In this episode, we explore the profound impact of crime on individuals and communities with Jackie Helfgott, PhD. We delve into her personal experiences, discuss the interplay between societal factors and criminal behavior, and address the current dynamics in the criminal justice system.
Key Takeaways:
- Personal Impact: Jackie shares her experiences with crime growing up and how it shaped her career in criminal justice.
- Crime & Society: Discussion on how environmental and cultural factors contribute to criminal behavior.
- Preventive Measures: Importance of community involvement and addressing societal issues to prevent crime.
Guest:
Jackie Helfgott, PhD, professor/director of the Crime & Justice Research Center at Seattle University, author, and criminal justice expert.
Resources Mentioned:
- Dr. Jackie Helfgott: Website and LinkedIn
- Jackie Helfgott’s Books: Titles on criminal behavior, psychopathy, and the criminal justice system.
- Rais Bhuiyan’s Documentary on Hate Crimes and Forgiveness: Pain and Peace
Quotes:
-“Understanding the root causes of crime helps us tackle it more effectively.” – Jackie Helfgott
“News should focus on pro-social stories to create positive societal impact.” – Mark Wright
Listener Challenge:
This week, try to engage in a community activity or dialogue with your local law enforcement to foster a safer environment, and share your experiences with us on social media using #BEATSWORKINGShow.
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Transcript
The following transcript is not certified. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. The information contained within this document is for general information purposes only.
[00:00:00] Mark Wright: Dr. Jackie Helfgott, welcome to the BEATS WORKING Podcast.
[00:00:02] Mark Wright: It’s great to have you here.
[00:00:04] Jackie Helfgott: Thanks for having me. It’s an honor to be here.
[00:00:06] Mark Wright: All right, we have a lot to cover over the next 45 minutes to an hour. You’ve spent your career in crime and criminal justice. You’re a professor at Seattle University. Um, we’re going to learn a lot over the next little bit, but I guess I want to start out with How did an art major end up in the world of criminal justice?
[00:00:25] Jackie Helfgott: Yeah, I started out majoring in art, uh, watercolor and pen and ink was my favorite medium and, uh, I was at the University of Washington and, somebody mentioned that how hard it was , to make a living , in art. And I also was interested in commercial art.
[00:00:41] Jackie Helfgott: And I thought, I don’t know if I want to make money out of doing art, and so I switched to double major in psychology and society and justice, which is at the University of Washington. it’s now called law, society and justice, but then it was called society and justice.
[00:00:58] Mark Wright: I love it when [00:01:00] people use their life experience to go on and choose, at least use that as an impetus to, to choosing a field of study. And when we spoke a while back, you said that you were kind of a juvenile delinquent when you were a kid, you grew up in Seattle and you also had victims who were, I should say friends who were the victims of crime.
[00:01:21] Mark Wright: Take me back and. Tell me Jackie, how that shaped, you know, your perception of crime and your decision to actually study it.
[00:01:29] Jackie Helfgott: I was in situations that presented me with all of the different sides of the tragedy of, crime. I was a juvenile delinquent. I wasn’t that big of a juvenile delinquent. A lot of people around me, were. I was, in fact, the only person, And my friend group that graduated from high school, and I remember I graduated from Lincoln High School in Wallingford, and I remember standing there and throwing up the hat, and there was nobody around.
[00:01:57] Jackie Helfgott: And so, but I was [00:02:00] very much influenced by a lot of the tragedies I saw around me. My brother had a family. friend. I don’t know how much detail you want me to go in, but my brother had a friend when I was very young. I mean, my brother was five and he had a friend who was, hung. I lived in Bellingham in, prior to middle school and had a friend that, uh, was hung in his mom’s closet by somebody who lived in her neighborhood.
[00:02:27] Jackie Helfgott: Like somebody who was renting a room from her and, and I have very early memories of the, missing children on the back of the milk carton, you know, especially having experienced something like that in real life. You know, later, the sister of one of my friends was one of the Green River Killer victims, uh, who lived in Fremont and, uh, right across the street.
[00:02:49] Jackie Helfgott: And she was found with braces on her teeth, 15 years old. her name is Colleen Brockman and, and, it’s just an enormous, of course, [00:03:00] tragedy and hard to wrap your head around. and then I, I had, other things happening around me.
[00:03:05] Jackie Helfgott: I had, one of my first boyfriends found his, um, Mom stabbed to death over in Green Lake multiple times. she ended up being stabbed by some kind of cocaine dealer, who ended up being put in prison in Florida. But anyway, I could go on and on, with stories, but there have been enough, but crime is something I’ve seen different types of crimes all around me.
[00:03:27] Jackie Helfgott: My first landlord I ever had, I lived in one of his houses in, in, in Ballard for six years. Years later, I was taking my students through the Special Commitment Center at McNeil Island. We’re talking to the counselor and there he was with his walker. He was committed to the civil commitment for sexually violent predators.
[00:03:46] Jackie Helfgott: And so I could just in terms of victims, perpetrators, I’ve had friends that have gone to prison. but also during a lot of my years when I was, a waitress for 15 years while I was going to college. And, [00:04:00] Police would come in and I would talk to police. And so I, as I was going to college and just Thinking through a lot of this, I had police that had offered to take me out on ride alongs.
[00:04:11] Jackie Helfgott: So I was able to go out on police ride alongs, just learn about that side of things. I had a professor in one of my classes at the University of Washington who took me and another student up to Walla Walla Prison, and I had been following, you know, I’d been interested in, and did my doctoral dissertation on psychopaths.
[00:04:30] Jackie Helfgott: And I became interested in psychopaths because I was following in the news, like many of us were at that time, the story of Kevin Coe and Diane Downs, and, uh, the professor that took As to Walla Walla, we, he took us there right after Kevin co was put in prison and I actually saw him just feet from me.
[00:04:51] Jackie Helfgott: So there were just many different things that happened to me and were happening around me that just made me realize how real [00:05:00] crime is. Is just and all of the different tragedies of crime from being a victim to being a perpetrator and being treated unfairly in the criminal justice system to being a police officer or being in the corrections setting and having to manage, people in prison.
[00:05:17] Jackie Helfgott: So there are just a lot of aspects that really impacted me.
[00:05:21] Mark Wright: Yeah. Crime, in other words, was not an abstraction in your life. It was a very real thing that you dealt with. And I think that’s interesting that in those formative years, when you had to kind of try to make sense of these crimes, I remember when I was a kid, our home was burglarized at least three times when I was a kid.
[00:05:41] Mark Wright: And it was very traumatizing, to see all your stuff spread around and windows broken. And, uh, and to this day, my wife calls me Mr. Blockwatch because I just am so almost absurdly diligent about locking doors and, you know, motion lights and just, it just, it’s weird [00:06:00] how that stuff that happens when we’re kids really does shape who we are later.
[00:06:04] Jackie Helfgott: Yes,
[00:06:05] Mark Wright: Um, so let’s talk about the, uh, Crime and Justice Research Center at Seattle University. I’d love to have you explain for folks who don’t know what that is. And when we had our conversation a few weeks ago, I was, I had no idea. This is such an overarching, body that really is doing amazing work in the community.
[00:06:24] Mark Wright: So explain the center, how it got started and what its work is today, Jackie.
[00:06:28] Jackie Helfgott: Yeah. so I’ve been at Seattle University since, 1993 and we started the, um, and I was department chair for about 16 years and, we started the Crime and Justice Research Center while I was still department chair at the time and, and, uh, I was about over 20 years ago now. You know, I, when I went into criminal justice, I never, I didn’t want to be a professor.
[00:06:55] Jackie Helfgott: I actually wanted to work in a prison. And once I, [00:07:00] I got into academia, I most definitely didn’t want to be an ivory tower, professor. And I can’t think of any discipline there is that where it’s more important to to be out in the real world, understanding, criminal justice and, and the impact of, crime.
[00:07:16] Jackie Helfgott: So about 20, I think it was about 22 years ago now that, I invited, every criminal justice professional I could think of in local state, federal, agencies , and, uh, we now have nonprofit and also private agencies. But I remember inviting 30 people to come to join our Seattle University Advisory Committee for Criminal Justice.
[00:07:40] Jackie Helfgott: And 29 people came. I was shocked. We had a big luncheon and 29 out of 30 and these are chiefs of police and the special agents in charge of every federal agency and, um, the secretary for the Department of Correction. So everybody can think of, and that, evolved over the years. We now have about 155 [00:08:00] local, state, federal, nonprofit, private, uh, individuals representing agencies related to criminal justice, and over 60 something different agencies. So, that advisory board has worked with our department to form internships, research, and, uh, to help just inform our curriculum. So, out of that, the Crime and Justice Research Center, uh, grew out of the conversations that we had with our advisory board members and our interest in our department and in doing collaborative research projects, continuing education, events that would benefit the community and, Public scholarships that would benefit the community.
[00:08:42] Jackie Helfgott: So that’s what we do at the Crime and Justice Research Center. And when I came off of being chair Um a number of years ago, I think about seven years ago now I took on the role of the director of the Crime and Justice Research Center So I could focus on that. I really have loved interacting with the [00:09:00] criminal justice professionals and My job now is to work on collaborative projects, you know, bringing opportunities for students to engage in research that matters, in the community around crime and justice issues.
[00:09:14] Jackie Helfgott: I also run our continuing, Ed event. We do a big continuing Ed event every year and, uh, service and public scholarship types of activities.
[00:09:22] Mark Wright: Wow. So the center really is, It’s just that sort of liaison group between the real world and research and academia, which I think is, is so critical when we talk about the enormous amount of money that we spend on criminal justice in our society. I think it behooves everyone to figure out the real causes of crime and what the real trends are in crime as well.
[00:09:46] Mark Wright: So you’ve authored a number of books, Jackie, copycat crime, how media technology and digital culture inspire criminal behavior and violence. That one from last year, you also wrote no remorse, talking about psychopaths, [00:10:00] psychopathy, and the criminal justice system, and also criminal behavior, theories, typologies, and criminal justice.
[00:10:05] Mark Wright: So you really have an expansive background and understanding of all of these things. I’d like to do, though, Jackie, is just give our listeners a very broad view of the criminal justice system in America right now and in Seattle, because you’ve seen criminal justice evolve over time, and we’ve seen flashpoints like defund the police in Seattle.
[00:10:32] Mark Wright: So this is such a dynamic topic. But when people ask you about just like. What is the criminal justice system like now in America? Well, how can you describe it?
[00:10:43] Jackie Helfgott: Well, it’s become, I mean, it always has been politicized, and it’s become increasingly politicized, which makes it difficult to make progress on theory and research and data that informs criminal [00:11:00] justice practice. if you think about criminal justice as a, discipline or, trying to improve things that we do in, criminal justice, it’s, difficult.
[00:11:09] Jackie Helfgott: Unlike other disciplines, I think oftentimes about medicine or cancer research and how theory and research, we all want to cure cancer, we all want to get rid of crime, but politics drive, and I know politics probably drive medicine in many ways too, but politics drive crime in ways that, are really unheard of in, in other discipline or are much more central than they are in, in medicine.
[00:11:38] Jackie Helfgott: , in other disciplines or other areas that, you know, we want to fix in society. And so it, it makes it very difficult to, um, move the needle forward to create change, to reduce crime, to increase justice. Public safety,
[00:11:55] Mark Wright: Yeah, I think, and what I guess you’re getting at is that because [00:12:00] emotion is such a strong driver when it comes to the topic of crime, I’m guessing that that can skew things. And because, you know, we’ve all seen city council meetings where The testimony gets kind of emotional and, sometimes it gets heated and the, back and forth between our, our elected officials and the, and the general public, you know, every time you see a hearing in Olympia on gun control and, you know, it’s just one of those things that, uh, we almost.
[00:12:26] Mark Wright: Never go to someone like you and say, give us the truth on where this stands, because people’s perception of crime is so strong. I’d love to talk about that. Jackie. What the perception of crime is probably I’m guessing just about as. As important as the actual crime numbers. Talk about the importance of crime perception in our society and specifically in Seattle.
[00:12:50] Jackie Helfgott: well, yeah, I mean, perceptions of crime can matter just as much as actual incidents of crime. I mean, if a person [00:13:00] is afraid of crime, it’s going to affect their quality of life. They won’t want to, you know, Go talk to their neighbors. They won’t want to walk to the grocery store. we know, uh, from research that the mean world syndrome is very real, that if someone consumes a lot of media, and who lives next door to someone who doesn’t consume a lot of media, the person who doesn’t consume a lot of media is gonna believe that the world is a much more safe place than the person who consumes a lot of media.
[00:13:29] Jackie Helfgott: And so, most people get ideas about crime from the media, even those, those of us who’ve experienced crime and violence, much of our experience is media mediated and that can influence perceptions. But yes, most definitely perceptions matter very much in terms of, directing people’s activities and actions.
[00:13:54] Mark Wright: So what is the best way to educate the public about crime? I think one of the positives is I [00:14:00] have an app on my phone. I can’t remember the name of it, but it lets me know it’s a connection of neighborhoods and you sign up and you’re admitted to the group. And it actually is people saying, Hey, there’s this guy and there’s some doorbell video, of this, whoever.
[00:14:15] Mark Wright: You know, package thieves and, I feel like technology has given us the ability to connect as a community more than we ever have. But by the same token, that, that connectivity, I think, as you mentioned, can drive fear, as well. What is the best way to educate the public about crime?
[00:14:33] Jackie Helfgott: You know, I struggle with that. I mean, that’s I struggle with that, of course. the time. I mean, in this digital age, it’s hard to really answer that, question. I guess that the best way to educate people about crime, in my mind, is to introduce people to all of the different realities. I mean, a lot of what people think about when they think about crime is, Us, them, black, white.
[00:14:59] Jackie Helfgott: I think [00:15:00] the more, that people can be introduced to all of the nuances of crime, understanding that people who are perpetrators can also be victims, understanding that , crime isn’t just about the police and what the police can do, but about all the different components of the criminal justice system and how much we as community members get involved to, to try to informally address crime.
[00:15:28] Jackie Helfgott: And so figuring out different ways to get at people, but as you mentioned, apps that connect people up, they’re only giving you whoever’s talking on that app, and a lot of times it creates hysteria, and it doesn’t give the opportunity to, connect with people in real life, so I think more and more, In our digital culture, just, trying to get the word out, about the realities of crime, but also figuring out ways to connect people in real time, in the [00:16:00] real world, to understand each other.
[00:16:02] Jackie Helfgott: One conversation at a time.
[00:16:05] Mark Wright: Yeah. And you take part in regular meetings, right? With the public and law enforcement about that. Give us some examples of. of forums or, or meetings or ways that we can actually connect with law enforcement and everybody in the system.
[00:16:18] Jackie Helfgott: Yeah, so, I mean, I, I do the, Seattle Public Safety Survey every year and lead the Seattle Police micro community policing plans. And as part of that. We do community police dialogues. they are via zoom just for logistics , and convenience, but they bring together community members and police to speak directly about public safety concerns and to be able to ask questions.
[00:16:44] Jackie Helfgott: We have different types of Dialogues, one broader, micro community police dialogues where community members can talk to the precinct personnel and other police personnel. And then we have special dialogues with the new Seattle police recruits from [00:17:00] before the badge, where community members can meet the people Seattle police is hiring to, become officers and tell them what they want to see in officers.
[00:17:09] Jackie Helfgott: And. Those dialogues give people opportunity to ask questions they otherwise might not be able to ask, like, I don’t want to call 9 1 1, you know, a lot of times they’ll talk about 9 1 1, like, I don’t know when I should call 9 1 1. I’m afraid to call 9 1 1 because I don’t want to contribute to systemic racism.
[00:17:27] Jackie Helfgott: I don’t want to call 9 1 1 because, The police won’t come, and it gives an opportunity for the police to say what they want, and, um, or they might have a public safety concern, and, they want to voice that concern, and there might be an officer there from the precinct where they can talk to about what they want done, and oftentimes the officers will say, I’ll meet you for coffee, or, I’m happy to do this or that, so it’s just an opportunity to connect directly, and, you know, one, Conversation after another, I’m hearing people say, wow, I had no [00:18:00] idea that that’s going on.
[00:18:01] Jackie Helfgott: And that really gets at, you know, you talk about public. education, just hearing people say, Wow, I had no idea that’s been going on, something that might have been going on for 20 years, but they’re getting some sort of different, message when they’re watching TV or listening to whatever they’re listening to, and they’re not understanding what’s actually going on.
[00:18:22] Jackie Helfgott: So, those types of conversations really help, to increase understanding and information about crime and public safety.
[00:18:30] Mark Wright: I think that’s such great advice, Jackie, when you talk about, I think everyone should know a police officer and should have a relationship with a police officer. When I was a journalist, I often would encourage people who complained about media coverage. I would ask them. Do you know any reporters?
[00:18:45] Mark Wright: Have you reached out to any reporters and said, Hey, I’d love to have a coffee with you, or at least to give them feedback on a story. And many times people said, no, I don’t really know any reporters, but what I encourage them to do was to develop a relationship with a reporter so that [00:19:00] if they wanted to influence, news coverage.
[00:19:02] Mark Wright: They had someone they could actually call and say, Hey, what do you think about this? This is a story idea. And the more that I’ve gotten to know, you know, I’ve known police chiefs and just everyday beat cops. I really have a different understanding of policing and an empathy. You know, I, I did jujitsu with a guy who was, you know, a beat cop up on Capitol Hill in Seattle.
[00:19:23] Mark Wright: And I asked him, I said, well, what’s a typical day like? He said, honestly, Mark, I deal with the same seven people who are mentally ill every day. Most of my days, all I’m doing is responding to calls from the same, you know, from businesses who said, Hey, this person broke a window. and I was like, Oh my gosh.
[00:19:42] Mark Wright: So I was like, wow, that’s what our police are doing. At least at certain parts of Seattle is just responding to chronic mental illness. On a daily basis. So property crimes, forget about it. They can’t, they don’t have time to do that.
[00:19:55] Jackie Helfgott: Right? And, and it goes the other way too, you know, the police are always dealing with [00:20:00] problems, they don’t, problems in the community, they don’t have an opportunity to actually engage in a conversation, and so having dialogues allows the police in a non emergency, non crisis situation. situation to have a conversation with community members, to sort of break down that social construction that people have about each other that doesn’t really exist in reality.
[00:20:24] Mark Wright: We talked a little bit about defund police in Seattle. That was really a flashpoint when you talk about the politicization , of, policing and criminal justice. there was a period a few years ago in Seattle where there was a movement in the city council, I can’t remember how far the actual motion got in terms of legislation, but The idea was we’re going to cut police funding by 50 percent and spend money on social services to try to treat mental illness the blowback from that was Extreme and pronounced and we’re still dealing with that today.
[00:20:55] Mark Wright: I’d love to know jackie. What was your perception of defund [00:21:00] police? In seattle and what was the result of it? What did it tell us about policing in our society?
[00:21:06] Jackie Helfgott: Well, I immediately wrote an op ed in the Seattle Times right when that all started. Um, just because when all that was happening, I was in such shock. All I could do was to sit at my computer and write something. I mean, it was, it was just shocking to me. Because, having been involved in a lot of the data and research, having been involved in a lot of what was going on at Seattle Police, I was on the crisis, I’ve been on the Crisis Intervention Committee since the inception of it and the consent decree.
[00:21:38] Jackie Helfgott: It was just shocking, especially in Seattle, to see something happening in another community that was so directly influencing and affecting our community on the heels of many years of a huge amount of work on, um, building [00:22:00] and bringing people in to inform them. actual law enforcement practice.
[00:22:04] Jackie Helfgott: And, I know for a fact that much of what we do in the, in Seattle, not just Seattle police, but in many areas in criminal justice is data driven and informed by a lot of, theory and practice and a lot of, exceptional work that has been done, to get us to the right place and the defund the police movement Reminds me a lot of what happened, with the nothing works in corrections movement in the 1970s, where there was an one article that came out , that nothing works in correctional rehabilitation.
[00:22:42] Jackie Helfgott: Politicians got a hold of it. It was a. It was a, uh, very crude meta analysis of prison programs in the United States that where they used the title, Nothing Works. Politicians got a hold of it. The article actually never said nothing works, but what it [00:23:00] said that treatment needs to be directed towards certain types of individuals and it needs to be more.
[00:23:06] Jackie Helfgott: nuanced in a nutshell, but politicians got a hold of it and it removed every prison rehabilitation program out of the prisons in the United States. So the Defund the Police movement just reminds me of that. That, you know, it’s, media images, media ideas are being put out. And from what from a real horrific, tragic incident that happened, but widely affecting many different areas very quickly without thinking through the implications of it for all of us.
[00:23:45] Mark Wright: Yeah, those defund police voices had no plan, no alternative, uh, I mean, when they were impressed on the issue and the result of that , when police officers on the front lines in Seattle [00:24:00] actually saw. You know, after the resignation of Carmen Best, who was like, I can’t deal with this, how she was being treated, they saw that the city actually didn’t have their backs.
[00:24:10] Mark Wright: , they resigned and left in droves. Hundreds and hundreds of police officers fled Seattle. They’re still trying to rebuild the force to pre pandemic levels. So, That’s an example of media and society all combining in a way that had a really detrimental effect on criminal justice in our area. yeah.
[00:24:32] Mark Wright: Any, any further thoughts before we move
[00:24:33] Jackie Helfgott: Well, just that it’s another example of the us, them, I mean, I had students who were on the front lines of, as protesters and also former students who are on the front lines as police officers and, figuring out a way to break through that and have everyone understand their role , and I know a lot of people believe it’s not Possible.
[00:24:58] Jackie Helfgott: And, your show [00:25:00] is probably not long enough to talk about all of the many issues that really get in the way of having any kind of resolution , to all of that, but it boils down to just thinking that does not center the real tragedy of crime and justice and what needs to happen to, improve the situation for all of us.
[00:25:21] Mark Wright: One thing I think that gets lost in the shuffle. At least when it comes to crime is lasting impact. Every crime has on people and families and communities. I live in Mukilteo and there was a mass shooting here that happened in the summer of 2016. It actually took place at the home of some friends of ours.
[00:25:40] Mark Wright: And my son was there at the time and he’s lucky to be alive today. Three young people died at that party. One was wounded, but I think living through that, reporting on it, and also living through that for me, I mean, we went to the court hearings, we went to the funerals, and, uh, it’s kind of an emotional thing for me to talk about for that reason, because my [00:26:00] son grew up with these kids, from the time they were in grade school, and, at those funerals, the slideshow would have been the same.
[00:26:06] Mark Wright: If it was my son and, uh, I think the thing that I have taken away from that is just how much time and money and energy is spent investigating and prosecuting one crime. That one crime cost multiple millions of dollars in tax money. To investigate, to prosecute, to incarcerate, the shooter’s going to be in state prison for the rest of his life. that’s, that’s the one takeaway is just, and that’s one crime. That’s one crime. I think the other takeaway is that, three families will never celebrate the milestones that I get to celebrate with my son. Weddings, graduations, grandchildren, hopefully someday. And I don’t think until you go through, a crime like that, that you fully understand the impact because I think if we did, we might [00:27:00] have a different approach to solving crime because we have such a deeper understanding of that.
[00:27:06] Mark Wright: When you look at crimes like that, and I’d love to get into the, to the media and social media and digital aspect of, of crimes, with you. But when, you know, when you saw crime in Mukilteo. Jackie, what, was your perception of, of that, that whole case? Mm hmm.
[00:27:23] Jackie Helfgott: Well, I mean, that and many other, I mean, I think about those types of crimes all the time just because I teach about , the crimes and when something, when that happened locally and the other, there’ve been a number of incidents that, I mean, the SPU mass shooting that occurred and there’s been a number of, so what do I think about?
[00:27:42] Jackie Helfgott: I, think Like you’ve explained that you think I, from morning to night, I calculate my risk and everyone else’s risk of victimization and all the things that can be done in terms of personal safety habits and, I think, here it’s [00:28:00] happened again, here, there’s a situation that all these different ripple effects and harms are going to be created and I think about what could have been done to it.
[00:28:09] Jackie Helfgott: To prevent it. I mean, when my daughter was in kindergarten, I was terrified to have her go to school and I became the, you know, the lunch safety monitor where they give you the orange vest. I was in and I was in her school on the school year, the first week she was in school and she was in school right after the Beslan hostage crisis.
[00:28:31] Jackie Helfgott: And so I had that in my mind. Well, the first, one of the first days that I was doing that, a kid came up, a kid ran up to me and said a kid was talking about shooting up the playground. And then I went up to that kid and I said, what did you just say? And he held a finger to me and pointed the gun to me and said he was going to shoot up the playground.
[00:28:53] Jackie Helfgott: And I tried to talk to the person who headed up the school safety people. And she said, well, you [00:29:00] don’t think he’s going to. Do it, do you? And, it made me think of, you know, the six year old who had the, that was killed, you know, on the East Coast, and so I, and I tried to set up a more restorative justice sort of conversation around it, which didn’t get very far in the school system at the, the, the time, but to just try to find out why that kid said that.
[00:29:21] Jackie Helfgott: And I, I bring that situation up because, What I think about when incidents like that happen is, what could have been done to prevent that from happening? Was there one thing that could have been, that someone said to someone else that could have stopped it? , and I think about that incident, you know, my own experience of, that incident being sort of pushed away and, and disregarded.
[00:29:42] Jackie Helfgott: And. And, um, boys will be boys type thing, you know, when a kid holds a finger like that.
[00:29:49] Mark Wright: And I think something that we should talk about with the Mukilteo shooting, if people aren’t familiar with that actual case, a 19 year old who had broken up with his girlfriend in Uh, wanted [00:30:00] to get back together with her. She did not want to get back together. So his solution was to buy an AR 15 and go find her at a party and kill her to others and wounded a person.
[00:30:10] , the big takeaway I should say from that case for me really was the number of red flags that. That came up, the shooter told his friends, he bought a gun. They asked, why did you buy a gun? He said, I’m going to go shoot some, an expletive. Uh, and they were, they questioned him and said, what, what, what?
[00:30:28] Mark Wright: He said, stay in your lane. So he kind of threatened them to just none of your business. So red flag, number one, your friend buys a gun, says he’s going to shoot some people. You know about that in advance. And no one said anything to police. His own mother saw the box in the garage. And, and asked him, what did you buy a gun?
[00:30:49] Mark Wright: Yeah, I bought a gun. How come? Oh, self protection. Self protection? An AR 15? Seriously? So the mother knew that he had purchased a gun. he posted a picture of the [00:31:00] gun on social media in the days leading up to the shooting. I mean, there was red flag after red flag. The night of the shooting, the same friends that knew he bought a gun, knew he was trying to find the party where his ex girlfriend was, and they helped him find the party.
[00:31:17] Jackie Helfgott: well, in that case in particular, really ill staked, I mean, there’s really, in this, era of digital culture and the way that we’re all inundated by the media mediated violence and other cultural messages that decrease public safety and increase crime, there are three main things that case illustrates, but that we need to be thinking about in terms of Creating change and one is to, to de glorify violence and stop celebrating violence and show more stories of pro social types of behaviors in the media.
[00:31:54] Jackie Helfgott: But the other is , to get rid of that message that violent masculinity is [00:32:00] power, which it sounds like in that case, there was a lot of, messages and cultural messages that, Potentially we’re in for not potentially that we’re informing that that individual and then finally what you are saying is to have a multi pronged effort to get at all of this to, every single person has a responsibility to say something when they hear something that.
[00:32:24] Jackie Helfgott: Could create danger for other people and I think oftentimes People just don’t do it. That’s not their business or they I don’t know You know They’re just not taking action to try to do what needs to be done and in many of these cases one person saying Something could make a difference
[00:32:45] Mark Wright: I’m just imagining if someone had anonymously called the police department and said, Hey, this person I know is talk is talking about shooting people and bought a gun. If a cop had rung the doorbell at his home, and his mom had answered, and they sat down and said, Hey, [00:33:00] we’re hearing this. And we want to talk to you about this. I’m guessing that, I don’t know, it may have snapped him out of it. I’d love to ask you, Jackie, you’ve studied crime and criminals. when criminals start to obsess about something and then they isolate and they start to mentally spiral, what, what’s actually happening there because it seems like they get just completely detached from reason at some point where it seems like.
[00:33:28] Mark Wright: Oh, she broke up with me or I, I broke up with her. She doesn’t want to get back together. So a solution is murdering her. And that somehow makes sense. How do they get to that point?
[00:33:38] Jackie Helfgott: Well, I mean, I think we all can spiral and we all have our own cognitive scripts, and there’s all kinds of cultural ideas that make their way into all of our cognitive scripts. But when you’re, young, and you know, we know now from the research that the youth brain doesn’t fully develop till 25, when you’re young, when you’re isolated, and when you’re [00:34:00] insulated by digital culture.
[00:34:02] Jackie Helfgott: I mean, a lot of the mass shooters that we’ve seen one after another. Have been involved in digital subcultures, whether they’re gaming subcultures or whether it’s the incel, movement or whatever, but , they’re members of digital subcultures where their ideas are getting validated and strengthened.
[00:34:23] Jackie Helfgott: And whether it be from playing a video game and seeing somebody die and get respawned and reborn and, and that sort of minimizing the harm that comes from violence in this, in their media mediated sort of idea of violence and that can play into the individual’s cultural script, whether it’s the idea that Violent masculinity equals power and because this, yes, this girl or young woman broke up with the person and therefore they’re entitled to do something about it and that those entitlement messages are all around us in culture, all of those different cultural messages [00:35:00] can make their way into people’s cognitive scripts and the more a person is Isolated and insulated by these subcultures that validate those messages, the more that individual can spin out and that fantasy can evolve to the point of action.
[00:35:18] Jackie Helfgott: And I call, that in my, the copycat crime book that I just, you know, I’ve called these individuals edge sitters because we’re all in a lot of ways edge sitters that there’s, you know, a line between us engaging in pro social versus anti social behavior, but some individuals have many more risk factors for engaging in antisocial behavior and crime and the individual that you just described, like many people who commit mass shooting are edge sitters who it could take one thing, one more thing to take that person from fantasy to action and that in between is what needs to be interrupted by, any way that we [00:36:00] can interrupt it.
[00:36:01] Jackie Helfgott: , By identifying these red flags.
[00:36:03] Mark Wright: And we should say that from a policy standpoint, speaking to the brain science that you mentioned in the state of Washington in the years after that shooting, uh, the purchase age. Was raised by legislators from 18 to 21 to purchase semiautomatic weapons. And that seems like that was a logical response.
[00:36:22] Mark Wright: When you think about how incomplete the human, especially male brain is until it gets to be about 25 years old. And I think we should probably also talk about the accessibility of weapons. I always think back to the Sandy Hook shooting, and here’s a mother, Adam Lanza, the shooter. His mother knew that he was struggling mentally. And yet she took him to the gun range and he got really proficient at firing a semi automatic rifle.
[00:36:51] Mark Wright: And she didn’t keep it secured in their home. And she was the first one that he killed the day of the Sandy Hook shooting. And I think about what [00:37:00] would have happened if she had secured her weapons? It might’ve prevented Sandy Hook. I don’t know, but it was super easy for him to do that with his accessibility to that gun.
[00:37:09] Mark Wright: , what do you think, your perceptions of, of that. I mean, it’s gun control is a hot, hot, hot topic. And, you know, I have a concealed carry permit. I think I’m very responsible, but some people think that, you know, guns should be completely banned. which when you look at our constitution, that’s never going to happen.
[00:37:29] Mark Wright: , so I’d love your perspective on quote unquote, gun control.
[00:37:33] Jackie Helfgott: Well, and that gets back to everybody taking a piece of the responsibility. I mean, if you are going to be gun owner, yeah, it needs to be locked up. We know from routine activity theory that, you know, there’s situation there’s aspects of the environment that can be and need to be controlled to reduce crime and to reduce crime.
[00:37:54] Jackie Helfgott: You need to, you know, decrease crime. Temptations and increased controls and locking [00:38:00] a gun is one of those many ways that that crime can be controlled. But yeah, the availability of firearms. In this country and the, conflicts, political conflicts around all of it is another example of, obstructing any path forward to try to address the reality of the situation with availability of, firearms.
[00:38:23] Jackie Helfgott: And, All of this starts, of course, with parenting and in the home and but not everyone’s parenting and home situation, is ideal, which is where the whole, it takes a village ideas is so important because if you have a failure in the home, a parent that You know, has gun, doesn’t lock it up and is, you know, certain cultural messages are making their way into the individual, the child’s mind that’s forming the child’s fantasy.
[00:38:55] Jackie Helfgott: , and then the kid goes to school and, says something that, that, [00:39:00] that makes it clear of what’s going on in the home, then that’s a point where something can happen , to intervene. But it’s all very. Complex and nuanced and there’s so many different areas where red flags can be identified and different individuals in a person’s life might be able to do something to stop something like that from happening.
[00:39:27] Jackie Helfgott: But as far as the gun control issue and the availability of firearms. There are too many guns in this society. They are too available to children and adults. And something needs to happen , to make a dent it. And things like the red flag laws. I mean, there are policies and practices where we can try to get at some of this, such as increasing the age that a person can own a weapon, red flag laws, and other types of policies that, Can be a piece of the puzzle of how to move forward.[00:40:00]
[00:40:00] Mark Wright: Yeah, we have seen some very constructive laws being passed when it comes to domestic violence situations and, prohibiting people in, in those situations or, having really severe penalties for someone who’s been convicted of domestic violence having , access to weapons. your copycat crime book made me really think about that.
[00:40:19] Mark Wright: The contagion effect in our digital society, we are so connected, that we hear about every bad story that happens anywhere in the world. What do we know about contagion, Jackie, when it comes to mass shootings and when these people, as you described them sitting on the edge here of someone else who’s carried out one of these mass shootings, is there a legitimate concern about contagion via digital media?
[00:40:48] Jackie Helfgott: There most certainly is. I mean, the, you know, one after another of these mass shooters we know has followed other mass shooters and, you know, there many of [00:41:00] them see, you know, the, Columbine killers or, or uh, you know, Virginia Tech shooter or. Or, um, Elliot Roger from Santa Barbara.
[00:41:07] Jackie Helfgott: These people have become idols in the minds of these edge sitters, and we really need to pay attention to the stories that are going out in, in media. That doesn’t mean censoring. You know, I was recently, you know, inter interviewed for a story on the, the shooting that happened in, Tennessee, and the, there’s a legal.
[00:41:30] Jackie Helfgott: Action being taken to try to keep the manifesto of the shooter from Coming out and I don’t, and, many of these mass shooters do use other shooters manifestos. And, the way that we make decisions about this information coming out needs to just be very, It doesn’t mean that we need to be censoring the information because we need the information in order to study and learn and understand.
[00:41:56] Jackie Helfgott: But do we need to report on crime in ways that [00:42:00] glorify and celebrate? The shooter? No, we need to figure out ways to de glorify the shooter, to present these stories in a way where the person is not celebrated, and the focus is on the victim, and the focus is on pro social behavior, and also in ways that, Give us hope.
[00:42:21] Jackie Helfgott: I, you know, I once, saw the, in a news report of the father of someone in a mass shooting, situation, hold up his hands and say, it’s like an earthquake. It’s like an earthquake. we can’t seem to do anything about it. And I would argue as a criminologist, there’s aspects that might be like an earthquake, but we have science that can help us identify risk factors to help us reduce the likelihood of this happening in the future.
[00:42:50] Jackie Helfgott: And so think we need to stop. Holding our hands up and saying it’s like an earthquake or, I mean, I understand that side of the victim’s [00:43:00] perspective of it because it does very much feel like that when one after another of these incidents are, are happening.
[00:43:06] Mark Wright: Yeah, I feel like it’s one of those problems in society that we just have to say, what are we going to do as a society? Because when you look at climate change, when you look at, any of these, when you look at racism, when you look at any of these systemic societal problems, there is no one answer.
[00:43:25] Mark Wright: The answer is, what are you going to do in your life, in your space? In your area of influence to move the needle and to make a difference and the answer is going to be different for every person, right?
[00:43:38] Jackie Helfgott: I 100 percent agree with that. I mean, yes, what are we going to do? What am I going to do? And that’s one of the things that, that becomes problematic in criminal justice. That’s one of my frustrations with the whole defend the police. movement that people are, the police aren’t doing anything, the police are harming, people, [00:44:00] yet I, those very same people, I’m not going to call the police because they won’t come, yet oftentimes people don’t, want to take their own responsibility to do anything and how to educate people on as you say, like in your, everyone has just their small area of existence and their everyday life.
[00:44:21] Jackie Helfgott: And there’s very practical things that people can do , To help and protect themselves and, to increase public safety in their own communities. And I know it sounds cliche, but, you know, getting to know your neighbors and going outside. I mean, that’s one of the most important things in our current digital culture.
[00:44:40] Jackie Helfgott: I mean, there’s, the, we’ve moved from the ethical and I’m using other people. One of my favorite books is the book, The Aesthetics of Murder. It’s By Joel Black, and he talks about how we’ve moved from the ethical realm of the real, where people engage with each other in everyday real world, everyday life, to [00:45:00] the aesthetic realm of the hyper real, where everything is media mediated.
[00:45:03] Jackie Helfgott: And in my book, I talk about how we’ve now gone to the digital realm of the unreal, where there’s this huge blurring of boundaries between real and fiction for many of us. And. What individual people need to do is get back out into the ethical realm of the real, be part of your local community, identify when you see a red flag, call the police when something happens, get to know your neighbor.
[00:45:31] Jackie Helfgott: Go out and have the night out barbecues, you know, small little things that sound cliche Make a huge difference when it comes to public safety and reducing the harms that can come from crime
[00:45:43] Mark Wright: Yeah, I have a lot more faith in everyday people than I do in the media. I spent 35 years in the media. I tried to watch a local newscast the other night in the first 12 minutes of the newscast was dedicated to violence and crime that had [00:46:00] almost no relevance to me. And my community, that model’s broken, it’s stuck and, you know, it’s becoming less relevant by the day because they somehow think that, I’m sorry that somebody got stabbed on the street somewhere.
[00:46:14] Mark Wright: I’m, I’m that, I’m sorry about that, but I don’t need to know about that in my daily life. It just makes me depressed and afraid.
[00:46:22] Jackie Helfgott: But can I ask you a question because I really want to know because the biggest thing that needs to happen and as a reporter Yeah, how can we get more pro social stories and messages out? Because that is one of the number one things that I think could be done to mitigate some of the harms that come from violent media.
[00:46:43] Mark Wright: yeah, I agree. And I, I battled for many, many years with young producers about the types of stories that we were covering. The problem with the current model of local TV news is that it evolved in a time before the Internet. So [00:47:00] think back to before the Internet, a house fire was very unusual. You almost never saw a house fire.
[00:47:06] Mark Wright: Catch on fire in person. So, wow, there’s a house fire. Let’s put that on TV and it got viewers because it was unusual. A garage fire. That’s unusual. A shooting. That was very unusual. A stabbing. That was unusual. So,, it became this delivery system of. Unusual and, highly charged , emotional content.
[00:47:27] Mark Wright: That’s how it started. And it has not evolved away from that. Viewership has plummeted back in the old days. You’d have 60, 70 percent of the population watching local news every night, at the appointed time. So the model. Is flawed and based on an old system the other night that same newscast They had a garage fire in the first 10 minutes of their newscast.
[00:47:53] Mark Wright: Nobody got hurt There was no takeaway and yet they felt compelled to put a garage [00:48:00] fire on the news and they’re wondering why people have tuned out So and the flip side of that is there are some amazing storytellers In local media, especially here in seattle and when they do those positive stories You They’re extremely popular and successful.
[00:48:17] Mark Wright: The problem is the decision makers who decide which stories go where and when are still in control of the system. So instead of leading with that great pro social story, they lead with the stabbing that just happened, thinking that the immediacy and the emotional content will somehow be more compelling than that pro social story.
[00:48:41] Jackie Helfgott: Well, and that’s one of the, and I know we’re probably running out of time here, but , that’s one of the things I know there’s a, a lot of, um, Opposition to social media like TikTok, but TikTok actually has a lot of really positive pro social stories at the same time. And, and that’s the whole, I think, point of TikTok , to have [00:49:00] more, lip syncing and dancing.
[00:49:02] Jackie Helfgott: And, and I mean, that’s not necessarily the pro social types of stories I’m actually talking about, but those types of, different forms of media also bring with them, positives. In addition to negatives.
[00:49:15] Mark Wright: And what’s ironic, Jackie, is that the metrics are undeniable on my social media account. . I was at a restaurant in Seattle and a waitress went out of the restaurant and she went out on the sidewalk and she asked a homeless man what he would like to eat and she started taking his order outside and I snapped a photo of her taking his order.
[00:49:38] Mark Wright: , I was really touched by the fact that the restaurant ownership obviously was okay with that. And the compassion that this waitress had , to actually do that. I put that on social media and it got like 25, 000 views and likes and comments. And, there’s no disputing that content, we’re craving that kind of content, [00:50:00] but the delivery system is broken.
[00:50:02] Mark Wright: The delivery says that’s why that’s why social media is supplanting traditional media
[00:50:07] Jackie Helfgott: Yep. I agree. Yep.
[00:50:09] Mark Wright: As we wrap things up, I’d love to ask your opinion about, you know, you have a daughter in her mid twenties. I have some, some boys in their twenties. What do you hope that her generation does differently when it comes to understanding and dealing with crime?
[00:50:23] Jackie Helfgott: Oh boy. Well, I hope number one, they get involved in their local communities and, just do positive things and have positive messages come out. Maybe that is what’s happening with this, the, some of the social media that we’re seeing focus on positive pro social. Aspects of interacting with people, and focus on that instead of the, violence and negativity and hopelessness and, harm and, help each other and, care [00:51:00] about each other , and be in the real, world.
[00:51:02] Jackie Helfgott: And what I hope, and I say this in my classes all the time. We don’t know empirically yet if children who are growing up and born into the digital age are, that are going to be more prone to violence or, and media mediated violence or less prone to it. It could be that, and my hope is that kids that are living and growing up in this digital culture are, less shocked by it all.
[00:51:29] Jackie Helfgott: And more. sophisticated in terms of knowing when they need to spend time in the everyday world. being pro social and helpful and hopeful and being members of their community and living less in the sort of media mediated realm of violence. And that’s what I hope for my daughter and those Younger that they’ll be able to sort out the damaging effects of media violence and be in that ethical realm of the real and notice when they’re [00:52:00] in the aesthetic realm of the hyper real or the digital realm of the, unreal and be able to sort through it all and just be better members of their own community.
[00:52:11] Mark Wright: And I feel like, I mean, if you look at the numbers, Our kids aren’t watching TV.
[00:52:16] Jackie Helfgott: No, they’re not.
[00:52:17] Mark Wright: not, they’re getting their news from the internet, from YouTube and from TikTok and from everywhere else. So I feel like they’re a little bit more sophisticated in, their willingness to expose themselves to, to awful negative content.
[00:52:30] Mark Wright: And as we kind of wrap things up here, Jackie, you know, this podcast is dedicated to redeeming work and that is to, showcase people who are doing great things through their work, but also showing that work can be a really honorable thing. you’ve spent decades, of your career in criminal justice, and I’m so glad that there are people like you who want to study crime.
[00:52:52] Mark Wright: And criminal justice and try to figure out a better way of doing that. I don’t even know how much of our GDP we spend on crime. It’s got to be astronomical. [00:53:00] So, if we can prevent one crime, that would be amazing. just from a monetary standpoint and a psychological standpoint. What are your thoughts on redeeming work?
[00:53:10] Mark Wright: And, uh, work as a means to making our society better.
[00:53:15] Jackie Helfgott: Well, Mark, I love the focus of your show. I listened to a number of your podcasts and your guests and this idea of redeeming work. I have not heard anyone talking about it, especially not the way you’re talking about it. And, work to me is amazing. Is the meaning, one of the meanings of, life.
[00:53:37] Jackie Helfgott: I mean, to be able to, do your part in society, it gets to a lot of what we’ve been talking about, about what can increase public safety and reduce crime. I mean, everybody has a job to do and, the whole goal of life is to, to, Figure out what role or what your talent is and, what small part you can play [00:54:00] in your local community and society and the world.
[00:54:03] Jackie Helfgott: And that’s what works about just doing your, your small part and doing it as well as you possibly can. Can do it and making your small contribution to try to make the world a better place.
[00:54:17] Mark Wright: Well, I’m glad you didn’t decide to be an artist,
[00:54:22] Jackie Helfgott: Well, thank you. Although I still do that on the side and I did art in prisons for a long, long time.
[00:54:28] Mark Wright: which, which is another example of, of taking your unique abilities and applying them before we wrap up, tell me about what was that like doing art in prison? What, was that like? What were the takeaways?
[00:54:39] Jackie Helfgott: oh, I could tell you. A lot of stories about that. But yeah, I did, art in the Washington State Reformatory and the Washington Correctional Center for Women for, well, mostly the Washington State Reformatory for over 20 years, and we did one of the Pike Place Markets pigs on parade, and metro bus stops, What I learned from that is you can have [00:55:00] someone who, who has committed a horrific crime and they can still be an amazing artist.
[00:55:07] Jackie Helfgott: You can have somebody who, who is sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, but they can still make something beautiful and they can still do their part to contribute to society. I mean, we used to do murals in the prison that would then.
[00:55:26] Jackie Helfgott: So even the person that you can think of who’s had the, a moment in their life where they’ve done the most horrific thing can still make something beautiful and do their part. Okay.
[00:55:40] Mark Wright: Thank you so much for spending some time on the podcast. And I appreciate all the work that you’re doing in the community to make it our community, a better place and a safer place. So thanks a lot. I hope we keep in touch.
[00:55:52] Jackie Helfgott: thanks, Mark. Thanks for having me.