Spirit in Action
Healing of Youth Facing Adult Imprisonment - YSRP & Bianca van Heydoorn
Bianca van Heydoorn spoke at this year's FGC Gathering, held this year at Haverford College, just outside of Philadelphia, which made it much easier to have Bianca here for Spirit In Action.
- Duration:
- 55m
- Broadcast on:
- 16 Aug 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
(upbeat music) ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ - Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeat and each week we bring you visits and conversations with people doing healing work for this world, hearing what they're doing and what inspires them and supports them in doing it. Welcome to Spirit in Action. Early in July this year, I was at the Friends General Conference annual gathering, held this year at Haverford College just outside of Philadelphia, which made it easier to welcome Bianca von Hadorn as an evening plenary speaker and to have Bianca here for Spirit in Action. Bianca is Executive Director of YSRP, the Youth Sentencing and Reentry Project, working in multiple ways to limit the damage that our prison industrial system does and has done to youth who are threatened with adult penalties from ages as young as 10 in the usual harsh system in Pennsylvania. YSRP also supports the youth during and after incarceration. Bianca's work is wonderful and her life story and the transformation she has experienced and which he passes on to others is nothing short of inspirational. Andrew Janssen provided production assistance on today's program. Also keep in mind that there is an uncut version of this interview on northernspiritradio.org. We'll sit down now at Haverford College in Pennsylvania for a visit with Bianca von Hadorn. Bianca, what'd it like to have you here today for Spirit in Action? - Thank you, happy to be here. - Thanks for driving in for this. It's a local trip for you. Obviously me coming from Wisconsin to Philadelphia is a little bit longer. How long have you been in Philly? - I've been in Philly five years now. - And before that it was New York? - New York City. - So those are your two experiences. So you don't have any experience of mid-state Wisconsin? - No, no, though I would not be opposed to having such an experience. - We have guest rooms and you may stay in the dragon room, in fact. So please come visit. - I will take that. - So I have you here because you're a plenary speaker tonight at the Friends General Conference Gathering. And you've been invited here. Who was the contact who connected you up? How did the Quakers know that they should be reaching out to Bianca von Hadorn? - I was working with Tracy Gelt-Selevin, who was a dear colleague of mine and she mentioned it. I guess to the folks here and they reached out and I said, "Of course." - You are a vivacious individual, but you like reading legal code. That seems a contradiction in most people's point of view. Could you please explain a bit to the listeners how Bianca got to this role with the U sentencing and reentry project? - I always trip over myself with how to respond to like, how did I get here? Because it was such a convergence of happenings, things, learnings, experience, access, all of that. And all of those things contributed to what my path looked like. And the simplest answer that feels the most true is that it feels like it's my assignment. Because when I look back through all that I've experienced, all that I've learned, all that I have been through, all of it has informed the way that I lead today. All of it has brought me to the U sentencing and reentry project. All of it has brought me to Philadelphia. And so I think if I had to give the headlines, I grew up in New York City in the 1980s and 1990s and all that came with that. The national economic structure, the infiltration of crack cocaine into communities of color in particular, I grew up in a family that was really loving and fiercely protective. That also didn't have the resources and access to protect in real ways and love in ways that were always nurturing. You called me vivacious and that has been true since I was a child. I had a mother who when I was eight years old was really looking for something to do with all my vivasers energy. When she was looking through the newspaper one day, found this community theater company and said, this is what we're doing with you on Saturday morning. And it was through that theater company that I developed a political consciousness, saw art as a way of making social commentary, of protesting, of alchemizing the hardship I was going through at home that connected me. Our first play was about apartheid in South Africa. And it connected me to children my age on the other side of the globe who were struggling to meet their basic needs, who were having their humanity ignored, denied, oppressed. And while at the time I will not suggest that at eight years old I knew that there was a parallel between what those young people were experiencing and what I was experiencing, seeing my community be decimated by drugs and mental illness and poverty and my home home being ravaged by the same. I won't say that I was that evolved as of an eight-year-old but what I do recall is seeing the image and feeling motivated and inspired by the image of children my age, having agency and moving into action. And it inspired me, yes, to have, to use whatever voice I had and power I had to advocate for a world that's peaceful, where people can belong. And it also helped me know that, again, I didn't understand this at the time but it helped me know that there was a world worth fighting for that I could get to live in. And I think it both gave me an escape from my home in the ways I needed an escape from my home and also that first glimpse from the divine, there's a path here. Like, let me give you a little glimpse of where I'm about to put you and that what comes after this will all be preparation. - I'm amazed at the commonalities I feel across the differences. I'm growing up in Wisconsin, white family in almost lily white town villages that we lived in. You're growing up in New York City, black family, you've got all of this. But the exact description you gave of yourself, I grew up in an alcoholic family. My mom dies drunk driving and I'm not in my same night. My dad has an accident because he's drunk driving, doesn't know anything about my mom and almost kills someone. My household was ravaged by these things there was disease from the inside and I had to see an outside world. That's what I hear you describing and somehow so, can you provide any details or color on what the ravaging of the inside of your household was? Was this siblings also that you had to deal with? 'Cause about half of my siblings have driving while intoxicated and one or two have spent time in prison and so on. So I see that in my family and I'm the one college educated person. Yeah, I hear that. Yeah, you know, it looked a number of ways in my family. Alcoholism and substance abuse go very far back in my family. One of my grandfather's, you know, the story is that he died because he passed out in the snow, drunk and froze to death. I have three parents. I have a mother, a biological father and a stepfather. My stepfather helped raise me. All three of them have alcoholism and substance use in their histories and it made for a very chaotic upbringing. What I learned as a part of that experience was to be hyper vigilant. I'm really good at reading a room now because as a young person, it was a matter of safety for me to be able to read the room, how drunk his mom, how high his dad, what does that mean in terms of my safety? Similarly, uncles, you know, people really trying to medicate pain in those ways. It both gave me some superpowers that are really useful right now in life and created some really big challenges that still exists right now. You know, at the same time that there was loads of chaos, that same mother who could barely pick herself up out of bed in the morning to get ready for work and who I likely had to put to bed the night before also was the mother who looked in the newspaper, who saw me and saw what I needed and found a way to connect me with something that I so desperately needed. So I think that the thing that makes it, it just kind of, I'll probably jump back and forth between like history and now. It's a part of what is so powerful about being able to lead YSRP. It's because I get the value of multiple stories. I get that the young people that find themselves facing adult charges in Philadelphia and the surrounding counties are more than just the incident that brought them in contact with the police and the courts. One of the stories I often tell is a story where I am maybe 15 or 16 years old, probably more like 14 or 15. A group of friends and I are standing outside of Crown Fried Chicken and you can get an image of a place called Crown Fried Chicken in your mind. We are drinking and smoking and lots of things that we at our age are not supposed to be doing but this is a regular afternoon for us. The topic of a friend of ours who is pregnant comes up and I think, wow, she should have given birth by now. So I say, mind you, 14 or 15 drunk out, you know, all the things I say, what is she an elephant? And my friends look at me like I grew multiple heads 'cause they don't get the connection. And I say out of my very young and very drunk mouth, kind of with a shrug, the gestational period of an elephant is two years, right? That's who I was and that's who I always have been is the person who is very comfortable in front of Crown Fried Chicken with a 40 ounce of beer. I'm not comfortable with that right now but with what that represents and equally as comfortable in that space communicating that I know the gestational period of an elephant or that I know what a gestational period is at all. - Right, yeah, it's not a real language. - Right and at that very young age. So for my entire life, I have been and felt until now like an oxymoron and today I see that that is the beauty of who Bianca is and that all of my experiences have given me the opportunity to either accept or reject that about myself and I've always learned something when no matter what choice I made and what I want for the young people that we meet at the Youth Sentencing and Reentry Project is for them to have the space and the opportunity and the access to figure out who they are, to embrace or reject the pieces of who they are and to have that be honored and supported and guided by caring, resourced, resilient adults. And when you are black and brown and broke in this country, the luxury of childhood isn't always afforded to you. And so I hope and I intend because a very good mentor of mine said, hope is for Tabernacle, tell me what you intend. My intention with our work at the Youth Sentencing and Reentry Project is to love young people into adulthood in ways that help them pick up the pieces that are germane to who they are and do what they will with it, in ways that keeps them and the community safe. And I hope that my own experience, you know, kind of what I look like at 17 or what I look like standing in front of Crown Fried Chicken is not what I look and sound like now, but it is all in there. And I hope that they are able to see me as an example. Number one, that none of our lives are a foregone conclusion. Two, that all of you is worth being on display and that carrying adults will create space for you. And each time I think about what made the difference in why I do not currently have a criminal record. Currently. Currently, I mean, all things are possible. I remind myself that it's not for lack of effort. I actually tried to go to, you know, like the things that I was engaged in, it was divine grace, luck, and incredible timing. That is to credit for why I don't have a criminal record right now. Many of my friends do. Many people in my family do, including my father and my uncles. And I think that a part of the design was for exactly the work that I'm doing right now. And when I started doing this work, doing this work with a criminal record was much harder than it is now. And thankfully, it's easier now. And what I'm hearing you saying is that your very life made you into a bridge between experiences which can go down the sewer drain and those that thrive and go to the sun. You are a living bridge between that. And that's what you do with YSRP. One thing you say, and I think you said it, I just want to say it explicitly, none of us is the best thing we've done. None of us is the worst thing that we've done. And I'm imagining you have to say that every day with these people, because I'm sure you meet people who have done some really nasty things. And that's not all of them. You may have even met some people who look like they're the happy, the good, this, but their best thing is not who they are too because we're all, as my favorite theologian said, we're all the same schmuck. We've all got that mixture within us. So you finish off a little bit of the path that leads you at 17 Crown Chicken. And somehow you're ending up the schooling that you've done, the learning, the legal, and I think it's social work, everything mixed together that you are doing now. How did Bianca Von Hadorn get from one spot to the other? Because you're still standing in front of Crown Chicken at this point. - Nice, yes. And it's around that time that there is a huge uptick in the number of people in my social network who are being incarcerated, killed, or becoming pregnant. There is a moment where I'm in high school at this point. And in my junior year of high school, I remember having, I was one foot in, one foot out in high school. I went to performing arts high school in New York City, which is a famous high school. The film and TV show fame is named after it. It was my dream ever since a child that would watch the show on TV and say, that's where I want to go. Which is also another theme in my life. When I'm focused on something like that, the universe conspires to make it happen. So I need to be aware of that superpower of mine. And in high school, I kind of had one foot in this arts world. My whole world opened up. I'm in Manhattan. I'm going to this fancy, famous high school. I'm meeting people from all different cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds and politics and the world is expanding. And my other foot is in my neighborhood with my gang affiliations engaged in violence and really straddling that line. And there are adults in my life who are saying, you are not going to make it to 21. And there are adults in my life, like my American history teacher, who said, I will take you out to dinner every week if you show up to class because you are so smart and you just bring something to this class, why won't you get here? And like, 'cause I was drunk the night before, maybe speak clearly. I was drunk the night before and couldn't get to your class on time. That's why I'm not coming to class, right? Because also, I was already starting to pour alcohol on the things that hurt at that young age. So there was this straddling that was happening for a while. And I remember this moment like it was yesterday. I was in a friend's living room, which was usually where we all cut school and did drugs and drank in all manner of things. And as I was looking around the room at each person, I thought about their futures that I could imagine for them. It was like, you're going to jail soon, you've already got a college degree. And I went around the room and when I got to myself, there was this very clear fork in the road. And it was like, you could stay here or you could tighten up, you don't even have a high school diploma yet. You can tighten up and get this degree and start your acting career. And it was literally that moment that I was like, I'm going to finish school and I'm going to finish strong. And it was one of my friends in that room. As a matter of fact, the person whose living room it was that hosted all these cut parties, that reinforced it for me, who had gotten a full scholarship to St. John's University and let it go that said, go finish strong and get your behind in college. We will be here, we're not going anywhere. And that started the trajectory. And it was that same year that a really good friend of mine was sentenced to 15 to 18 years for a murder. That friend, we would stay in really close contact the whole time he was incarcerated. We would write letters back and forth to each other. I would tell him what was going on in the community. He would tell me what was going on there. And it was through that relationship and a shift in the political landscape where way more people were starting to pay attention to what would later be called mass incarceration. And so it became this convergence of the personal, the political, and by this time now I'm about to start college. And I get to choose what I study. I get to choose what time my classes started. I get to, and I flourished when I went to college because there was all this access to all these kinds of people, all this kind of knowledge, that 14, 15 year old who was talking about the gestational period of, nobody told her places like this existed. She got to have so much fun. And I got my first job in the kind of social, I got my very first job was at a research library for the performing arts. And my supervisor there was moonlighting at a non-secure detention facility for girls. And she said, "You are so smart. "Will you come tutor the girls part time "so that they could get their GEDs?" I was five years older than these girls at the time and had just made the decision that gang affiliation wasn't where I wanted to be anymore. Five years earlier, I had one foot in, one foot out, and I was 17 and pregnant. And I said, "I absolutely am gonna do this." And that experience was like the catapult, was like not only do I have something to give and offer, but I also light up inside when I'm offering it. It's progress that you can see and measure and feel in the connection with another person. And then I went to the City University of New York. I designed a degree through this really, really amazing program because I wanted to understand how people created community in carceral settings. I knew it happened. I knew it was horrific. The ways that we use our criminal legal system to disappear people and disrupt communities and rob people of their humanity. And I knew that inside of those places, because of my proximity to people, and I will call his name, people like Shelby, who I went to visit every other month for 18 years, right? Who we wrote incessantly back and forth to each other, who we would be designing curricula together, right? He would write a piece and send it to me. And I'd make notes and I'd write a piece and send it to him and make notes. And he did nearly all of those 18 years inside. When he left, I was 15 and he was 17. And the next time we were able to choose where we sat next to each other, he was 34 and I was 32. - So you got to see it all happening on the ground. And clearly Shelby is also a very intelligent person like you, is gifted, but went down this other path because of choices at a certain point. - Absolutely. - And folks, I have to remind you that you are listening to spirit and action. Spirit and action is a Northern Spirit radio production website, northernspiritradio.org. We are speaking with Bianca Van Hadorn and she works with the Youth Sensing and Reentry Project here in Philadelphia. Their website is YSRP.org. And we have that link on northernspiritradio.org. Come to our site, comment on the program, give us suggestions for other guests. Check out the list of the 35 stations or so nationwide that carry our programs and please support those stations because we need more avenues to get out the good news. We're trying to cover people who are doing world healing work and you're gonna find out how Youth Sensing and Reentry Project is doing healing work for the world very shortly. But you're learning a lot about how Bianca got to the point where she could do this work. So when you visit our site, suggest to us other guests and please, if you can donate, this is full-time work that I'm doing and we can't do it without you. This partnership is the way things get done in the world. And we do not rely on corporations nor government for our income for northern spirit radio. It makes a difference. It means we deprive ourselves of some opportunities but it means we get to do the work that we're called to. And I think that Bianca could tell us a bit about that as we go on. Again, their website, YSRP.org. Let's continue on a little bit more into what the work that Youth Sensing and Reentry Project does. How many years did you have to practice saying that before you could rattle it off without tripping over your tongue? - It's still a mouthful, right? So I've been the executive director now for, it's hard to tell. I started as interim executive director two and a half years ago and became permanent executive director last year. And so this whole time it has taken me to say, Youth Sensing and Reentry Project, YSRP, YSRP. Although I fell in love with YSRP when I first got to Philadelphia, when I first came to Philly or soon after arriving in Philly, I was appointed by Mayor Kenny, the most recent mayor, to launch the city's Office of Reentry Partnerships. And so I was working within the mayor's office, coordinating city level support for people who were coming home from incarceration. And as a part of that work, I was obviously wanting to know what organizations were doing great work on the ground and in what ways the city could support that work. And so I learned about YSRP and fell in fast love because as an organization, YSRP was clear about the lane it wanted to be in, the gap it was filling, and the way that it wanted to fill that gap. So YSRP works with two groups of people. The first group is young people under the age of 18 who are facing adult charges in the criminal legal system. So it means they're under 18, but the conduct, and I will spare the like dry legalese, but the conduct that they were charged with allows for them to go through the adult system. And it means for all intents and purposes, they are treated as if they are adults, which means they don't have the right to have a parent or an adult there when they're in conversation with their attorney. It means that they don't have a right to live in a carceral setting that has other people their age. And what that means, because there are other laws about how to protect children, is in essence they're in solitary confinement because they are children living in a facility that was designed for adults. And you have to, by law, have what we call sight and sound separation. Try that for an alliteration, which means that a young person and an adult can never see or hear each other in the facility. So then you lock a child in a room for 23 hours a day so that you can comply with that law. And in Pennsylvania, a child as young as 10 years old can be charged as an adult and have that lived experience. And that's the first group of folks we work with, obviously because we recognize that children are particularly vulnerable. They cognitively, developmentally, all of the things are not in a place where they can and should be as culpable as adults are. And our belief is that people, young people included, should be held accountable for the actions that they take. But that accountability needs to be proportional and needs to recognize, number one, the capacity for further growth and development and understanding of behaviors. One of the other harms of charging a young person as an adult is an adult criminal conviction, carries 44,000, what some people call collateral consequences, like access to housing, voting depending on where you are. It comes with all of these things that once you've served your time, further hinder your ability to fully be a participating member of society. And we think that it is the opposite of the goals of the criminal legal system to put a child in the position where for the rest of their life, they will face challenges, getting employment, finding a place to live, all of that. So our work with young people is to partner with them, their legal team, their families, their teachers, everybody that is around them, to develop a mitigation report that really tells the story of who that young person is from the moment they were born until the moment they show up in court. Because we think it is important to see and know the whole human, to your point earlier, none of us are the best of what we've done, none of us are the worst of what we've done, and our intention is to provide more to the court than just the facts of the case. To paint a picture around that one moment in time, and to try to convince the court that the best place to engage with this situation is in the juvenile justice system, because the juvenile justice system was designed in recognition that young people are young people, right? And so we developed this mitigation report, we become a part of their legal team, we interview anybody that that young person will give us access to, we pull medical records, school records, correctional institution records, pictures from families, videos if people want to make a video, really trying to get as much rich and deep information about a young person and not just they were exposed to lead, or this one has substance abuse. Yes, some of those things that are very real and very true and regularly show up in mitigation reports, and also what that young person's hopes and dreams are, what movement have they made towards those hopes and dreams, showing the young person like I described myself being once that has one foot in this world and one foot in another, and then share with the court, here are the ways that YSRP and our partner organizations are in a position to help that young person choose the fork in the road that leads to them thriving, to them contributing in community in a way that keeps them and others safe, and our goal is to have the court, as I said, move that case into the juvenile justice system. So your role is not as a lawyer specifically for the young person, they probably have another lawyer that they're working with, so you've got a very specific role and you're not trying to say they're guilty, they're not guilty, you're trying to say they're a young person, here's the real picture. - That's right, and I'm glad you brought that up. Yes, all of the young people that we work with are eligible to have a public defender, which means that they come from a family where the income is low enough that they would qualify for a public defender, but for one reason or another, the public defender office cannot represent that young person. So they're working with, typically working with lawyers who sign up for those cases to do pro bono, and then because of that, they don't have the resources to hire people to do that kind of investigation and develop this kind of report, and that's where we come in. The practice of doing mitigation reports, interestingly enough, is not a very common thing outside of death penalty cases. The notion of doing a mitigation report really comes from the world of death penalty cases, and we've adopted it as a practice. One, if you ask me, it should be a practice all the way around, and for us, it takes that level of effort to support and try to protect a young person. And so that is the model. We were founded by two lawyers who began this work working with our second population, which is people who received life without parole sentences when they were children. Pennsylvania and Philadelphia specifically has given the most life without the possibility of parole sentences to children on the planet, which is why YSRP being founded, where it was in Philadelphia was so important. We do the mitigation work to try and get that case moved out. Whether it is or not, we stay in relationship with that young person. During any period of incarceration, we go to visit, we send them books, we send them money if they need money to buy things while they're inside. We'll help their families to go visit them and really help them work on that re-entry plan that was developed before they were incarcerated. And when they come home, we are there with our arms open, saying how can we be of service? And our relationship extends, I say oftentimes with a smile. We're in relationship until you say you don't wanna be friends anymore. Recognizing that what many young people, what all young people need to see is someone who will show up, be available, be consistent. We work really hard to be that and to do that with and for young people. - I think we need to make clear Bianca, some of the difference in the law that's true in Pennsylvania, I don't think it's true anywhere else in the U.S. And this is a bit crazy. I mean, there are certainly for certain crimes, children get considered as adults and death is one of them. But Pennsylvania, for some crazy reason, and if you can make this clear to me, it'll help me. Because you see, I expect, because Pennsylvania was founded by Quakers and it's supposed to have this city of brotherly love, Philadelphia. Quakers are supposed to be the loving, considerate people. And in the state, that's the Quaker state, here they have this law, which seems rather horrendous. So how did this come by, what is the law? - So for certain charges, homicide is a charge for which a 10 year old can be charged as an adult. I will undoubtedly get some of them wrong. So I will say for things like murder at 10 years old in Pennsylvania, you can be charged as an adult. For a series of other violent offenses that you can be charged as an adult up until you're chronologically an adult or an adult by the legal systems standards. How we got there, I think, is a question. I don't know if I can answer in this space right now, except to say that this was a trend nationally of charging young people as adults that really has its origin in the era I grew up in, in the era. - In the whole three strikes you're out. - In the three strikes, in super predator language, in really this astronomical spike that happened in our use of incarceration in the early 1990s through maybe 2012, was this notion that if you do an adult crime, you do adult time. That was a nationwide trend. And it was in the late 90s through the early 2000s where grassroots campaigns started to be launched, raised the age campaigns went on throughout the country. Pennsylvania, I think, is very interesting in that I think there are simultaneous conflicting histories that all occurred together where you have this rich, beautiful, Quaker philosophical historical underpinnings and a huge backlash against black and brown bodies as people were fleeing the South while they were still enslavement in the South, that Philadelphia was this beacon and also kind of the beginning of the backlash before the Civil War. And that history of racial tension and all of that continues to this day. And I think outside of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, kind of the rest of the Commonwealth is really a mashup of conservative anti-black orientation that I think allows for multiple things to be true at once. - The increased level of fear, the thought that what we really need is retribution, not rehabilitation, all of that kind of stuff. So how different is it in Pennsylvania versus the other states? Is it just which number of crimes? - The difference is that in most states, I wanna say there's two. It's like Pennsylvania and one other state and every other state has done some decent work in terms of the age of criminal liability. There are only two still where the age is under 17, right? So most of the country has gotten to 17 as the limit and someone will drop down to 16 for homicide, for example. I'm hesitating because I don't have it committed to memory and I'm both my policy director and our staff attorney is like, you know, I can feel their eyes on me right now. Like, don't say anything wrong. So I think it's safe to say that Pennsylvania is an outlier and that we are one of two states where there's a lot of work for us to do to raise the age of criminal responsibility. - YSRP though is not actually working on the issue. Like, you gotta change the law, right? - We are. So our work is kind of broken up in a number of ways. One, we do our direct service, direct advocacy work, which is the mitigation, the reentry support, those kinds of things. We also do policy work and I describe it as our direct service work is standing at the bottom of the river and plucking one child out at a time and our policy work is going upstream and figuring out who's throwing those kids in in the first place. So we're doing a lot of work to get a bill that has been introduced called HB 1381 and it's a huge omnibus bill. So it's got a lot of things in it. One of them is to end the practice of automatically charging children for certain offenses as if they're adults. The other would raise the age for, you know, it has broken down by each of the offenses and the associated age and so has some recommendations about how to raise the age by criminal conviction. And then there's also language in there about what I don't think we do enough of, which is diversion, which is do all our responses have to involve out-of-home placement. Are there investments that we could be making in community supports that would allow young people to stay close to family, close to community, close to educational opportunities while also holding them accountable for the actions that they have taken? So our policy work really is focused one on legislation and secondly, on narrative change, really helping people understand if they can evict the language of super predator out of their minds and see a full picture of someone that might help us get to more creative solutions about how to create safety. A year and a half ago, we launched a Speakers Bureau that is largely members of our community who were juvenile lifers and who got released when the Supreme Court decision came down that made mandatory life without parole for children unconstitutional. They share their personal stories, their stories of being a young person, receiving that sentence, the decades upon decades of time that they spent incarcerated and what it has been like to come home and what difference a change in legislation would make for other young people who are similarly situated. And so we really feel like for us, it is not enough to just pluck the child out of the bottom of the river, nor is it just enough to be upstream in Harrisburg arguing for a change in legislation, nor is it just enough to be out doing narrative change that those things indeed need to work together. It is on the ground working with young people, being in community, being in correctional settings that helps us understand how current legislation impacts their lives. And it is our understanding of current legislation that helps us help them navigate the current landscape. And if we're not sharing our experience, the strength and resilience that lives in our community, I think we're derelict in our duties. - How long has YSRP been going and what measure of what you've changed is visible? - Such a great question. So we're celebrating 10 years this year. We were founded in 2014. And as I said, our founders really launched the organization to help support people who were currently incarcerated with life without parole sentences that they received when they were children. And so I would say one of the biggest changes that has happened since YSRP was founded was the Supreme Court decision coming down that allowed for those formerly young people to get res sentenced and come home. And so YSRP partnered with other organizations within Philadelphia, the Juvenile Law Center, Amistad Law Project to help provide legal assistance. And we have a little bit over 40 client partners that we've worked with that we've helped to get res sentenced and come home. And so that contribution to community is huge because the vast majority, I would dare to say every single one of those men and women that came home after doing 20, 30, 40, sometimes 50 years of incarceration. Joe Ligon, I will say his name, is the longest serving prisoner in the state of Pennsylvania. And he served, I believe, either exactly or a little bit over 60 years of incarceration. Everybody who has come home has made some major contribution towards advancing the needle towards justice. The part that YSRP played in that, if we never did anything else, and we've done many other things since that, but if we never did anything else, to me would be a major contribution because the reverberations of what people have been able to accomplish and the community that's been able to be built by those 40 plus incredible humans coming home, there aren't words. - I wanna ask you a terrible question now. Those of us who've seen in our TV programs, we see a lawyer has to take on someone and has a client who's really a pretty bad apple. It's not a promising case for the future of the country. And yet the lawyer says, well, you know, everyone deserves protection and a lawyer and so therefore I'm gonna do it my best. But some of them say, really hope this guy goes to prison 'cause I don't want him out there. Are you allowed to even say that or think that thought? 'Cause I know you're hoping to protect every person that comes along, but some of them probably look pretty bad. By bad, I mean, bad promise for the future. The odds don't look good that this person is going to turn around. - At our core, and I am speaking as Bianca and also on behalf of YSRP, at our core, we do not believe nor do we have evidence to suggest that putting a human in a cage produces good. And therefore we would never want that as an option. And I think part of the frustration is that so far in recent history, we have this hammer called prison and everything we see is an ale. Unless and until we look in the toolbox for what other tools there are, we will continue to use that hammer. Are there people that we have come in contact with that we are like, whoa, it's hard to see you coming out of this cycle. Absolutely. And we recognize unlike in ways that we wish the system would or the systems would, 'cause there are multiple systems at play here, we recognize that it is more than just the actions, behaviors, beliefs, choices of an individual that make that future outside of this cycle so hard to see. I'll maybe say it a little clearer. One of the things that I'm known for is being against recidivism as a measure of success. A lot of people will say, well, what are your recidivism rates? And you're working with young people charged with some serious, what's the recidivism rate? I do start by saying our recidivism rate is very low. Yes, we know what it is. That's not where we start because a recidivism rate says more to me and I think as an academic measure is way more of a measure about someone's proximity to violence, about someone's proximity to the police. How many police officers you have in your neighborhood? Who in your social network is engaged in violence before we get to whether you are actually engaged in violence? This measure of recidivism says way more about the environment that you're in than it does about any of your actions. Before I get to do something that is outside of the law, if I live in a community that is regularly patrolled by police officers and I am regularly stopped in the course of my daily life and questioned and my ideas run and all of that, if when the police run my ID and they see a former criminal record, I am more likely statistically to be arrested. Once I am arrested, I am more likely to go further into the system and some people, the way they define recidivism is re-arrest. And that to me is about your proximity to police and the likelihood that you will. A reconviction is also a function of risk assessment instruments that we use that say if you have a previous conviction, you're more likely to get another one, right? So once you start peeling the layers back, recidivism becomes a really murky measure and re-incarceration is the third one, right? Once you're convicted and you've big, all of those things, that measures. And then also the flip side because I like being strength spaced, the flip side of that is I could be living under a bridge with no food and dirty and nobody to hug me or tell me they love me and I have not recidivated. And that bar for human existence, we refuse to accept. So what we would prefer is the measures of a healthy life, of a safe community. Let's measure that and let's have the things that we set up for folks be pointing towards accessing those things because the research also tells us that when you have those things, you are less likely to engage. People who are married have lower criminal records, right? It's like those things. So if we are organized around what people need to be whole, safe, healthy, that's the space. - I'd love to talk to you for a long time, but I'm very aware that you have a presentation you'll be giving here tonight at the Friends General Conference Gathering. People are gonna be eager to hear Bianca Van Hey during speaking about YSRP, the Youth Sensing and Monetary Project. One piece that I wanted to throw in and we had some discussions before we got on the air, what part religion played in favor or opposed to or maybe just spirituality? I'm not sure what it was, not just for you, but for the young people that you're dealing with. Religion gets a bad name these days and sometimes justifiably, but I'm wondering it for you or for others that you know of, if it's had mitigating effects helpful or inspirational effects for all I know. - Thank you so much for that question. I'll start with, for me, this is all with the benefit of hindsight. I personally feel a deep connection to spirit, to the divine, those are the words that I use to help me understand what I mean. It's very recent in the past five years or so that I have been intentionally trying to deepen that connection because at some point, it's still murky what the story is there, but at some point I realized that what was driving me the whole time, what was protecting me, and I might get a little bit emotional, but what was both propelling me forward and protecting me on that journey was spirit and that when I did not listen to that nudge, when I didn't trust it is when things were hard. When I felt that it was important to be propelled by my own power is when my story of alcoholism began and deep in the depths of that painful time in my life, one of the things that kept coming up for me was at the time I wasn't using the divine in spirit language, I was using the God language, but what kept coming up for me was, this is so disrespectful to God. And not in the Southern Baptist way that I was raised, but in a Bianca, you know what was placed in your heart. You know that you're here to do, you have an assignment, and this is a deviation from that assignment. And so the more I got comfortable with what I could hear and feel and experience on a spiritual level, and I let that be what it was, and I stopped trying to give it names or organize around it or apologize for it, any of that, whenever I am able to be in it and with it and have it be me and in me, when I move from that place, magical things happen. And that's why it still feels a little icky on my tongue to say this work is my assignment, but it is. And it is the practice of saying it that deepens my connection that deepens my understanding of why I'm here and what I need to do and what my assignment is and allows me to keep stripping the ego part of that this is my assignment. And it brings me back to, I didn't even know what I was doing Mark when I was a little kid, but I would set up candles and alter and incense and sit in quiet meditation as a elementary school child. There was always a practice that I had that was about centering, getting quiet, communing and allowing that conversation to happen with spirit. And at some point I connected the thread of like, oh yeah, not only have you always had this practice, but this presence has always been here and this is how you have stayed safe and beloved when you move in that, you are unstoppable. And so my practice today is about really looking for ways to how do I stay in that? How do I stay home? And I think for our young people, it runs the gamut. There are many people who were Philadelphia as a large Muslim community. Many of our client partners were born into that community. Many of our client partners joined the Muslim community while they were incarcerated. So I would say it really depends on the individual, what role all of that plays in their lives. And yeah, and for us as kind of facilitator, supporter, whatever, we just show up for that. We've had unfortunately young people who have passed away. And so, you know, we've supported a number of whatever that person's religious or spiritual ceremony is, you know, we have participated just by showing up. We've participated by contributing funds. We've participated, you know, we just really try to honor where our client partners are kind of at every level and the spirit level is no exception to that. We are not explicitly a spiritual or religious organization. And so, we kind of treat that piece of it as other parts of who that human is, right? We respect it and we support it. - Yes, Bianca is unstoppable, fueled by spirit in a way that really has led her life. And I'm so thankful that you do this work. Again, with the Youth Sentencing and Reentry Project, YSRP.org is the website. We have it on northernspiritradio.org. If you want to follow up, folks, I do hope you follow up. And I hope that you can be a template for what the world needs to do to be better in how we deal with our youth. Thank you so much for that work. And join us today for spirit in action. - Thank you, Mark. - Again, it's on northernspiritradio.org. We'll see you all next week for spirit in action. - The theme music for this program is "Turning of the World" performed by Sarah Thompson. Check out all things spirit in action on northernspiritradio.org. Guests, links, stations, and a place for your feedback, suggestions, and support. Thanks for listening. I'm Mark Helpsmeet, and I hope you find deep roots to support you to grow steadily toward the light. This is spirit in action. ♪ Oh, with every voice, every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ and our lives will feel the echo of our evening ♪ [MUSIC PLAYING]
Bianca van Heydoorn spoke at this year's FGC Gathering, held this year at Haverford College, just outside of Philadelphia, which made it much easier to have Bianca here for Spirit In Action.