sherman and i am your host and my guest today is dr dion johnson she is the owner and c e o of juvenile and adult reentry connections subsequent to obtaining a master degree in marriage and family therapy from california state university dr johnson obtained her masters degree in theology and a ph d in clinical psychology from fuller theological seminary in california her work has allowed her to provide services in various mental health outpatient clinics inpatient forensic hospital settings community crisis response teams correctional facilities residential and group home placements and with impacted a huge segment of the population so right now you are the owner and c e o of juvenile and adult re entry connections let's talk about what that is and why you are doing it ok juvenile and actions or j r c for short is committed to providing reentry services for those coming home from residential and or correctional facilities such as jails and prisons for those who also have behavioral really benefit from a holistic approach is to treatment that really kind of speak to what their needs are and this population intrigued you for is it because there it occurs to me that there are very few places that offer this specific plea yes and again i've interviewed people you know in the prison system from the prison system who have been made and one of the things where we fail miserably is in rehabilitation yes so we lock them up we put them in this box and often they're mistreated abused you know it's like there's no education in there for the most part  and and then most of them are coming out yes and we somehow think we don't have to think about it because they're over there but when they come out if they haven't had any rehabilitation yet they're coming out the same or worse than when they went in yes and then being out in society and doing the things that they were doing before yes so so in working with this population it occurs to me like it provides a huge it fills a huge need yes yes most recently i was mental health director at one of our one of the state's county correctional facilities and you know one of the best ways to ensure or one of the factors that really increases the likelihood of folks reoffending is to really not provide any follow up services once folks will home now i'm a big proponent of people being accountable for their actions you know whatever it is we all need to be accountable however if we see that people have issues with addiction or issues with trauma of we see that people have issues with really understanding how to approach becoming gainfully employed i think that the onus is up to those of us will say that we're committed to this work to really kind of be about what we say were about hence the impetus for juvenile adult reentry connections as you've already been called out of work in a lot of different set right in the ball really seems to drop from a service perspective in my opinion one people go home i think so you know and i think you know while folks do need to do their part to be accountable i think that they need to have some unity of reentry as well yeah i'm just within our communities but within our professional community environment too yeah and i think you're absolutely right they have to be accountable and they you know we do make choices moment by moment and so you either choose to reach for what's available or search for or to be a demand for it yes or you kind of take the path of least resistance the issue though for me is you know i've interviewed recovering addicts and want of the things one of them said was it never ocurred to me that that would be possible for me so i think that's part of the problem is they're not even aware that it's a possibility yes how we think about ourselves has a direct influence or consequence on our behaviors yes and so i was that's interesting you brought that up natasha because as morning i was thinking about you know what exactly makes juvenile a diary entry connections  more generally what are some of the things that really kind of impact folks is a tendency to really a thin or even to relapse and i don't necessarily think it's due to not always a lack of available resources i can't tell you how many people that i've worked with over the years who have been to a number of substance abuse programs and treatment alternatives and for them is not necessarily that they don't know what they should do cognitively right has to translate into a behavior change an attitude change a shift and for many folks it's hard for them to see themselves sober yes on the other side of the law yeah so i found that in our work is really important to shift or to address attitudes and beliefs about how one sees themselves because that just doesn't happen overnight tell me about it you know i'm a coach and  for me again it's what do you believe about yourself yes and again you know i keep pointing out when you were lying in that crib right and you know you weren't thinking that you had all these limitations and you couldn't and somebody else was better than you so it was all learned and it had to be unlearnt and bingo yeah exactly i'll give you an example of a few years ago i was working with a young man in my position as mental health director at that correctional facility was maybe twenty five twenty six so he was telling me about how when he went home he really wanted to turn the corner in his life and engage in a more legal lifestyle so we started working on job readiness social skills modeling because he had never been in a legitimate workplace least of all in an interview so when we got to the point of the salary negotiation he just stopped and he said that johnson jobs are pissing people off like then that's what they're paying people and i mean it just really reminded me this is a huge paradigm shift yes to someone like him and i said yeah he said do you not to make it in ten minutes what they want to pay me all week and there's that kind of shift that a lot of folks struggle to make yes because it doesn't come easy within a more legitimate context yeah it does and that it happened that way and yeah so it's looking at the tradeoffs yes exactly and for him i said well that may be true but you won't are in that kind of money that readily but you get to sleep at night with peace of mind you don't have to worry about will be distracted by someone coming into your home even law enforcement or opposing gang members you could walk out the you door get into your car for all intents and purposes and pull off without necessarily doing a check to see if somebody is following you or even if there's some kind of and i think even that sometimes doesn't occur like a big enough payoff to make the try to you know but again it's everybody's personal choice you can only lead them to the buffet and then they have to choose what to eat but they're also training them to make better choices yes and i think one of the things you know it occurred to me when i looked at your web site i mean you cover the whole spectrum of the population and i think to myself how can she work with sex offenders and drug addicts and criminal it tighter and tighter and be effective in all of those and then what you really get is they're all human beings yes and it's really kind of again you know looking at what what caused this what behavioral change needs to be made and also working with the whole family yes and i also like the idea that you don't intermix adolescents with adults now and to sometimes even males and females aren't in the same groups but it's really kind of starting at the root causes yes yeah  i will say the most common thread that is within all of the difference of populations of those who are reentering is that most of the folks who we treat have significant trauma histories and so the various ways that individuals try to cope with that trauma could be through addiction for those who have sexually offended against others not all the time but often times they reenacting what trauma was done to them because that was normal d to them or even men who men and women who've been home ten years who are struggling to reconnect with their children because of those fractured or broken attachment relationships due to their incarcerations and so it's about finding that common thread helping folks figure out how can i make better choices how can i more effectively cope with what happened to me and how can i move forward in a positive way so  but clearly you have a passion for it yes so what are the biggest challenges like there must be certain segments of the population that it's tougher to rehabilitate than others yes so who would you say that is to be honest with you i will say working with adolescents has to be one of the biggest challenges i have because you know it's not just about helping them to engage in a paradigm shift or  you utilize a holistic approach in working with adolescents the whole family system that can be tough because while the adolescent may want to shift the larger system around them may be resistance to that change in that shift as well and so you know you do your best to read ability and provide treatment alternatives and other ways of coping many of our adolescent correctional and residential facilities that's there ain't but when we send folks adolescents in particular right back to the same pathological environments that elicited that criminal behavior that's challenging i would say that's the most challenging some of the other challenges that i found in working with this population is that many people are very concerned appropriately so with their survival needs so employment transportation access to employment access to transportation that wow engaging in wanting to abide by some of those parole and probation requirements to participate in behavioral health counseling you know if folks are struggling to try and put food on their sometimes  psychiatrist or case managers at the bottom of the list so who pays for these your patient population eighty five to ninety percent of our population our receive show i was talking to someone who mentioned that he had been met with an h r attorney and who said that new jersey recently passed a law that says on an application form you can't ask if the person has a criminal record is that the case yes that measures call ban the box and the aim of that measure or initiative rather or law is to increase the likelihood of those who have been these criminal histories and felony records of obtaining gainful employment because unfortunately or oftentimes sometimes legitimate concerns and really that's when a potential employer sees this someone has a felony record or even a misdemeanor there's a pause or even resistance to want to follow through with a potential employer so i'm assuming there's always you know because we do background checks so then that will come out ye it's just your you've gotten a little further before the pause comes right now because one of the ways said a potential employer could notice a red flag will concern is by looking at someone's resume significant gaps right on for a more employment history right and so by banning the box that hopefully will give bills will homie otherwise be marginalized or not given as fair an opportunity to compete do you think that's change things change the results in any way i do i do i think that if for nothing else for our population i think they feel less marginalized they feel less closed out i think many people actually and do feel like they actually have a chance to compete right and i assume also that it at least is the impetus for them to try as opposed to what's the point exactly and sometimes that impetus to least trying given an effort sometimes as a yeah that's exactly it tosh yeah so one of the things i knew when i met in the end i mean basically my goal here is to give people food for thought but also to know what the resources are and also to get invested in recognizing that this impacts them whether they like it or not they may not see it directly but if people aren't being rehabilitated they're going to get feel the impact somewhere along the way yes so the other thing is when you when i met before we talked about sex offenders yes and there is a very low rate of success particularly with pet a files in terms of rehabilitation yes and you said something very interesting i asked you you know how do you deal with them because first of all for most of us we would want to reach over and strangle and you said that you see their humanity which is like truly a gift but at the same time you can't again there are there are consequences it's not like ok i forgive you and you know what you did is you know it's in the past because it's not right so they have to be held accountable and the reins have to be held in by society and whatever and wail and probation yes so but when i ask you like what is how do you treat them differently or what holds them in line and your answer was i think that for many folks sometimes just the concern with consequences right most people you know work with years even a day a second in prison is too long although you've done something right i want that time right so people don't want to go back to prison and so if you don't want to go back to prison if you don't to risk going back to prison we need to work back with oakley so this really is in your control whether or not you go back to prison so how can you use your control and power appropriately to lessen the likelihood of you going back to prison  rai what kinds of behavioral changes do we need to make to gather do i need to help you there's mustapha need to help you engage in to lessen the likelihood of one back to prison i think once people really begin to own or internalize their behavior change for themselves even if this with threat of external consequences best when the shift can really occur right so you know one of the things that i hear and what you say besides people taking ownership of their behavior it's kind of in rolling them in the idea that they can succeed yes but also in rolling them in getting invested in their own success yes exactly i believe that each one of us every day is a new opportunity just to do things a little bit differently in the better a little bit better than what we did the day before yesterday is past to mo here today waft in the not is all we have so how can we make the most out of our moment right now what needs to shift what needs to change to help you own your change differently and to help you move forward even in a small incremental way toward that endeavor that she wants yes and is that a hard sell it can be especially for folks who have been oppressed downtrodden who been disappointed for much of their lives much of that disappointment comes from early family and childhood experiences early experiences with caregivers which have unfortunately negatively reinforce to them that they are not worthy that they're not good enough that they're not our choices and you know it's like women in abusive situations you know and it's for some of us it's hard to fathom allowing that to happen but it's not usually an immediate thing it's a progression and then it people women become and even men become debilitated and their their self esteem is so low and their fear level is so high yes that it's almost impossible yes i've had one of the young adolescents who we work with currently she just told me she's not afraid of death so you know whatever happens to her seventeen happens to her she just goes about her life doing things is status quo outside of the fact that she's gang affiliated outside of fact that it time she fails the flames so for her in our work is really about helping her hopefully to shift that she can see herself outside of this which she doesn't because all of her life experiences up until this point have been filled with trauma loss and disappointment and so she just thinks th a course in life as to where she saw herself five years from now when we were in session maybe a couple months ago she said dr johnson i don't even see myself to you a male someone who's not yet so those attitudes about self and perceptions of self that i would say the main area of treatment that rehabilitative work should focus on and not have a vested interest in it you can't even see the possibility that even the possibility already at seventeen and this is what we're test with when we think about our young folks or even adults but in particular our adolescents who are being adjudicated who are coming home you come home with that kind of fatalistic attitude was the likelihood that you are going to do anything differently or you can change you know it's interesting because i interviewed and i've mentioned this before he was a white area and supremacist who ran the line and show and  you know fast forward he now is part of an organization called life after hate to when i said to him was there anything anyone along the way could have said to you that would have made a difference that would have had like a lightbulb go on like what am i doing and he said no because what was being provided to him was so powerful that everything else paled in comparison and that was identity and belonging yes right exactly and so that's another part of the shift in terms of a lifestyle change that increases or lessens the likelihood potentially thinking you have to really change a reference or be mindful of your peers of who you're around because everyone wants to feel like they can identify that someone a matter how negative or positive we are and to feel like we belong and the environment wins yes so if that's the environment you're surrounding yourself with i remember having a trainer who said you want to be rich hang around with rich people yes because they think differently than you do yes simply not because they're going to give you money but they think differently right and so it's the same thing but that's a tough battle to fight because that longing to belong and to feel connected and then if you do in a group that doesn't support you coming out of it it occurs to me of like her kilian and that's the catch twenty two for a lot of folks who are coming home reentering or attempting to reenter back into society if the reference group is still stuck in post criminal ways of thinking in attitudes sometimes people will sabotage their own progress or their all movement forward yes no matter how negative a positive is which you know yes and so that that's always that weird kind of tension or dialectic it's true i remember seeing this interviewing this guy who teaches in prisons and he said so i saw some of the guys being interviewed one of them said i was a smart kid but it wasn't cool to be smart so i dumbed myself down you know here's the thing we have a few minutes left and i think again it's really to provoke thinking but i think one of the things and you and i have talked about this is looking at prevention yes and it's the idea of we have to get committed to doing life differently we have to get committed to embracing diversity to teaching our children about including one another because that whole thing of belonging is we'll have people kill for a sense of belonging you know yes so we have to create an atmosphere a culture of belonging of embracing of including and it doesn't mean you have to love everybody it just means you have to treat them in a particular way yes a community of reentry yeah  speak and so you know it's one thing for us to give lip service and to say that we believe in reentry efforts but when people come home and you find out that they have an offense record i'm not even talking about those who engage in sexual  even our housing practices are biased toward folks who have these felony records employment plan i think it's also in society in general i mean we sit back and watch these conversations and we're even thinking we agree to them and we think yes something should be done but you know i would assert that what you have to do is examine what they're teaching in your children's school yes see a demand for programs that include that create inclusive it you know go in and start groups where you're working with children to to teach them about inclusive and to teach them self worth but if we don't start doing that we're just always like you know a whack a mole putting out flame has and you know ok we've got this one ok we're jumping on the next fire as opposed to creating an atmosphere where people thrive yes and even at a basic level what we've started with c is somewhat akin to big brother big sister so like a mentor pairing that's sort of folks who for whatever reason maybe have burned their bridges and can't reconnect with some of those a million all relationships as we have agreed everyone used to feel like they had belong somewhere and they are accepted so even pairing with a community member just went on with or to go out and have coffee just to know that there was someone in your corner you have that you can connect with that who is engaging in efforts to understand you yeah that's huge for a lot of folks you know we've all heard the stories about people who you know they spoke to someone for half an hour in their lives have changed so you know you never know the impact you have you do know the impact you have when you're nasty and mean it's obvious right away but you know when that kind of infusion of acceptance and embracing yes it shows up yeah  y six two five three six i phone thank you so much for being here and thank you for the work that you do thank you my name is natasha sherman thank you for joining us