Maybe it’s time to tackle crime by working backwards.
Will Gonzalez of the Phoenix City Prosecutor’s Office posed the idea during a panel at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Gonzalez, along with graduate research assistant Doug Mellom and assistant professor Kevin Wright, spoke on police action reform, criminal prosecution and correction centers. This was the third Public Service Impact Talks held by ASU’s College of Public Service & Community Solutions.
“It got me to start thinking,” Gonzalez said. “Can we problem solve backwards? Can we move backwards? Why do we wait for the crime? Why wait? Can we work with partners out there and look at the research and ask ourselves, what does it say? How can we prevent, how do we intervene in lives to change that which other people say, ‘They will always be that kid. That’s their luck and you can’t change that’”
The Public Service Impact Talks were inspired by the TED Talks to “identify problems and specific solutions that are influenced by the work of our facility here within our college,” Associate Dean Cynthia Lietz said.
Each of the three speakers took turns talking about their criminal process section then came together for an open discussion on the issue.
Mellom’s lecture, “Police legitimacy: repairing the damaged trust,” focused on the relationship between police officers and the community.
“When individuals feel like they are being treated with dignity and respect and politely by the police, they were actually able have some kind of voice in the interaction,” Mellom said.
Gonzalez spoke about criminal justice collaboration and why university research is crucial to reform. He said rehabilitation programs are sometimes a better option than prosecution.
“You can’t incarcerate your way out of a problem. There has to be more,” Gonzalez said. “Perhaps the way for this individual is not to go to court but to divert them out of the system.”
Wright had the final word in his discussion point entitled “Incarcerated in America: Why You Should Care.” He shared statistics and Johnny Cash song lyrics about incarceration in an effort to remind the audience of what is happening to the people inside jail and to forgive them for their mistakes.
“You see, there is a very strong overlap between victims and offenders,” Wright said. “The same situations that produce victims are the same ones that produce offenders.”
Criminology master’s student Stephanie Morse is in Wright’s doctoral level corrections class and said the Public Service Impact Talks overlapped with course themes.
“It is always really interesting to hear the work that’s being done and relating all these research issues back to what’s going on in the community and making it more relatable,” she said.
Contact the reporter at Courtney.Pedroza@asu.edu.
