Celebrating 40 Years of Impact: A Special Episode with Former Directors of BJA

MERIDITH TIBBETTS: Welcome to Justice Today, the official podcast of the Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs, where we shine a light on cutting-edge research and practices and offer an in-depth look at what we're doing to meet the biggest public safety challenges of our time. Join us as we explore how funding, science and technology help us achieve strong communities.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Welcome, I'm your host, Karen Friedman. I'm the Director of Criminal Justice Innovation, Development, and Engagement at OJP's Bureau of Justice Assistance, otherwise known as BJA. This November, BJA proudly marks 40 years of unwavering commitment to advancing justice and safety across America. For four decades, BJA has led the way in fostering innovation within the criminal justice system. To celebrate this significant milestone, we're launching two special podcast episodes, one featuring insights from past directors, and the other showcasing a conversation with our current director. 

In this first podcast, we dive into the experiences of BJA directors exploring how they tackled crises and stayed attuned to the needs of the field. We start today with Nancy E. Gist nominated by President William J. Clinton and confirmed by the United States Senate. Nancy served as director of BJA from 1994 to 2001. During her tenure, she oversaw grant programs and was instrumental in the early funding for community and specialty courts. She also led initiatives to enhance public defense systems, supported the expansion of community engagement efforts in prosecution and law enforcement, and champion early actions to combat hate crimes. It's so great to be with you here today, Nancy. Thank you, great to see you.

NANCY GIST: Thank you, Karen.

Now, I know under your leadership, BJA witnessed a rise in diversion courts aimed at individuals with mental health and substance use challenges, as well as veterans. What motivated BJA to support the development of these courts and why was their expansion so significant?

NANCY GIST: Additionally, there was increasing interest in communities and court systems in considering the possibility of other specialty courts, like as you mentioned, courts focused on people with mental health issues, homeless courts, et cetera. And so, in our travels and in our conversations, we learned about these things and decided that we wanted to invest in some of these early examples of specialty courts and study their outcomes and identify models that could be replicated. And then find ways of providing technical assistance to local jurisdictions so that they might establish their own specialty courts. This was really innovative and novel work. And it was a real pleasure to be able to support them and to then watch the growth of those courts. 

The other set of courts, the community courts were also coming into being at that time. We identified the Midtown Community Court in New York, which was perhaps the first community court. It was something that the courts and communities in New York, in particular in Midtown, decided would be something to experiment with to take the more holistic approach to the issues of crime and violence. And try to get underneath and focus on and figure out ways to address the underlying causes. So Midtown Community Court became a model. We supported it. We also provided substantial funding there so that they could serve as a technical assistance to other jurisdictions that were interested in establishing them. We had convenings, et cetera. So community courts and problem solving courts, I should say in general, were of particular interest to us in our early investments in those areas helped provide the, sort of, seeding and examples for the spread of those types of courts.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Well, I can tell you, I've recently went to see the Midtown Community Court and it still is a model. It's doing great. Wonderful judge named Judge Wang leads that court now and I'm so impressed with all their efforts. So, that seed money and that seed assistance really went a long way, because courts from all over the country still look at that court as the model court to follow. So your efforts have expanded and are far reaching for many, many years. So that's wonderful.

NANCY GIST: Thank you. And I would to add, Karen, that in New York, through the Midtown Community Court, we provided substantial funding for the establishment of the Red Hook…

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Okay.

NANCY GIST: …Community Justice Center. The…

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Been there too.

NANCY GIST: Absolutely. It's still going strong and I hope all…

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Doing great, doing great.

NANCY GIST: That one we intentionally called it a Community Justice Center, because that more accurately reflected the extent of the resources that were available to communities through that court, along with the supervision and so forth that was assisting people through the…

KAREN FRIEDMAN: And it reflects the level of need in that community that…

NANCY GIST: Yes.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: …existed.

NANCY GIST: Yes.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: But that justice center is also still up and running and doing really great and must be so rewarding for you that after all these years, these things that you started are just really helping people on a daily basis. I could only imagine the sense of satisfaction that you…

NANCY GIST: Absolutely. And I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, that the Midtown Community Court, which morphed into the Center for Court Innovation, which is now the Center for Justice Innovation.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Justice Innovation. Yup. 

NANCY GIST: Remains a significant source of not only technical assistance, but they provide all kinds of research on the work that's done and on various strategies that have been employed in community justice center-type arrangements in various cities. 

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Yeah, I work with them all the time. So yes, they're doing very well. So, Nancy, what were some of the major challenges you faced as the director of BJA?

NANCY GIST: Here's the big one. In 1996, Congress enacted the Local Law Enforcement Block Grant program, which was a $500 million grant program that was intended rather than the Byrne program, which sends funds directly to the states, to send funds directly to counties, and cities, and tribal governments and justice system components.

And so, this was in May, this was enacted and we had a piece of paper, which was the legislation as written, and we were to develop a grant program from that, develop an application, get the applications out, get the applications back, and get the grants made by the end of the fiscal year, which was September 30th. This was four months. This was an enormous undertaking. And we did several things. We ended up very quickly hiring about 25 people, new grant specialists to come in and get trained and then join all the other hands on deck to get this done. The other thing that was really important about this was that we had people on staff who had gotten to a point where they had a good understanding of the capabilities and they had the skills to work on the technology that was available at that time. They developed the first end-to-end automated grant application and award process.

It was all done online and that was a huge development. Again, it was done very, very quickly. The staff really stepped up and did a tremendous job and we got it done. We got those awards out and I would say that that was the biggest challenge and that we met it. We met it, we got the money out in four months. And I think that the fact that the legislation provided that the program be administered by BJA was itself a testament to BJA's capabilities in terms of grant programs.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: I could tell you that if you would speak to Director Moore, our current BJA Director, I know that he faces similar challenges because our responsibilities keep growing and we keep needing more staff, and have more responsibilities. And we do it, we rise to the challenge.

NANCY GIST: Absolutely.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: But it definitely is challenging. So, reflecting on your time at BJA, what do you consider your most significant achievement?

NANCY GIST: Our most significant achievement was the open solicitation. As we travel and got feedback from practitioners and governments and courts and so forth around the country, we realize that their grant programs were being established that didn't necessarily address the issues or provide funding for the issues that they were dealing with and grappling with. So we thought, what if we just ask people, what if we set aside some money, and have a very simplified application and ask people to tell us, "Okay. What is the problem? What's your challenge? How do you propose to address it? Who would you work with? How much would it cost? And how will you know if it works?" That's it. Those were the questions. It's a very simple application. And we thought we should give some guidance, so we created six or seven, or eight broad, broad categories, like enhancing the effectiveness of the adjudication process, big, broad categories that people could—we hoped—would cover and encompass all of the kinds of things that we've been hearing about and that practitioners on the ground were grappling with.

We set aside $4 million, we started this from scratch, we had no idea how many applications we would get. I think we sent information to something like 40,000 units of government and other agencies and organizations that would be eligible to apply. We really encouraged partnerships. And we ended up getting 1,700 applications. This was another all hands-on-deck moment where everybody pitched in to, get these applications reviewed and evaluated, the grants made, and get the money out. 

This also was responsive to Attorney General Reno again, whose view was we can't just sit in Washington and know what it is that our constituents on the ground are concerned about or most interested in addressing in their communities. And so this really was responsive to that as well. 

We learned so much. We produced a document that not only talked about or illustrated who the applicants were, which was fascinating because a very good percentage of them were tribal governments and rural areas. And many of them had never applied for federal grants before, they don't have grant writers on their staffs and so forth, which is one of the reasons again that we were trying to make this really, really simplified. And we ended up that first year making, I think it was about 40 grants, and it was a terrific experience. We convened on the grantees, we connected with them with evaluators who would help them help develop the measures of effectiveness and all of that so that we could actually have some evidence of whether any of these programs actually accomplish what they wish to in terms of addressing an issue, so we published those results.

And then we turned around and did it the next year too. So we did an open solicitation three times and the feedback, of course, was spectacular because people were accustomed to these gigantic applications, I should say, if not the highlight of my time at BJA. I'm also proud of the work we did with respect to hate crimes. There was an increase in amount of coverage in the media about local hate crimes, we're also hearing from our constituents that this was a real problem. So we convened, the state administering agencies directors and did a whole briefing and presentations from various people on hate crimes. And we published “A Policymaker's Guide to Hate Crimes.” And we were involved in the planning of the White House conference on hate crimes, which was a major event during the Clinton administration.

We had a paid internship program, which most of the internship programs previously, if not all of them, had been volunteers, and so sure students would be able to have the Department of Justice on their resume. But many people who wanted that opportunity, both the experience and the credential, could not work in the summertime for nothing. So we established a paid program. We had 10 or 12 students, very diverse set of students from all kinds of schools all over the country and each year, so probably 70, 75 students who came through our internship program and a number of them, we were gratified to learn, went on to work in public service. I was proud of that as well. Additionally, we convened all kinds of meetings and gatherings, both nationally and regionally, to bring together both grantees, state administering agencies, and local law enforcement block grant program grantees.

Apart from the opportunity to meet their counterparts from other parts of the country and develop relationships with them, these provided really fertile ground for exciting conversations and connections and all of that. So I think that was a really important thing that I think we did. And another thing, again, Attorney General Reno was very focused on outreach to and learning from tribal governments and Alaska native communities. And so we traveled. We went to a number of reservations and Alaska native villages, and met with law enforcement as well as prosecution, defense, and city officials—or village officials—and so forth. And tried to engage them, bring them into the fold, and one way that we tried to do that, of course, was with the open solicitation but also to just make sure that the channels were open so that they could take advantage of whatever technical assistance that we had and so forth, and also to fashion technical assistance that might be particularly useful to them.

And so I would say those were some of the significant things that we were able to do during that period of the late '90s.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Once again, I can tell you that all that work has continued. I'm just returning from Birmingham for our hate crimes conference.

NANCY GIST: Oh.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Brought together all of our hate crime grantees and it was a incredible conference in Birmingham.

NANCY GIST: Uh-hmm.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: And I know that on Monday, a big team is going to Alaska to meet with the tribal communities there, so all that incredible work that you started is still continuing. So, kudos to you.

NANCY GIST: Thank you. And may I mention, Karen, related to the hate crimes, another issue that one doesn't hear much about these days but was a very significant topic during that period was the issue of church burnings. There were quite a number of church burnings going on across the South and Congress established a funding program that would provide funds to each county, to the sheriff's office in each county, in a number of states. That was sort of the beginning also of the different kind of increased interaction with sheriff's offices that had not so much been the case before we had, of course, dealt with sheriff's offices. Our focus had been primarily on local law enforcement and police departments, as opposed to sheriff's offices. So there was sort of unexpected consequence of our administering the church burning grants, and that was a very positive one.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Well, Nancy, thank you so much for joining me today, it's been so lovely talking to you and getting to know you a little bit, and thank you…

NANCY GIST: Thank you.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: …for [INDISTINCT] we really appreciate you.

NANCY GIST: Thank you. And it's great to meet you as well. I love the work you're doing. And it's just so important and it's like what we try to do, on steroids, you really are out there, along with, it sounds like, the staff and really have established a presence in communities and with stakeholders, that is just really admirable.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Following Nancy was Richard Nedelkoff who served as BJA Director from September 2001 to July 2003. Before joining BJA, Nedelkoff served as the Executive Director of the Criminal Justice Division for the Office of the Governor of Texas where he directed an agency that provided more than $140 million in state and federal funds for juvenile justice, criminal justice, and victim services throughout the state. 

You were an experienced public official leading a state administering agency in Texas and advocating for juvenile justice. For those of our listeners who are not familiar, what is a state administering agency and why was that position good preparation for leading BJA?

RICHARD NEDELKOFF: I was working in the Governor's Criminal Justice Division and that is the state administering agency for the state of Texas. And what that means is it's the entity that most of the money from the Office of Justice Program flows to the state level. We, in turn, at the state level then administer those grants to state and local law enforcement, corrections, courts, agencies across the state of Texas. Every state's different. Sometimes this state administering agency can be a standalone entity, sometimes it's part of another bigger agency, like the Department of Public Safety. In Texas, it was part of the Texas Governor's Office. And that job really just mirrors the Office of Justice Programs because we're administering all of the funds, most of them, that OJP administers. So what we do, it just mirrors what OJP does on the federal level, only we're doing it at the state level. And as far as preparation for me and the job of BJA Director, to use a baseball analogy, it's like I'm playing in the Triple-A farm team and I'm ready to go to the majors, and BJA was the majors.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Your passion has always been juvenile justice. So because of that, people were surprised that you wanted to lead BJA as opposed to Office of Juvenile Justice, OJJDP. Why BJA?

RICHARD NEDELKOFF: Well, again, I was working in Texas as part of the Governor's Office, and that governor happened to become the President-elect, my immediate supervisor, the Governor's Chief of Staff, became the head of White House personnel. So, in Texas, the stars were truly, aligning for myself professionally, and I really viewed that opportunity as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And for someone who's always been a public servant and just felt that was the highest calling you could do, I saw the breadth and depth of what OJP and the funds that flowed from BJA could do and it was really about having the potential to make a greater impact. And if I was going to make this commitment and come to Washington, then I wanted to have the most impact as I could.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: September 11th, 2001. That was the day the United States Senate was going to vote on your confirmation as BJA Director. However, obviously that day that lives in infamy. The tragedy postponed your confirmation for several days. How did the events of 9/11 change what was needed to lead BJA?

RICHARD NEDELKOFF: Well, I'll tell you, it was a day I'll never forget and it started off with me believing this would be one of the happiest days of my life in career. I was expecting a call. The Office of Legislative Affairs said, "You should get good news around 9:30, 10:00," and I was in the Department of Justice in the Office of Justice Programs that day awaiting to hear back from the Senate. And obviously everything changed. The world changed. The country changed. The Department of Justice, BJA, what was going to be one of the happiest days of my life turned out to be one of the longest and one of the saddest days of my life. And again, having this preparation for almost three years, I thought I knew what I was getting into, but that day and that event changed the whole dynamic. I was used to administering grants and policy for state and local law enforcement. Administering multi-jurisdictional drug task force programs across the state, aiding victims of crime. Courts, probation, corrections, school safety, that's the job I knew at. And then that event on 9/11 changed things because the priorities changed and it was very clear the President did not want an incident like that to ever happen again. So protecting our homeland at that moment in time was the most important thing, and I believe it was a time when we were about as united as a country for a while as we could have been. And so when that became a priority, it wasn't a controversial priority. It wasn't hard for me to go out and say protecting our homeland is going to be the most important thing. We're still going to do our other work but, it just had to lead with that because it was what it was. It was our priority and for the first year or two, almost my entire term, it was a really leading focus of what I did.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Because people have to remember that at that time, there was no Department of Homeland Security, right? People forget that, right? So BJA really became the primary source of funding for many law enforcement agencies. What was it like to lead the agency during that time and how did you ensure that public safety agencies receive the funding and the support that they needed during these unprecedented times?

RICHARD NEDELKOFF: BJA, by default, became that entity. And, one of the first things, obviously, was preparing our responders. And the Congress appropriated almost, within days $450 million for first responders in New York, New Jersey, DC. And obviously it was imperative to get that money out because they needed equipment, they needed training. We needed to feel prepared. And this was one of the first moments where I realized I'm maybe where I'm supposed to be, because when I was in Texas, one of the things that was very important to me is making government just less bureaucratic and making the grant-making process streamlined and a positive experience for grantees. And so, we had sort of figured out the magic formula in terms of doing things quickly, swiftly, promptly, but correctly.

And so my Chief of Staff, Camille Cain, who later became BJA's Deputy and then Acting BJA Director, she was working with me in Texas and I remember her coming into my office and I was talking to her about how important it is to get this money out quickly. This is critical. And she just looked me in the eye and said, "It's done. It's done." And no one I think would have been able to do that and it was a day. It was one day. It wasn't a lot of back and forth. It was just preparing the proper paperwork, getting the grant awarded, talking to the state local officials who were receiving the grant and telling them, "Go forth, spend, do what you need to do." And I think it could've taken days or weeks or longer because government typically doesn't do things quickly. And we had figured out the secret on how to streamline things and the timing was perfect for something like that.

So, I felt very proud we were able to get that done literally a day of being awarded that money. And then, of course, BJA has the Public Safety Officers’ Benefits Program. So I'm sending teams of people to Ground Zero to work with the 450 families of firefighters and police officers who died that day in Ground Zero. That's a year's worth typically but it was in one day. Assistant Attorney General Deborah Daniels tasked me to be coordinating counter-terrorism training among the federal law enforcement agencies. So I'm bringing the COPS Office and NIJ and FBI and other agencies together to coordinate what we're doing. BJA had operated a very successful program called SLATT, "State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training." So that was very much in demand. I was testifying before Congress on information sharing, helping write citizen preparedness guides.

So, remember that job back in Texas that I thought I was going to take, helping improve the Administration of Justice and help corrections and courts and it was anything but that. It was about protecting our homeland, counter-terrorism training, information sharing, citizens' preparedness. And again, it was our priority but it was, again, a totally unexpected twist in the job that I agreed to take on.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: But along with that and along with this emergency and to 9/11, you also still had to deal with the everyday operations of a major government agency, right? So how did you balance that? How did you balance the everyday needs of BJA while also ensuring that the crisis and the tragedy was handled properly?

RICHARD NEDELKOFF: First of all, I had to be open and honest to admit to what our priority was and that was easy and it was protecting the homeland, but I've also had the experience of being an SAA and understanding the administration of grants and so forth, training and technical assistance I understood it. So I was probably able to hit the ground running faster because of my experience. That day-to-day stuff was like walking in my sleep. It was just, sort of, it was very easy for me to do. I think the year before I arrived, the Law Enforcement Mental Health Act of 2000 was enacted, but we received about $45 million of funds to kickstart the Mental Health Courts program. So, I remember having to work with Senator DeWine's office at the time to get that program and the council for state government who are very involved in this subject, getting that Mental Health Courts program off the ground.

We had a really wonderful information technology program. My former deputy Dick Ward, that was his area of expertise. He was great at that and because of what happened in 9/11, it was even more important that we had an integrated justice information system. So things that we had done at BJA like the RISS system, the Regional Information Sharing System, that was critical. That was work that we had done for years. But now that 9/11 occurred, the need for the FBI and DEA and INS to be able to access that information was critical. 

And then one of the other hallmark pieces of the President's initiative was Project Safe Neighborhoods. That started under my watch, and it actually was something that we did in Texas under a different name called Texas Exile, working with the Texas Attorney General and the U.S. Attorneys.

But then Project Safe Neighborhoods became a national initiative that took up a lot of time my first two years at BJA and it had a little bit of a Homeland Security twist to it. It was from just a gun violence prevention and reduction to sort of a bigger, watching your neighbors and watching to make sure that we're protecting our homeland. So, there was a lot of things. And again, with Homeland Security being the priority, a lot of balls in the air, but I did my best to juggling them.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: You did an amazing job juggling them. Looking back at your time leading BJA, what would you say was your greatest accomplishment?

RICHARD NEDELKOFF: The biggest satisfaction was that I believe that the timing of my tenure, the fact that I was there at that time , gives me the greatest satisfaction. I worked hard. I tried to juggle a lot of balls but me being there at that historic moment in time, that gives me the greatest satisfaction, that I was there, no one else was. I was there.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: In your opinion, what is the legacy of BJA over the past 40 years?

RICHARD NEDELKOFF: Well, it has a lot of legacies. Obviously, funding is critical and BJA in the big scheme of things doesn't administer a lot of money in the big picture of justice across the country. But it delivers enough money to make a difference. So the most important thing was, BJA either made it flexible. There were funds that we administered where we said there's flexibility. You can decide how it can be best used. Or it was something that Congress felt it was a priority, so it was specific funds that really helped with an emerging problem, a problem that existed at that time. So  the critical funding at critical times is a very important part of the legacy. It's provided so much training and technical assistance across the country. But if I had to think of one word, and it's the federal level and the local level is, and it’s innovation.

BJA allowed for innovation in our justice system across the country. It allowed for state locals to innovate with flexible funds. It allowed BJA to look at emerging issues and problems and say, "Let's try this. Let's do this." But it was, I think, that stands out among everything else is that innovation. And it's a wonderful legacy. I'm glad I was a small part of it. And again, I always look back on my time there with the fondest of memories.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Thank you, Richard, so much for being here with us today. We really appreciate it. It was great talking to you.

RICHARD NEDELKOFF: All right. Well, thank you very much. Pleasure is mine.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: After Richard's departure, Domingo Herraiz joined BJA as Director. He served the agency for five years between 2004 and 2009. Herraiz came to BJA with more than 30 years of government and public safety experience in dealing with local, state, and federal policies. Prior to his role as BJA Director, Mr. Herraiz served on the Ohio Governor's cabinet as the Director of Criminal Justice Services. Like his predecessor, his time at BJA included a national emergency, Hurricane Katrina. How are you today, Domingo?

DOMINGO S. HERRAIZ: I'm good. Thank you, Karen.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Thank you.

DOMINGO S. HERRAIZ: Good to be with you.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Thank you for being here with me today. Hurricane Katrina, let's talk. After Hurricane Katrina, BJA played a major role in supporting justice-involved agencies from corrections to courts. What were some of the immediate issues that BJA experienced when the rapid assessment team visited the area and how did the agency work to address them?

DOMINGO S. HERRAIZ: Thanks for the question. I think the foundation of this, I guess in preparation for a director-to-be at BJA, one of the most important things is to really understand the field. And the largest part of the field that BJA serves is that pass-through purpose, which is the SAA, the State Administering Agency.

And so, having a strong footing which may the Directors have had in the past really helps because when we are faced with this challenge of Katrina, trying to figure out how to really help the states, it's so complicated because all the constituents, whether it's the courts or law enforcement or prosecutors or public defenders on and on and on, it's such a broad feeling. BJA's portfolio is so large, so you're going to need help and you're going to need help at the state level and certainly at the local level. But the state really, when you break it down, there's 18,000 law enforcement agencies just as an example, 3,000 counties, but we have 50 states, so when you break it down into the smallest parts, the 50 states plus the territories, it's a lot easier to deal with a small component.

Well, the first step we have to deal with was in Katrina, obviously, as everyone remembers, things were a mess down at the state, local level. So the government asked us, Department of Justice asked us, "Okay. We got to go down and we have to assess." The FBI was down there. Obviously, DEA, marshals on and on and on, and other components of justice, so rights and what have you, trying to figure out, "Okay. What's going on? What do we need to know? And feed us information." So we set up OJP through BJA, set up what we called the Rapid Response Team, the RRT, and we we're fortunate enough to have some folks from law enforcement that were part of our team at BJA. Folks like David Lewis, Steve Edwards, Deborah Meader, and others, who volunteered to go down and really make an assessment of what was happening on the ground.

They lived down there for weeks on the ground just like the folks sweeping on cots and various locations and making reports, giving us an assessment. And after weeks and weeks being down there, well over six weeks trying to come back, give us field reports what they were seeing in the justice system, so that we could then in turn feed that information back to DOJ and saying, "What is the crisis from a justice capacity?" Because obviously being a component of DOJ, that's what we are concerned with. Obviously, HHS, education, et cetera, they all had their own need that they had to fulfill. But ours was, "What is the state of justice in those five Gulf States that were mostly impacted by Katrina?" So the work that they did at that time was phenomenal. What they saw on the ground was so important to help us with our assessment of what the needs were.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Now I know that in a matter of weeks, BJA was asked to send more than $500 million to the impacted area. How did the agency decide how much funding each state would receive and get that funding out the door so quickly?

DOMINGO S. HERRAIZ: Congress determined that obviously we needed to get funding. And in that funding, they had to attach many things that happened in Congress. And the Defense Reauthorization Bill, because they had to have something moving through Congress in order to have funding, they put in hundreds of millions of dollars that ended up coming to DOJ and then ultimately came to BJA. And with those funds, they said, "Okay. You need to get these funds out as soon as possible, again, hundreds of millions of dollars for the justice system in five states, those that were impacted by Katrina."

We moved the money so fast that Congress raised an alarm bell. They said, "Wait a minute. How could you move that money so fast? How are you going to keep accountability for?" Well, the answer was, we used what we knew, the State Administering Agencies. Because our relationship—and again, the lesson here is relationship-building which BJA is excellent at—we used the relationships that we already have, all those State Administering Agency Directors, so people like Mike Ranatza in Louisiana who at that time ran the State Administering Agency in Louisiana. Now he happens to be the Director of Louisiana Sheriffs' Association. But we used Mike, we said, "Look, Mike, you're going to be held accountable. We want weekly reports from you and your team of how you put the money down and what you use it for in the state."

So many things were like the HVAC systems in the jails which you wouldn't think of because at that time, all the HVAC systems were in the basements. Well, obviously, they all got flooded out and the prisoners needed air conditioning. You can imagine, anybody who's been to New Orleans you can't go there in the summertime or in the fall time or the spring without the high humidity. You can't put prisoners in jail and expect them to survive without air conditioning. So we had to quickly rebuild the HVAC systems and it was done through these funds through Congress. And so if it wasn't for the partnership between BJA and ultimately the SAAs in those respective states, we wouldn't have been able to move that money so fast. So it's all about coordination, relationship-building, collaboration on the ground, and keeping those relationships alive.

It was so powerful at the time that Congress questioning it and we were able to document everything because those SAAs documented everything. There wasn't one piece of fraud or misuse of money in the justice system.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Yeah. I always say that collaboration—I call it the C word and always say that that's our love language.

DOMINGO S. HERRAIZ: Oh, absolutely.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Collaboration is our love language.

DOMINGO S. HERRAIZ: Absolutely.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Yeah. It's wonderful. All right. Well, in addition to working on Katrina relief, you also oversaw the design and implementation of the National Sex Offender Website, which is a national database that provides the public and local governments with access to sex offender data. How did this change the way that sex offenders are tracked nationally?

DOMINGO S. HERRAIZ: This is a very interesting story and it started with Congress. Well, it started with the press, actually. The press was surprised that the only resource that was available out there at the time was this about 2004, 2005 timeframe. That the only thing that was out there was the registration exists with the FBI. So it was a police only law enforcement sensitive database where all the local jurisdictions out there would submit their data to the state, the state would then submit the data to the FBI. And so the press got a hold of this and the movement was such that there was a considerable amount of sex offenders out there and the situation was an individual from North Dakota. Dru Sjodin gained a lot of attention in the media and said the family, to their credit, pushed the issue, said, parents need to know this. 

Neighborhoods need to know this and you shouldn't have to go to your local police department to find out where registered sex offenders are. And so they put pressure. Media got a hold of it. Congress got a hold of it. So Congress went to the FBI and Main Justice, and said, "We need to create this public registry, so the citizens can just type in and get access to the data." And the FBI said, "You know, ours is law enforcement sensitive. It'd be pretty close to impossible for us to do. And if we did it, it's going to cost us a hundred million dollars to do this and it would take us at least a year to complete this." Our staff at that time was very engaged in law enforcement technology and looking at David Lewis and Patrick McCray, Jim Burch at that time. David Lewis pitched it to his team and they came to me and said, "You know, we can do this."

The beauty is, we end up doing the National Sex Offender Public Registry, the exact model that I just described, we pulled it off the pilot in the six weeks. Three months later, we have multiple states and then less than a year, within six months, we had all 50 states and the territories connected all for about $950,000, less than a million dollars, all because it gets back to what you said, Karen, partnerships and collaboration. We pulled it off because of that collaboration.

All we had to do is give each one of those states a server and help them, from a technical perspective, connect and point to that website. It becomes the website, which it is today, and then of course named after Dru Sjodin. So a wonderful example of how you can do something if you have the courage, if you trust people, and if you have that coordination and that collaboration.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Wow. Amazing. 

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Looking back at your time at leading BJA, what would say is your greatest accomplishment?

DOMINGO S. HERRAIZ: So this one becomes very personal for me. I grew up the son of a firefighter and the nephew of a police officer. And I chose a career path right in the middle, a bureaucrat or a civil servant if you will, right in the middle. But when I came to BJA, I inherited the Public Safety Officers' Benefit Program and really became my pride, if you will, but also a struggle, a struggle because the backlog of cases were horrible. We had so many of our partner agencies, the FOP, the IAFF, Fire Chiefs' International Association, Chiefs of Police, et cetera, many of these organizations, if you will, breathing down our neck, "Why aren't you moving this, why isn't this happening?" During that time period, we had a lot of new regulations passed, Congress passing new legislation, new interpretations that had to happen.

So, the first thing we did was I brought in Hope Janke. I brought her with me from Ohio to oversee that effort, and she's still there today. But we hired more staff and hired more administrative hearing officers, which I think was important. We clarified rules and regulations. We started holding consistent law—or stakeholder groups, not just law enforcement, firefighter, EMS, all the groups that I mentioned, volunteer firefighters, et cetera. And probably the most important thing, we stopped looking at this program as if it was a claim against the government.

Too many folks were looking at it as, "Well, we got to be real diligent and look at this as a claim against government," instead of looking at there are real surviving families behind this, that people are dying in the line of duty, they're dying to protect us, and we need to look at the surviving family. So between the hiring of more administrative officers, hiring of more staff, internal lawyers into the program, consistency in operations, redefining the regs that were there, clarification on the regs, and just putting a focus on the program, moving those cases through more quickly and changing what information we really needed to know in order to process that claim, made a huge difference.

And so I think that became personal for me because of my background and my family's background, and so I think that that probably is the most proud moment I had, was reconstituting how we approach the PSOB Program.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Yeah. PSOB is incredible, and Hope is such a gem. So thank you then for bringing her to BJA. It's been wonderful for me to work with her. She's incredible. Thank you. And thank you so much for being here with me today in this incredibly interesting conversation.

DOMINGO S. HERRAIZ: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: In 2011, Denise O'Donnell joined BJA as Director. O'Donnell is an accomplished attorney, and in addition to serving as Director of BJA, she served as Deputy Secretary for Public Safety for two New York governors, managing a portfolio of 11 criminal justice in Homeland Security agencies. During her time at BJA, Ms. O'Donnell oversaw the addition of several new programs to BJA, including the Second Chance Act and PREA, the Prison Rape Elimination Act. It is so great to see you here today, Denise. I'm so happy to be with you.

DENISE O'DONNELL: Well, great to be with you, Karen.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: So, you spent your career working as an attorney and a social worker. What excited you about coming to D.C. to lead BJA?

DENISE O'DONNELL: Well, I was very excited about the possibility of becoming director of BJA for a number of reasons. One of the most important was that I had also served for 15 years as a federal prosecutor as a U.S. Attorney. And so I understood that what really was special about BJA was that it was a component within the Department of Justice with the mission that DOJ has, to really enforce the federal laws but ensure that there was fairness and equity in the criminal justice system. And all of those things were important to me. So it was a great opportunity to be able to take that position as Director. I also knew first-hand from my time at DCJS in New York, that BJA had an incredible staff, very hardworking staff that was aligned with what we call the field. But that really had strong relationships with communities and the opportunity to improve the lives of people throughout the country. So it was a great opportunity.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Definitely. During your tenure, there was an expansion of partnerships between the public safety field and researchers. How did BJA help foster this growth and how did these relationships help reduce crime and keep communities safe on the local level?

DENISE O'DONNELL: That's a good question. When I came to BJA, they were actually in the middle of a strategic planning process. And that was because the mission of BJA had just really exploded from being primarily focused on public safety and law enforcement, and really had grown because of the Second Chance Act and the expansion of drug courts, and so many other programs that came to BJA. So we had the strategic planning process, we finished it. It's not easy for anyone who has ever been part of that process. So BJA came up with a mission to reduce crime, recidivism, and unnecessary confinement, and to provide a safe and fair criminal justice system, that really reflected all of these new programs and initiatives that BJA was charged with implementing. So we came up with a mission statement to reflect our growing portfolio.

That really began to reflect the reentry focus, the focus on drug courts and problem-solving courts, and justice reinvestment initiative, and PREA, and officer safety, and really included that. And so we figured that with this growing mission and this, kind of, new vision, that we really needed to develop expertise in the field. And that required us to really reach out and form relationships with some of the leading criminologists and scientists that were focused on criminal justice issues. So we did that. And that was helped along by Lori Robinson, who head the Science Review Board and brought a lot of alliances with the leading experts really in the field to develop and we knew we had to grow our policy office to develop expertise in so many of these areas, which we did.

Jim Burch, who had been acting Director and a longtime leader at BJA had started a Smart Policing Program that really focused on research practitioner partnerships in the policing field. And I love that program, and BJA was very enthused about it. It was growing. We really saw that practitioners in the policing field could have strong relationships with researchers and develop more effective programs, use data better. And we ultimately, during my seven years at BJA, followed in Jim's footsteps and expanded that to include—by the time we are—I think I left BJA, we had nine Smart on Crime programs that really supported research practitioner partnerships in areas that had never experienced it before, like prosecution, and indigent defense, and, of course, reentry, and corrections. And so it really blossomed.

And there were a number of other things we did. We realized that we had to use technology to be able to expand the knowledge about what works in criminal justice programs. So, we developed tool kits in many areas, online platforms like the” what works” in policing clearing house, the National Reentry Resource Center to be able to begin to translate a lot of the knowledge about best practices and what works in criminal justice to the field. So, that's how it all was started and it really blossomed in a lot of areas during my time at BJA.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Yes, a lot of stuff.

DENISE O'DONNELL: I know.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Yeah. So, now typically, people think the government moves slowly. However, BJA was well-positioned to rapidly train law enforcement agencies nationwide in the face of growing interest in the use of body-worn cameras and [INDISTINCT]. How was BJA and why was BJA uniquely qualified to do that?

DENISE O'DONNELL: I think BJA has a history of doing that. And it certainly was very important to me during my time at BJA, and it was for really a number of reasons. The kind of seminal program at BJA was the Byrne JAG program, and that enabled BJA to have strong relationships with every criminal justice coordinator and governor's office in the country in many of the large cities and to really develop relationships over the years. The program staff at BJA had long established relationships working with all of the criminal justice coordinators throughout the country. So, there was a network there that really encompassed the entire country. And I think that was significant as well as just a number of the tools that BJA developed. So, BJA's history of providing technical assistance really took off during this time on steroids with the National Training and Technical Assistance Center or, NTTAC.

So, BJA was able to get out there and help people provide technical assistance to them in so many different program areas, had tools out there to do it and had these relationships. So, when programs like body-worn cameras, which I think may have been the most rapidly disseminated change in policing, at least in my lifetime, happened and occurred. The administration looked to BJA to really try to implement that. And the relationships with the few researchers who had even looked at body-worn cameras in policing before and the relationships with the field really helped BJA develop sound policies that I think really worked in implementing body-worn cameras nationwide. Not without some issues, hiccups, but was widely accepted and then was, along with funding that the administration provided to implement body-worn cameras in the country, allowed BJA to disseminate those practices throughout the country.

So, that's just one example. PREA was similar to that. And certainly a lot of the work that BJA has been doing in the opioid area was very similar in increasing the significant role of the BJA now has in addressing the opioid crisis. So, there's lots of examples of that. But I think it's a real credit to BJA that it can respond quickly with sound criminal justice research and best practices to emerging issues in criminal justice.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: And why do you think that BJA is so trusted in that area? Do you think it is that relationship with the state administering agencies that has created that trust? I know when I spoke to Domingo, he discussed some of that relationship building as well with the SAAs.

DENISE O'DONNELL: I think the relationship building is critically important. But it's also important that BJA can really use its grant-making capacity to really spread best practices and evidence-based practices to the field by building them into solicitations as it does now, so that the organizations and the states receiving the grant funds really have a knowledge base to build on in terms of how they're going to use the funding that BJA provides.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Yeah. So, looking back at your time leading BJA, what do you see as your greatest accomplishment?

DENISE O'DONNELL: I thought about that question and I have to say that really I feel like no director can really take credit for the amazing work that BJA does because it really is a result of the people that work there. So, my part trying to hire great people to work at BJA to help provide a vision for them and then to support them because this work is work that is done by the people that work there and are career people and very astute and really determined people who are dedicated to the mission of BJA. So, I have to just take a back seat in that one. I would look to this effort to bring best practices and evidence-based practices into the BJA programs started before me, continues after me, but I think my seven years there was very focused in that area as well. And it's credit to all the people that worked at BJA to make that happen.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Yeah. But we really do have an incredible staff. It's amazing. So, in your opinion, what is the legacy of the last 40 years of BJA?

DENISE O'DONNELL: I think the legacy is very rich. And what I'm trying to really discuss is how the legacy has been built and continues to build upon the programs that came before, and in many cases, the leaders that came before and the programs that Congress funded at BJA. So, BJA has grown and run with it and has, I think, operated in a very nonpartisan way no matter who was in the White House, tried to keep our eyes really on the ball of what our mission was and is, and that continues to this day. So, I think it's the leadership in all these areas that really makes BJA's legacy so rich over the past 40 years.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Denise. Thanks for being here with me today and thanks for all that you do to make this world a better place.

DENISE O'DONNELL: Oh, thank you. And I have to say that my years at BJA were some of the best of my career, and I wish everyone there great success for the next 50, 60, 100 years.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: Following Ms. O'Donnell is Director Jon Adler. Adler came to BJA with an extensive background on law enforcement having served as a federal law enforcement agent for 26 years. Before being appointed as the Director of BJA, Adler served as the Chief Firearms and Tactical Training Officer with the United States Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York. He currently serves as the national president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Foundation. Why was it important to you that the agency tackled this problem within the law enforcement community?

JON ADLER: Hi, Karen. So, sadly, unbeknown to the general public, one of the what might be called a dirty little secret in law enforcement is that each year, we lose more law enforcement officers to suicide than we do from felonious gunfire and vehicular fatalities, and substantially more. And we realized that taking the "bury our head in the sand" approach wasn't going to make that better. In fact, the numbers were getting worse. So, just taking a deep dive into why suicide wasn't being addressed, we realized there's an incredible dysfunction in the culture of how we deal with mental illness, how we deal with post-traumatic stress, injuries and those who are needing mental health care.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: We weren't even talking about it, right?

JON ADLER: It was, I'd say, dirty secret. We're so sort of stuck in the old go to the doctor, open up your mouth and say ah, and yet, we don't have the means for opening up our mind and our soul and really delving into the injuries that lodged themselves there.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: So, the program, Smash the Stigma, helped start discussion around mental health and policing. Why did this signal a cultural shift in law enforcement?

JON ADLER: During my time as Director of the Bureau of Justice Assistance, I was working closely with, oddly enough, one of my predecessors, Domingo, who was working for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. And we were working on suicide prevention and awareness program for law enforcement. And at one particular forum that we were both attending and I was speaking at. I barked at the audience because I became a little frustrated with the fact that there was too much gentle banter and it wasn't a greater sense of immediacy. And what I mean is that while we were calmly sipping coffee, officers were committing suicide in real time. And I really wanted to sort of escalate and elevate the seriousness of this situation.

I think the "smash stigmas, save lives" mantra really caught on because it was sort of a collective feeling, enough is enough. A little Popeye the Sailor, enough is enough, and enough is too much. And I think what we started to see as we were paying more attention to the increasing rate of suicide was that we found there were officers committing suicide who gave no outward indication of suffering from depression or post-traumatic injury. And we realized, no, this isn't something that, isn't delegated to the land of misfit toys. These are good human beings who are just impacted by a variety of circumstances. And there's absolutely no shame in coming forward asking for help.

The big challenge was sort of getting the unions with the chiefs and the mental health professionals to work out an understanding, how can we create a program where law enforcement officers have the confidence that they can come forward for help, get credible help, in terms of timely credible help, and not have this tag, this stigma put on them. And the chiefs were open to it. The unions, of course, were. The mental health professionals are great. And I think just getting everyone in the room, rolling up the mental sleeves, if you will, we started to make progress. BJA had a grant with IACP, which was very instrumental in elevating the mission. IACP is one of the national law enforcement organizations. It's the International Association of Chiefs of Police. And they were the grantee who were really tasked with coming up with programs to further the Smash Stigma, Save Lives spirit.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: So speaking of cultural shifts, you've talked about the increase in drug courts and diversion programs. I don't know if you know my background, but I actually came to BJA after being a drug court judge for many years in Baltimore, so that's my background. So I am particularly passionate about this topic. But when you came to BJA, how did BJA help communities understand the importance of these types of programs? Because back then, they really were new and novel. Now, we just take it for granted. "Oh, everyone has a drug court," but it wasn't like that back then. So how did you get that, the buy-in, that we needed to make that happen?

JON ADLER: Yeah. No, I didn't expect it. Some things I expected when I came to BJA, but the importance of the drug courts, the diversion programs, was brought to my attention both from staff, and I was blessed with brilliant staff. One of my executive level staff persons, Michelle, was heavily invested into drug courts and she pulled my ear on it and gave me a great briefing. And sort of concurrent with staff sort of briefing me on the importance of the drug courts and the program in and of itself was the sheriffs, the National Sheriffs' Association. They were very concerned that the old practice of simply arresting someone in possession or under the influence is brought to a jail, and then what happens is a bad situation becomes worse. It's a risk to the person under the influence, it's a risk to the sheriffs or the deputies or the correctional officer. And nothing positive comes out of that. Nothing.

So we realized that the whole concept of diversion, taking someone who you have a police encounter with on the street to an alternative to incarceration. And such as, for example, we had grants that went out there looking for creative, effective solutions. And I don't know if it was Arkansas or not, but they came up with this concept of a crisis stabilization unit. And it was somewhere where you could take someone who was under the influence and be treated by professionals who have the experience in both substance abuse and mental health. It was a safer alternative for law enforcement. It was better for the person under the influence of the substance. And at least there was an opportunity for a longer-term gain.

In terms of drug courts, and, I mean, you and I, we can talk all day and night about it, I wish the general public was even more aware of the drug courts. They're critically important. You hear on the TV shows, they sort of portrayed the stereotype, the court system is so backed up, they can't hear cases timely. People who, again, come into police contact and maybe arrested, there's no value just holding up the court system and bringing in people who are only hurting themselves for the most part, it makes no sense. And I had the opportunity to go visit some of the courts and see really great work. I mean, the judges, like yourself, the people working the court system do phenomenal work.

And, critics will come back and say they'll give you percentages of recidivism. My view is that it's not so much analyzing the recidivism rate, it's more you're providing hope, you're providing an opportunity. You're showing someone you care, but you care, being a little stern, but caring at the same time, but not sort of just shifting the burden to the general judicial system where that person will become lost, and chances are they're only going to become worse.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: And I always used to argue that same conversation and say, well, recovery, relapse is part of recovery, right? And if the drug court was successful in keeping someone, you know, on that road for three years, right, that's three years that he was a father again, three years that he was a husband again, three years that he was a taxpayer again, three years that he wasn't arrested again, right?

So, yes, maybe sometimes we couldn't get him clean for the rest of his life, right, but at least for that period of time that we were successful we've really made an impact for that person and for everyone around him, his family, community, et cetera. So, yes, you're definitely talking my love language here.

JON ADLER: Right.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: I know that you're also a proponent of the Second Chance Program. Why is it so important for local communities to support reentry programs?

JON ADLER: Yeah, when you asked, Karen, about how I sort of became even increasingly familiar with the drug courts and the diversion program, again, I've got to give credit and recognize my staff, Andre, in particular. These people are—they're brilliant. They're the ultimate experts in policy and they're innovative thinkers as well. And the worst thing we can do in government is have people with great thoughts and not approach them and appeal to them to share their ideas. And Andre resonates with me. He was someone who was just so forward-leaning, and thinking. He understood he's a former correctional officer, probably one of the top minds as far as anything relevant to being institutionalized, both during and after, all the different versions or variations of therapy.

And I approached him and said that the general public, or some within the public, may see those incarcerated as an inconvenience. You don't want them in your backyard. You don't want them around. Them, the nefarious pronoun. But in reality, you have human beings who, for whatever reason, wound up incarcerated. They are going to, at some point, get out. And, I told my staff, I said I saw this movie many times, “The Shawshank Redemption.” And the old way of having elderly inmates who are ultimately released, who then get a job in a supermarket packing groceries is a shortcut to failure.

So I said, we need to really think about what skills we can start offering to those incarcerated where they can come out and they're marketable, skills where they may not have to have deep, in contact with the public in their homes per se, if the public's a little skittish, but the point is that we need to aggressively engage with those incarcerated to build up their self-esteem and make them marketable in the job play. Because if not, I mean, I'm career law enforcement, Karen, I can tell you straight up, if you don't invest the time, the moment the person is left out, 99.9% of the time they're going to go back to where they are familiar, which is their neighborhood, and nothing positive is going to result from the release. So, do we want to keep doing that or do we want to wisen up and take the enlightened path and figure out what we can really do in combination of better therapy options and building a skill set. And most importantly, and again, I've dealt with people, 26 years in law enforcement, most critical thing is self-esteem.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: I don't know why it's so hard for people to really understand the argument. It just seems so logical to me, right? I think people don't realize that 95% and more of people that are incarcerated at this very moment in time will be released at some point.

JON ADLER: Right.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: I think people have this concept, "Oh, you put someone in prison and that's where they stay." That's not reality. There's a very, very small percentage of people that stay incarcerated for life. Most people are getting out, and what do you want that to look like, right? That's going to be the person that's going to be taking the bus with your son who's going to school. That's going to be the person behind your grandmother at the ATM machine. What do you want that to look like? What do you want him to look like, right? And it makes such a logical public safety sense, but yet it's still hard to get buy-in for how important that process, that reentry process really, really is.

And it's more, the reentry, it's really reintegration, right? Everyone's going to reenter, right? Everyone coming out is reentering. The question is how many of them are really going to be reintegrating in a meaningful, productive, successful way?

JON ADLER: Right.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: So looking back at your time on leading BJA, what would you say is your greatest accomplishment?

JON ADLER: Well, my greatest accomplishment at BJA, I think, actually predated my going there. Going back in and around, I think it was 2006 to 2007, I was the president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, it's a nonprofit organization representing feds in Capitol Hill on issues relating to pay and benefits and officer safety issues. And I had come up with an idea which led to my drafting a legislative proposal called the Congressional Badge of Bravery. And I wrote up the draft and I met with then Senator Biden, before he became vice president, and he embraced it immediately. We got it introduced on the Senate side during National Police Week in May, and it fast-tracked and ultimately was signed into law. So for me, that in and of itself was very meaningful. And now I come to BJA as a director and BJA oversees the Law Enforcement Congressional Badge of Bravery program with Greg Joy, who I dealt with from the very beginning, and Michelle, and they just do a phenomenal job.

And to me, why is it important? When you create something—we're mortals, we're going to come and go, and hopefully to a better place in the afterlife, but you're leaving something behind where people will be recognized for their incredible bravery. And bravery isn't mandatory, it's an option. It's a person's decision to go forward instead of in reverse. And I think that leaving something in play to recognize someone who's injured in the line of duty while exuding tremendous bravery is important. And I have peace of mind knowing that, again, when I'm long and gone, there will be wonderful, outstanding law enforcement officers getting recognized for putting their life on the line to protect and ensure public safety.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: I couldn't agree more. Thank you so much, Jon, for joining us. I really appreciate talking to you today. And all the best to you.

JON ADLER: Thanks, Karen. It's my pleasure.

KAREN FRIEDMAN: We want to extend our heartfelt thanks to all the directors who took the time to share their experiences at BJA. Now, please enjoy part two, where I sit down with Karhlton Moore, the current director of BJA. Justice Today is the official podcast of the Office of Justice Program.