was if we knock doors down and
we get rid of drug dealers there will be
no more drugs right and I’m not an
economist but it doesn’t
cutting the supply doesn’t seem to stop
the demand right and that’s what it was
it was it was just knocking on doors
right kids being traumatized by SWAT
teams coming in any type of criticism of
the justice system of cops makes you a
cop hater right all right my mom’s
husband is a cop right been caught for
35 years I did police work myself right
the the the least thing that we are the
people that actually stand up here and
criticize it it’s actually it’s the
opposite right we don’t hate cops it’s
the opposite we love the criminal
justice system so much that we’re
willing to sacrifice our friends and
whatnot to say I don’t think that’s I
don’t think that’s the right way to do
it but it takes time right so so once
you start once you start taking into
these like warned drugs and the politics
and state violence you start filling up
these gaps and other areas of study that
that could that could help our criminal
justice and in terms of being more
critical is how we think about victims
crime is not a crime without a victim
and yet less than 10 percent of of
courses revolve around victims right we
don’t even do we don’t even talk about
it I didn’t take one victim class we
don’t we don’t talk about in the police
academy it was never a thing in the
police academy
how to abstract information from victims
of crime again you start filling up the
gaps when she starts talking like this
right you start talking about
socialization you know as a cop as a
male what your shows have you been
socialized to look at domestic violence
when you show up to a house right
domestic violence domestics are one of
the most frequent calls right so what
happens when you show up and the woman
is with sometimes tends to be a woman
it’s crying and sobbing but but a lot of
times we used to go back into the either
the police department on one night and
what you hear is well she’ll be back in
no time right just get back right so
then you just hand a pamphlet and hope
that they’ll eventually leave but what
happens is that they don’t leave and we
don’t know why they don’t leave because
we don’t even study them right so we get
we get caught up in this vicious cycle
of of are we helping are we not helping
I don’t think so
but you don’t really know how far you’re
not hoping because you’re not really
getting into the nitty-gritty stuff
right police academy again we never
talked about these these things as the
same thing were meant to help you never
ever talked about the impact that mental
health has on criminal behavior right
and some of the things that are missing
is we’re not hundred percent sure just
because there’s no courses there are
there are professors and our teachers
that talk about these topics in the
classroom but we don’t know to what
extent so that’s also that’s also
missing but one thing I think that we
have to ground ourselves and is what the
number one answer that that cops say in
interviews about why you want to do this
job is because I want to help people
it’s such an answer that when we coach
other people before they go into
interviews that we tell them don’t say
that right it’s too much it’s just too
general everybody says that don’t say
that
but it’s interesting is that we want to
help people but we don’t even know about
the people we want to help we don’t know
what makes them take we don’t know why
they’re in the situation that they’re in
we don’t know how to get them out right
and it’s not because the answers are so
complicated it’s because we haven’t even
taken the time to even listen we haven’t
even taken the time to actually sit down
and and and and listen to victims kids
who see domestic violence are more
likely to to also
continue the cycle of violence with
their intimate partners right and we
have and we’ve never really got into the
Nitty and the Gritty of what exactly
it’s happening – um – these kids aren’t
during those times right and my
suggestion is the sooner we get on the
ground and understand these issues it
could serve as a catalyst for it for
criminal justice on preventing this from
going on so if I leave it where anything
is when you say you want to help people
you ask yourself are you really do you
really know about the person that you’re
helping thank you
[Applause]
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