Welcome to episode three in our series Unveiling Trauma's Impact: Navigating the Hidden Costs. In this episode, we uncover the hidden costs of unaddressed trauma in the justice system.
Have you ever stopped to consider the remarkable potential hidden within individuals entangled in the justice system? Today, with the guidance of David Dawdy and Travis Atkinson from TBD Solutions, we venture into the profound connections between trauma and criminal justice. We challenge the status quo, shifting the conversation from the deficits to the strengths of those who have faced trauma.
We talk about the hidden costs that trauma inflicts on quality of life and societal structures, and unravel the narratives of justice-involved individuals. We also discuss the role of trauma-informed practices, strategies that prevent adverse childhood experiences, and emphasize the ethical necessity of integrating diverse voices in decision-making processes.
This conversation is an invitation to embrace an abundance mindset that offers support and inclusion, rather than exclusion—sowing the seeds for a justice system that truly heals and restores.
Join us to discover how leadership, informed by compassion and resilience, can transform environments and foster triumph over adversity.
David Dawdy is a speaker and trainer, and he held the distinguished role of Mental Health Director for the Michigan Department of Corrections for a decade. His leadership in managing mental health, substance use disorder, and sexual offense treatment services for justice-involved individuals exemplifies his unwavering dedication to providing comprehensive and effective care. You can learn more about David on his website: JDavidDawdy.com or email him at davidd@tbdsolutions.com.
Travis Atkinson is a training instructor, coach, meeting facilitator, and conference presenter. He has worked for the past ten years in both clinical and managerial roles in behavioral health. Through these experiences, he espouses the value of a healthy and functioning behavioral healthcare system, the power of data to drive decision‐making, and the importance of asking the right questions. Travis is also the host of The Crisis Podcast and you can email him at travisa@tbdsolutions.com.
Learn more about TBD Solutions, where David and Travis both work,
Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.
Invite Manya to inspire and empower your teams + position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in fostering resilience and trauma sensitivity.
Welcome to episode three in our series Unveiling Trauma's Impact: Navigating the Hidden Costs. In this episode, we uncover the hidden costs of unaddressed trauma in the justice system.
Have you ever stopped to consider the remarkable potential hidden within individuals entangled in the justice system? Today, with the guidance of David Dawdy and Travis Atkinson from TBD Solutions, we venture into the profound connections between trauma and criminal justice. We challenge the status quo, shifting the conversation from the deficits to the strengths of those who have faced trauma.
We talk about the hidden costs that trauma inflicts on quality of life and societal structures, and unravel the narratives of justice-involved individuals. We also discuss the role of trauma-informed practices, strategies that prevent adverse childhood experiences, and emphasize the ethical necessity of integrating diverse voices in decision-making processes.
This conversation is an invitation to embrace an abundance mindset that offers support and inclusion, rather than exclusion—sowing the seeds for a justice system that truly heals and restores.
Join us to discover how leadership, informed by compassion and resilience, can transform environments and foster triumph over adversity.
David Dawdy is a speaker and trainer, and he held the distinguished role of Mental Health Director for the Michigan Department of Corrections for a decade. His leadership in managing mental health, substance use disorder, and sexual offense treatment services for justice-involved individuals exemplifies his unwavering dedication to providing comprehensive and effective care. You can learn more about David on his website: JDavidDawdy.com or email him at davidd@tbdsolutions.com.
Travis Atkinson is a training instructor, coach, meeting facilitator, and conference presenter. He has worked for the past ten years in both clinical and managerial roles in behavioral health. Through these experiences, he espouses the value of a healthy and functioning behavioral healthcare system, the power of data to drive decision‐making, and the importance of asking the right questions. Travis is also the host of The Crisis Podcast and you can email him at travisa@tbdsolutions.com.
Learn more about TBD Solutions, where David and Travis both work,
Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.
Invite Manya to inspire and empower your teams + position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in fostering resilience and trauma sensitivity.
I was thinking about, similarly, how we look at people, and that question of what's wrong with them, what's wrong with you, needs to be flipped and we need to be looking at what strengths can that group, this individual, this person that I don't understand bring to their own recovery, bring to the table, bring to my community that we're missing out on because we didn't include them.
Manya Chylinski:
Hello, welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, Mayja Chylinski, and today we have another episode in the series Unveiling Trauma's Impact Navigating the Hidden Costs, and today we're talking about trauma and the criminal justice system. My guests are David Dawdy and Travis Atkinson, who both work for TBD Solutions, a consulting firm that works with healthcare and social services systems to improve quality and access to care and help them get better at helping people. We talked about the connection between trauma and justice-involved population. We talked about how do we think about individuals who have been incarcerated or who are involved in the justice system and the role of our system in preventing us from really helping those individuals thrive in a lot of circumstances. This is a great episode and I know you're going to learn a lot. Thanks for listening, David. Thank you for being a guest again on the podcast. Thanks for being here.
David Dawdy:
Good morning.
Manya Chylinski:
Good morning, and, travis, I'm thrilled that you're joining us. Thanks for being here today.
Travis Atkinson:
It's a pleasure.
Manya Chylinski:
Before we dive into the topic at hand, I have a little lighthearted question. I want to ask you both and I'm going to start with you, Travis If you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would it be and why that's?
Travis Atkinson:
a great question, and I think people's assessment of who counts as a historical figure probably plays into this. For me, the history that I care about is that of people in the healing professions and people who have tried to push up against systems that have not served people well. And so there's a gentleman named Dr Loren Mosher, who was a psychiatrist and a researcher in the 70s and 80s and was a pioneer in a lot of crisis services, and I found out about him right near the end of his life, never had a chance to talk to him or meet him. He died about maybe 15, 20 years ago, but I felt like I've tried to follow some of his footsteps and understand the way that he thought and the way that he cared for people, and I would just I don't care what we would eat. I would go to my least favorite restaurant if I got to spend some time with him. So Lauren Mosier is probably my person.
Manya Chylinski:
Oh, that's great. I love that and that he had such an impact on your career, and it would be amazing to have a chance to meet with him. Thank you for sharing that, david. What about you?
David Dawdy:
Yeah, I am a person that struggles to answer questions like that and I did a little bit of thinking about myself and it seemed like Mark Twain or Samuel Clemens, if you prefer was a person that I would love to spend some time with. He was witty and obviously funny, but he was really a social justice kind of a pioneer back in the day and I think it would just be intellectually stimulating. I think he always seemed like such a down to earth person Thinking about our topic. Obviously, racism reform is something that he was on the forefront of for his time, right in Huck Finn and things like that. My favorite quote was whenever you find yourself thinking like the majority, it's time to pause and reflect.
Manya Chylinski:
I like that Great choice and, like I say with all my listeners, I so wish we could make these happen and if I couldn't join you, at least I could hear about it afterwards, because I think these would be such amazing conversations. Thanks for sharing. And so we're here today to talk about the hidden cost of trauma and the three of us are going to be talking about the price of trauma and the criminal justice system. And just a quick overview, like in the context of this discussion, when we're talking about hidden costs, it's a range of things. It could be financial costs, but also opportunity costs or burden on society or things. I'm not even thinking of things that we're not really accounting for. So I'd love to just start, I think, first with you, travis, and then with you, david, like when we're looking at trauma and justice involved individuals. What are the biggest costs? We think? Just overview to society. Thanks.
Travis Atkinson:
When I think of the costs for this population, it starts with quality of life and also the impact that it has on their community, whether that's a large community or their family. When an individual experiences trauma, humans by instinct are survivors. We exist here because there's a long line of ancestors that overcame adversity and fought through difficult situations to get here, and certainly they had some help. They had their tribes, their people around them to help them. But where trauma can come in here is that it puts you a few steps behind your peers as far as the resources that you have to succeed, the ability to capitalize on opportunities and to live the life that you want to.
Travis Atkinson:
And what I've been most moved by in our healthcare or our social service system is the increased focus on compassion for people and their experiences, and not looking at people as only what they've done or what they did on the worst day of their life, the biggest mistake that they might have made, but looking at what informed their decision making or their choice in that instance, and trying to address what happened to them instead of what they did, and I think that's an important aspect of considerations, for trauma is what happened to this person, and I heard this in some of the programs that I worked in that the people would live to experience with mental illness, addiction in the criminal justice system. That would be one of the first questions they would ask the people they were serving is what happened to you? Or tell me your story. Not let's work on this issue alone. That's plaguing you as if this was entirely your fault and we need to move you on some sort of course of correction.
Manya Chylinski:
Right, david, what about you?
David Dawdy:
Well, that was very eloquently said, travis.
David Dawdy:
First thing that comes to my mind and I'll take this perspective from adverse childhood experiences, just because I've been focusing on that a lot, not because it's you know, those are the only sources of trauma that people experience, but because it just makes such a nice framework and there's such good research on the health outcomes.
David Dawdy:
And obviously when I say health, I'm including mental health. But you look at people in poverty, people that have been affected by racism, particularly black Americans, and I may have mentioned with you previously that the data for black males between 24 and 35 going to jail and prison was that up until about, I want to say, 2010, they were as high as one in nine black males in that age range that had been to jail or prison. It's a little bit better now, but unfortunately the data is showing that we're seeing more black and brown women being incarcerated. And when you think about ACEs someone in your family being incarcerated, or parental separation and divorce that's an ACE. You've got a parent go to prison, you're losing out on that parent's effects and it really has this cyclical down the generation's impact. And obviously it's hard to measure the societal impacts of that Neither financial costs, but lots and lots of social, emotional heartache costs with that kind of thing.
Manya Chylinski:
Right Now. David, I know you and I have talked about this before. Not everyone who is traumatized is going to find themselves involved in the justice system, but trauma seems to be overrepresented in the justice system. So either one of you can you kind of explain what is that? Is there a way to kind of identify that connection?
David Dawdy:
I'll go first because I've looked at that quite a bit with the importance of being trauma informed when you're working with the criminal justice population, and the reason for that is because it's a universal effect within people that get involved in the justice systems. There have been studies done in mental health, diversion courts, drug courts, and vert identifies some kind of historical or current trauma that they've been going through and that's a much greater rate than just the general population. Difficult circumstances, if you want to call them generally, are common to most of us, or at least many of us, but in the population that gets involved in courts arrested, put in jail or prison much higher rates and those individuals have just experienced more difficult circumstances in their lives.
Manya Chylinski:
So what systemic or structural barriers do you think are preventing us from dealing with this trauma and how it relates to the criminal justice system and, you know, preventing people from perhaps not ending up in the justice system? Travis.
Travis Atkinson:
I recently read a book called Healing by Dr Thomas Insel, and Insel worked in the government he was kind of the mental health czar, I believe he self-identified as that for many years and he was introduced to a concept or a way of describing our health care system that we have a sick care system instead of a health care system, so we have to meet certain criteria for authorization or for eligibility in order to get into certain services, and so, unfortunately, we wait until things are pretty bad before somebody gets the help or the care that they need, instead of doing some preventative services or meeting people at an earlier phase to address some of these issues.
Travis Atkinson:
And part of that goes back, I think, to just our reactionary nature of our society I might not bring my car or my lawnmower or something else with an engine in for repair or maintenance until it's broken and versus waiting, you know, having a maintenance schedule or noticing that something doesn't sound right and trying to get it fixed then.
Travis Atkinson:
And I think the origins of that, unfortunately, are in a maligned and antiquated belief that people who are struggling will malinger or feign symptoms in order to get help, or that people who are asking for help in a certain stage are trying to work or game the system. So changing those systemic barriers, I think begins with trust from the practitioners and from the gatekeepers to say that if a person is expressing or verbalizing a concern or a problem or a challenge, that first of all we believe them but second, that we don't set up a number of barriers for access to something like food stamps and say you're not poor enough to get this, when we're not taking into consideration the experts that they are at their own lives. But you have to have a lot of capacity in your system, your case managers, your social service, like your social security determination agents. They have to have low caseloads in order to do that. When they are really overwhelmed and overburdened, they're going to make just flip the switch decisions instead of having the time to think about the person in front of them.
Manya Chylinski:
What steps do you think we as individuals, or we as organizations or as a society can do to address this trauma better and help slow down the number of people who are ending up involved in the justice system because of trauma? David, how about you?
David Dawdy:
I love part of Travis's answer, the words individuals being experts about themselves is so important, and we absolutely, as a society, don't take that approach with people, particularly people that have been abused by the systems that we have in place.
David Dawdy:
And one of the most powerful things that I learned about was through the organization that you and I have been at least learning from, if not taking active roles in at various times the Center for Trauma Informed Policy and Practice, where I learned about self-healing communities, and I thought that research was fascinating and I thought the most important step that they took was being very intentional about including everybody in their community who really had something to say about what mattered to them and how to improve their lives, and that was one piece of the puzzle to start reducing adverse childhood experiences.
David Dawdy:
So I think preventing adverse childhood experiences we know is really important and can be done. I don't know if people think that way, like we can actually do things to make communities healthier so that people don't get abused, people don't go to prison and jail, people aren't neglected, children aren't neglected. But we need to also because not all of those things can be prevented start building capacity for parents to build and mentors and teachers to build positive childhood experiences. When one, possibly two people take a really genuine interest in a child, that matters and it builds resilience. It builds the ability to withstand those difficult things that we go through.
Travis Atkinson:
I really like what you said about inclusivity of communities and hearing from people. I think inclusivity goes beyond gender and race and some of those other basic factors we think about, but it also speaks to including voices of people with lived experience and with mental illness, addiction, the criminal justice system we do some pretty exclusive and I don't say that in a good way, like oh, look at your exclusive, like Coles cash that you got in the mail like in a bad way. We do some pretty exclusive things to people in the criminal justice system. We don't allow them to vote. We sometimes take away their Medicaid or their benefits and take a while to reinstate those when they're returning to society.
Travis Atkinson:
So what is that saying? That's saying that we're creating an us and them paradigm and once you make a bad decision or once you act out of your normal rational self, well then we don't care about your opinion or about your voice anymore. And Americans have gotten really good at being exclusive, at keeping people out doing a lot of gatekeeping, and I think that needs to change, because one of the main points, especially of jail, but also of prison, is restoration, is learning from your mistakes and being able to come back and do better and still live a meaningful life and be a productive member of society. But if we're not listening to their experiences or if we're discrediting people who have a criminal background and saying your voice doesn't matter, well, we're missing out on opportunities to experience that restoration that not only do we pride ourselves on in other areas, but we personally appreciate when other people give that to us.
David Dawdy:
Right and I think it's important to add to that that it's really important that we go out and say I want to hear what you have to say to people that are different from us. Funny story I don't know if a lot of people know this, but in prison I worked in prison for many, many years and they have wardens forums. The warden goes and listens to a group of prisoners about what's going right and wrong inside that prison and that makes it a more palatable, safe place to be. People have to serve their time for what happened, but we also in the United States don't want to make that a torturous, unsafe place and try to do better.
Manya Chylinski:
And I think this point about inclusivity at all stages is you know, I've been involved in situations where I'm not necessarily going to get my way, or the thing that I want to have happen is not necessarily the thing that's going to happen. But if you actually ask me for my opinion then, and you're asking other people for their opinions, then I trust that the answer that you come up with is at least going to be informed, even if it doesn't go the way that I really wish that it would. And it's so curious to me why many of our organizations aren't as inclusive as I think the rest of us would wish them to be.
Manya Chylinski:
But, David, that's impressive, I did not know there were. You know in your system, for example, that the warden would do that. I think that's amazing. Probably couldn't do everything every prisoner wanted, but at least was listening to them.
David Dawdy:
Being heard so important.
Manya Chylinski:
It's very important. In your opinion, what are the ethical and moral obligations of us as individuals or institutions when it comes to acknowledging this cost of trauma and how it's relating to the criminal justice system?
David Dawdy:
I can't say enough about what we were just talking about in terms of including people. We have to acknowledge the societal impact that has happened to individuals that get disabused in our systems and then actually treat them as the individuals that they are. Yes, you've been impacted by this and, yes, you have important things to say about what's going to be healing for you that we have to build into our systems and into our own ways of thinking, approaches that are Going to come to people.
Travis Atkinson:
that way, there's a quote that says when you have more than you need, build a longer table, not a higher fence. Hmm, I don't think a mindset of zero sum or of a scarcity really serves us well. I imagine. If you polled homeowners, many of them have more rooms in their house than they have people living in those rooms. So we live in an era of abundance. We have means, we have capacity. Most of us don't have to work 12 to 18 hours a day to make ends meet. We have a lot of downtime, a lot of you know, time to think, to enjoy life, be entertained, engaged in recreation.
Travis Atkinson:
So I think the obligations are if you have your needs met, what could you do to help somebody? And that doesn't mean become a martyr or, you know, lose your life for the sake of a Cause. That's not for everyone, it's not for most people, but if you know that that a trauma exists and you have the means to help someone, then I think that's that is an ethical concern or a moral concern, whether you're a licensed practitioner, whether you're a direct support professional, whether you're a family member. Along with that obligation is a belief in yourself that you can help someone. And Before there were doctors, before there were, you know, licensing boards.
Travis Atkinson:
People were still helping people, and I believe that there is a power inside of us to help one another and we have to exercise that power and we're missing out on what might feel like a full life or or being a true community partner. When we're more concerned about our Netflix binge, then we are about the restoration of our neighbor, or then we are about giving something of ourselves because somebody else would like to have an adequate or a decent quality of life and we sit in our own homes or, you know, behind our own fences, not Extending to them what we could if I can add to that a little bit, what Travis is making me think of is the trauma informed care approach being boiled down to two sentences, which is, instead of asking what's wrong with you, asking what happened, what happened to you, what's going on.
David Dawdy:
And it's such a big mindset shift which just remembered something else I wanted to mention in terms of specifically what we can do in all. You know, I'm talking big terms about society and organizations, but I Mentioned to you in a recent recent discussion that there was this big scare in 2022 and 2023 about shoplifting and how bad it had gotten and, as it turns out, the data that's coming, it doesn't really support that there was a big change in shoplifting, like since before the pandemic. What happened was Everything kind of shut down in 2020 with COVID right, and then it bounced back.
David Dawdy:
Mm-hmm and it had in some ways hasn't bounced back as much in some ways, like New York City, has had big problems, but the response to that has been to make more and tougher laws and Travis's language, higher fences, harsher penalties, and that really affects the people that can least afford to be incarcerated to get into the justice system, which makes it difficult for them to get the treatment that they need or the opportunity that they need, and and that kind of a response by lawmakers is obviously not trauma informed and we've got to make progress on that.
Manya Chylinski:
Yeah, thank you for bringing that up. These are. These are great points. And, travis, david, I could talk to you guys for about three hours on this topic and I want to, but we are really close to the end of the time for this episode. Travis, any last thoughts you want to leave us with about the subject and what we can do to improve?
Travis Atkinson:
I think our ability to Let our minds live in a gray area and recognize that people are not inherently good or inherently bad they're just people, is an important skill or characteristic in our quest to take care of one another.
Travis Atkinson:
And if we take on some more reflectivist tendencies, some more Eastern mindset of that that we're all in this together, that we're, all you know, a part of something, I think that will serve us well. If we continue to live in in silos and Believe that other people are very different than us or that we could never find any similarities or even any Any value in those people, I think we'll continue to struggle and suffer unnecessarily, and I think the suffering goes both ways. It's not just on the individual who's experienced trauma, it's on the person who missed an opportunity to help someone, and If you believe in karma or if you believe in things coming back around, it's just bad for all of us. We could, we could all do so much better, and so I think that invitation to be more present with people around us and and to celebrate or to Discover our similarities is is really important in this quest.
Manya Chylinski:
Thank you so much, travis. David, how about you? Any final thoughts?
David Dawdy:
well, I was thinking about similarly, how we look at people, and that question of what's wrong with them, what's wrong with you, needs to be flipped and and we need to Be looking at what strengths Can that group, this individual, this person that I don't understand bring To their own recovery, bring to the table, bring to my community that we're missing out on because we didn't include them in the mental health world. We're doing a Good job of that by training up peer support, specialist peer recovery coaches who have lived Experience and can come alongside someone that's struggling, and we need to continue that work. There's not enough. It needs to expand into other opportunities, and I think that's one really solid way that we can continue to enhance people, because when, with peers, you know we identify the struggle that you went through, made you stronger and you can help somebody else, and I think that's a really good opportunity to invest in.
Manya Chylinski:
Oh, thank you so much, David, Travis. This was such a good conversation and I know our listeners are gonna learn a lot, so thanks for being here today.
David Dawdy:
Thank you so much.
Manya Chylinski:
Bye everyone. Thank you for listening. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I did. So if you'd like to learn more about me, Manya Chylinski, I work with organizations to help understand how to create environments where people can thrive after difficult life experiences, and I do this through talks and consulting. I'm a survivor of mass violence and I use my experience to help leaders learn about resiliency, compassion and trauma, sensitive leadership, to build strategies to enable teams to thrive and be engaged amidst difficulty and turmoil. If this is something you want to learn more about, visit my website, www. manyachylinski. com, email me at manya@manyachylinski. com, or stop by my social media on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thanks so much.
