885: Rehabilitating the System - with Dr. David C. Hayes⁠, Forensic Psychologist & Instructor Working with Incarcerated Students, & ⁠Arti Finn⁠, Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer, ⁠Orijin⁠

Dr. Jacob Easley II: Welcome back everyone. It's your time to add up on the EdUp Experience podcast where we make education your business. This is your special guest host, Jacob Easley II, PhD, PMP, and I am the full-time host for EdUp Accelerated Excellence, a podcast for educational effectiveness and equity, part of the EdUp network. Today I'd like to introduce two wonderful guests. We have Arti Finn and David Hayes. So I'm going to start ladies first. Arti, please tell us a bit about yourself. And then we'll move on to David.

Arti Finn: Hi everybody. I'm Arti Finn. I am the co-founder and chief strategy officer for a company called Origin. We provide pathways to sustainable employment for folks who are involved with the criminal justice system. Most of our deployments are inside carceral institutions. So we work inside prisons and jails, parole, probation, and even alternatives to incarceration. 

What we provide is hardware. We have large secure tablets that provide access to individualized education, rehabilitation, job training, and reentry plans. There's also a big motivational piece. And sort of the third leg of that stool is data, because you can't do anything without data. You need to know how people are performing and you need to know where they're not performing and you need to know when to intervene.

We have a lot in between there, but we are a public benefits corporation and a B corporation. So a lot of people think of us as a nonprofit, we're actually a for-profit, but we have a double bottom line. So our investors care as much about how we make money as how we deliver outcomes to folks. That also means we never charge the justice-impacted or their friends and family. Our customers are departments of corrections, departments of labor, departments of education, who pay for our solution to come in.

Many people wonder, well, why did you get into this? Why did you start this? And I always say, you need to know one simple fact. Well, two simple facts. There are 2 million people incarcerated in this country and about 10 million people who cycle in and out of the criminal justice system. And less than 17% of them get any access to education. So we exist to transform corrections from one of warehousing to one of true rehabilitation with superior content and an individualized pathway so that they can create their own pathway out of incarceration and hopefully into sustainable employment.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: Arti, I really like the fact that you gave us the numbers and percentages to lay out the context. I was going to ask you about that and I really appreciate your emphasis on the use of data because I think that's so important. So, David, let's kick it off to you. Tell us about you.

Dr. David C. Hayes: Hello everyone. Again, my name is David Hayes. I am a forensic psychologist and an instructor of psychology and communications in a couple of different areas. Most importantly, in the law enforcement side for degree completion for officers and corrections officers. But a vast majority of my work is with Jackson College in Michigan, teaching in the prison system in the Department of Corrections there.

So really, that's what it boils down to as I am an instructor within the prison system, kind of frontlining it and an advocate for justice-involved education. Because we know that the only real way to have any sort of systemic community change is through education. That's the only hard numbers that we can find is the way education inside raises self-esteem. And that self-esteem translates to more job opportunities, a different approach to life a lot of times, and really aids in the re-entry process. So that's the basics of where I'm at.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: Well, I really like this idea of justice-involved or a justice approach. And I have to echo your sentiment, say yes, education is that sort of great liberator and it's very important, particularly in this context. So I know that the work that you do is important for both of you and can be difficult and arduous. I want to hear a bit about your origin stories for both of you. Can you address for the EdUp community any challenges or resistance that you may have faced in getting started? And how did you overcome those?

Arti Finn: I want to start because I think I'll give the institutional perspective and David will probably give the individual perspective. But for us, the biggest challenge, I mean, anybody who's an entrepreneur knows you're going to hear no a million times before that one yes is what counts. And we had a couple strikes against us. One, we were working in corrections, which at the time, and this is now 11 years ago, almost nobody really talked about. We've been very fortunate that we were able to ride the wave of helping transform the industry. 

But I think the biggest challenge for us was, one, getting people to understand that corrections is really not different than the folks who've been failed by the K-12 system. It's where everybody ends up. The second big challenge for us was fundraising. And how do we find people who believe in our idea enough to give us money? And it has been an arduous path. If you ever meet an entrepreneur who's like, it was easy to raise money, slap them because they're lying to you. Don't literally slap them because I don't want to get in trouble here. But the point is that you have to get people to trust you enough to give you money. 

And one of my favorite lines from an investor who I respect enormously is he said to us, "You know, I love your idea. I love you guys. I expect to lose all my money." And that's really, if you really want to be an entrepreneur and do things in industries and things that are challenging, you really have to be able to say to people, you may lose all your money. And once you've looked someone in the eye and said, I'll take your money, even though I might lose it. Thank God we haven't yet and we're not going to, but it is probably one of the hardest things to do is raise money.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: I can definitely relate to that one.

Arti Finn: Yeah. And I think, you know, if you're going to do this, you need to have a really strong network. So just make sure you've got a very strong network of people that can introduce you to other people who can help you. That's very important.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: So I'm just going to tip our hat to some of the work over at EdUp Accelerated Excellence. We do profess asset-driven networking, which really is this big concept of, or it's not necessarily big, but maybe a small concept of drawing on the best attributes of different organizations and entities, how you interface with one another to elevate the work of each other, but ultimately collectively, how do you move social change that is not possible as an individual entity standalone. So I really liked that idea of this networking. So David, let's hear from you.

Dr. David C. Hayes: Brilliant segue to where I was going to take this. So yes, raising money is the hardest part about this. Second hardest is changing people's minds. And that's really kind of where I'm living with this. You know, in the mid-90s, the Pell for prisoners was taken away. And so that eliminated a great deal of opportunity for higher education within our prison systems. And it was disastrous at that point. What it did is it really just kind of doubled down on the warehousing things that Arti was talking about where we've become a people housing unit as opposed to a rehabilitative or a life-changing process. 

2015, the Second Chance Pell pilot program kicked in and to their credit Jackson College where I teach was part of that pilot program. And it's in Jackson, Michigan, and Jackson houses most of our state penitentiaries in various different areas there. And as a practitioner within there, it was really difficult to get people, just people in general, to think about the idea that someone in a prison setting, someone who was involved with the justice system, isn't a raving maniac frothing at the mouth murderer. Vast majority of my students, and I deal with a lot of people that are currently incarcerated, had a really bad day and made a really horrible decision one time. And that one really horrible decision has resulted in of course, where they're at right now. 

And to say that that particular person is beyond redemption or beyond changing their life or beyond able to learn is something that was kind of an affront to me. And so in my work, half of my time is spent in cold case criminology and consulting and the other more than half is within the prison systems, because I really think this is the one chance that we have to really change communities and to really change and move the lives of a great number of people forward. 

Arti already said there's 2 million people incarcerated in the United States, the most of any country. When we look at it, about 40% of those students, those call everyone inside students, 40% of those people have high school diplomas. So that opens up the possibility of a huge amount of people able to benefit from higher education. And most recently, just within the last year, last June, I believe, the federal government opened up Pell for all again. So Pell grants are now available to a number of currently incarcerated individuals. And it's been life-changing for those few people that have been able to access it. 

Schools now, higher education institutions are getting onto the bandwagon. And cause we know, you know, the student cliff, the traditional student demographics are moving away. Adult students are where the tuition is going to be. And this opens up a huge, just bucket of potential students, but even as good as that is, there are still some major systemic issues with the education within the department of corrections all over the country. And that's still a part of that changing those minds again, where the educational opportunities simply aren't the same. And I know they can't be exactly the same, but they could be more equitable to what students that are incarcerated are learning. And it is vexing at times to have to work within that system. As much good as we do, it could be so much better.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: Well, let me just say, I think let's paint a picture for what education looks like in a carceral setting.

Arti Finn: Sure. There are almost no classrooms. If there are classrooms, they are essentially one-room schoolhouses. And so when you do have access, it depends on if you have gotten in trouble that day, if the system is in lockdown, if you happen to be housed in the right facility that has the kind of programming that you're supposed to do. I can't tell you how many heads of corrections I've spoken to that have said to me, and I want the audience to think about this. We release people from solitary confinement onto the street, having never given them any programming. And I think everybody is smart enough now to know that solitary confinement is a very bad thing for people psychologically, mentally. I mean, David, you could talk to us all about that.

Dr. David C. Hayes: If I can interrupt really quickly, it's not just, you're in the hole for a couple of weeks. Some people are in solitary confinement for years. There are months and years of solitary confinement. And then your term is over. You've served your time and you're released and there's very little reentry in general, but to come, you know, I am fully on the bandwagon with anyone, whether you work within a department of corrections or you are living there for any period of time in a short period of time, you are going to be exhibiting PTSD symptoms just from the situation. 

So imagine if in your classrooms on your traditional campuses, everyone rolled in and it was a crapshoot whether they're going to be there or not that day. While they're there, they are having some post-traumatic stress disorder exhibiting in any manner possible. Sometimes it's food scarcity is a thing, you know, they'll call class during meal time. So you're going to skip a terrible meal or come to class. And so it's very different.

Arti Finn: And I'll just tell you a little story. So we just hired a lady who was incarcerated in a state where she had to choose every day if she was going to earn money so she could spend it on the commissary to get the food she needed, or if she was going to be able to get her high school equivalency and educate herself to be successful post-release. And she had to choose food every day. And we're talking about inside a carceral institution. So she comes out after 10 years at the age of 30 with no high school equivalency, no skillset. All she's done is work in like the kitchen or wherever they would give her a job so she could earn money to just afford to be incarcerated.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: So I think both of you are really talking about the complexity of the issues and I like this idea of changing mindsets because there's a particular image that many folks, not everyone, but a lot of people might have about those who've been incarcerated. Fear, danger, but they don't necessarily understand the full scope of circumstances. So as Arti, you mentioned earlier about what has been one's experiences in P-12 schools? Did they finish schools? What are those life circumstances that they sometimes have inherited, not necessarily created, and sometimes making poor choices, as you mentioned, David, and now they land you in a place that now has you incarcerated in some ways. But I'm also hearing from both of you that even within the system, that complexity of the conditions continues. So I want to hear from you then. So Arti, thank you for that story. How do you manage and work with the carceral system to ensure that you have continuity of services to the extent possible for your students and for your, and Arti, I'm not sure if you say students or clients.

Arti Finn: We say learners.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: Students and learners.

Arti Finn: Yeah, so our goal is that the moment of incarceration, you have access to a program that is right for you. So it involves you taking some assessments and then creating your own pathway. So how do you figure out, let's say I'm incarcerated, I don't have a high school diploma, I don't have any of the life skills or enduring skills I need to be successful post-release, I don't have any financial literacy, I don't have any of the pieces I need to be successful. So our goal is to identify what are the pieces that you need and then to help you find out, maybe you're interested in becoming a plumber, maybe you're interested in going into manufacturing, whatever it is, we want to help you build the skillset you need. 

So we actually created what we call an employability framework that not only helps the individual understand what they need, but also the potential employer, because there's this big gap. We can get people ready, but then employers won't hire them because like you said, there are stigmas out there. And so we really have to give people a different way of presenting themselves to employers. 

Now our workforce, 15% of our workforce is formerly incarcerated. We don't have any of the stigmas. We don't care what type of crime you did. We just care that you present the truth to us. And if you do that and you have the skills we need to hire for, we will hire you. So I think there is also this other piece. So David talked about Pell and that 40% - our experience with folks who are involved with the criminal justice system is that there's more like 80% that are either not Pell eligible or Pell ready. And you couple that with the fact that they're not actually motivated to get involved in programming. 

So you have this 20 to 30% that will go through programming once you give people access. You have another 70%, let's say, that actually need to be motivated. So we do a lot of motivational curriculum that's designed to help you figure out what's my life plan? How do I tell my story? So there's a great book, if you all haven't read it, you must, it's called The Master Plan by Chris Wilson. And it talks about how he changed his life. He was a juvenile lifer, but he was able to get out using his master plan. And so we use his story to actually help people motivate and write their own stories for their own plans. And once they do that, they start to create a pathway.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: All right. I wanted to ask you a bit about, for both of you, a bit of the scope. And I want to go back to this question again. I'm so sorry for interrupting, but this distinction is so clear about those who are Pell eligible and ready. So David, I'm assuming because you work with the university, you're working with, or seeking degree completion.

Dr. David C. Hayes: So for the most part, we're through Jackson College, a two-year school. So it's servicing associates degrees essentially. And I'll be working, I work with everyone who has a GED or a high school diploma already, whether they got it outside or inside. And that goes to the idea of the Pell eligible. You know, a majority of people that are incarcerated haven't finished high school and they haven't finished that, not a majority, percentages somewhere. And I know Arti will tell me what it is.

Arti Finn: It's 60%.

Dr. David C. Hayes: 60% so it is a majority. Right. First time today and don't tell my wife. And so a lot of the work in the K through 12 is to get the GEDs through there. I do that a little bit in my local jail is where I do some of that tutoring for GED and adult eds that way, but the level of students that the amount of students that are still Pell ready and Pell eligible is still massive. It's really with so many people incarcerated, there's just so many people there. And like Arti said, the biggest issue is in the motivation. The reason why someone commits a crime and goes to prison is largely contextual. It's what happens in the neighborhood. It's what we've always done. It's how things happen. It's a hand-me-down family system for maybe decades. And it's so incredibly hard to break out of something like that, to simply just like, you know, I'm going to change my life for the better. Well, no, that's not how it works. This is what life is like. And so that it's the same cycles, these repetitive cycles. 

And the best thing that can come from this idea of education is to really show that there's a different aspect, there's a different route to take. And so Arti does that with some wonderful technology and opportunities within correctional facilities. And then we try to do that on an individual basis, one-to-one, as much as we can, you know, when classes are actually happening.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: I just want to draw a line because both of you, the point that you're making about helping individuals and learners, students to become motivated, that's very difficult if you've had a poor experience outside of the prison system, but in K-12. So imagine now you have not had high engagement and been able to connect to schools. Someone's trying to coach you or engage you into bettering oneself through education. Now that you're incarcerated, that becomes quite a feat in itself.

Arti Finn: It does. Yeah. It's also why we're starting to experiment with some technology that nudges folks and encourages them. So, you got that answer right, or you didn't get it quite right. Let's figure out how to help you. So it really individualizes that person's experience because I'm a big fan of teachers, but there's never enough teachers. And so you can't expect them to do the kind of work or the kind of support they might get in other environments. It doesn't exist in prison and jail. And so you really have to get smart, not just about the motivation but the continual encouragement of individuals.

Dr. David C. Hayes: The K through 12 system is an interesting one. So if it didn't work for an individual, it's not because they didn't work within the system. The system is made for a majority. So, you know, if it works for 80%, great. That other 20, sorry about your luck, you know, have fun. And if the majority is being, you know, taken care of in a way that's fine, then people don't bat an eye. But in that 20% falling out of the K through 12 system, not finishing this degree program, not getting that encouragement that's necessary like Arti was talking about along the way, the bit by bit, which is such an esteem builder, then it can easily result in, you know, that decision making or falling back into those social and cultural contexts that caused you to commit a crime. And, you know, I didn't mean at the end of the day, of course, a crime is a choice. So, you know, just to make sure everyone really there's not weird outside factors in the world of those are the reasons why someone decides to commit a crime. Most people know that they're breaking the law when they do it and you know it's down to a choice, but the influences on the choice can be multiple.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: Right, I remember I think it was my fourth or fifth grade teacher who gave us perspective of I would like to think I would never do that because she said she was... She made a point that it's sort of a, this was interesting, we were young kids, moral decision-making is that we often have norms within that particular society or social group and how we make decisions that are in alignment with the general population. But there can be circumstances that will, I guess, influence you to act outside of those norms that you probably could not have imagined of before. So for example, you're a mother, you have to feed your children and you have no resources. So probably consider means that are against the norm in those circumstances. But David, I wanted to get back to you really quickly. How do you work within the penal system or the carceral system to help keep students engaged and for the continuity of their services?

Dr. David C. Hayes: So it's difficult. In a word, it's difficult. It depends in... I'm just in Michigan, so I'm not all over the country, of course, seeing different things, but even in different facilities within the state, it depends on who's working at the time, like as far as a correctional officer and who is running the facility to see like what's offered within the facility. Sometimes you can come in and you'll be able to have a class where I can use a projector and I could do a PowerPoint. Other times I may have a chalkboard. Maybe.

Arti Finn: If he had my technology, he could be in a virtual classroom.

Dr. David C. Hayes: I could. I could make decisions on a large scale. It would be very easy, but it's difficult. Another part of it that really becomes difficult is these students in a carceral setting aren't getting the same level of preparation that someone outside would be. The degree is the same. The associate's degree is the same. The general education requirements are the same. The learning outcomes are the same, but that preparation is absolutely different. 

So for example, I can't use first names. I'm just not allowed to use first names, which kind of as a detriment when you're looking at as a professor, as mentor or professor as potential contact, once someone is out, that's just a small thing, but it's, it kind of builds from there. So the lack of resources is really that one of those tough things to get around. 

What I find myself doing quite a bit is going very Aristotelian... Aristotelian, I don't know. Aristotelian, aristotelian, and more Socratic. And what we talk about is not practical application of how these things work in the world that they knew because it's a completely different world, but practical application in a world that they're going to encounter. And that's when they get a little bit terrified for the most part about an entirely different world than when they went inside. 

And that's what I think is where the biggest hurdle is, the biggest barrier is because eventually someone's going to get out and someone's going to get out with either their high school diploma or their associate's degree or maybe they've got into an entire four-year program and they've got a bachelor's degree in business administration and they're going to roll into a world where you have to fill out a job application online but they have no internet experience because they weren't allowed and that's... and it scares my students and that's you know one of those barriers that when we talk about adult education that comes up, that fear of the unknown and the fear of the I'm too old and the fear of why even bother, it's not gonna work anyway. All of those things are what prevent adults from engaging in education in general. And it's just exacerbated inside.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: So I don't know if I answered your question. If nothing else, you're making me think about some other issues. So I wanna clarify for the EdUp audience. Let's talk a bit about scope. So David, I know that you're working at a university with the prison system. Is your scope limited to your state?

Dr. David C. Hayes: Yeah, my scope is limited to my state right now.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: So how many institutions are you working with, for example?

Dr. David C. Hayes: So we've only had, we have, I'm working with one institution inside. And then there are two, no, three, four-year universities that offer limited classes in a couple of different facilities in the state. So it's still not very prolific, but the two-year school that I work with is in six different facilities within the state.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: Okay, right. So that, I mean, that's a good, that's a good reach, David.

Dr. David C. Hayes: It is. It is.

Arti Finn: I'll give you some scope though, because when you talk about correctional institutions that are willing to invest in real education, they are small. We are in 14, 19 states across the country now, 19 states, and they have, we have examples of states like Maryland, where we're in many of the prisons in Maryland, but they're limited to the classrooms. So just like you would have access to technology, you only get it if you're in the classroom. You contrast that with a state like Massachusetts, where they have access, every single person has access to our technology and can participate in programming at any time. Or a state like Tennessee, where we partner with the Department of Labor and they've invested so much that they are, we are deployed across the entire county jail system. So across 95 counties, I think we're in 92 of them. 

So you have to like think about scope and scale too, because as I said, there's 2 million people incarcerated, but another 10 million that cycle in and out, particularly on the jail side. So you're looking at really touching a very small fraction of folks who are incarcerated. And so when people like David talk about Pell, that's fantastic, but it touches so few people. We really have to rethink the purpose of incarceration in this country. 

We're spending something like, I like to use this example and New York State will be very mad at me because I'm going to use them as the example. But you think of the average household income in New York State is $65,000. The average cost of incarceration in New York State is $65,000. That is not sustainable for them or any of the other states that are investing in warehousing people. And then they get out and people are like, well, they're just committing more crimes. They don't have anything else to do. What are they supposed to do? They don't have the skills. They don't have the employers that are willing to hire them. And so we really have to rethink. 

I want to say one other thing because, you know, in the world of education, it's all about statistics, right? Like, what are the measures of success? The one measure of success in corrections is recidivism. 43% is the average recidivism rate in this country. That is such a negative measure of success. How long did it take you to come back into the system is what we measure as opposed to how much time did you spend in programming? How much access did you get to education? What degrees did you earn? How many employers interviewed you? What was your average starting salary? If we really think about changing a system, we have to change the way we measure it.

Dr. David C. Hayes: And that goes back to the changing the minds aspect too. Since we only measure things by recidivism really. So, I mean, that's that original sin black mark, right? So you go to your prison, you get out of prison and the measurement of your success is, are you committing more crimes? And then so the sad part is like all of the funding that we can get is tied to that R number anyway. So are you proving that that recidivism is down? Are you helping communities that way? Like, well, there's other ways, of course, but when we retire everything that way, and that goes back to that idea of the criminal as criminal and nothing else, we have this lack of redemption stories that we actually believe in. They're fine, you know, personal redemption stories where you can rise up from your circumstances and do something great. But the minute you apply that to someone in a carceral setting, it's behind an eight ball already. We as a people, we as a society, aren't as redemption friendly if someone's been in prison.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: Right, and while education is very important, there are other root causes beyond the fact that someone has been academically educated. Because what the two of you are talking about is not just academic education, but sort of social, emotional, life skills readiness. So it's not just reading, writing and arithmetic. I think that's important.

Dr. David C. Hayes: Exactly what, you know, higher education is designed for.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: Right. It's the point of higher education. It's not to make sure you're the best accountant in the world. It's to make sure you're a really good person that happens to be a good accountant. So you talked about this, 10 million folks who cycle in and out of the system. Do you, do either of you work with, and so I'm opposing this in two ways. Do you currently work with those who are on probation and parole? And if you do not, are there plans to do so?

Arti Finn: We absolutely work with people on parole and probation. And a lot of times they're in an alternative to incarceration program. So the judge has said, you're a mom or you have a full-time job. You can be home on house arrest or do your job, but we still need to know that you're doing programming. And so that's when we come in and we say, okay, here's how you get access to programming at your convenience. So a lot of jurisdictions are increasingly understanding that just the, I mean, you can lose your job within 24 hours of incarceration, right? You don't call in one day, you're fired.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: And that's part of the system again.

Arti Finn: Exactly. That makes it more difficult.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: The system itself seems to be very restricted.

Arti Finn: Yes. That's what it's designed for. It's designed for security and warehousing, period. And what we're trying to say is that people are human beings. They've made mistakes. We have to understand that. You know, we're not just talking about the people that are cycling in and out. There's 70 million people in this country with some sort of involvement with the criminal justice system.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: That is true. So that's even larger than the 10 million that we mentioned earlier.

Arti Finn: Exactly. So you can start thinking like, this is not like some, you know, small population we're talking about.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: Yeah, that's right. That's the 70 million, which includes those who are probation and parole, including those who are technically incarcerated.

Arti Finn: Or have or have had some experience with the criminal justice system. So they have a record of some sort, because like David said, once you have that stigma, it stays with you throughout your life. You can't vote. You can't do all of these basic things. The moment somebody does a bad... I mean, I interviewed and I have a podcast. I'm not plugging it on this, but I just want to say I interviewed Larry Miller, the chairman of the Michael Jordan brand. And he talks about, he was incarcerated and he talks about how he had to hide because back in those days you could hide your incarceration. He, I think it's called From the Block to the Boardroom, another great book. And he talks about how he just spent his entire life until his daughter finally convinced him to tell everybody that he actually was incarcerated. He hid it. He spent every day stressed out. He would get massive headaches because he would worry about, my God, are people gonna find out? Luckily, we don't have to live that way anymore. But we still punish people.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: Magnified.

Arti Finn: Exactly, exactly.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: So David, can you share a success story from your experience working with students?

Dr. David C. Hayes: Yeah, there is, now in my situation and on the university side, I am actually prohibited from any contact once someone's released. So that, that again, there's another barrier in the university. Like how do you develop a mentorship and a relationship? I will not go on the record and say that I've ever broken that edict.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: May have happened.

Dr. David C. Hayes: Well, no, of course not. I'm a big rule guy, but, so that's, that's a tough one. Now on the, on the other side, when I'm working in, in the jail system, so the County jail system, I do some tutoring and literacy work in there that that contact is, is, far more open. We don't have the state rules and the state regulations on that one. But, I think my, like my favorite success stories, generally are happening in the classroom. And then I can, I had once in a while we're allowed to use laptop computers. No internet, of course, because that's, that's not allowed. But, when I can see like a 50-year-old man who's been inside for 32 years, open up a computer for the first time and start to do things that he thought was impossible. Then that it's, it's not a, a switch or anything. It's not that light bulb or anything, but you can see that this person is now thinking differently. I think that there is more out there than what there was. 

And, those, those routinely happen even with limited resources, even with not having class all the time, even with sometimes there's a giant lockdown and you don't see people for weeks. There's the, the fact that there are enough people that care and there's organizations like Origin that care, really, help people through their time and seeing that one-on-one as someone's, you know, maybe until your focus has changed. And that's, that's really kind of an amazing thing. I won't trade that for pretty much anything.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: Yeah I can imagine. And Arti, you shared a story earlier, but do you have another success story?

Arti Finn: Yeah. I have so many. And if you want some inspirational ones, you can go on our website because we have them written up too. But there are, I think of the DC jails where you have, we're fully deployed inside the jail there, and folks who got access to our device. There's two in particular, Warren and Salina. And each one of them, Warren used our device and got employed by the DC government where he now works as a mentor advocate. And Salina used it. She was incarcerated in the federal system and just happened to be housed in the DC jail and got access to our device during lockdown. And so they were let out of their cells during, during COVID lockdown for 15 minutes a day. So Salina discovered that our tablet and got her, all of her supplemental education because she had, she had her high school diploma and used it to get IT skills, which she's now employed in California using her IT skills. So for me, that makes my company successful in my mind, right? Because I now have people who are employed. They've shown their kids they can be employed, that there's a different life that doesn't have to involve incarceration. And I should add, they're both sustainably employed.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: So I want to ask both of you, is there anything else you want to add about your work, working with a very unique population and on a need base? This is really a huge asset to those who are incarcerated and the 70 million who have some are filtered through it and affected by the system itself. So David, anything else you want to add about the work that you do?

Dr. David C. Hayes: Just that, you know, we spend three times more on expanding our prison systems than we do on education. And if I can, you know, anyone that's listening to the EdUp podcast probably already knows how powerful education is to begin with. So we're not, we're not changing any minds in this demographic definitely. But, if we could be a little more advocates out there in the world for how much change this could bring and how beneficial this is, regardless of setting, whether it's a K through 12 program, someone's helping to tutor literacy in a County jail, or you're teaching at the college level with some terrible circumstances, whatever it is, it's changing lives. And if we really truly believe in rehabilitation and we'd really truly believe in the capacity for redemption, then there's no way we can ignore this because the only hard data is in education and in our carceral systems to make things better.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: And Arti?

Arti Finn: I want to add a plug because I agree with everything you said, David, but I want employers. I want employers to change their minds about folks with records and to give them a chance. And if we do, we will change the criminal justice system forever because we'll prevent people from going in because all remember all these people that are incarcerated have families that are affected by incarceration. And so for employers to really want to hire, and they're second chance employers. I want employers to really think about this and I will tell them, go to origin.works, sign up and tell us that you're willing to hire. Reach out to us, because we want to change that.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: So, I've already talked about what's next and I have in some way foreseen. Johnny Carson, remember that Johnny Carson episode where he would have the hat on?

Arti Finn: Yes.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: At the envelope. Okay, so here we are at that point. But I talked about perhaps a collaboration between Jackson College and Origin. But what's next for either one of you? If not, perhaps a collab?

Dr. David C. Hayes: Well, I can't speak for Jackson College, I can speak for me. And so I am willing to go anywhere and do anything to kind of get the word out. You can, if you want to visit my sites, it's HayesCriminology.com where I, a bit more about my work and what I do and what we can do to help. But, yeah, I'm willing to do anything. I would love to try and get the Origin items everywhere because they are, I, regardless of who's putting the technology together, there's a couple of different companies, of course, and it just benefits every student that has access to something like that. So, you know, please, that's something that can be so incredibly helpful. And that's a really good segue into the reentry and how the world works. You know, having a tablet that does even just some of the things that you're going to run into makes this outside world less scary. So you don't want to stay, you know, where you're at. You can have that potential to change.

Arti Finn: I'll just add one other...

Dr. David C. Hayes: You got to say one thing, David. You can't have exploitative technology. You've got to have technology that is invested in by the jurisdiction and not by the individual, their friends and family.

Arti Finn: I interrupted you David, but I'll just add to that. If I put myself out of business in 10 years, I will have been successful.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: Yes. I don't know if that's going to happen in 10 years. It's going to happen. Given the current system, so I believe both of you are spot on with this notion of working with the system to perhaps change the system, but sort of the global mindset about individuals. Let me state it differently. I hope that by the time, within 10 years, everybody has access to technology that allows them to create pathways to sustainable employment. So Arti, what might be next for Origin?

Arti Finn: Origin's taking over corrections. Origin is going to change corrections for good forever.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: All right, so I want to make sure that the EdUp audience knows exactly where to find you again. So David, can you plug one more time where you can be found?

Dr. David C. Hayes: Sure, at HayesCriminology.com.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: And Arti, where can Origin, or maybe even your podcast, is okay?

Arti Finn: Yeah, so Origin.Works, my podcast is called Second Chances, and you can reach me at Arti.Finn@origin.works.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: Well, thank you both of you for allowing us to spend this time with you and to our EdUp audience. You have been added up. So I've been waiting to say that because I don't use that on my podcast. And I'm going to celebrate it.

Arti Finn: Excellent.

Dr. Jacob Easley II: But this has been a wonderful time spending with both of you. Thank you so much.

Arti Finn: Thank you, Jacob.