Jared Fishman featured on Gin & Justice podcast

Executive Director Jared Fishman was a recent guest on the Gin & Justice podcast. On this episode with hosts Justine and Amanda, he discusses the work of Justice Innovation Lab, the current state of the criminal justice system and how we can fix it as well as his book, “Fire on the Levee.”

In this conversation, Jared shares, “Every justice system in America is different. We have over 2,000 justice systems in America, and they're each run by locally-elected officials, and they're the ones handling somewhere between 87% and 95% of criminal cases. So, when we talk about this massive problem of mass incarceration, when we're talking about all of these things, it is both truly massive, but it's also very local. And that can make people feel really overwhelmed a lot of times because, how are we going to fix this problem, if we have to deal with 2,000 different justice systems? And I agree. If that's the way you think of it, it's terrible. 

But, the flip side is also true. Each of these 2,000 communities can be incubators of new ideas, right? And, they don't have to get the national Republicans and Democrats to have a conversation. We can do this locally with local partnerships. And, so we try to find those communities where all of those things are together – motivated leaders, a problem that people are willing to try to solve, and some degree of resources that people are already willing to commit to solving that problem. And, then we come in with our approach with our data scientists, with our human centered design experts, with our systems thinking, with our former prosecutors, with our community liaison experts, and we help communities work through a process where they solve their own problem in a way that makes sense for that community. And then, when we find that solution, our goal is to find something that we can share with other communities.”

Jared’s interview starts at 21:32. You can listen to the full episode here: https://ginandjusticepodcast.com/episodes/jared-fishman-justice-innovation-lab