We think everyone who’s joined ACEsConnection has a story to tell. So, we’ll be contacting many of you to ask you a few questions about what inspired you to work on ACEs. We ACEs Connection Network team members will go first, partly because if we want you to participate, we should, too.
What personal or professional moment or event in your life inspired you to work on ACEs?
When I was a sophomore in college, I became involved with two programs that have greatly shaped my life. The first was a class that took us into a maximum-security prison to talk with prisoners and the second was an after-school tutoring program at a local middle school. At the prison I talked with men in their sixties who hoped that one day they would be released. At the school I tutored an at-risk kid, who frankly told me that one day he would go to prison like his father and brothers before him. The older mens’ circumstances seemed to ominously foreshadow the boy’s future. Society had put this child on what seemed like an inevitable path. Despite my best efforts, and some minor victories, by the next fall he had been transferred to a school for struggling students. After this disappointment, I realized that it was important for me to continue to study the link between social disadvantage and the criminal justice system. I wanted to understand the psychological framework of the societal issues, prejudices, stereotypes, and perceptions of justice that put this child on the path he was on and, if nothing changed, would continue to affect his life.
What do you do, and what does your organization do?
I am now a PhD student in Social Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. I study risk factors that lead to incarceration and result from incarceration. I am particularly interested in how relationships are changed by incarceration and how that may affect people’s chances of reoffending. I try to keep my research embedded in the local community, so that it doesn’t suffer from the “ivory tower” syndrome, where researchers are cut off from the people they study and can affect. Additionally, I teach Psychology and Law to undergraduates.
I am also the Graduate Intern for ACEsConnection! I post daily summaries of recent research, I create mini-profiles like this one, and I work on our Wikipedia page (soon to be available!).
How would you like to see trauma-informed practices shape your field?
I hope to see trauma-informed practice become regularly used both while an individual is incarcerated and during reentry into the community. Our current system focuses on control and retribution, but a trauma-informed system would focus more on correction and support. In prison or jail, this would entail providing more services and programs to incarcerated individuals. Some of these may involve counseling or preventative health services, but I think additional job training and reentry planning can also be trauma-informed. By providing this second type of support, which helps an individual to change their environment, we are saying that you are not inherently a bad person, but you have been and are in a difficult situation. I think this is, in itself, trauma-informed. Additionally, once released, an individual should be surrounded by services that support them and continue to help them change their life. I know some people would say that those who commit crimes should not be provided so many services when law-abiding citizens cannot access get them. However, I think it’s worth it, if providing these can ultimately help us create a safer society with less trauma.
When did you learn about ACEs, and how did that change your work (or life)?
I first learned about ACEs when I read the Felitti et al. 1998 article “Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study,” while doing research for a paper on risk factors in the lives of capital defendants. I now often cite ACE studies in my work, because I think they help to demonstrate the diverse effects that ACEs can have on people.
How have you used ACEs in your work or life? Has it changed what you do?
I try not just to think about what people are currently doing, but try to think about the context that led them to this place. This helps me both in understanding peoples behavior in my work and helps me to be a more sympathetic person in everyday life.
How do you hope to contribute to and gain from ACEs Connection?
I hope to continue to build the resources available to the ACEsConnection community, so that people can better implement trauma-informed practices in their work. I also appreciate being involved in this community, because it takes me out of the research domain and puts me in contact with those implementing services.
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