Bad Behavior Won't Stop With Punishment | Adam Foss | TEDxSuffolkUniversity

this is a picture of Steven this picture was taken just a few months before he died of a stabbing in Roxbury this picture is a picture of my mother this picture was taken just a few months before she died of breast cancer both of them are buried relatively close to my house so they ended up in virtually the same space but how they got there was completely different I was working at the bar and actually studying for the bar at the same time those of you in law school you get to know how that is and I remember the first time she called me and I got annoyed and just sent my phone to voicemail because she knew that I was working and then she called again and I remember thinking like okay mmm something might be wrong or she's just had too much wine to drink tonight so let me just send it to voicemail again and then she called the third time and this time I stepped into the walk-in refrigerator at my work and heard the words that no child ever wants to hear first it was just nothing just silence and all I could say was my mom working what do you want and then I could hear her crying and say I'm afraid I have Stage four breast cancer I'm dying from that moment from that critical moment until the end of her life at a hospice bed there was one question I never had to ask myself from those first few moments of learning about her diagnosis to those last few moments of watching her expire in a hospice bed I never had to wonder whether or not my mother was getting the best treatment from the best people using the best equipment and the best medicine of the best hospitals in the country seeing through her terminal disease and seeing her humanity in it switching from palliative care at the diagnostic care despite our meager means and her dire diagnosis my mother was cared for like any patient that we would expect to be cared for in the United States of America medicine is as prehistoric as we are with the first surgery you're carrying about 7,000 years ago archaeologists and France found the remains of a prehistoric boy whose arm appeared to have been surgically removed using a stone tool and they surmised that aside from that stone tool the surgeons at that point in time used some plant-based antiseptics to numb their pain but as science in industries innovated so too did those practicing medicine leech bloodletting and drink holes in people's heads gave way to prognostic and diagnostic care vaccines and antibiotics changed the way that we reacted to medicine instead we tried to prevent it wars demanded that we treat traumatic injury differently the expansion from country to city gave us special concerns about public sanitation and community health the advent of the microscope changed the way we thought about infectious disease and so on and so forth until we got to the point where the stone tool was replaced with micro surgeries with lasers unlike those in the medical system however those in the criminal justice system have avoided adaptation for tradition despite advances and understanding the intersection between poverty and crime between the traumatic reasons that people commit violent crime between addiction and why people commit crime all of the things that go on when children's lifestyles and the manifestation of those things and the commission of crime we have practiced in virtually the same way since the advent of our profession a healthy community is a safe one and oftentimes those people who are the last lifeline of folks coming to court are the first responders in those court houses including prosecutors and instead of being given the best and the latest technologies and tools to solve that information we are taught to think about winning Stephen came to my courthouse for the first time he was 16 years old he was arrested by the Boston Police Department for threatening another teenager of a shooting despite the fact that they didn't find a handgun they still arrested Stephen and charged him with possession of a fire I'm an assault on the dangerous weapon and he came to my courthouse it didn't take us long at all to figure out that if we didn't do something immediately Stephen would either be the victim or the perpetrator of a serious violent crime his mother was terrified that we were going to lose Stephen she thought that by bringing him to the courthouse he was going to be in the best hands our hands my hands and the time that I knew Stephen he touched our public systems hundreds of times he went from public school to public school he lived in public housing and he wasn't in public housing he was in foster home after foster home after Posture home he was kicked out of at least 11 different schools and had 28 foster home placements by the time that I met him he was arrested by our local police the school police he went through a juvenile Justice Department mental health facilities local jails the adult justice system and finally adult prison and despite the fact that Stephen went through all of these things we continued to use the same iteration of solutions for his behavior arrests new school new foster home runaway suspension arrests jail punishment simply put we were using crime solutions for mental health and public health problems we absolutely blew it Steven was born in Cape Verde and he grew up in the small island African nation and abject poverty where he witnessed unspeakable violence against his mother and suffered abuse on his own and what we was witnessing and what was experiencing taught him to use via as a tool for everything and as he learned that behavior began to manifest and made his mother think that the best thing to do was to move to Boston with Stephen to go and be around the supportive network of his family in Boston when he got here Stephen was 11 years old when he got here because of his language barrier and because of his behavioral issues he had to skip to fifth grade and so he stayed a year outside of school and in that year he began making friends with the older Cape Verdean kids in his neighborhood who had been living there for some time creating their own environment finally after that year Stephen was allowed to enroll in school but having no treatment for his mental and behavioral health issues his behavior was met with suspensions and expulsions further detaching him from school further arresting his educational development and further allowing him to spend more time with Cape Verdean gang members in his neighbourhood and for the first time in his life Stephen felt something that felt like protection loyalty love responsibility agency and because of those things Stephen was led to a life of more serious crime Stephen came to my courtroom presenting all of the symptoms of learning disabilities of malnutrition of post-traumatic stress of adverse childhood experiences and yet our response to his behavior was not trying to understand and treat it was trying to punish the behavior out of him instead of trying to understand and treat Stephens behavior we were focused on the word of the law and deciding whether or not it was broken instead of focusing on the broken person who was in front of us and doing everything that we could to treat him so that he would not come back but every single time Stephen showed up the response was the same arrests new foster home new school run away suspension expulsion arrest repeat I am not unique this is true of the 31,000 prosecutors who are around this country every day we are met with people who are at the worst point in their life and need help and we are taught to open up our toolbox use a stone tool to fix that problem that stone tool is incarceration and punishment and oppression this is probably the first time that you heard of Stephens death he died in this city while he bled out in his friend's car in our neighborhood of Roxbury and despite the fact that Stephens death was entirely preventable despite the fact that he touched our system hundreds and hundreds of times you didn't hear about it despite the fact that because of the times he touched our public systems all of those systems had the information to intervene and do something for Stephen you never heard about it in fact when I researched what I looked for an article about Stephens death I found one it said black man 19 years old stabbed to death investigation to continue we're using crime solutions for public health problems we knew that Stephens behavior was about medical and health problems and yet we chose to punish him imagine your doctor punishing you for heart disease because you've worked too hard can you imagine your doctor incarcerated you for your diabetes because you ate too much sugar imagine going to jail for a lung cancer because you smoked too much imagine if that's the world that we lived in now imagine that doctor is brand-new fresh out of medical school and all they're equipped with is a stone tool we would never let that happen so we have to ask ourselves why do we let it happen to the Stevens in the world imagine but that newspaper article would have looked like if my mother died because the people who she met on the worst day of her life did not have the best tools the best education the best equipment the best medicine to solve her problem when I think of Steven now I think of this a 16 year old boy getting his permit and being so happy that he found this new place in his life does this look like to you a violent and serial criminal who did not deserve the best treatment that he could have got on the day that he came to us on his worst day imagine if we failed my mother the way that we failed Stephen leicht Stephen my mother is buried not far from my house my mother died despite doctors best efforts to treat her but because she died it doesn't mean the doctors weren't trying too hard us if they weren't the most educated they weren't trying would use the best medicine the best tools and techniques means that mother is saving lives because doctors learned and adapted and that's what we need our criminal justice system to do because we are failing there are millions of Stevens and Stephanie's we will never meet that will never be in the empty chairs in these rooms because the criminal justice system is being allowed to run the same way that was during its inception centuries ago imagine never knowing what your loved one could have contributed to this society what your loved ones could have been who they could have married what children they could have had what business they could have started what art they could have made imagine that because Stevens mother will never know we will never know I don't want to be here next year it should be somebody else Steven perhaps and until we start demanding that our criminal justice system takes care of the Stevens and Stephanie's and the millions of people that you will never meet that I have the fortune and privilege of meeting every day that I walk in through an old Polish neighborhood into a prison around this country until we start demanding that we're depriving ourselves we will never know what we list out by Stephen not being in this red circle perhaps the next big idea worth spreading thank you you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 28,755

Rating: 4.9290991 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Global Issues, Big problems, Change, Crime, Criminal justice, Prison, Public Policy, Reform, Youth

Id: inv89j3VYVc

Length: 14min 19sec (859 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 24 2018