Shades of Freedom

Must Prison Be Traumatic?

Episode Summary

Prisons in the U.S. are, by design and operation, focused on punishment. But does punishment have to be traumatizing? Could prisons and jails be places of healing? In this episode of Shades of Freedom, our guest Nneka Jones Tapia, Managing Director for Justice Initiatives at Chicago Beyond and a former warden of the Cook County Jail, joins us to discuss the new Square One Project report, Harm Reduction at the Center of Corrections.

Episode Notes

Prisons in the U.S. are, by design and operation, focused on punishment. But does punishment have to be traumatizing? Could prisons and jails be places of healing? While healing-centered and restorative approaches are being looked at in pre- and post-incarceration programs, less focus has been on trauma and harm reduction for those currently incarcerated.

In this episode of Shades of Freedom, our guest Nneka Jones Tapia, Managing Director for Justice Initiatives at Chicago Beyond and a former warden of the Cook County Jail, joins us to discuss the new Square One Project report, Harm Reduction at the Center of Corrections, which begins: “The American correctional system is not a system of accountability that rehabilitates people as it purports to do. Instead, it is a system of pain and punishment with reverberating impact on the people confined there, the people who work there, and the families and communities of both.”

Guest Biography

Dr. Nneka Jones Tapia is the Managing Director for Justice Initiatives at Chicago Beyond, which backs the fight against inequities in Chicago’s communities and invests in the fight for all young people to achieve their fullest human potential. She is an experienced psychologist who is passionate about mental wellness, criminal justice reform, and supporting young people who have experienced trauma. 

Since joining Chicago Beyond in 2018, Dr. Tapia collaborated to launch programs focused on positive family engagement for families who are justice-involved, holistic healing supports within Chicago Public Schools and peer-led healing supports for youth. She is the former warden of Cook County jail in Chicago, Illinois - one of the largest single site jails in the country. Under her leadership, Cook County jail implemented several bold strategies to promote wellness and to reduce recidivism, including the Mental Health Transition Center, a program that has helped hundreds of people who have been incarcerated to successfully reenter their families and communities.

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Episode Transcription

Shades of Freedom

Episode 9

Must Prison Be Traumatic?

Guest: Dr. Nneka Jones Tapia

September 7, 2021

Copyright 2021 Aspen Institute Criminal Justice Reform Initiative

Announcer (00:01):

Welcome to Shades of Freedom from the Aspen Institute's Criminal Justice Reform Initiative. This week's guest is Dr. Nneka Jones Tapia, the managing director of Justice Initiatives at Chicago Beyond.

Nneka Jones Tapia (00:15):

When we turn on the news and we see that violence is high in neighborhoods that have limited jobs, unstable and unsafe housing, poor-quality schools, limited opportunities for safe and enjoyable recreation, we have to understand that the people in these communities who are acting out are acting out their pain.

Dr. Douglas E. Wood (00:44):

Welcome to Shades of Freedom. My name is Douglas Wood, director of the Aspen Institute's Criminal Justice Reform Initiative. Our guest today is Nneka Jones Tapia. Nneka is currently the managing director of Justice Initiatives at Chicago Beyond, an impact investor that sources local organizations in Chicago from education to youth safety to health and wellness. Before joining the organization permanently, Nneka was selected as Chicago Beyond's first leader in residence in 2018. Before she joined Chicago Beyond, Nneka was a warden of the Cook County Jail and one of the first psychologists to lead a correctional facility in the nation. She joins us today to talk about her work and her new paper at the Square One Project titled Harm Reduction at the Center of Incarceration. Nneka, Welcome to Shades of Freedom.

Nneka Jones Tapia (01:37):

Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Dr. Douglas E. Wood (01:41):

Can you tell us about your background, and specifically, how has your training in psychology helped to inform your work around trauma?

Nneka Jones Tapia (01:50):

If you had asked me that question maybe five years ago, I probably would have focused on my training in psychology. But from where I sit today, I now recognize that although I was able to use my psychology training as a tool, it was really my personal interactions with the criminal legal system from a very early age that most informed the work that I do and have done.

Nneka Jones Tapia (02:24):

I often talk about the incarceration of my father when I was eight years old as the primary influencer of my journey. And when I think back on the experience of seeing my father put in handcuffs and really the silence that was deafening in my home as I watched him being driven away in a squad car and this internal darkness that I experienced from the reality of losing my dad to the prison system, I would say yes, that experience and the support that I received from family and a few people in my community really did lay the foundation for my journey, undoubtedly. But it wasn't until I was older and experienced the incarceration of another man whom I love and is important in my life, my brother, that my path was really illuminated for me. And it was that experience that illustrated for me just how lethal incarceration was to us as a people and the critical importance of support for people who were incarcerated.

Nneka Jones Tapia (03:57):

Because I experienced the incarceration of people I love, I was really able to see from an early age that people are capable of good and bad, and that doesn't make us good or bad. And those actions didn't define us as people. And so I was also able to see through my life experiences the influence of our early experiences and our actions on the decisions that we make and the importance of healing so that we don't continue to act out the hurt that we carry. And that is really how I approach my work in corrections, and that's how I approach my work in community now.

Dr. Douglas E. Wood (04:42):

Can you tell us about Chicago Beyond? What is the organization, and what is your role there?

Nneka Jones Tapia (04:48):

Yes. Chicago Beyond is an impact investor. We back the fight for equity for our young people here in Chicago and really all across the country. We invest in organizations, ideas, research, and people that are well positioned to positively impact the lives of our young people. Our approach to the work is very much so holistic, and so we invest in multiple areas from safety to education to health and wellness and beyond. And since we were founded in 2016, we've invested more than $30 million to really impact the lives of more than 10,000 young people.

Dr. Douglas E. Wood (05:39):

In your paper, you state that the effects of trauma exist on a continuum. Can you explain to us what you mean by that?

Nneka Jones Tapia (05:48):

Research tells us that two thirds of US adults are going to experience some type of traumatic event at least once in their lifetime. And most of us who experience that event will experience some sort of stress afterwards, and we call that traumatic stress. But most of us will bounce back relatively quickly. Our brains and our bodies like balance. So the body as a system gets to work immediately after the experience of trauma to try to get us back to the point of balance. The experience of trauma is very much so individualized though. And so many of us who are able to get back to that point of balance have a strong support system, or have had very few experiences with previous traumatic events.

Nneka Jones Tapia (06:51):

But there are some of us who experience trauma much more frequently or experience trauma that lasts longer or is more intense. And these are the individuals who are at increased risk of that traumatic stress escalating to produce symptoms that really impair their ability to function. That is when we start to see impairment that is indicative of what we call post-traumatic stress disorder, which is a mental illness. When people experience trauma with great frequency and duration and intensity, their brain functioning shifts in a way that they are more likely to respond to even benign events and people from a position of chronic fear, and they have difficulty regulating their thoughts and their feelings. So they tend to have negative perceptions of the world. They tend to have more interpersonal conflict with people, and they tend to experience difficulty seeing the meaning and value of life.

Nneka Jones Tapia (08:07):

So when we turn on the news, or when we scroll through our newsfeed on our phones, or when we open our newspaper ... I don't know if any of us really open newspapers anymore ... and we see that violence is high in neighborhoods that have limited jobs, unstable and unsafe housing, poor quality schools, limited opportunities for safe and enjoyable recreation, we have to understand that the people in these communities who are acting out are acting out their pain. They are demonstrating a very normal neurological response to a very abnormal experience of chronic trauma. And we as a society have to take responsibility for putting people in positions to have to experience chronic trauma.

Dr. Douglas E. Wood (09:06):

Let's talk a little bit about what happens inside correctional institutions. Can you tell us a little bit about the types of trauma that individuals who are incarcerated experience? And not only that, but also correctional officers. Oftentimes we don't think about the fact that they too experience a great deal of trauma. Can you talk about their experiences with trauma inside correctional institutions?

Nneka Jones Tapia (09:33):

One study of about 13 prisons in this country found that more than a third of the men and about a quarter of the women who were incarcerated experienced physical abuse from either a staff member or from another person who was incarcerated, just in the six months prior to the study, not even for the duration of their incarceration. The study also found that more than 10% of the men and almost a quarter of the women reported being sexually assaulted in the correctional facility, just in the six months prior to the study.

Nneka Jones Tapia (10:27):

Being locked in a cage and handed your meals through a tiny slot is animalistic. Having to shower and use the restroom in the company of more than a dozen people whom you don't know is scary. These are just a few of the experiences of people who are incarcerated. Everything about a correctional institution is traumatizing, from the entry to the exit.

Nneka Jones Tapia (11:05):

Most correctional institutions are founded on this premise of punishment. Not most, all are founded on this premise of punishment. That means they are meant to and actually do a very good job of eroding the dignity of people from the moment that they encounter it, especially people who we as a society have deemed unworthy of freedom.

Nneka Jones Tapia (11:37):

I remember my first week at Cook County Jail. I was assigned to work in a small unit that housed men who had severe mental illness. These were men who had difficulty feeding themselves and had difficulty grooming themselves, and they were locked in a jail. Some were there for very serious charges. Others were there for very minor charges. But the charges really didn't matter. What was clear then and is clear now is that a jail is not where they belonged.

Nneka Jones Tapia (12:22):

There was one officer who was assigned to the unit with me, and there were about 10 men on the unit that day. And there was a black man in his forties or fifties who was taking a little more time in the shower than the officer had liked. And I remember joking with the officer and saying, "This is what we want. Let him shower. Let him bathe. I can wait. I'm not going anywhere. I'm here." And the officer didn't listen. I remember he got up and he went into the shower area, and all I could hear was the man yelling for the officer to leave him alone. And then I heard the sound of the officer's fists hitting this man's wet body, and I froze.

Nneka Jones Tapia (13:19):

That is trauma. Even telling the story now hurts because I just imagine if that was my dad. Then the officer made a false report about it and said that the man attacked him. And again, this was my first week at the jail. And I remember he shoved the paper, the incident report in my face and asked me to co-sign it. Thankfully, I had established a good enough relationship just in the few days that I was there with a couple of other officers that worked a unit adjacent to where I was, and I walked over to them and I was trembling. They could see something was wrong. And I told them what happened, and I asked them for their advice. And they said, "Don't sign that. You did the right thing. Do not sign that." And I just think about me as a young professional, had those officers co-signed with that one officer and said, "No, you need to sign this," I probably would have.

Nneka Jones Tapia (14:34):

That was like a fork in the road for me that I knew I couldn't do things the way that this institution was used to doing things. Staff experience and witness and read about incidents like that every day, and it leaves scars. Correctional staff have a life expectancy that is about 20 years shorter than the general population. We don't talk about that though. They experience substance misuse and marital problems and suicidality at much higher rates than people in the general population. We don't talk about that either. So this system not only doesn't work for people who are incarcerated, it doesn't work for the staff either. It doesn't work for anyone who is touched by it, and that's people and communities. And the scars oftentimes don't have the opportunity to heal because we don't talk about these things.

Dr. Douglas E. Wood (15:46):

When I supported college in prison in correctional facilities across the country, I would always be amazed with the fact that people just assumed that because the correctional facility was three hours away, that it had no connection to the community, when in fact it had an incredible connection, an explicit connection to the community. You've talked to us about trauma inside facilities, but can you talk about the trauma that exists within communities, particularly as Todd Clear refers to them sometimes as imprisoned communities, where there are spatial concentrations of mass incarceration? What's the impact in terms of the communities with respect to trauma?

Nneka Jones Tapia (16:30):

Jails and prisons are typically filled with people who come from a small number of communities, and all of the communities with high rates of incarceration have a high prevalence of people living in poverty. And I'm sure it will not surprise you to hear that these neighborhoods are home to predominantly black and brown people.

Nneka Jones Tapia (17:00):

The research tells us that more than 98% of the people who are incarcerated have experienced at least one traumatic event before they are incarcerated, and usually that happens before they turn age 18. I will tell you from experience that every person I encountered at Cook County Jail had been chronically exposed to trauma in their communities and in their homes. Their experience of trauma was then further compounded by everything they saw and experienced within the correctional institution, so they were reentering communities more hurt than when they left.

Nneka Jones Tapia (17:51):

Incarceration, though, doesn't just impact the person who's incarcerated. There are 2.7 million children that we know about in the United States who have an incarcerated parent, and we know that that is an underestimate because most studies, unfortunately, only focus on prisons. They don't include jails. And the greatest turn into correctional facilities is through jails where more than 10.8 million entries occur each year. So for us to not consider the number of children impacted by jail incarceration of parents does us a disservice. We know that that number is much higher than 2.7 million children.

Nneka Jones Tapia (18:39):

But the incarceration of a parent is devastating. It disrupts the family. It disrupts the community. It disrupts the financial stability of both of those, the home and the community. And it can lead to negative life outcomes for the child when they do not have adequate supports and when they are not able to maintain a positive relationship with their incarcerated parent.

Nneka Jones Tapia (19:17):

The trauma that occurs within correctional institutions impacts staff, as I've just shared. Research also tells us that many of the staff who work in correctional facilities experience depression and post-traumatic stress disorder at far greater rates than what we see in the general population. I think the prevalence rates among correctional officers is something like four times the prevalence of what we see in communities. So the people who are incarcerated, their families, correctional employees, they all live within this broader community, and they are carrying that pain with them. We live in community with them, and we're impacted by those scars that they carry too.

Dr. Douglas E. Wood (20:19):

What is the STAAC framework for harm reduction that you've developed, and how did your personal experience as a correctional administrator inform your model? And I also want to note that in addition to the framework, you've also applied it to four related groups of people. Right? Can you talk a little bit about the framework and your personal experiences and how it's informed that model?

Nneka Jones Tapia (20:46):

The STAAC framework represents how I approached reforms during my tenure in corrections, both as a psychologist and as the warden. And it includes my understanding of the critical value of including community in those reform efforts. To effectively reduce harms that these institutions cause, correctional leaders must consider the experiences of these three groups, the people who are incarcerated, the staff and the larger community, in every aspect of correctional policy, procedure programming and training.

Nneka Jones Tapia (21:34):

The components of the STAAC framework that I'm asking correctional leaders to center include safety, transparency and trust building, agency, asset-based approaches and connectedness. An increased amount of transparency from the institution to each of these groups and the larger community is required in order to build trust. The institution has to provide all of these groups with the tools that they need to begin and continue their journey towards healing. That's agency. These institutions are required to help people to feel and actually be safe. They have to approach all of their policies, procedures, programming and training from the understanding that everyone has strengths to be actualized, as opposed to their current perspective of punishment.

Nneka Jones Tapia (22:40):

And lastly, correctional leaders have to create more opportunities for these groups to interact with each other in a way that is going to increase the likelihood that they approach those interactions with humanity. And it will require a shift in power from the correctional institution to the community because correctional leaders can't do it alone.

Dr. Douglas E. Wood (23:07):

We always ask our guests this question at the end of the podcast. What does the phrase "shades of freedom" mean to you now and into the future?

Nneka Jones Tapia (23:20):

That's a great question. Shades of freedom now means the vast number of ways that I believe each of us can support the freedom of all of us, specifically the freedom of black and brown people. We all have something to give to this movement. Shades of freedom in the future represents ways that we will no longer be bound by the internal and external things that confine us.

Dr. Douglas E. Wood (23:57):

Thank you so much, Nneka. It's been so great having you on Shades of Freedom, and we'll continue to follow your work at Chicago Beyond and the Square One Project.

Nneka Jones Tapia (24:07):

Thank you.

Announcer (24:09):

Thanks for joining us for Shades of Freedom, from the Aspen Institute's Criminal Justice Reform Initiative. We'll be back soon with more thought-provoking guests, so please subscribe on your favorite podcast app. This podcast was produced by Lynnea Domienik with research assistance by Willem Patrick. It was edited by Ken Thompson. Special thanks to Christian Devers and Wanda Mann. CJRI's programs are made possible by support from Arnold Ventures, the Bank of America Charitable Foundation, the Arthur M. Blank Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the Ford Foundation.