Adam Gelb
Founder, President and CEO, Council on Criminal Justice
We have to show that when we get together and roll up our sleeves, we can find common ground and advance the ball.
Summary
This week on “Leadership Matters,” Alan was joined by non-profit leader and public servant Adam Gelb, the Founder, President and CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice. Founded in 2019, the Council on Criminal Justice is a nonprofit think tank that works to advance the public’s understanding of the criminal justice policy choices facing the nation in order to build consensus around solutions that enhance safety and justice for all.
On this week’s episode, Alan and Adam discuss his upbringing and childhood, his early work as a journalist and working in the public sector, the creation of the Council on Criminal Justice and its impact around the country, as well as his views on critical topics like mentorship and consensus building.
Mentions & Resources in this Episode
Council on Criminal Justice – How Long is Long Enough: Task Force on Long Sentences Final Report
Guest Bio
The founder of the Council on Criminal Justice, Gelb has been working for a more just and effective criminal justice system throughout a 36-year career as a journalist, congressional aide, senior state government official, and nonprofit executive.
Gelb’s first job out of the University of Virginia was as a reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, covering police and the drug war at its height in the late 1980s. After earning a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, he staffed the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee during negotiations and final passage of the landmark 1994 federal crime bill. From 1995 to 2000, as policy director for the lieutenant governor of Maryland, Gelb established several initiatives that focused comprehensive crime control and prevention efforts toward at-risk people and neighborhoods. He served as executive director of the Georgia Sentencing Commission from 2001 to 2003 and then as vice president for programs at the Georgia Council on Substance Abuse, where he oversaw youth reentry and methamphetamine control programs.
From 2006-2018, Gelb led criminal and juvenile justice reform initiatives at The Pew Charitable Trusts, producing groundbreaking national research that documented the high cost and low public safety return of traditional sentencing and corrections policies and helping 35 states develop, adopt, and implement increasingly comprehensive and impactful reforms.
Gelb founded the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank and invitational membership organization, in 2019. He speaks frequently with the media about national trends and state innovations and advises policymakers on formulation of practical, cost-effective policies that are grounded in facts, evidence, and fundamental principles of justice.
Episode Transcript
Alan Fleischmann
My guest today is an accomplished public servant and nonprofit leader whose work has led him to fight for criminal justice reform around this country. Adam Gelb is the founder, president, CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonprofit think tank that works to advance the public's understanding of the criminal justice system and policy choices facing the nation as he builds consensus for solutions that enhance safety and justice for all. Prior to founding the Council on Criminal Justice, Adam served as the director of the Public Safety Performance Project, a very important project, at The Pew Charitable Trusts. He also has a wealth of experience working in government at the state level, at the federal level, and previously worked as a reporter at the Atlanta Journal Constitution. I'm excited to have Adam on the show today to discuss his early life, the breadth of his fascinating career, his purpose and passions in life, and his thoughts on how our country can better approach criminal justice reform.
I have known Adam now for many, many years — I should disclose that we are very close friends, we worked together. And he is someone I admire greatly. And I've wanted to have him on the show for some time. So, Adam, welcome to Leadership Matters. It is a personal pleasure to have you on the show.
Adam Gelb
Alan, it's fabulous to be with you. Thanks so much for bringing me on your wonderful show among so many fabulous guests that you've had. We know a lot about each other, as you just said, and at the same time, I hope we'll discover some new things here today in our conversation.
Alan Fleischmann
I know we will, I know we will. Let's start a little bit with your early life and influences. You know, I like to start with a little bit about your background and upbringing. Tell us a little bit about your childhood, where you were born and raised, a little bit about your dad and your mom and what they did when you were growing up, and what life was like around the Gelb household.
Adam Gelb
Sure. I don't often talk about myself, Alan, so this will be a little new thing for me here. So, I was born in Connecticut when my dad was teaching at Wesleyan, but moved very early in life when I was about two to Alexandria, Virginia, and just had the most wonderful childhood. I was extremely fortunate to be in the same house in the same neighborhood for the entirety of my childhood, in fact, through college. There was a little neighborhood called Hollin Hills. If you're familiar with the D.C. area, it's about halfway between Old Town Alexandria down the George Washington Parkway to halfway to Mount Vernon. And it's a normal suburban neighborhood, we played basketball and kickball in the street and everything. But there was one big difference in this neighborhood, I think, from most suburban neighborhoods. And that is that practically every adult in that neighborhood was involved in some way in public policy. They worked for the federal government, or the World Bank or in politics or in think tanks. And so, it was an exposure from very early on, all the way through my childhood to a sea of people who were trying to improve the world and try to try to make the world a better place and make a difference in different ways.
And at the same time, I had stability, this incredible stability in my friends. I've got, to this day, eight friends who I have known since we were two years old. A lot of people refer back to their high school friends, our spouses all call us babyhood friends. And it's just been too good to be true when you have those kinds of relationships with people for that long a period of time now, it gives you just enormous comfort and confidence in your relationships. So that's a little bit what it was like growing up in Northern Virginia.
Alan Fleischmann
I mean, it's amazing, actually, because I do know your background and I'm always struck by the fact that you had these babyhood friends. I think your sisters had similar experiences as well. And this idea that you could be in this neighborhood, there's something just Norman Rockwell-like when I hear the stories of you growing up, and how you guys still do things together in the summers with your spouses and families still get together and that you've known each other since we were babies. It's really an amazing thing.
Tell us a little bit about your mom and dad.
Adam Gelb
Yeah, my mom and dad are the best parents you could possibly hope for. My father, as I thought you might say, was literally the textbook example of the revolving door between government and journalism.
Alan Fleischmann
I should mention that Leslie Gelb, who’s your dad, I want you to be a little less modest about him because I'm gonna have a hard time getting you to be un-modest about yourself, but let's not let ourselves be too modest about him. He had the most extraordinary career, and I'm sure his name is very familiar to many, many people. And we'll get into details about what he created and built and what you are creating and building, there's some synergies there but tell us a little bit about Leslie Gelb.
Adam Gelb
He grew up dirt poor in New Rochelle, New York, the son of immigrants from the Carpathian Mountains in Eastern Europe. They ran a little deli and grocery store and he spent his childhood not necessarily out playing basketball with friends, but working in the store and parking cars at the country club where he could not have been a member due to his religion. But he was smart and he worked hard, and he became, at a very young age, an aide to Senator Jacob Javits. Then he went to work at the Pentagon, where Defense Secretary McNamara, then in the 60s, asked him to write answers to a whole series of questions about the Vietnam War, how did we get into it and why. And that piece of work that he directed, a number of people contributed to it, eventually came to be known as the Pentagon Papers.
And after that, he worked at think tanks, and then at the State Department, and then at the New York Times, back and forth actually a couple of times between government and the Times, and, like I said, literally became the textbook example. If there's a textbook of this revolving door between government in journalism, there's his picture and his story next to it.
He set the bar very high for himself and for us, for his kids and everybody around him and everybody that worked for him. And after he left government the last time in the 90s, he became the president of the Council on Foreign Relations for 10 years, and then went on to become a columnist. And I say to all this, Alan, I'm happy for you to jump back in here but I think you're bringing it up here, not just to talk about how wonderful my dad is and how amazing my mother is. As he well knows, as do I, that none of us would achieve even a fraction of what we've been able to achieve without the support of our spouses and certainly mom played that role for dad in every conceivable way. But I think maybe because my dad's career in a lot of ways, and his approach to issues, shaped my own. And I think I should maybe just dive in straight to the example of kind of how I think, or at least how —
Alan Fleischmann
I knew you so well when we worked together, but you know, and I just say I was your boss, but nobody ever was your boss. But there was a time that I realized that your path and your father's path were quite similar, but I didn't really recognize it in the sense that you also had the revolving door life, but he was so firmly focused on the international affairs world, and you were very focused on the domestic affairs world. He was very focused on how do you create collaboration and, you know, influence public policy and convene and play a catalytic leadership role around international relations, and you are very focused on criminal justice. And I think at one point, you acknowledged it when you created where you are now, that these paths, as different as they are substantively, there was a lot to be emulated in both. But it's interesting so keep going, but there are some synergies here.
Adam Gelb
Yeah, so I didn't go back and forth. And that in large part, that's because of just how much journalism has changed. But I did go down a different path. And I don't know if I went in the domestic policy direction rather than international foreign policy direction as some sort of rebellion or not, but you're right, there was a lot in common procedurally if not substantively. And I think where we should go with this is probably just to acknowledge that my dad had a very iconoclastic streak, very skeptical if not iconoclastic and a value that pervaded his work and I think has really informed how I think about things and approach the world. And I think it was his book about Vietnam and about the Pentagon Papers that he wrote a few years after leaving the Defense Department that most dramatizes that.
As you know, Alan, the book was called The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked. And the main point was that yes, the story that you have heard, the public narrative about the Pentagon Papers was that the government lied to the people. And that's certainly what the Pentagon paper showed. There were lies and deceit about body count, about what happened at the Gulf of Tonkin and so on. But the main point of the book was that leadership of the country, and the foreign policy establishment, truly believed in the domino theory, right? That if South Vietnam fell into the communist hands, so will the rest of Asia, so the war might not be won, but it could not be lost. And what he describes in the book and what the Pentagon Papers and the real lesson of the papers, he thought, was the system worked to achieve that mission and the goal that the government believed in.
Now, he was very clear to say that those beliefs were wrong and that they were clouded by a terrible ignorance of the people of Vietnam and the culture. And that that ignorance led to very unrealistic notions about what could be achieved. But he really felt strongly, and he wrote this book to say that while the Pentagon Papers revealed that history of deception, the Pentagon Papers really were mostly about beliefs and not about lies. And with the book, he sought to shift that narrative, and I think that approach to storytelling and policymaking deeply informs my own.
Alan Fleischmann
That’s great. You went off to university, anything you want to highlight from going to university in that part of your life, anything you want to highlight from that period? I'm curious, I think it happened, if I'm a student of Adam Gelb, that your focus on the criminal justice system really happened when you were a journalist. Am I wrong?
Adam Gelb
No, that's absolutely right. I mean, just to be clear, my father never encouraged me at all to get into journalism. In fact, he tried to steer me elsewhere to go play basketball and do something else. But what happened, I'll admit with a little blush here is that in 11th, grade, a bunch of my buddies, childhood and babyhood friends about whom we spoke a few minutes ago, took a journalism class at our high school. And the teacher was an attractive young woman. And they loved her, and they loved being in the class and I hadn't taken it and they all gave me a lot of grief for missing out on it and badgered me into taking journalism senior year in high school. And I also had a lot of fun with it. And we wrote some columns and that was sort of what pushed me into an interest in journalism. I'm sure it was in the back of my head somewhere, maybe in my bones, in my DNA as well.
But when I went to the University of Virginia, I did join the newspaper there. And I have to say, one of the things that I hated most about working so much at the newspaper there, and I became the associate editor and then the news editor of the paper, was having to call the university police to see what was going on with crime. It just somehow didn't interest me at that point. But when I graduated, I was able to get a job at the Atlanta Journal Constitution. And I had no idea what they were going to assign me to. You get a job at a major daily coming straight out of college, you take it you don't negotiate about what beat you're going to have.
And so I showed up here in Atlanta in 1987, the height of the drug war and what was happening in this country with crack cocaine. And there was a note on my desk from my editor saying, “Welcome, sorry I'm not here to greet you. You'll be caught ringing up the police beat and working from four in the afternoon to 11 at night on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays.”
And so I just got sort of thrown straight into the mayhem that was happening here and around the country. And that’s what bit me. Most reporters want to move as quickly as possible off the police beat and go to city hall and cover the mayor or cover education or the business community or something sexier and considered more thoughtful, I guess. But I really got bit, and if you'll indulge me, there's one particular story that really cinched it for me.
Alan Fleischmann
Absolutely.
Adam Gelb
So, I got called into my editor's office one day and he said, “Listen, can I just tell you this and see if there's anything to it? I don't think there is, but look into it if you will.” And what he said was that his wife had heard from a friend of hers who was a teacher at a middle school in Atlanta that two kids from her class had been absent for a week. And it didn't make any sense to her, particularly about one kid who was a really good kid who was never absent. And she couldn't find out how or why he hadn't been coming to coming to school.
So, she looked into it and found out that the kid had been arrested. And that shocked her, it didn't make sense that this boy would have done anything wrong. He was 14. And so, the editor had asked me to look into it, find out what's going on. Here's what I found out had happened. He and his friend, these two kids had been trying to get to the amusement park in Atlanta here, Six Flags Over Georgia. And they found a ride with somebody who said he would take them there. And they got in the back of his van.
On the way to the amusement park, this guy stopped off at his girlfriend's house, got in a fight with her , hit her over the head with a pistol, jumped back into the van and sped off, sped through a stop sign and police happened to see him speed through the stop sign. They stopped his van and arrested him and the kids for aggravated assault because of what happened with the gun. There was cocaine under the seat in the front of the van, they got charged with possession of cocaine and a whole bunch of other heavy-duty charges. And they were being held without release and for… it was at least two weeks at that point.
I ended up doing eight stories about this case, and eventually tracked down the victim of the assault who confirmed to me, nobody else had ever asked her about this, but confirmed to me that the kids had nothing to do with this assault. Right, they were in the back of the van. He had run inside and got into this argument with her. And that included, Alan, the public defender who had been assigned to the case for one of the kids and a private lawyer who had taken 500 bucks from the other kid’s family to represent him. And nobody was looking at the facts and trying with any urgency to do anything about it.
After the the eighth story I wrote at this point, trying to piece all this together, a lawyer from the suburbs called me at the newspaper and said “Is the story in the paper this morning true?” And I said yes, we tend to try to put things that are truthful in the paper. And this guy was a lawyer, he was a real estate lawyer, he marched himself down to the Fulton County Juvenile Court and had one of these kids out that afternoon. I wrote subsequent stories about this as well that led to the introduction of legislation and the passage of legislation that prohibited holding kids in detention for the purpose of not being able to have anywhere else for them to go. Alright, and at that point there was just no emergency shelter detention. It was just straight-up lockups.
The upshot of it for me was this is a really terrible screwed-up system that is neither doing justice nor producing safety. And actually, there's something you can do about it. That's what really set me down this path.
Alan Fleischmann
Wow. And did you know what that path was, what it would entail at that point?
Adam Gelb
No, I had no idea. But if we're being honest about the times, you'll remember that journalism itself at this point in the early 90s was changing dramatically on account of the advent of cable news, particularly USA Today. And so, the paper here in Atlanta, and a lot of papers around the country, started changing and getting less interested in more serious in-depth journalism, and more interested in selling papers with shorter stories, bigger graphics and pictures. And so, there was an exodus from journalism at that point.
I don't know what really would have happened if that hadn't gone that way. I was part of a large contingent of reporters my age who left journalism for places where I think we felt we could do more serious work than was being encouraged at the time.
Alan Fleischmann
You went to the Kennedy School if I'm not mistaken, right? That's when you left, you went to the Kennedy School to pursue a master's degree. So, you got the bug to go and focus on policy from there as well, or no?
Adam Gelb
I did. I also spent a year on the hill before I went to the Kennedy School and was lucky enough to have worked with then Congressman Schumer and then Senator Kennedy on some really important and interesting crime and drug issues before going to the Kennedy School. And if I remember correctly, I was literally the only person out of about 240 people in my class to concentrate in what they call “Crime Control and Justice.” And that was just, it's some of the greatest minds in the country that are working on these issues: Mark Moore, Frank Hartman, Mark Kleiman and others. And for whatever reason at that time, and despite the fact that we were right in the midst of the nation's worst crime wave, very few people at the school were focused on this. They were also interested in business and government and health and education and these other issues. So, I felt very lucky to have been exposed to and had such a fabulous education.
Alan Fleischmann
And you did that for two years?
Adam Gelb
That's right. And you know, sort of the way the world works, a former Kennedy School graduate, Chris Putala, who was working for Senator Biden at the time on the Judiciary Committee staff, needed somebody. And I was sort of the right person in the right place at the right time and got swept back to Washington and worked on the Senate Judiciary Committee staff right in 1994 when the crime bill was coming to fruition, as various provisions of that bill had been bubbling around for three plus years or far longer. And so that was also a defining experience which, despite sort of the narrative around the crime bill that we've had for the past few years, was a real, significant bipartisan achievement.
Alan Fleischmann
I mean, it really was. 95-4-1 or something like that. It was one of the most nonpartisan bills to pass at that time, or I should say bipartisan bills to pass at that time. And you really did navigate partisan politics in a way that, frankly, created an overwhelming success for the Senate. Any highlights from that on how or why did that happen? You know, unlike what you saw at the Kennedy School, was it because people saw the urgency of the moment? Or how did that happen actually when you think about the fact that it was such a shining example of, you know, partisan unity or nonpartisan unity?
Adam Gelb
Yeah, I don't know, Alan, that there is much to it beyond that. Plus, that this was as complicated as a time as it was. It was not as bipartisan, I mean, it's not as polarized as things are today. This was a time when things in Washington, you know, could still get done. Big things could still get done and people were willing to compromise and people did not necessarily think that their compromising on something meant that they were abandoning their principles. It was a lot of horse trading, and that's why you see in the bill 100,000 police and significant new dollars to build prisons, while also containing the assault weapons ban, while also containing a whole set of provisions to combat domestic violence. And something that often gets forgotten these days, in addition to a lot of resources for crime prevention, especially among youth, there's a provision in the crime bill that is the one that the Justice Department has been using since and continues to use today to investigate police departments for pattern and practice of biased and racially biased enforcement. So, it was a Christmas Tree kind of bill that had something in it for everyone.
Alan Fleischmann
Well it worked, and it is sad to think about how, when one could compromise back then and it would be a badge of leadership, if somebody compromises like that today, you can be, you know, abandoned by your own party and actually put an exile. It's a terribly different world.
Well, this is when I got to know you right at this point. Now we're at a point where you then decided that you wanted to work in Annapolis at the state level, and work for the Maryland Lieutenant Governor, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, when you were Policy Director. Tell us a little bit about that role. And some really extraordinary initiatives, what I love to think about is that a lot of the issues, you've never given up the issues. I mean, I knew you were just passionate about those issues when you were on the Hill, that you were passionate about from when you were meeting all these incredible colleagues and mentors when you were at the Kennedy School, and the issues that you saw at the frontlines when you were a journalist, are the very issues you fight for today. I mean, not to say that we haven't made progress, we have, but the fact that you've never given up is a big part of what I consider to be a great emblem of your leadership. But tell us a little bit about what drew you there and a little bit about your successes in Maryland.
Adam Gelb
Well, first, I’ve got to say, Alan, most of what I've learned about leadership I've learned from you. So period, full stop. Beyond that, certainly our boss at the time, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, showed us how to do it. And I think, you know, fundamentally, what she taught us, at least what I took from working for you and her was that you have to dream big about the future. And you want the world to change, but you also have to have the awareness and the skills and the passion and the persistence to take the steps that we need to take one day after the next in order to get us from here to there.
We all want big transformational change. And we all want it now. But that's often not the way that government works. And it's, in fact, not the way that government is designed to work. Particularly in our American system of checks and balances. And so, yes, I brought all that passion that you described, and it was matched and then some by you and Kathleen for dealing with that in the mid-90s, particularly in Baltimore and Prince George's County and parts of Maryland and communities and neighborhoods that were suffering from really terrible rates of violence.
Alan Fleischmann
You were creative, you were cooperative, you were collaborative but you are also, and it's one of your traits today, one of the things I love about you is that you were consistent in your urgent impatience for people who didn't want to move forward. And you were probably extraordinarily annoying, I know you were, to anybody who resisted change because your impatience is contagious. And your frustration when people don't want to advance is palpable. And in that time when you and we worked together, some extraordinarily creative ideas were born that actually had success, that actually worked. You know, that were not only conceptual and creative, which they were, they were based on models that worked elsewhere, adapted to where we were, but proved pretty quickly to be successful. Tell us a little bit about those. And still, there's so much that we did back then and there's so much that we learned back then that became to me some of the greatest advice I give to up-and-coming political leaders who are, especially at the state level and the city level that you know, everyone from mayors and governors and in between, to really make a difference. Tell us a little bit about that.
Adam Gelb
I think that the HotSpots Initiative was far and away one of the most innovative things that we did. And quite frankly, today would remain innovative because it was so hard to do. And so let me let me describe it quickly.
There's a tremendous amount of money that flows down from the federal government into states for criminal justice and crime-related projects. And mostly what the states do is scatter that money all across the state; they send it to this prosecutor who wants to do a pet project on this particular issue, or to this police chief in a different area who wants to do an after-school program or police athletic league. The central insight of the HotSpots Initiative was that crime is highly concentrated geographically in certain neighborhoods and that if you want to make a difference, you have to focus your resources in those neighborhoods. And what we did was move from this incredibly fragmented, disjointed system of passing money out based on relationships and based on political considerations, and said we're actually going to put the money into these neighborhoods, we're going to work with the mayors and the county executives in these counties to identify those neighborhoods, we're going to give them a menu of options of things that you can do in those neighborhoods, community policing, community probation, youth prevention, and nuisance abatement to get rid of businesses and houses where the problems were centered, and so on.
And beyond that, Alan, you'll recall that we worked with all of the state government cabinet departments to say, this isn't just about the federal dollars in grant money that's going to be funneled to these neighborhoods, but the full machinery and the whole of government is going to be focused on these neighborhoods. So, if you're the Corrections Department, you're gonna focus probation officers in these neighborhoods, if you're the health department, drug treatment resources are also going to be prioritized for people in those neighborhoods. And when we coordinated across all these different places, and in close coordination and cooperation with the local government, we made a huge difference. I mean, in the hotspots violent crime went down about 20% in the years that that was happening, which doubled the rate of a drop in violent crime that was occurring elsewhere around the state.
Alan Fleischmann
Amazing. And, you know, after your work in Maryland, you went off to Georgia. So, you have this idea of the state level, I think is a big part of what you do even now is you realize the power, the importance of being closer to the ground, but not necessarily at the mayoral level but at the gubernatorial level in a lot of ways. But you went off to the governor's office, where you were the executive director of the Commission on Certainty and Sentencing in Georgia, which is why you're in Atlanta now. Tell us a little bit about your goal in that role and anything you want to bring up from there. But there was a lot from that experience, and from your experience as Vice President of Programs at the Georgia Council on Substance Abuse, that I just think about all the things that I know you fought for, and that you’ve articulated so beautifully from Maryland to Georgia. Any highlights there that you want, because it really did lead to your experiences at Pew. There’s a lot in there, sorry.
Adam Gelb
It was tough to leave what we had together in Maryland. And Kevin was tougher.
Alan Fleischmann
And it's very tough that you left.
Adam Gelb
We had our son, and my family was all in New York at that point and Katie's family was here in Atlanta, and we decided we needed to be closer to family so we moved back here. I had a chance to work at a different level in state government and then on very local programming for a couple of years. And that moved us into a place I think where I had, at that point, a very rare set of experiences in press politics and public policy seeing things from all these different angles that led the folks at Pew then to find me, and spent 12 years running the criminal justice work at the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Alan Fleischmann
If I recall, there you became, Adam, a great sensation at Pew. You were celebrated at Pew but that's not how it began. I remember you scrapping for resources if I'm recalling right. You were making a case when nobody was listening, although you had obviously some people who were supportive from day one, or you wouldn't have been there. But I remember this not being celebrated at the highest levels of anywhere you were, and you were pushing. You were salmon swimming upstream, you were pushing the envelope. You were ringing bells that nobody was listening to. But that's not how it ended. The journey transformed, you know, and people realized, and I think it had much to do with the fact that enormous data success points came through and people realized that you were onto something. But tell us a little bit about that journey. And I'm right, or am I wrong that it wasn't an easy beginning? But obviously, it became very well-known in not too long that what you did at the state level, in a very comprehensive way, showed results.
Adam Gelb
You're right. When we started, we were supposed to be a team of four people. And we were supposed to try to work with two states. 12 years later, the team had grown to about thirty-seven people and we had worked in 35 states, and several of them more than once working with them on adult-to-prison issues and juvenile justice issues. And it did, I think and I hope, help bend the arc of criminal justice reform in this country writ large, as well as ride that wave as well. It was a really tremendous commitment from Pew and that organization to spot this issue before many others had and to be willing to put that kind of commitment and those kinds of dollars into this effort.
And I think we did a good job with it, it became known as the Justice Reinvestment Initiative, in partnership with the Justice Department and Vera Institute of Justice, and the Council of State Governments Justice Center, and the Crime and Justice Institute. It took a lot of people to work with all these states across the country, to go to their governors, to their legislative leadership, to their chief justices and say will you all sign on to an effort in which we will come in and provide free consulting advice, essentially, to analyze your prison population and help you facilitate agreement on a set of reforms that will strike a better balance between incarceration and crime. And I think, as part of that effort, we helped a lot of states change their laws and policies, and at a deeper level helped change a lot of attitudes about the role that crime and prisons play in our society.
Alan Fleischmann
I mean you really were building something that was pretty extraordinary. And again, I was saying it was celebrated and it was the first time that I saw someone’s work being understood as something to celebrate in an area that, frankly, I would argue is too often the stepchild in public policy, which is criminal justice issues. I mean where unfortunately, those who are in it know it, those who are in it live it, but it didn't until then, in my opinion, kind of break the bubble. You know, the way maybe more sexy things out there like international affairs do. Not to bring back your dad, but you were slogging through there for a long time. And I'm just curious that, from that point on, when was there a moment there that you realized there is a need for something else?
Adam Gelb
Yeah, I think we should give credit where it's due with respect to elevating the issues of criminal justice reform, right. That's about Michelle Alexander and The New Jim Crow, and that's about Bryan Stevenson and Just Mercy and those kinds of those folks and many others elevated the prominence of this issue.
And then, also, we should acknowledge that the police killings have played their own role in that. If we hadn't had Michael Brown in Ferguson and Freddie Gray in Baltimore and what happened after that, the convulsions that then proceeded George Floyd, this issue would not be getting the attention that it is now and that it's deserved for so long. So, it was good to be in early, but I think that there are so many people who played such critical roles in building this field, and in capitalizing on and realizing what those things are. Many others have shown the really desperate need for criminal justice reform in this country.
Alan Fleischmann
Tell me about that a little bit, because you were working and developing and executing across 35 states, right, at Pew?
Adam Gelb
Over time, not at once. Yep.
Alan Fleischmann
Okay, over time and you obviously had to navigate through so many different political structures and government structures and different constituencies in so many different jurisdictions where they have very different philosophies and perspectives. But you've managed to get things through. Is that because of the complications and complexity, and the fact that you got to see at a high level. You went deep, but I'm saying a high level meaning across the country, that you realized that something was missing that could actually bring, from the bottom up, a national policy or national outlook or a national effort around the reform. Is that what became the council?
Adam Gelb
That’s exactly right, Alan. I think that the Council on Criminal Justice, for me, was the culmination of these various experiences that we've discussed. From press to politics to public policy, I don't think that my perception of the gap is new or was new. I think I've had it for quite some time. But I got to a place in my career where I felt that I could do something about it in a better and elevated way. That gap was this, like through all this I came to see that there was a real need for an organization that called balls and strikes, that doesn't cherry-pick data, that's a source of information and ideas that people can trust wherever they fall on the political spectrum, and a forum that can sponsor and host serious, honest conversations without demonizing people who disagree, and that truly values, different perspectives from across ideologies and disciplines and sectors of the field, a place that values rigorous empirical research, as well as the experiences of people whose lives have been touched by crime in the criminal justice system. This didn't exist, so I saw that hole in the field and I filled it.
Alan Fleischmann
And you did and that wasn't an easy thing to fill. I remember being around a diamond table at my house when you were talking about the concept that you wanted to create. And it was so ambitious. And I thought, wow, the mountain you're about to climb if you do this is very, very, very high. And I challenged you, I remember, about it because it just seemed very daunting. But you obviously saw something that was missing. And you got an extraordinary cast of characters to join you along the way, and again, bipartisan. But tell us a little bit that.
And I can't help but compare a little bit, and I'm curious how much of an influence it had, of your father's great legacy at the Council on Foreign Relations. And you saw, obviously, from the inside out what that did in bringing people together, creating collaboration and communication, and an enormous amount of thought leadership and action. And they’re different, obviously, it's very different. But did that have an influence as well?
Adam Gelb
It certainly did. I should first acknowledge, that my dad thought this was a crazy idea and crazy talk. He came into the Council on Foreign Relations, it had been around for at least 50 years at that point and was very well endowed. And to try to build something similar from scratch, he really thought was a nutty idea. And I appreciated your candor about it at the time as well, Alan, but I really had come to see the power of neutral, objective, fact-based information and data in these conversations. You know, people don't think that that is. And there plenty of people who don't want that, but there's a real thirst in this country, particularly when you get outside the Beltway and outside of Washington into state capitals and to city halls where people actually have to do work and solve problems and directly confront them on a daily basis.
There's a real demand for evidence-based information, and so I felt like this was something that needed to happen and I was fortunate enough to have built relationships with a lot of people across the country and across different sectors of the field and different levels of government and in sectors of the field over what ,at this point, was a very, very long period of time, a good 30-plus years. People like Laurie Robinson, people like Sally Yates and Mark Holden at the Koch Industries who was a strong conservative advocate for criminal justice reform, and to have built relationships with people in the field, colleagues at Pew and others who I had enormous confidence in. Abby Walsh and Andrew Paige and Jennifer Warren and other people who I simply couldn't have done this without. And so, I came to a point where I thought I had enough of the pieces in place and enough of the people who believed in this idea and believed in me to take the leap and step off of the ledge from a very wonderful organization and an incredible team and support at Pew to strike it out on my own.
Alan Fleischmann
How many are you now?
Adam Gelb
We're 22 people now, plus about six people who are part-time with us and our fellows. And it feels great. And I really feel like we're starting to make an impact on the critical policy conversations in the country. As a former reporter, I don't get that much jazzed up about media hits, but it's sometimes one of the few ways that you can quantify, you know, the impact that you're having. And if one of our goals was to become a source of credible information and ideas and trusted information, that's certainly borne out by how much the media is relying on our work. We're, at this point, over 16,000 stories have been written about things that we have produced, and it feels great to be filling this void in the field.
Alan Fleishmann
You said 16,000?
Adam Gelb
16,000 and counting.
Alan Fleischmann
Wow, that's really impressive. That's amazing. One of these, actually, you said earlier about when you were on the Hill and the crime bill, that it was a time when people were, you know, less partisan and compromise was everything. What stuns me about the Council on Criminal Justice is, you know, there are many think tanks but very few attract people who are not necessarily coming into this with the same political perspective. You know, there's a sense of bipartisanship or multi-partisanship in this case, in many ways, but this is not a left-leaning or right-leaning organization. This is an organization focused on the challenges and opportunities to overcome those challenges ahead. There are not many organizations, I can say, that are truly nonpartisan. What's the secret here? Is that because of the original cast of characters, was it deliberate from day one? But am I right? I really do believe that it's an organization that’s populated by people whose unity and politics may only exist in what they're doing with the council.
Adam Gelb
That was our vision. And so it was not only deliberate, it is the one deliberate and overriding purpose of the organization. We have nothing if we do not have the credibility. Let me just say this, Alan, part of leadership is being able to tell folks what they don't want to hear. And that's what we're doing here. And it is a firm belief that the narrative must bend to the facts, not the other way around. In these times we have a lot of people who want to ignore them. And a good part of what we're doing at CCJ is saying, wait, this is this is actually what's going on. Let me give you two examples.
We have an ongoing research series on racial disparities in the country's correction system in our prisons. They have been narrowing, substantially, over the past 20 years. They’re still large, the disparity between Blacks and whites in prisons is about is about five-to-one now. It used to be eight-to-one. The disparity between Black women and white women used to be six-to-one, now it's two-to-one. The disparity in drug imprisonment in 2000 was 15 Blacks for every one white, now it's five-to-one. So, these are these are significant reductions in racial disparities and who's being held in prison. It's a situation that has gone from worse to bad and the left doesn't really want to hear this. They want to focus on the size of the…
Alan Fleischmann
I hear what you’re saying here. There’s been success. It's not good. The results are so terribly challenging and difficult. But with the right interventions and the right focus, you're having real successes. It's just not quick enough, and not maybe hitting the numbers we want. But it's getting better.
Adam Gelb
It's not quick enough and it's not fast enough. But we've got to do much more than just bemoan it, we've got to understand it. You've got to unpack it if we want to make more progress. We got to understand what's working, why are these disparity gaps are narrowing and what's holding them back. And so that's what we're doing, that's the kind of work that we're doing. And that was one example. I think that I know that some folks on the left are concerned about our shining a light on it, because they think it will sap energy and funding from efforts to reduce disparities if people think oh, well, things are moving in the right direction. Our belief firmly is that we need to shine a light.
The other example would be what we've just done with long prison sentences and the message that came out from that project and folks on the right. Folks on the right tend to want to say, let's lock them up and throw away the key. There's been some movement on that, and certainly not all conservatives believe that way. In fact, there are a lot who understand that prisons ought to be subject to the same kind of scrutiny as any other government program, as education and health, and that the resources ought to be used frugally and targeted on the most dangerous people. But one of the country's primary responses to violence from all these years has been to persistently ratchet up sentences for violent crimes. And what this task force did was pull together people from across the political spectrum. It was co-chaired by former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, who is not a partisan but is known for fairly progressive views, and former Congressman Trey Gowdy from South Carolina, also former prosecutor, federal and local prosecutor who was a well-known conservative. And the two of them and others put out a report from our task force on long sentences a few months ago that called for significant changes in focusing how states in particular, the federal government as well, use their use their prison resources when it comes to long sentences.
Alan Fleischmann
That was great.
Adam Gelb
The main message of the report, as I read it was that there's no public safety benefit to the long tails of the sentences. So if you want to support locking up people and throwing away the key, do so on the basis of your belief that that is moral and just punishment, but don't try to hide behind the argument that your 16, 17, 18, 19-year sentences are going to actually do anything to improve public safety. That's mostly all costs to taxpayers and very little benefit to public safety. And not everybody necessarily agrees on all these things, but that's the core thing of what we're doing, Alan, at CCJ. We’re bringing people from across the different ideologies, perspectives and sectors, focusing them on the data and the research as best we know about these issues at a given time, having respectful disagreements about things, but working things through — just the way the crime bill was done back in the day — and saying, okay, what can we agree on? How can we get to yes here because these are critical issues for safety and justice in our communities. And we have to show that when we get together and roll up our sleeves, we can find common ground and advance the ball.
Alan Fleischmann
We only have a couple of minutes left but I want to ask you two things, kind of rapid-fire kind of questions. You know, you've actually had some great mentors. I know you mentioned a few throughout your career, how do they shape your leadership style?
And then the second question coming from that, you know when I think about who you are, you yourself are a great role model and you made it more interesting and more attractive for young people to want to follow in your footsteps and focus on these daunting challenges in the criminal justice world. And now, because of the work that you've done and others have done with you, that you can actually make progress, you can actually see results done together in a nonpartisan and collaborative way. So just wanted to ask you about your mentors and their influence, and you as a mentor, what's your message to young people?
Adam Gelb
There's so many, I really would have to go back to my parents and to my in-laws, Katie's parents as well. I think at one point you were able to meet my father-in-law, Clay Long, who also grew up very poor in Demopolis, Alabama and clerked on the Supreme Court and started his own law firm which grew and grew to be firm of a couple 100 people, and is now part of the world's largest firm, Dentons. Just an incredibly accomplished and inspirational man. In fact, both Katie's father's and my father's stories are pretty similar in a number of ways. So they both really inspire me.
My message to younger —
Alan Fleishmann
And your mother-in-law also served as a judge?
Adam Gelb
She did, and she was the chief judge here in Fulton County, which, depending on when this airs, I think we'll see some more action in the Fulton County courts here. And my mother worked all the way through when we were in school as well. So, you know that's really leading me to what your next question was about a message, and if I have one, it's this. Mostly, this is about, I think this was a Truman, it's mostly about perspiration, not inspiration. I think a lot of people have a lot of good ideas. They're not always a lot of people who both have good ideas and know how to get things done and are willing to make the efforts and stick with it and be stubborn like we were in Maryland and elsewhere and say, this is just going to happen and I'm going to be willing to be all in and to do what it takes to get where we think we need to go.
Alan Fleischmann
I love that. And for young people looking at pathways to take and, you know, again, criminal justice reform may not be the sexiest chapter on a college campus. I have a daughter, for example, I have two daughters who are interested in this issue, but largely the elder daughter, she's very focused on criminal justice reform. And part of it is because I think she feels that there needs to be more people fighting for it. So, there is that gap, you know, that, if not me then who? And I think you are a great example of that, where, you know, if you're not going to put voice to the people, then there's nobody in speaking up. And I just look at you as that role model as well.
Adam Gelb
So here's my advice to that point. Don't go directly from college to grad school. You've got to work in the community, you've got to work in local government or state government. you have to be you can you have to see things from a ground level and you have to understand how they work and what the considerations are, what the obstacles are. You have to understand that the people working in these positions, whether they're police officers, or corrections officers are people as well. What I see too much of these days is people coming directly out of college and going into advocacy or going straight to grad school and coming out with very ivory tower notions and saturated with narratives about what's going on. And even tremendous misconceptions about what's happening that leads them to sort of these hyper-exaggerated notions of what the problems are and very distorted views of what the solutions are.
Alan Fleischmann
That was great. We have to close unfortunately, which is sad, which means we have to have you back on. But I will say that you are an inspiration to me, I've known you so well and I've watched you so closely. And every time I talk to you, I learn more. You're data driven, you’re collaboration driven, and you’re persistence. And I love that quote from Truman you mentioned. That persistence is inspirational, you're not going to give up until we have reforms that actually save lives. And that's ultimately what this is about. It's about quality of life and giving people options and not having people's lives destroyed because people aren't paying attention. And if they could, we can do so much more.
You've been listening to Leadership Matters on Sirius XM. I'm your host, Alan Fleischman. We've had an incredible hour with Adam Gelb, the founder, president and CEO of CCJ, the Council on Criminal Justice, the innovative thought leader, the extraordinary leader who's really fighting for criminal justice reform in our country. We've been discussing his journey, the ambitious agenda ahead at CCJ and what it means to be a mentor and a leader. So, I'm really grateful, Adam, for this.
Adam Gelb
Thank you so much, Alan. It's been a pleasure.