Tweet from Mayor Steve Benjamin
7:54 PM - 25 Oct 2019

I will host the Inaugural Collegiate Bipartisan Presidential Forum at @BenedictEDU “Students First with candidates on Sat. & Sun. in Antisdel Chapel.

The discussion will begin at noon.

Several of the presidential candidates are confirmed to attend.

Open to the public.

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VIDEO: Pete Buttigieg at the Benedict College Criminal Justice Forum

Key Excerpts

ON SECURING JUSTICE FOR INDIVIDUALS WHO WERE WRONGLY IMPRISONED

You know, back when I thought I was going to be a journalist, I had an opportunity to spend a summer in Chicago. And it's too long of a story to tell here, but because of a story that I got to work on for a local TV station, someone was exonerated who had spent I think nearly 10 years of a life sentence for a homicide that he did not commit. And the thing that was amazing to me when we went to interview him as he was on the cusp of being released was the grace that he had and the hope that he had for the future after everything that had been done to him.

We are a society that must accept responsibility for the terrible wrong that is perpetrated against somebody who is wrongfully convicted and imprisoned. It is why we need to fund ending the backlog on testing of DNA that can exonerate people. It is why that people in that situation should be compensated at a substantial financial level. Nothing can bring back those years, but we absolutely must meet society's responsibility to set them up for success and to compensate them for the time that they've lost. And there needs to be accountability for prosecutors who knowingly get in the way of evidence that could be exculpatory, and we've seen that happen time and time again. There needs to be a federal process to shed a light on those cases.


ON TRUMP COMPARING IMPEACHMENT TO LYNCHING

[W]e can damn well do better than a president who compares his own impeachment -- a constitutional process he brought on himself -- to lynching, which, just to be very clear, is a pattern of white supremacist terrorism, and claims that his supposedly unfair treatment gives him insight into the criminal justice system. It means he does not understand what reform is about. Because it is about justice, it is about wealth, and it is about power -- and his story is a story of somebody born into wealth, benefiting from the power that comes with that, using that to accumulate further wealth, who has now used that to gain power. He has abused that power and he will be held accountable.

It could not be more different than the situation of millions of Americans who were denied wealth, denied access and inheritance that is so important in our economy, through the generational theft that began with slavery but has continued over time -- have been denied power and have had power asserted over them by means of poverty and by means of suppression.


ON BUILDING TRUST BETWEEN COMMUNITIES AND POLICE

That's so important, and the work that the organization is doing I think reflects the fact that police trust and legitimacy is important in order for police to be able to do their job in order for neighborhoods to be safe and in order for Black communities to know that they will be policed and encounter police with justice and not be over-policed or view the police as an occupying force. [...]

I want a police officer to have the mentality of a city council member, to view the people that they encounter as people they serve in and should solve problems for. And one of the reasons police legitimacy is important is not just of course, that we cannot go on with a drumbeat of news about violent encounters with police officers and the harm that that does to people who are impacted, but also knowing that so much, of course the majority of a violent crime is a crime against a civilian by another civilian. Well, if we want to break that cycle, a person who is in a cycle of violence needs to know that they can trust the police, so that they call the police instead of calling their cousin. And if we don't have that, then everybody is worse off.
 

ON DECREASING YOUTH INCARCERATION

Treating youth as adults in the system virtually guarantees that they will have struggles for the rest of their lives and it, it sentences them to deeper involvement in the criminal justice system in the worst ways then, then there should be....We should call for an end in life without parole for offenses when somebody is a juvenile. We need to get the profit motive out of this. I would say for the prison system as a whole, but certainly when the incarceration of youth is involved, nobody should be making a buck off of locking up children.

We have a code school in South Bend teaching young people to code that spend time with the people in our juvenile justice system, encouraging them and teaching them coding skills. And it turned out you didn't have to teach him much. They were, they were sharp. Some of them were-- had been bored because nobody had believed in the power that they had in their intellect. These are the kinds of things that we can be supporting. And if we do, it benefits the young people who were impacted directly, but it benefits our whole community. Our whole society is better off. That is the pathway to safety with justice, and our laws need to reflect that.
 

ON INCREASING THE NUMBER AND QUALITY OF PUBLIC DEFENDERS

So first of all, public defenders should be compensated in a way that's comparable to prosecutors. It's just as important, often more challenging, and somebody is at an unfair disadvantage when the person who is serving them is both overworked in terms of caseload and under compensated, which makes it difficult for even the best people to remain in that field. So we need to act to increase compensation for public defenders and we need to act to increase the number of public defenders.

By the way, these two things go hand in hand; when they're more compensated, better compensated, if we have adequate funding and require it, then we're also going to see more people go into the field. And that can help us with the fact that they're just spread way too thin. Lastly, we need to make sure that -- and this will be part of the judicial philosophy of the kinds of people I point to the bench -- that we recognize that the right to counsel doesn't just mean that you technically have a lawyer somewhere. It means the right to adequate counsel, otherwise that right's not being recognized at all. And that is something that will be very important to me in terms of the case law that I would hope would be built in the judiciary in the future.
 

ON ESTABLISHING A NATIONAL REVIEW BOARD FOR POLICE SHOOTINGS

Another thing that I didn't have a chance to mention in my comments but I think is important, is that we review and learn from these incidents over and above the justice process. So, when there is an incident, especially an incident of police violence that turns out to be murder, as has happened case after case, then of course there needs to be justice there. But also, a lot of cities have built models where they treat every incident that happens --from an issue around a demonstration, to a police shooting -- as a learning opportunity. And just like we have a National Transportation Safety Board that figures out what happens when there is a plane crash, we need a National Incident Review Board, I believe, that is not about assigning blame -- that happens at the accountability level directly -- but is about leading to more policies and changes that need to happen in the aftermath of these incidents.


Read the full interview transcript below:

Mayor Buttigieg: Thank you. Thank you for the introduction, De'Keither, and your leadership in local government. I think we'd be well served if national government resembled the best in local government instead of the other way around, and I appreciate what you are doing. In the same vein, I want to thank my fellow mayor, Steve Benjamin, a leader within the community of mayors. And I want to thank everyone who made this event possible -- in particular, Benedict College and its students for the hospitality here -- and I am honored to be with passionate reformers, activists, and advocates today. And given the conversation that is going on these last 24 hours or so here, I am particularly looking forward to a serious discussion about what it would be like to have a president who is actually committed to criminal justice reform. I am looking forward to a discussion about how we can do better than a president who calls for death for the Central Park Five, refuses to apologize even after they are exonerated, and then proposes to resume the death penalty at the federal level. If we are serious about criminal justice reform, we can do a lot better than that. We need a president who can do better than encourage police officers to rough up and not "be too nice" to those that they encounter. We can do better.

 

And we can damn well do better than a president who compares his own impeachment -- a constitutional process he brought on himself -- to lynching, which, just to be very clear, is a pattern of white supremacist terrorism, and claims that his supposedly unfair treatment gives him insight into the criminal justice system. It means he does not understand what reform is about. Because it is about justice, it is about wealth, and it is about power -- and his story is a story of somebody born into wealth, benefiting from the power that comes with that, using that to accumulate further wealth, who has now used that to gain power. He has abused that power and he will be held accountable. It could not be more different than the situation of millions of Americans who were denied wealth, denied access and inheritance that is so important in our economy, through the generational theft that began with slavery but has continued over time -- have been denied power and have had power asserted over them by means of poverty and by means of suppression.

 

So, in order to explain why I am running for president and why my presidency would be different, I want to ask you to picture what it is going to be like that first day when Donald Trump is no longer the president of the United States. I want you to really picture it. Now, there's always first a sense of relief and a murmur of approval when I paint that picture, right, of what it's going to be like that first day -- because this presidency is going to come to an end one way or the other. And it will be a relief to move past the chaos and the corruption, but really think about what this country is going to be like that day. We will be even more torn up and polarized as a country than we are right now. The sun will be coming up over a country still facing the crises and the challenges that have brought us to this point -- they did not take a vacation for the Trump presidency or for the impeachment process. The sun will come over a country that is approaching the point of no return when it comes to our climate. It will come up over an economy where millions of Americans cannot get ahead and where opportunity is still not equal. The sun is going to come up over a nation beset by a gun violence epidemic that is stealing lives in our houses of worship, in our schools, and on the streets of cities like mine every day. And our next president has to be prepared to offer a vision that is bold enough to take on those problems and capable of unifying the American people. So I'm running to be the president who can pick up the pieces of our divided nation and help put it back together, and we cannot do that without meaningful criminal justice reform.

 

When our system is as unequal as it is now -- with racism so firmly embedded in its foundations -- we cannot really call it a justice system at all. Now, the First Step Act was a solid first step, but if the president thinks he ought to get an award for signing it, let's pause to acknowledge the leadership of people like Congressman Hakeem Jeffries in putting that bill together. And yes, that also means acknowledging the leadership of my friend and competitor, Senator Cory Booker, who made that happen -- along with all of his House and Senate colleagues.

 

Whether you have a courtroom that doesn't provide adequate defense, or a classroom where minor infractions are leading to major punishments, we still see a system that inflicts, and reflects, and compounds injustice -- and South Carolina knows this all too well. Despite making up less than 30% of the overall population, here in South Carolina, Black citizens account for more than 60% of the incarcerated population. And for those who have served their time and are looking to get back on their feet, state policies compound federal policies -- like the exclusion from support for housing, education, and health -- all but pushing people back into a cycle of incarceration.

 

I come at these issues from the perspective of a mayor of a diverse city who has seen how the shadow of our nation's history of racism complicates every dimension of our lives, from housing to health, from education to economic empowerment, from access to justice to access to the ballot. I also come at this shaped by my own story and search for belonging. Everyone's experience of exclusion in this country is different. I have not had the experience of being more likely to be pulled over or less likely to be called back for a job interview because of a stereotypically Black name, or less likely to be believed when describing symptoms of pain, as has been shown to be the case for Black women in clinical environments today. But I do have a propulsion to act on these issues from my own, very different experience, because I do have a memory of knowing the war that can break out in the heart of a young person who realizes that a basic fact about him could dictate his future, could mean that he will be feared, will be hated, will be subject to random violence, will be denied opportunity. And I also know something of the amazing power of activism and advocacy, solidarity and alliance. Because as someone who knows what it is like to see your rights come up for debate in the political square, somebody whose marriage exists by the grace of a single vote on the United States Supreme Court, I have an understanding of why political decisions matter, why politics matters. It matters because the decisions they make in those big white buildings flow into our families and our communities, our workplaces, even our marriages and our lives. And I come at this issue as an American, having put my life on the line for this country, reflecting on our history, and realizing that of all the forces that have come close to actually destroying this country, of all our enemies, foreign and domestic, the one that actually came nearest to ending America is white supremacy. It happened during the Civil War, and I believe that if we do not destroy white supremacy in our lifetime, it could well destroy the American project in our lifetime. Lastly, I come at this as a person of faith, mindful of the scripture that says that we are to always remember those who are imprisoned as though we were in prison next to them -- and I believe that has implications, even as somebody who believes that when you are in office, you serve people of every religion and of no religion equally.

 

We are called to do better, and the idea of the Douglass Plan for Black America that I have put forward rests on the knowledge that it is not enough to replace a racist policy with a neutral policy and expect justice to find its way forward on its own. We have to bring intention -- as much intention and resources as we brought into the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe -- but this time, it needs to be invested right here at home to deal with the issue of systemic racism before it constrains this entire nation. And that is not only a matter of criminal justice, because the Black experience in America is not just about criminal justice. But we know how much we've got to do when it comes to criminal justice -- to cut incarceration in half, which we can do by ending incarceration for drug possession offenses and eliminating mandatory minimums, and at the state level, doubling funding for decarceration efforts and incentivizing states to process evidence backlogs to prevent people from languishing in jail while they have not even been given the chance to see the results. And with order over 43,000 young people behind bars on any given day, we are going to place a big emphasis on overhauling the juvenile justice system. We are going to provide $100 million in grants to states to close youth prisons and repurpose them to serve the needs of children. We are going to ensure better conditions for people while incarcerated and better opportunity when released -- and when I am president, we will end the use of prolonged solitary confinement, because it is torture, and the United States does not torture. We will demonstrate that we understand basic human decency -- from making sure people can make phone calls to loved ones without being gouged by someone seeking a profit, to ensuring that we offer free women's hygiene products to women who are incarcerated, supporting a real shot at a second chance, restoring Pell Grant access to the incarcerated and banning the box -- because incarceration should not only be about detention, it should be about redemption, and people should be able to get back on their feet when they leave.

 

Finally, we have got to improve police training and accountability. The pain that followed the death of Eric Logan in my own city, and the almost weekly news of violent encounters from around the country, show us what is at stake in ensuring that policing is known to be just and accountable in every community. That means more transparency, standardizing data reporting, a red flag system, and a better pipeline for national service so that we can have the best kinds of police officers -- which is why I am proposing that we develop a national police academy, along the line of the US service academies, which will offer a four year college degree in policing that includes an emphasis on things like deescalation and civil rights. And we will raise the legal standard under which officers are expected to demonstrate if they are justified in using lethal force, and promote legislation to end qualified immunity so that accountability truly is equal for all.

 

There is a lot more in there than I can describe in a set of comments, so I would invite you to visit peteforamerica.com to learn more, and I am looking forward to having a discussion now about what is at stake and what we can do. Thank you very much, again, for the opportunity to be with you today.

 

Sen. Eddie Melton: Good afternoon. My name is Eddie Melton, I'm a State Senator in Indiana, representing Gary, Merrillville, Hobart, Crown Point, Lake Station, and New Chicago. Thank you. I have the unique honor and pleasure of interviewing my friend and colleague -- and fellow Hoosier -- here today. So, let's join in a very robust conversation, and looking forward to hearing from you today.

 

Mayor Buttigieg: Sounds good.

 

Sen. Alright. So mayor, first off, I just want to congratulate you on your success. There are so many Hoosiers across the state extremely proud of you and honored to see you on the national stage and addressing very critical issues. Today, we want to have a discussion on a variety of topics in regards to criminal justice reform. I was recently in South Bend a couple days ago, and individuals spoke to me about various concerns and issues. I know as mayor, you have witnessed and you have seen a variety of things take place. You mentioned in your remarks, in terms of the death of Eric Logan in South Bend at the hands of a police officer. What did you learn from that experience, and as president, what policies would you implement to address this on a national level?

 

Mayor Buttigieg: Well, the biggest thing that we learned in the aftermath of this police shooting, which is being investigated to this day -- I called for an independent investigation and it is running its course -- but what we realized is, we didn't have to wait for that in order to act. What we know is that all of these issues are connected, and beyond what happened in an individual incident, part of why there is such anguish in a community when this happens is that it ties to a greater sense of fear and a wall of mistrust between communities of color -- especially the black community -- and those who are sworn to serve them. We also know that it is not only about policing, it is about economic empowerment too. And so, we are working all of these things at once. We set up a community process where individuals concerned about policies had a chance, not only to learn about them, but actually give their input to consider changing the policies on things like the use of force, the way body cameras are used in the city -- we have them but they did not serve us well in this case-- how recruiting works, because we have got to have a more diverse to police department, and this has been a real challenge for departments across the country, and making sure that we have the right standards for accountability and officer discipline. And we have been able to make it into an empowering experience for people who are concerned, and we need to continue in that direction, because these things need to be managed out in the open. There has got to be transparency in order to have accountability. But the other thing we learned, as I said, is everything is connected. And so, we are stepping up our efforts to make sure that the city is doing business, for example, with businesses owned by  minorities. We have been working on this for years, but we have been able to hit the next level this year because of some research that gives us the legal foundation to set goals. And by the same token, nationally, I am proposing we set goals for 25% of the federal government's business to be done with businesses owned by those who have been historically excluded -- because we know there is a connection between economic disempowerment and the fact that people of color are more likely to be encountering the criminal justice system. We have to take every piece together; it is true locally, it is even more true nationally.

 

Sen. Eddie Melton: Right. So as president -- what can a president do? Being a mayor, having experience seeing these situations, what would you do day one to address these issues?

 

Mayor Buttigieg: So much. So, I mentioned a few of them here -- things like setting up a different standard around policing, making sure that the federal system is leading the way toward decarceration. Look, there is still this myth that locking people up makes us safe. We are the most locked up country in the world and we are certainly not the safest, so there is every piece of evidence that cutting incarceration in half will make America safer. One of the things we see in South Bend, and I know your community has been affected by this too, is a generation of youth who have experienced the incarceration of a parent, which is right alongside the experience of violence as a young person in terms of something that can make somebody more likely to have issues in their own life later on. Incarceration that did more harm than the offense that it was intended to address -- that is why we need to end mandatory minimums, it is why we need to end incarceration as a response to drug possession. Another thing that I didn't have a chance to mention in my comments but I think is important, is that we review and learn from these incidents over and above the justice process. So, when there is an incident, especially an incident of police violence that turns out to be murder, as has happened case after case, then of course there needs to be justice there. But also, a lot of cities have built models where they treat every incident that happens --from an issue around a demonstration, to a police shooting -- as a learning opportunity. And just like we have a National Transportation Safety Board that figures out what happens when there is a plane crash, we need a National Incident Review Board, I believe, that is not about assigning blame -- that happens at the accountability level directly -- but is about leading to more policies and changes that need to happen in the aftermath of these incidents.

 

Sen. Eddie Melton: You mentioned the youth aspect to this. You know, in Indiana we're not fully funding our schools--

 

Mayor Buttigieg: Right.

 

Sen. Eddie Melton: --the best way we should be. The school-to-prison pipeline system that we are seeing across the country, in particular in communities like Gary, like South Bend, Indiana, we see a significant amount of Black and Latino students being expelled from school for minor offenses. How do we address that issue, and as president, what type of policies would you implement to say, how do we turn the tide in terms of students being expelled from school?

 

Mayor Buttigieg: Yeah, this really needs leadership from the top. Because what we see is, the same incident leads to an overreaction, suspension that then leads to detention -- and then you get into this youth justice system, if we can call it that; certainly, it is a youth incarceration system that tends to perpetuate these problems. It sends a message to young people that we don't believe that they are going to go anywhere but prison. And it is that psychological violence, as the procedural problems, that are such a big deal. But we can make a difference. How? Well first of all, incentivizing the right kind of relationship between police and students. When we have something like a police athletic league where relationships are being formed, that is part of how we can inspire students to grow up and become police officers. But when police presence in schools leads to over-policing, leads  in some cases to violence, we have got to look at how these programs are structured, and we should not be funding ones that tend to contribute to a school-to-prison pipeline.

 

Sen. Eddie Melton: Right.

 

Mayor Buttigieg: We've also got to promote alternative to incarceration programs at the juvenile level. And we've got to treat, look, we got to treat kids like kids -- the brain is still being developed, and we have got to raise the age at which youth can be tried as adults and end the practice of life imprisonment for people who are not even fully formed into the people they are going to be.

 

Sen. Eddie Melton: Alright. You brought up, kind of, the over-policing in schools. What are your thoughts on resource officers? Do you see it as a benefit? Do you see it as a pro or a con? What are your thoughts on that?


Mayor Buttigieg: It's really problematic. Look, I don't mean to paint a broad brush. I have seen cases where resource officers believe in the kids and they view themselves as mentors, but more often than not, there is the risk of them basically being treated as armed guards, not guarding the kids, but policing the kids, and that's where it goes off the rails. So we need to review all of the SRO programs that get federal funding. And if they show evidence of having that effect, then they just should not be getting federal support.


Sen. Eddie Melton: Right. You know, we talk about youth, we talk about the entire gambit. I have a lot of friends that have driven without driver's license, and this is a significant issue especially for those (inaudible) have had an offense that requires that the state take their driver's license away from them, which prohibits them from either going into a job, prohibits them from going to school, a health care. Many of our communities are transportation deserts, we don't have adequate transportation services. What would you do as president in terms of addressing the current ability for states to take away individuals' drivers license?


Mayor Buttigieg: It's such an important point, and we need to change this policy because it's almost ordering people back into the justice system. In South Bend, some of the people that we have worked with, we do one event, kind of event, called a call-in with people who are really at risk of being involved in violent crime, but we think if we could get them a job, would want to and be ready to change. And there's about an hour where they hear a message from law enforcement as well as faith leaders, and when I attend, I usually stand kind of by the door so they could-- they head for the door afterwards. We make sure there's food and we try to stop and talk. And when you talk to these men -- they're almost always men -- who are working or have a chance to find work, it's usually in Elkhart, which is about an hour away from our city or 45 minutes. Good jobs, good manufacturing jobs there, but if they don't have a license or they can't get their license cleared up, it's incredibly hard for them to get that job. We see it in South Carolina where so many Black youth are in rural areas that are these transportation deserts. So first of all, we got to do something about making sure that we have better public transportation, so that you're not always depending on an unreliable cousin with an unreliable car, and that's one missed shift away from you getting fired, but also make sure that we don't create barriers to being able to get your license. And this is just one of the many ways in which being incarcerated is expensive. We pile on more and more costs, and people sometimes make cents, pennies an hour when they're working while incarcerated, making license plates or different things, and meanwhile have denied the opportunity to get Pell grants for education, have a Medicaid exclusion, so there's no continuity of care between when you're in and when you're out, which is a huge challenge for people with addiction right now. And when you do get out, you can't get section 8 housing, when we know that access to safe and stable housing is one of the best predictors for whether somebody who is released is going to make it. So all of these, in addition to what you're talking about with a license issue, have to change. Now the government can't dictate it because it's a state decision, but there's a lot of carrots and there's a lot of sticks that you can offer from federal policy, and we should link federal funding to states having an enlightened policy on making sure that people get the chance to drive.


Sen. Eddie Melton: That's good. You mentioned the call-ins and there is a program I know that the city of Gary, our mayor implemented called Gary for Life, I think as the same similar model that you all have. Can you talk a little bit more about that and how it helps residents and those that are on that track in terms of incarceration? How does it help the population?


Mayor Buttigieg: Well it's based on the knowledge that there are a lot of people who are caught up in group or gang related violence. It's often the only social cohesion they've known. They might be teenagers, they're 16 to 24 or so, but that they will, they will find their way out if we help them. The messages, you will-- we have to stop this violence, but we want to help you. And we have been able working through partners like Goodwill that create jobs for people to help them get on their feet. And when that happens, it sends a different message. It tells them that your community expects more from you right than for you to go back to prison. And we certainly want more for you than for you to be shot or shoot somebody. And this is a whole community effort. Look, we got to recognize that violence prevention is not something we can just say is only the job of the police. It is the job of the community. That means faith. That means the city. That means the police. That means families. And by the way, another issue that's at stake is neighborhood stability because the other thing that helps people get on the right track is the eyes of a neighborhood or an extended family. So even if you don't have both parents in your life -- I know sometimes on a given block there will be one person, and she's usually a grandmother or great grandmother and she is on her porch and she knows exactly what is going on and young men in the neighborhood may or may not respond to the police, but they will definitely respond to Ms. Gail.


Sen. Eddie Melton: Right.


Mayor Buttigieg: Which is one of many reasons why housing policy is involved here too because we want Ms. Gail on that porch and we want her in her home. And when we're talking about a neighborhood that people have been redlined into and are now being gentrified out of, which is happening in city after city, that has consequences for the social fabric of the neighborhood. It's one of the reasons why our Douglass plan also includes a piece on housing and a 21st century Homestead Act to help people stay in their communities and build up equity in their homes.


Sen. Eddie Melton: Alright, good stuff. We could talk about this all day. I want to make sure we give the audience enough time and opportunity to ask questions. So we have folks in the audience that are going to have a microphone. So I'll let the students who help us out.


Question: Regina (inaudible) from the National Black Police Association. My question is to you, in regards to 21st century policing, what would you recommend to police agencies across the country regarding the pillar of building trust and legitimacy?


Mayor Buttigieg: That's so important, and the work that the organization is doing I think reflects the fact that police trust and legitimacy is important in order for police to be able to do their job in order for neighborhoods to be safe and in order for Black communities to know that they will be policed and encounter police with justice and not be over-policed or view the police as an occupying force. So some things that would make a difference, first of all, of course, having more diverse police departments. This is not easy. This has been a struggle as I've been very candid about in our own community, but we know that with the right kind of incentives and things like the national police academy that I'm proposing, that we can build up that pipeline and help in particular young Black men view themselves potentially having a future in law enforcement. A second thing is to incentivize police coming from the communities that they serve. Another way to make sure that they're viewed as neighborhood and community problem solvers, not as people from the outside and viewed with that kind of hostility. The third is to make sure that we really reinforce programming that's not just about enforcement. It's why foot patrols are important. It's why these athletic leagues that create, these relationships are important. I want a police officer to have the mentality of a city council member, to view the people that they encounter as people they serve in and should solve problems for. And one of the reasons police legitimacy is important is not just of course, that we cannot go on with a drumbeat of news about violent encounters with police officers and the harm that that does to people who are impacted, but also knowing that so much, of course the majority of a violent crime is a crime against a civilian by another civilian. Well, if we want to break that cycle, a person who is in a cycle of violence needs to know that they can trust the police, so that they call the police instead of calling their cousin. And if we don't have that, then everybody is worse off. Everybody's lives are endangered. And frankly, the conversation -- and again, your organization can, is showing a lot of leadership here -- has to happen among the ranks of police too. You know, I went to a police swearing in a few days after the police shooting of Eric Logan in South Bend, talked about how all the police work, just like all of American life, takes place in the shadow of systemic racism. To them, it felt like I was telling each one of them that I thought that they were all racist. What we really need to do is face up to the fact that racism affects the way -- and race in general, our racialized existence -- affects the way that all of us see the world, affects all of our jobs, and we've all got to get out of this defensive crouch that people get into when the subject of race comes up. Now a lot of this has to happen among the community of white officers and frankly white political figures as well. We got to talk about whiteness in order to understand some of the things that have created pressure and torn holes in legitimacy. And it has to be an honest conversation, and it won't be easy, but we got to fix this together because we're counting on each other with our lives.


Sen. Eddie Melton: All right, great question. We have another question in the audience.


Staff: I'm sorry. We're going to get a student to ask a question.


Mayor Buttigieg: Great, good.


Sen. Eddie Melton: Alright.


Question: Hi, my name is Jordan (inaudible). I'm the student government association president here at Benedict College. And I'm also an English major, and I'm a junior from Spartanburg, South Carolina. As we see-- have seen in the cases like Kalief Browder and the Central Park Five, locking youth away in adult facility exposes them to trauma, abuse, harmful conditions, an increase the possibility of being detained longer than infraction while incarcerated. As president, how will you support the removal of children from adult facilities and stopped the practice of persecuting youth in adult court?


Mayor Buttigieg: Excellent question.


Sen. Eddie Melton: Very good question.


Mayor Buttigieg: First of all Jordan, I want to applaud you for being an English major. I hope I'm living proof that there are good employment opportunities for people to choose to study literature. So, and you're right, this, this is a huge problem. Treating youth as adults in the system virtually guarantees that they will have struggles for the rest of their lives and it, it sentences them to deeper involvement in the criminal justice system in the worst ways then, then there should be. When the mind is still being formed, which is certainly true for teenagers, that means there are opportunities for rehabilitation, for restorative justice, and that needs to be the priority in our federal spending. Again, just because these decisions are made locally or at the state level doesn't mean we can't have federal leadership on it, that we should be funding and incentivizing alternatives for youth. We should call for an end in life without parole for offenses when somebody is a juvenile. We need to get the profit motive out of this. I would say for the prison system as a whole, but certainly when the incarceration of youth is involved, nobody should be making a buck off of locking up children. We need to invest in educational opportunities, different kinds of programs. One, we had in South Bend involved animals that were ruled to be unadoptable because of behavior issues. And some remarkable people came together. They trained the youth to train the animals, and their lives were saved, these pets, or they went on to be pets. But it was the young people who stood up taller, realizing that maybe for the first time their lives realizing they were needed. We have a code school in South Bend teaching young people to code that spend time with the people in our juvenile justice system, encouraging them and teaching them coding skills. And it turned out you didn't have to teach him much. They were, they were sharp. Some of them were-- had been bored because nobody had believed in the power that they had in their intellect. These are the kinds of things that we can be supporting. And if we do, it benefits the young people who were impacted directly, but it benefits our whole community. Our whole society is better off. That is the pathway to safety with justice, and our laws need to reflect that. So those are the kinds of things you would see us supporting. One other thing I want to mention, a lot of this depends on who is on the bench and who is in prosecutors' offices. I've been really inspired to see progressive people running for prosecutor and it's something worth thinking about for talented students at an HBCU, that we need just as many progressive justice minded people seeking to be prosecutors as seeking to be public defenders. Although I would add that when I am president, we will do something about the imbalance where people are so much more likely to be appointed to become a judge if they have a background as a prosecutor than if they have a background as a defender. That's something I'm looking to rebalance too because I think you'll get people with the right mentality in these kinds of cases.


Sen. Eddie Melton: I think we have time for one more question in the audience.


Question: Good afternoon. I'm Jamil Moore (ph.), a junior here at Benedict College, majoring in biology. So we hear about stories of people who get convicted of crimes that they did not commit, spend years in prison, only to be released or exonerated years later because DNA evidence clears them or a new witness comes forward. The exonerated person is free from prison, but they will never give the years they lost being away from their families back. As president, what would you do to ensure that the people who are wrongfully convicted be compensated? And how would you hold the prosecutors accountable for sending the wrong people to prison?


Mayor Buttigieg: You know, back when I thought I was going to be a journalist, I had an opportunity to spend a summer in Chicago. And it's too long of a story to tell here, but because of a story that I got to work on for a local TV station, someone was exonerated who had spent I think nearly 10 years of a life sentence for a homicide that he did not commit. And the thing that was amazing to me when we went to interview him as he was on the cusp of being released was the grace that he had and the hope that he had for the future after everything that had been done to him. We are a society that must accept responsibility for the terrible wrong that is perpetrated against somebody who is wrongfully convicted and imprisoned. It is why we need to fund ending the backlog on testing of DNA that can exonerate people. It is why that people in that situation should be compensated at a substantial financial level. Nothing can bring back those years, but we absolutely must meet society's responsibility to set them up for success and to compensate them for the time that they've lost. And there needs to be accountability for prosecutors who knowingly get in the way of evidence that could be exculpatory, and we've seen that happen time and time again. There needs to be a federal process to shed a light on those cases. And it's one more reason why we need to support the right people running for these offices, which are so often elected and making sure that we have justice-minded individuals in those offices to begin with.


Sen. Eddie Melton: You mentioned prosecutors, and there's one question I want to make sure we ask before we head out. I know we've got a couple of minutes -- well, one minute left. Much attention has been paid on the importance of prosecutors in a criminal legal system. Public defenders play an equally critical role, but have received little attention and a fraction of the resources. To create a fairer criminal justice system, we must ensure that individuals who cannot afford counsel have quality representation.


Mayor Buttigieg: That is right.


Sen. Eddie Melton: How will you and your administration, if you become president, recognize the critical role of public defenders in the federal and state courts?


Mayor Buttigieg: Great. So first of all, public defenders should be compensated in a way that's comparable to prosecutors. It's just as important, often more challenging, and somebody is at an unfair disadvantage when the person who is serving them is both overworked in terms of caseload and under compensated, which makes it difficult for even the best people to remain in that field. So we need to act to increase compensation for public defenders and we need to act to increase the number of public defenders. By the way, these two things go hand in hand; when they're more compensated, better compensated, if we have adequate funding and require it, then we're also going to see more people go into the field. And that can help us with the fact that they're just spread way too thin. Lastly, we need to make sure that -- and this will be part of the judicial philosophy of the kinds of people I point to the bench -- that we recognize that the right to counsel doesn't just mean that you technically have a lawyer somewhere. It means the right to adequate counsel, otherwise that right's not being recognized at all. And that is something that will be very important to me in terms of the case law that I would hope would be built in the judiciary in the future.


Sen. Eddie Melton: Good stuff. Well Mayor, thank you for your time.

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