A Timely Retrospective on the Need and Potential for Change

In “Organizational change through individual empowerment: Applying social psychology in prisons and policing,” Hans Toch (2014) offers a retrospective on his research career at the intersection of social psychology and criminal justice. Each chapter is a vignette of the defining moments from Toch’s over six-decades-long work in the field. He graciously acknowledges his teachers, stating the book is as much a testimony to what he has learned from them as it is a collection of his teachings. Throughout his reflections, Toch emphasizes the importance of doing psychology—moving beyond research and theory to see methodology as practicing one’s beliefs. As Craig Haney writes in the book’s forward, Toch’s uniquely humanistic approach to social psychology demonstrates an “appreciation for the power of context and situation to shape human behavior” (Toch, 2014, Foreword) and is undergirded by a steadfast belief that people—and systems—are capable of profound change.

In many ways, mainstream criminal justice is just catching up with Toch. Each chapter is rich with examples of the ways he saw beyond an immediate reality to guide his theory of change. Two themes in particular stand out as the best examples of his humanistic principles and values, as well as important considerations for the current era of reform. First, his incorporation of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals as research partners—as opposed to only subjects of study—could be considered radical even by contemporary standards, and it is notable that Toch foresaw the importance of including those closest to the problems in developing the solutions. Second, he recognizes the social psychology of violence impacts both those who are the subjects of policing and prisons and the people working in those systems. Traditionally, system actors and incarcerated individuals are positioned on opposite ends of the carceral dichotomy, and rarely analyzed side by side as being similarly impacted by its punitive culture. For Toch, the potential for people to change is intimately connected to the priorities of social institutions. While he provides examples of people and programs that led to positive changes, Toch also draws attention to important limits and failures of criminal justice reform that are particularly relevant for current discussions about where the field is headed. Any one of the issues in Toch’s retrospective could occupy a lifetime’s worth of work, and for Toch to have addressed so much over the course of his career is both inspiring and an indictment of how much work is needed to achieve a just society.

Toch’s inclusion of directly impacted individuals as researchers, facilitators, and ambassadors is an important principle that is still missing from too many justice reform efforts. All too often, the incorporation of directly impacted individuals is performative—a box to be checked on a grant application. This is not the case for Toch, whose deep respect for knowledge from direct experience is evident throughout the book but especially present in his memory about Manuel Rodriguez. This structural and political challenge to normative research-neutrality disrupts traditional power dynamics while reflecting Toch’s humanistic beliefs and avoiding exploitative or tokenizing narratives to further his agenda.

In the mid-1960s, Toch recruited Rodriguez as a “top researcher” (Toch, 2014, p. 34) for a study on the social psychology of violence while Rodriguez was still incarcerated. Rodriguez’s direct experience with violence in adolescence and the fact he had spent nearly half his life behind bars made him an expert on interpersonal and institutional violence. Toch explains Rodriguez’s other qualifications included an eighth-grade education, some trade school, time in the United States Army Supply School, and graduation from the New Careers Development Project—a targeted rehabilitative, job training program Toch helped pilot in a California prison. Toch reflects on how, after his release, Rodriguez continued to work on the project and approached participant interviews with sympathy and an intuitive understanding of the need to destabilize traditional hierarchies of researcher-subject through embodiment. Rodriguez’s understanding of the significance of every detail—from facial hair, to clothes that would make his interviewee feel more at ease—led to more intimate understandings of the social psychology of violence, and thus, provided better information for developing interventions and solutions. It is important to note that Rodriguez’s path to expertise should not be over-glamourized or go unacknowledged; however, Toch’s decision making is reflective of the sentiment that those closest to the problems are also closest to the solutions, and should be incorporated into all efforts to create a more safe and just society.

Toch also shares his experience partnering with law enforcement in Oakland, California, to study “problem officers” (Toch, 2014, p. 51) who had repeated violent encounters with civilians. Similar to his understanding of the expertise of incarcerated folk, Toch recruited “violence experienced” (Toch, 2014, p. 58) officers to study and pilot the Oakland Action Review Panel—an initiative that allowed officers who committed violence to self-reflect with peers and collectively develop measures to address the behavior. Although the chapter primarily focuses on the individual transformation and edification of a star recruit, it also acknowledges significant institutional challenges and highlights the limitations of reforming the system from within. Toch himself calls the experience an evanescent revolution, noting that despite proving the program “achieved the expected improvement in the post-panel performance of its subjects” (Toch, 2014, p. 62) and contributed to the overall reduction in number of confrontations between police and community members, the initiative was discontinued “in an across-the-board” (p. 62) budget cut. Toch argues leadership’s abandonment of the program signaled the “the beginning of the end” (Toch, 2014, p. 62) for the department’s internal commitment to stopping police-initiated violence and their credibility in the broader community. He notes shortly after this decision, a group of officers, dubbed “the Riders” (Toch, 2014, p. 62), were convicted for “systematically brutalizing citizens” (Toch, 2014, p. 62). The department essentially self-sabotaged their ability to address issues internally and failed to demonstrate a commitment to proactively preventing violence.

In Chapters 8, 9, and 10, Toch discusses his experiences working in Scottish prisons, and points to innovations there as potential next steps for the United States’ justice system. He noted Scottish prisons’ mindfulness toward human development and commitment to making life on the inside of prison as similar to life on the outside as possible. One example of Scotland’s ambitious attempts to mimic normalcy was instituting a level of participatory democracy within the prison. In Chapter 8, Toch describes witnessing leadership at Her Majesty’s Prison Penninghame—one of three prisons in Scotland at the time that did not have walls or fences—implement a participatory governance program, where staff and residents of the prison collaborated to resolve issues and develop reforms. But in 1999, Penninghame, along with what Toch saw as other innovative sites, was closed in what he felt was a “misconceived effort to save money by abandoning quality projects” (Toch, 2014, p. 121). Similar to Oakland’s divestment from internal proactive reforms, Toch felt Scotland’s pivot “happened to augur the demise of a revolutionary rehabilitative paradigm” (Toch, 2014, p. 102). In comparing Toch’s different experiences with law enforcement and corrections officials in Oakland and Scotland—and even the New Careers program, from which the aforementioned Miguel Rodriguez graduated—a concerning pattern of the life cycle of one-off reforms emerges: broader economic concerns inevitably “expedited the demise” (Toch, 2014, p. 48) of effective programs. It is clear that Toch believes these programs were abandoned because of a lack of institutional commitment to reform, and not for a lack of success.

Toch sees the need for prisons to mirror the outside world as necessary on two fronts: it facilitates a better transition back into the community for re-entry and improves conditions for people with lengthy sentences. He argues, “As long as we imprison many persons for unconscionably long periods of time, our prisons have to shoulder the obligation to support . . . and reinforce the personal development of long-term residents” (Toch, 2014, p. 126). However, Toch’s call for prisons in the United States to mirror the outside world may be difficult for a broader audience to accept. A recent study found roughly 47% of the United States thinks prisons are not punitive enough, while only about 12% think it is too harsh and just under 42% think it is just right (Wozniak, 2014). Toch’s retrospective does not directly discuss society’s preoccupation with punishment, and his reflections do not anticipate needing to justify this absence to his audience. Instead, he uses each chapter to make a compelling case about human potential for growth and does not shy away from critiquing governments and systems for failing to institutionalize successful one-off projects. While some may see the absence of a discussion on punishment, or even an anticipated rebuttal, as a critical oversight, it is significant that someone who spent almost 70 years working with people and systems across different counties and countries, in reflecting on the most significant moments of his professional journey, did not see focusing on punishment as one of the important lessons for future generations. If anything, this may have been a missed opportunity to speak directly about the difference between punishment and accountability, and clarify how the interventions for law enforcement and those incarcerated he discusses provide superior methods of safety and justice, compared to traditional retributive processes.

What has become increasingly more clear in recent years is the need for serious discussions about the balance between reforming the system’s responses to crime and addressing the root causes of incarceration, recidivism, and violence in the broader community. In a 1963 speech at a symposium on rehabilitation, Toch concluded his remarks by stating:

[T]he job is not merely to change the client or the patient, or the group member . . . [T]he changers have to change faster than the people being changed . . . Each of us must learn to work with persons or forces which promote the destruction of our roles, values, habits and preconceptions. (Toch, 1963, p. 122 as cited in Toch, 2014, p. 50)

Although Toch acknowledges the point of justice reform is to make the need for this type of work obsolete, he does not provide much reflection on how to successfully achieve this destruction. Given the examples he discusses about departments’ lack of long-term institutional commitment to reform, a bridge between short-term successes and a long-term strategy would have been helpful for readers to resolve this paradox of justice reform. The paradox exists because as the United States reforms the inside of the justice system, it resists the effort to invest in communities in ways that make police-led and incarceration-based interventions less necessary. That is, efforts inside that focus on rehabilitation and reducing the likelihood of recidivism upon release, or deflecting people from the justice system entirely, must be tied to efforts on the outside to keep people from entering and returning to in-custody settings to create a continuity of care and maximize success (Krivo, 2014). For instance, job training programs in prisons do little for successful re-entry if those jobs are disappearing from the modern economy or the industries discriminate against people with past convictions. Similarly, a lack of accessible or affordable substance use treatment in the community can make conviction and incarceration a primary method of service delivery for low-income and poor individuals. A more critical reflection from Toch on this reform paradox would be advantageous for the current generation of activists and reformers tackling the country’s most persistent and pervasive injustices.

In the few short years since this book’s release, conversations about justice are not merely calling for reforms to the system, but a radical restructuring of public funds that shift resources from carceral budgets to community-based networks of support. One strategy that has recently gained mainstream popularity is participatory budgeting: a democratized process whereby community members decide how a public budget is allocated (Hagelskamp et al., 2018). For instance, the People’s Budget LA in California—a coalition of groups led by Black Lives Matter, Los Angeles—has been organizing for 5 years to call on the mayor to divest from the city’s outsized funding for the Los Angeles Police Department—which receives roughly 54% of the city’s general fund—and invest in strategies that reduce unemployment and increase both opportunities and access to affordable housing (Black Lives Matter, Los Angeles, n.d.). These efforts are helping to shift the discourse from balancing punishment and reform within the criminal justice system, to balancing government budgets by investing in proactive measures in the outside community. Given Toch’s reflections on departments’ evanescent investments in reform, it is even more critical for people advocating for carceral divestment to monitor where budget cuts come from so that existing measures to address, prevent, and reduce violence in prisons, criminal justice agencies, and the streets are protected.

Taken together, Toch’s memories offer a guidebook for the current generation of criminal justice professionals that is sure to achieve his goal of teaching long after his retirement. The collection is a testament to both how far the field has come and how much further the quest for justice has to go. It also proves a long career advocating for change can make someone more hopeful, instead of more jaded.