Historically, prosecutors’ records were judged by the number of people who were put behind bars. For Tara Regan Anderson (MPP 2010) and her colleagues in San Francisco Defense Attorney Gascon’s office, that’s no longer the goal. Join her and Jonathan Stein (MMP/JD 2013) for a conversation about the shift in thinking around prosecution and the impact this shift is having on police officers, individuals interacting with the police, and the people connected to those individuals. In this episode, Tara talks about her work to support children of incarcerated parents and elaborates on how the criminal justice system affects all those involved, not just the individual entering the system.  

Interested in learning more about the work being done to support children of those in the criminal justice system? Here are three suggestions: 

1. Explore the research from the Quattrone Center  
2. Learn more about on-the-ground efforts from Project What! 
3. Read Tara’s article “The Power of One Embrace”, shared on the National Council on Crime & Delinquency’s  

Transcript

Spencer Bowen [00:00:00] Welcome to season two of talk policy to me. My name is Spencer Bowen and I'm a first year Master of Public Policy student at UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy. Today we have a chance to hear Jonathan Stein, an alumnus of the Goldman Masters of Public Policy Program. Interview Tara Regan Anderson, director of policy at the San Francisco District Attorney's Office. San Francisco is one of many cities across the country that's trying a different approach to over incarceration. Tara's work has been at the center of efforts to reduce the toll the criminal justice system takes on families and communities. Here's Jonathan Stein in conversation with Tara.

Jonathan Stein [00:00:57] Tara thanks for joining us.

Tara Regan Anderson [00:00:58] Thank you for having me.

Jonathan Stein [00:01:00] So does the San Francisco District Attorney's Office agree with former Attorney General Eric Holder on the issue over incarceration? When he was the lead law enforcement official in the nation he said "too many people go to too many prisons for far too long."

Tara Regan Anderson [00:01:13] I know you're asking this because I work in a prosecutor's office and it's a profession steeped in tradition. Oftentimes my boss District Attorney Gascón compares the medical field and the field of law. So if you take a medical professional from 50 years ago and put them in an operating room today they would need a lot of coaching and assistance around what are the tools available to them. Do the same thing with a lawyer from 50 years ago and put them in today's courtroom. They would fare pretty well. And to me that speaks to how much work we still need to do in reforming our criminal justice system. Advancing it to really be a 21st century justice system. And because we've relied on these old traditional ways of doing business we have a huge incarcerated population which isn't necessarily our public safety solution.

Jonathan Stein [00:02:02] There was a long held view among criminal justice reformers that the individuals with a history of substance abuse and low level drug offenses should be provided with medical and social services as an alternative to incarceration. And increasingly we're seeing that view actually expand beyond just the left and criminal justice reformers to actually people on the right of the spectrum as well. It's my understanding the San Francisco is actually a city that is trying to act on that new emerging consensus.

Tara Regan Anderson [00:02:31] Yes. And first I want to challenge this idea that criminal justice reform is exclusive to advocates. I really think again pushing the professional shift of a prosecutor's role in the criminal justice system is we really do have to see ourselves as part of the reform effort and that we're not exclusive to it but we are just as responsible for criminal justice reform as are the advocates who have been working in that regard for four years. So yes San Francisco is a jurisdiction that is really looking at those folks with substance use challenges and trying to solve those problems with non-criminal justice approaches and LEAD San Francisco is is one of those. So that's law enforcement assisted diversion program that was originally piloted in Seattle which has had amazing results in Seattle in terms of recidivism and cost reduction. And it really puts discretion at the line officer and so them having the opportunity instead of bringing someone and booking them into jail bringing them to a social service center that connects them with the resources they need. Really it's client centered and harm reduction as the core principle that guides that that intervention that program.

Jonathan Stein [00:03:47] LEAD SF,  it's my understanding anyway that it's really robust. So if you were a person participating in the program you might receive benefits and receive assistance with public benefits with substance abuse treatment, with mental health services, help might be provided to you in getting identification, getting housing, getting employment. And I think the moral case for that approach is really clear. Right you're helping people reclaim their lives instead of locking them away and putting further challenges in front of them and their family in their community. Is there also a public safety case, as someone who is you know your officer responsible for public safety, is there also a public safety case? And given the full range of benefits that are potentially possible within LEAD SF, is there also a financial case?

Tara Regan Anderson [00:04:27] Oh absolutely. You're looking at prevention. Really guiding folks to getting the resources that they need so that they don't advance to engaging in felony criminal activity. Because what we see is over time is that contact escalates. You've got more jail bed days that are utilized, more jail bookings, and also anytime that something advances to felony behavior you've got more court time and court resources that are going to be devoted to addressing reducing that harm of that behavior that that person is engaging in. And so when you have a program that is an earlier intervention and directs people to the resources that they need so that they don't engage and down the line criminal behavior that threatens public safety and communities, you are having a cost savings. You're also reducing recidivism. Susan Collins out of the University of Washington did a two your evaluation of the Seattle program and they found that compared to the system as usual, LEAD resulted in 60 percent lower odds of rearrest and 39 percent reduction in felony charges. So that those people who did get rearrested were less likely to be rearrested for a felony. So there is significant cost savings and obviously a public safety benefit when there isn't subsequent criminal activity.

Jonathan Stein [00:05:47] Does this shift in thinking pose a challenge at all for the individual prosecutor, maybe someone who got into the profession 20 years ago and at the time the point of the work was prosecuting individuals accused of committing crimes, putting people behind bars, and in a lot of cases now with LEAD SF and other work being done in your office, that's no longer the objective.

Tara Regan Anderson [00:06:09] Yeah that's correct. I mean that has been a big part of what District Attorney Gascón has done in San Francisco is shift this thinking away from a trial outcome being the greatest determining factor of someone's success as a prosecutor and using data to inform that kind of shift in thinking. So you know over 90 percent of our cases actually resolved through plea agreement. And so it's not the trial outcome that is the primary work of the office. So really looking at overall every case outcome resolving through the fair and equitable and swift process. We serve as stewards of the Constitution, we represent the people at large and really exploring what does that mean when you're representing the people. So one very specific example of what District Attorney Gascón has done to help shift this thinking is engaged in this San Quentin State Prison forum with the San Quentin news. So we have all of our managers and now all of our line prosecutors are going into San Quentin State Prison and having roundtable dialogues with the gentleman side that are serving their time there to get perspective on their court experience and also their post conviction experience in the criminal justice system you know you've got hard hardcore long term prosecutors that have put in 20 years come out with transformative experiences. And that's the way we're trying to shift the profession as led by District Attorney Gascón in San Francisco.

Jonathan Stein [00:07:43] I think that's so important. The criminal justice reform organizations that I admire most are ones that elevate the voices of folks who've been formerly incarcerated, who can speak from firsthand experience what it's like to  go through the system. You spoke at a conference on the children of incarcerated parents, an area that's a specialization for you in your career, and you said that there was an "inherent architecture of misery" in incarceration and you didn't mean, I don't think, the misery of being locked up in a cell. I think you meant something larger than that.

Tara Regan Anderson [00:08:12] Yeah I did. That our system is flat at the foundation. It's fractured. It reveals itself not just as a reflection of someone being incapacitated in a cell with their lack of freedom, it's based on the unmistakable look and feel to how this impacts and harms many everyone who touches the system. So this is your survivor, your victim, offender, the family of those two categories of folks and then also the system actors, the prosecutors, the judges, the corrections officers, all of these individuals are  a part of this architecture of misery and no one if asked would say it was a perfect system I assure you that. I worked in San Quentin for a number of years and so I saw this from many perspectives, all of those actors in fact. When you think of the architecture of misery you think of the very physical spaces. There's also this kind of soundtrack to the challenges that the system poses whether it's the rattling of keys or the closing and opening of cell doors. But beyond that I think a really great example of this insidious nature of this architecture of our criminal justice system is when a loved one visits someone who's incarcerated in prison and they go and there's the rules are posted and they say what to wear or not to wear. But that really can vary depending on who's interpreting those rules that day and who's processing you through to visit that institution certainly does their best to have it not be certainly insidious and vary so much but this is the real experience when you've just traveled miles upon miles to visit with your loved one and have done nothing wrong in the matter of law yourself and are subjected to so much misery. I think that's what I was trying to speak to is the multiple individuals that are impacted when one life is taken from us for a period of time to serve their sentence.

Jonathan Stein [00:10:19] Just staying on this question of family. Nationally one in 10 children has at least one parent who's currently in jail or prison or on parole or probation somehow supervised by the criminal justice system, it's a just stunning statistic. What are some of the strategies that we can use to minimize the impact of this system on those kids?

Tara Regan Anderson [00:10:41] Yeah there's several strategies. I've been honored to be a part of the San Francisco children of incarcerated parents Partnership for a number of years, both during my time working at San Quentin and even now working in a prosecutor's office in San Francisco. And there are I think three main strategies that are helpful at mitigating the harmful impact of having a parent who's involved in the system as you described. First of these I would say are time of arrest policies. So many different police agencies are being proactive about understanding the presence of children during arrest procedures so not handcuffing the parent in front of the child if possible and you know that the individual has school aged children and you can execute a warrant or engage in an arrest during school time hours you do so so that they wouldn't have to witness them but also there's a secondary responsibility there ensuring that there's someone who can pick up the children and care for them in that parents absence while they were booked into custody. So really engaging police agencies and mitigating the harmful impact of an arrest. Another area is what are being referred to as family impact statements. So during sentencing, having the court be made aware of the parental status of someone, or even if they're not a parent themselves but they are an uncle or another figure in the family and have significant responsibility for other family members, having that considered at a time of sentencing. This poses a question of does justice look different for parents or people who have to care for children? So an example of how this can be thoughtfully carried out is if you have an individual who is a parent who is in the process of getting a diversion program for drug treatment, it's using that information of the family impact statement to ensure that they're directed to a treatment program that will allow them to continue any sort of family reunification process that they may have which is a term that's used to describe if they have a child that's involved in child welfare that they can reunify with them, because you don't want the sentence to preclude any sort of long term family reunification or benefit. So really using that information to make the best outcome both for the individual that's serving their sentence and the family as a whole. The third area is really creating support opportunities for children who have a parent who's incarcerated. It's a population that doesn't necessarily reveal itself on its own. And it's also not necessarily appropriate for teachers to go around asking a question like that. So when that is disclosed or revealed, ensuring that there are support systems available for them. So one example is is project what program based here out of the Bay Area that works with and trains and employs children of incarcerated parents. And they have their own support network. And they also go around and train teachers and social workers and probation officers and law enforcement more broadly around hey this is who we are. We're a diverse group of of people and have diverse perspectives around our parental incarceration, but really hearing from them directly about how to support them I think is a key strategy to minimize the harmful impact of parental incarceration.

Jonathan Stein [00:14:11] Let me ask a question about San Francisco specifically this question of how racial bias within the criminal justice system hits the ground in S.F. So a report from the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice and from the San Francisco Public Defender's Office found that San Francisco police book people of color especially African-Americans on more severe charges than whites which has all sorts of downstream effects. Right. So cases for people of color take longer to be adjudicated. They are more likely to be convicted of felonies, they ultimately spend more time behind bars. What's the role of the district attorney's office in addressing or counteracting that phenomenon.

Tara Regan Anderson [00:14:52] So we have a we are stewards of the Constitution. So we have a very important role. We are a check and balance to the police department. We are recipients of their work product. So we need to be able to be critical of it and understand what may be driving, it whether that be implicit or explicit bias. It has the same impact as you described. We have our own training around implicit bias and have worked over the last three years in particular around ensuring that we have constant reflection on whether or not bias might be at play in any point in our decision making process. The San Francisco District Attorney's Office is also engaging in our own decision point analysis looking at any opportunities where bias may be at play. We're working with the Quattrone Center and UC Berkeley Professor Rafael from the Goldman School is our lead researcher on that project, and this is just another example of how we're taking initiative that we see our role in mitigating the potential impact of bias especially because prosecutors play such a critical role in the criminal justice system.

Jonathan Stein [00:16:04] Did you ever think you would end up in a prosecutor's office? What drew you to this work?

Tara Regan Anderson [00:16:08] What drew me to this work is I think that we're all so much more than the worst thing we've ever done or the worst thing that's ever happened to us. And that has been a mantra that I've carried in every professional role I've had working in the criminal justice system which are pretty diverse roles.

 [00:16:21] So working in San Quentin with sentenced individuals as they're making adjustments and returning to community, working with their families on the outside while they're serving that time, then working with children who have a parent who's incarcerated kind of navigating what that means for their own life course and then the opportunity presented itself to work for a district attorney Gascón who is an amazing thought leader in criminal justice. But he was also running for election at the time that I was in my hiring process and he had yet to come out with his stance on the death penalty. And that's something that's very very important to me to know who I'm working for and what positions they have on on key issues and criminal justice. That being one of the most significant. Could I work in an office that would sentence someone to death, And I really didn't think that I could. I took the position before he made his statement. Luckily a week within after that he came out saying he would not pursue the death penalty in any cases. So I lucked out there but I was prepared and had even consulted with folks that I worked with at San Quentin that do pastel Pastoral Council to condemned row and which is are another term of phrase for four death row here in California. But that was very important to me to really be sure who I was working for was going to be representing these best ideas about what criminal justice reform could look like from a prosecutor's office and that I had to 100 percent be behind and believe in that leadership and District Attorney Gascón is just such an amazing person to work for.

Jonathan Stein [00:18:04] It allows you to come to the prosecutor's side.

Tara Regan Anderson [00:18:07] It does. Yeah.

Jonathan Stein [00:18:08] And you have family who are in law enforcement right?

Tara Regan Anderson [00:18:10] Yeah. So my brother is a police officer a sergeant on the East Coast. My uncle was a judge, My father was a legal officer in the Navy. So I kind of grew up with criminal justice stories around my kitchen table. Anyone from the New England area would know the story of Amy Fisher the Long Island Lolita. That was a case that my uncle was involved in. But so I grew up with criminal justice and I knew I wanted to work in this field but I wasn't quite sure what my role was and it was kind of ironically during my college years, my brother a bit older than me. He took me to the shooting range and it was in the process of of that experience that I realized that being in law enforcement was not going to be the path for me that I really saw myself. I know it's cheesy to say next to the target as opposed to aiming at it and that's where I've been all of this time and I still see myself there. As a part of a prosecutor's office.

Jonathan Stein [00:19:12] Terror Regan Anderson is the director of policy at the office of the San Francisco District Attorney. Tara thank you so much for sharing your experience with us.

Tara Regan Anderson [00:19:20] Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Spencer Bowen [00:19:23] Talk policy to me is a production of UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy and the Berkeley Institute for the Future of Young Americans. For show notes, visit us at talkpolicytome.org. Music heard on today's episode is by Pat Mesiti-Miller. Talk Policy to Me's  executive producers are Bora Lee Reed and Sarah Swanbeck. I'm Spencer Bowen. See you next time.