On our New Thinking podcast, Emily Galvin Almanza talks about the urgent task of transforming the justice system.
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For too long, the criminal justice system has only had one setting: punishment. But punishment doesn’t get us safety, or even accountability.
That’s the case that Emily Galvin Almanza makes in her new book, The Price of Mercy: Unfair Trials, a Violent System, and a Public Defender’s Search for Justice in America. A former public defender, Galvin Almanza has seen the effects of that punitive approach on the more than 2,000 clients she defended over her career.
The data on our criminal court system reflects a very intuitive reality: when you’re using violence, lack of opportunity, trauma, to try to get people to thrive, it’s not happening!
She has also seen firsthand what can happen when the system breaks from its typical M.O. As a teenager, she had an encounter with the justice system that could have derailed her life. Instead, a judge gave her a second chance—and set her on the path she’s on now.
Today, Galvin Almanza is the co-founder and executive director of Partners for Justice, a nonprofit that helps public defender offices across the country better support their clients in all aspects of life.
There are so many people I have represented who the system wanted to throw away, who have turned out to be phenomenal entrepreneurs, parents, innovators.
Emily Galvin Almanza joined us on our New Thinking podcast to talk about her new book, how we can communicate solutions in a way that resonates with people, and the urgent task of transforming the justice system.