We've all been there. Maybe somebody tells you too much about the twist ending of a movie or they tell you who dies at the end. In other words, you run into a spoiler. How should you handle spoilers until you encounter this boiler?
Let's tell you how we handle spoilers at critics on NPR's pop culture hack hour. Listen by the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Aisha Rascal and this is Sunday Story where we go beyond the news of the day to bring you one big story. Today we're going to talk about the crossroads of two worlds.
You might not normally be put in intersect. Disability rights and criminal justice system. Joining us for this conversation is NPR, a Justice Force, make Anderson welcome to the podcast, Meg. So tell me about what you've been reporting on when it comes to disabilities and crime.
So what I've learned is that many people who end up in the criminal justice system have it disability. That affects their cognitive functioning. That is the way they think, learn, remember problems of and unless they receive care, the problems that landed them in trouble with a lot. They don't go away.
Yeah. I mean, I can see that. But I did find some people trying to address this issue. So let me take you to an office high above downtown Los Angeles.
You have this one for Danny Milicocks. He's a lawyer in the LA County Public Defenders Office. I met him there at his office and on the wall of these photos of people, he has represented him. So this is a client of mine.
He had some really challenging periods of his life. He pointed to a picture of some men in hard hats, posing against the wall. Cox's line is in the back. He's leaning into the photo to make sure he's seen.
He's holding up a power tool. Like it's like a prized possession. And this is a photo of him and his first day at work. And he's got a big grin on his face.
And you can't really tell which of the people in this photo is my client. And I think that's part of the thing I love about this is that when he's successful, you wouldn't know him from anybody else. So these photos are basically like little success stories packed to his wall. Cox says they don't do it.
Keep doing his work and meeting clients for their ad and helping them get to a more stable place. They're also evidence of the specific work Cox has focused on for the last few years. It all started at Asia after he noticed something unusual about many of the clients coming into his office. They were accused of a crime and meeting a lawyer.
I wanted to know their account of what happened and I'd ask them questions. And many of them would struggle with a basic explanation. And it wouldn't even be on significant questions, such as they do it or not. It would just be like, where were you that day?
It seemed like they were having challenges related to some sort of intellectual ability. So these clients were there for the same reason anyone comes into a public defender's office. Right? They had been charged with a crime and they couldn't pay for their own lawyer.
They're already in this position. That's not great because they're facing criminal charges and they don't have the money or the resources to get a private attorney. Exactly. And Cox realized that they needed interventions beyond legal representation.
It seemed clear that there was a tremendous number of these individuals, but it also became clear that not enough work had been done to identify these people to recognize their problems. So we said about to try and figure all this out. But no, a Cox and his team figured out it's pretty unusual. They created a new unit at the Los Angeles County Public Affairs office dedicated to represent people with cognitive disorders.
We'll be right back. This is a Sunday story. I'm joined today by Meg Anderson covers criminal justice for NPR. Meg is bringing us a story about this pioneering effort to address cognitive disabilities among people in the criminal justice system.
So Meg, before we get back to the public defender's office in Los Angeles County, I want to understand what no one was seeing if some of these people keep representing in court. Like what does it mean to have cognitive impairments? Yeah. So the term can definitely feel a little squishy and actually, Cox was saying a pretty broad swath of conditions because all kinds of things can cause an impairment to your cognition or your brain's ability to learn and understand.
And then there are disabilities that start at birth or in childhood. Those are called developmental disabilities. And some of them can affect your cognition too. That would be things like feel alcohol syndrome, down syndrome, or intellectual disability, which limits the person's intelligence or variability, reason, problem solve, do everyday tasks.
Cox is seeing pretty much all of these. So for this story, we're talking about basically any condition that affects brain functioning because those conditions are often the ones that make someone worse off when it comes to navigating the legal system. So I've had some instances in my personal life where I could definitely see how having a cognitive impairment or having something along with your brain could certainly put you in contact with the criminal justice system. It seems like if you're not thinking clearly and maybe don't have resources, you could easily come in contact with the police.
Am I right about that? Totally. And I want to put you into two statistics that I think are really illuminating on that point. So first, according to a survey that federal bureau of justice statistics, people in state and federal prisons are more than twice as likely to report having any disability compared to the general population.
But the most common disability they report is a cognitive one. Other studies point to that over representation too. And then the second one is that people with disabilities are also running places like to become the victims of violent crimes compared to the general population. Again, people with cognitive disabilities are the most at risk there too.
Those are also coming from the federal government. And that's really important to point out because I think that's something that a lot of people don't realize is that people with cognitive disabilities, you're saying they're both convicted of crimes, but they are also the victims of crime. Yeah. And so I talked with Leon, you can believe about that she works on criminal justice issues at the arc that I'm not confident advocate specifically for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
And she says cognitive disabilities, especially when they're not severe, can be invisible at first. Often it doesn't really doesn't recognize they could have gone through their school system, not ever really passing much, but it never got documented. So either guys are recognized or even just kind of dismisses irrelevant. And so without intervention and support can be easy for people with these invisible disabilities, the fall through the cracks.
They might have trouble understanding who the friend who isn't using judgment if they're in that situation, they can be highly suggestible. That makes them vulnerable to being taken advantage of right becoming a victim of crime. And I would think that that also goes the other way as well, right? Yeah.
Those same challenges can get a person in trouble. They can fall in with the wrong crowd. They might have trouble pulling on a job. And I should note that poverty can play a big role here too.
I know same disability can be time consuming and costly. And not even other resources to navigate that or know how advocate for someone who needs more support. Here's a complete again. There are intersections, of course, with poverty because when you're looking at personal disabilities who may have not been able to have access to getting the services that they need early on, that can just increase the situation with time.
So then that person grows that right. And then, you know, they do end up getting in trouble or going to jail or prison even more as you can arise. They go into a system that doesn't address their disability. They probably cannot match worse and probably more likely to commit more crime or get involved with people that will.
I mean, it just sounds like a vicious cycle. And I guess that brings us back to the public defender. You talk to Noah Cox. Yeah, that's right.
So cops have seen this play out, right? People coming in accused of a crime, even a lawyer and a lot more support than what they were getting. So what did he end up doing? Well, after years of noticing this, he established a team in 2021 within the public defender's office.
It's set up specifically to work with people in the public defender who have some sort of cognitive impairment. As far as Cox knows and as far as I could find, it's the only team of a kind in the entire country. Officially, it's made up of Cox and two social workers. There are other lawyers about a tier of time supporting the team.
And then there's also a rotating group of law clerks and interns. Cox will be many of them are college age and unpaid doing what amounts to full time work. I mean, so I mean, it sounds like a scrappy team that's trying to do a lot with not a whole lot, you know, to do a lot with a little, I guess. Yeah, that's exactly right.
They part of that is that they don't have a separate budget for this works. The team was created by, you know, reallocating resources, right? Shifting priorities. So they do get creative where they can and they rely on people who are willing to do more like you said with less.
So what do they actually do? Yeah. So basically the team operates in two phases. First they have a referral system so that public founders in LA who think their clients might have a cognitive impairment can alert them.
And the Cox and his team get these clients some initial testing, which is done also for free by local graduate students. When we come back the story of one criminal defendant who went through that cognitive testing and what happened next. I didn't realize what was wrong. I wasn't a bad person.
I just made that decision. Stay with us. We're back with this Sunday story hearing about an innovative program to try to identify and help criminal defendants with cognitive impairments. So Meg, tell me what happens once a person is identified.
Yeah, so I think the best way to explain what happens next is to tell you about a man named Jimmy. So first we are not using his last name because he is family or worried about the stigma of his criminal record. I met him in with Eric Park in Los Angeles this fall and he was very energetic almost right away. He wanted to show me his workout routine.
I don't know what's his right here. Jimmy is 56 years old. He was born and raised and he said like, I'm very hyper. You know, so I got to work out.
You know, because I got folks my energy because I'm not going to be a while ago. He's small and worried about tattoos on his neck and his glasses that are a little too big for his face. And for as long as he can remember, he's been getting trouble right with his family, with his teachers, with the police. I got a restaurant.
I was constantly getting arrested. I was a little kid. I wasn't a bad person. I just made bad decisions.
He has been homeless at times and struggled with drug abuse and he has been in and out of prison most of his life. Mostly for possessions of drugs and theft, but also for some really serious crimes including sexual assault and robbery. It was just revolving floor around like, it's like I was just a flooring in the background in other three steps. It was just a lot of problems with what we were living like.
No, it was just a lot of problems with what we were living like. No, a cop remembers the first time Jimmy came to his office in late 2021. He was there in a residential burglary charge. It was his third strike.
He already had two violent felonies on his record. So now he could face in much charge for sentence 25 years to life in prison. So there was a lot on the line for him that day and he introduced himself to Jimmy the way he introduced himself to all his clients. My name is Noah Cox.
I'm your lawyer and as your lawyer I have to and only to responsibilities. The first responsibility is to help you get the best possible outcome on your case. And the second responsibility I have is to help you understand everything along the way. And so the law sets up attorney clients confidentiality so that you know everything you and I talk about is a secret.
And it's your secret. It's not my secret. So I can't tell anyone. I can't tell the judge.
I can't tell the prosecutor. I can't tell your mother and I can't tell my mother. And that set up so that you can feel comfortable saying I did it and I need help or I didn't do it and I need help. And then Cox says Jimmy started talking about his case.
He was trying very hard to tell me something that was very important to him, but I could not understand what he was trying to say. This sounds like, you know, what Cox was describing earlier where he has a person in his office who he's supposed to be representing, but that person can't really express themselves. Yeah, that's exactly right. But by the time Jimmy came to his office, Cox had a plan.
Jimmy went through that initial testing, which did indicate a cognitive impairment. And this is where things get a little more formal with that initial testing hand. Cox asked the judge in Jimmy's birthday case to appoint a neuropsychologist to evaluate them. Those tests indicated that Jimmy had leak memory skills and leak executive functioning skills.
Those health person make plans. So I'll problem this manage time and his IQ score indicated a significant limitation in his intellectual functioning. So he was ultimately diagnosed with an intellectual disability. So once that happened, what happened to Jimmy's case?
What do you do? So this is where phase two happens, making me argument before judge that Jimmy's crime and really his life of crime was related to his cognitive impairments. And that with the right support, he'd be able to live a life where he follows the law. And Jimmy's case, Cox and his team believed that an alternative to prison, sometimes known as a version would be a better fit.
And part of making that argument convincing to a judge is laying out a clear plan for what that support would look like. Well, I mean, that makes sense. I mean, I would think if you're a judge would be easier to agree to someone not going to prison is you have this alternative plan in place so that they don't commit any more crimes. Yeah.
And so for Jimmy, he wanted to show that he was eligible for California's regional centers. Those are network support services specifically for people with developmental disabilities. So when you say that, we've developed mental disabilities. That means you've had that disability since childhood?
Yeah, that's right. So basically the defense you wanted to show that Jimmy had always had his disability. So they gathered as many records as they could and the interview Jimmy's family to get a sense of his childhood, including his older sister Sylvia. We're also not using her last name since it's the same as Jimmy's.
So Jimmy likes, he has a light personality where he loves to have fun. He has a good sense of humor. He jokes a lot. That's him on a good day.
Sylvia has a strained relationship with her brother. She and her sister help him where they can, but they don't always trust him. She says they had a rough childhood. We did grow up in an abusive household.
My father was very abusive. It manifested in different ways in each one of us. It's impossible to know how that abuse contributed to Jimmy's ability to function in the world or how it contributed to his serious mental health problems, which he also has. But Sylvia says as long as she can remember, her brother has struggled.
Jimmy, he's 56 years old. He's never held a job in his life and he doesn't know how to function like a normal adult. Jimmy knew something was different about her brother. He was late to crawl.
Like to speak, he couldn't do his paper out on his own. He couldn't remember how to adjust the water temperature in bathtub. He struggled a lot in school. And Sylvia says Jimmy started getting trouble with the police before he even hit his teen years.
It makes me feel bad for him that he didn't get any extra support and he was labeled as bad. I think it was a self-fulfilling prophecy for him the more he was labeled bad. I think the more he came back. Sylvia told all of this Cox's team during the course of several interviews.
She sent hours to talk to him with them and so did her mother and sister. After all those interviews, Cox's team submitted an application to those regional centers in California. They argued that Jimmy had had a disability since childhood and that he was in fact eligible for the state services. How important was this piece of it?
Like him getting accepted to those regional centers. Being eligible would be a big deal. These centers are cast-man funded and once you're eligible, you're eligible for life. The state eventually agreed.
And because of that, the judge and prosecutor agreed as well to get a diversion in his birthday case. And all of that to more than three years. Jimmy was in jail that whole time. It's very unusual for somebody who's 50 years old or older to be accepted by regional center at that age because we have to prove retrospectively that this condition existed 30 or more years ago.
But ultimately, regional centers said yes. I started crying. I was so happy because here's a person who had been under supported and not been given the things he needed to succeed for his whole life. So what kind of support does Jimmy now have from the state?
The regional center found him a group on the live end where he has supervision all along. He's also now getting out of the health treatment and substance abuse counseling. And he goes to a behavior management day program five days a week. All of this is happening in place of prison.
But he has a follow this plan going to that day program going to his appointments, thanks over not getting any new crimes and a poll slew of other commitments for two years or he may face prosecution for his crimes and go to prison. And again, he was facing 25 years to life because it was a third strike. So he had been in some serious trouble. I would imagine that there are critics of these diversion programs who say, look, if these people have committed real harm, you know, they shouldn't be allowed to go to a diversion program, they need to face punishment.
Yeah, and it's true that Jimmy has done a lot of harm in his community. I talked a Lisa do guard about that. She co leads purpose dignity action or PDA, which designs community based responses to public safety programs. She's a leading thinker in the country and what makes the version programs successful.
And she says they often operate on the premise that incarceration makes people worse than when they went in, but that that can seem to some people like leniency. We have all that raised in an environment that teaches that negative consequences are what we do when we take a problem seriously. The accountability means threatening someone that has responses. So she wasn't familiar with the LA program and they'll talk about it, but her initial impression was that it's not a good thorough defense work, but she says that sometimes I'm going to be the public defender.
It's often too late right. The harm has already been done. Do that as the earlier someone can take an exit ramp off the road to prison better. Well, so, you know, just thinking more broadly like what were her thoughts on what makes the diversion program successful.
So first there are many different kinds of diversion programs around the country. All these things are little differently. They serve different people veterans people with mental illness people with substance abuse issues. And so the first thing that they do is they have to become skeptics because they've seen these programs play out.
Anyways, that we're really disappointing person goes on to make our crime. So then like how do you do it right? Do you guys have the first thing that needs happen is that whoever is experiencing the problem, the problematic behavior, right, the victims or the witnesses of the assault, the robbery, whatever it may be, they need to feel like there's no longer threat. That's what traditionally putting someone in jail does.
And so if you're not doing that, do you guys have the alternative has to be good. It isn't better just because it's happening outside of the legal system and so what we do is poor them pretty soon society is just going to say, well, that's an idea. I'm actually sure that the people in jail is the only thing that really put on what works. It's important to note there are high rates of recidivism for those who receive routine prosecution and punishment.
Basically jail is a very imperfect solution still do. It says the alternative to prison has to actually help the person who committed the crime to a place where they won't commit another one. The design of the program really matters. She says you have to get that underlying issues that we drug use, mental illness and undiagnosed disability some combination or something else.
And in the case of Jimmy, it was all of those things. Yeah, that's right. And he writes as to tackle that right. There are four main pillars to help get to that better place.
You get them a safe place to live, you get them access to health care, you help them build connections to other people and you help them find hope or meaning. in their lives. We all of that sounds like it takes a lot of time and money and resources to really do that. That's what it does.
Take a team in LA right there operating on a shoestring budget and general public vendors are already really overworked. It can be hard for agencies for lawyers to make the case right pun intended for all these resources. But when a person is given support right and actually gets better advocates of these programs, you can actually close that revolving prison door for good. And I say in the long run, that's actually cheaper for society.
Do a good sense if you do all that, you can have unexpected allies right. Like police and prosecutors, even victims who often just don't want whatever happened to them to happen to anyone else. So in Los Angeles, how do we know if the program there is working? Well, so far we don't.
The team says that they have provided consultation and assessments in more than 500 legal cases. And they have represented more than 30 people who are facing felony charges and who were granted diversion. But it's hard to define what success would even be. Right?
Is it that someone who commits another crime, do probation violations count as a failure? How about misdemeanors? And the team is also only a few years old. So it's too early to know if it will have lasting results for the people they represented.
And that's true for Jimmy too. He's only about halfway through that two year diversion. Well, so how is Jimmy doing? I checked in with him this fall.
Progress has not been linear. The court has been monitoring Jimmy more closely in response because he wasn't regularly taking his medication. But his days are looking a lot different than they used to. He attends a day program.
He does the therapy sessions. He lives in a group home with other adults with disabilities. I guess what he thought would have happened. I mean, not gotten inversion.
I went back to prison. I went back to prison. I went back to prison. I went back to prison.
He was like all the time. He just feels useless like that. He says these days he feels happy and calm. All he can say is that the officer is more than prison has to offer.
The prison has to offer me. You know, because I'm just faced my life completely. And to see back to my life to the point where you want, I don't even use drugs anymore. I'm not almost anymore.
I'm not frustrated anymore. I'm just like taking my life where you're doing. So now, you're on with a lot of support and he's giving his life to the queen's face. Well, Meg, thank you so much for bringing us this reporting.
You're so welcome. Thank you. That was Meg Anderson. It criminal justice correspondent with NPR's National Desk.
This episode of The Sunday Story was produced by Andrew Lambo and edited by Jeanette. It was fact-checked by Nick Lettcon. The engineer for this episode was Robert Rodriguez. The rest of The Sunday Story team includes Justin Mann and Leana Simstrom.
Irena Gucci is our executive producer. I'm Aisha Roscoe. Up first is back to Carl with all the news we need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.