On Friday, June 19, 2020, 9 am ET, we hosted our special 2-Hour Season Three Wrap Show on the Criminal Justice Insider Podcast with Babz Rawls Ivy & Jeff Grant – The Voice of CT Criminal Justice. We invited all of our wonderful guests from our first three incredible seasons, guest list below! Live on WNHH 103.5 FM New Haven, rebroadcast at 5 pm. Live-streamed and podcast 24/7 everywhere, see below. Sponsored by the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven.
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The Criminal Justice Insider Podcast with Babz Rawls Ivy and Jeff Grant is broadcast live at 9 am ET on the first and third Friday of each month Sept.-June From the WNHH 103.5 FM studios in New Haven. It is rebroadcast on WNHH at 5 pm ET the same day. Live-Streamed and Podcast available 24/7.
An article about each show is published a few days later in the New Haven Independent (newhavenindependent.org).
Season One Guests:
Nov. 3, 2017: Robyn Porter, CT State Legislator
Nov. 17, 2017: Scott Semple, Former CT Commissioner of Correction
Dec. 1, 2017: Amy Smoyer (Asst. Professor of Social Work, Southern Connecticut State University) and Jackie Lucibello, New Haven Women’s Resettlement Working Group
Dec. 15, 2017: Lorenzo Jones, Co-Executive Director, Katal Center for Health, Equity and Justice
Jan. 19, 2018: Cynthia Farrar, Co-Founder of Purple States and Producer of Life on Parole
Feb. 16, 2018: Danielle Cooper, Director of Research for the Tow Youth Justice Institute, University of New Haven
Mar. 2, 2018: Joseph Ganim, Mayor of Bridgeport, CT
Mar. 16, 2018: John Santa, Chair of Malta Justice Initiative and Member of CT Sentencing Commission
Apr. 6, 2018: Brent Peterkin, CT Director, Project Longevity & Board Chair, The Phoenix Association
Apr. 20, 2018: Scot X. Esdaile, President of NAACP CT, Chair of NAACP National Criminal Justice & Da’ee McKnight, Family ReEntry
May 4, 2018: Earl Bloodworth, Director, Bridgeport Mayor’s Initiative for Reentry Affairs (MIRA)
May 18, 2018: Jacqueline Polverari, ED of Evolution Family Reentry Services
June 1, 2018: Mike Lawlor, CT, Former Undersecretary for Criminal Justice Policy & Planning, University of New Haven
June 15, 2018: James Forman, Jr., Pulitzer Prize Winning Author & Yale Law Professor
July 6, 2018: Bill Carbone & Erika Nowakowski, Tow Youth Justice Institute, University of New Haven
Season Two Guests:
Fri., Sept. 9, 2018: Kennard Ray, Blue Ribbon Strategies, CT Unlock the Vote
Fri., Sept. 21, 2018: Louis L. Reed, National Organizer for #Cut50
Fri., Oct. 5, 2018: Sue Gunderman (Hartford Interim Director of Reentry Services) & Beth Hines (Executive Director, Community Partners in Action), CT Reentry Roundtables
Fri., Oct. 19, 2018: Venezia Michalsen, Assoc. Professor of Justice Studies, Montclair State University
Fri., Nov. 16, 2018: Andrew Clark, Director of the Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy, Central Connecticut State University and Bill Dyson, Former CT State Legislator and Justice Advocate
Fri., Dec. 7, 2018: Glenn E. Martin, Founder/Consultant of GEM Trainers and Past- President and Founder of JustLeadershipUSA
Fri., Dec. 21, 2018: Fernando Muñiz, CEO of Community Solutions, Inc. and Rosa Correa, Community Leader
Fri., Jan. 19, 2019: Peter J. Henning, Professor of Law, Wayne State University & “White Collar Watch” Columnist, NY Times
Fri., Feb. 1, 2019: Jeffrey Deskovic, CEO of The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation who was Exonerated after Serving 16 Years in Prison
Fri., Feb. 15, 2019: Jeffrey Abramowitz, Executive Director for Reentry Services, JEVS Human Services, Philadelphia
Fri., Mar. 1, 2019, Rollin Cook, CT Commissioner of Correction
Fri., Mar. 15, 2019: Dieter Tejada, National Justice Impact Bar Association
Fri., Apr. 5, 2019: John Rowland, Former CT Governor
Fri., Apr. 19, 2019: Gregg D. Caruso, Ph.D. Professor of Philosophy at SUNY Corning & Co-Director of the Justice Without Retribution Network at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland
Fri., May 3, 2019: Michael Taylor, CEO of Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center in the Greater New Haven area
Fri., May 17, 2019: Tarra Simmons, Esq., Director, Civil Survival and Candidate for Washington State Legislature
Fri., June 7, 2019: Louis L. Reed, National Organizer for #Cut50, Part Deux!
Fri., June 21, 2019: Marcus Bullock, CEO of Flikshop
Season Three Guests:
Fri., Sept. 6, 2019: Khalil Cumberbatch, Chief Strategist, New Yorkers United for Justice
Fri., Sept. 20, 2019: Aaron T. Kinzel, Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Michigan-Dearborn
Fri., Oct. 4, 2019: Charlie Grady, Outreach Specialist for the FBI CT Community Outreach Program
Fri., Oct. 18, 2019: Michael Kimelman, Former Hedge Funder and Author of Confessions of a Wall Street Insider: A Cautionary Tale of Rats, Feds, and Banksters
Fri., Nov. 1, 2019: Corey Brinson, CEO, Second Chance Firm, NY Policy Assoc., Legal Action Center
Fri., Nov. 15, 2019: Cathryn Lavery, Ph.D., Asst. Chair & Graduate Coordinator for the Iona College Criminal Justice Department
Fri. Dec. 20, 2019: John Hamilton, CEO, Liberation Programs
Fri., Jan. 3, 2020: Reginald Dwayne Betts, Lawyer, Poet, Lecturer on Mass Incarceration
Fri., Jan. 17, 2020: Serena Ligouri, Executive Director, New Hour for Women & Children – L.I.
Fri., Feb. 7, 2020: David Garlock, Program Director, New Person Ministries, Lancaster, PA, Featured in Movie “Just Mercy”
Feb. 20, 2020: Larry Levine, Talk Show Host & Criminal Justice Consultant
Fri,. Mar. 6, 2020, Hans Hallundbaek, Interfaith Prison Partnership
Fri., Mar. 20, 2020: Tiheba Bain, Founder, Women Against Incarceration, Director of Coalitions, National Counsel for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women & Girls
Fri., April 3, 2020: Rev. Dr. Chris Kimmenez, Minister and Criminal Justice Advocate
Fri., April 17, 2020: Icy Frantz, Activist, Columnist, Philanthropist
Fri., May 3, 2020: Eilene Zimmerman, Author of “Smacked: A Story of White Collar Ambition, Addiction and Tragedy”.
Fri., May 15, 2020: Scott Semple, Former CT Commissioner of Correction and Alex Frank & John Hart, Vera Institute of Justice
Fri., June 5, 2020: Children of Incarcerated Parents Show with Aileen Keays, Nishka Ayala & Isis DeLoatch
Dieter Tejada wants to diversify the legal profession.
Not necessarily by race or by class or by gender. But by an identity he believes is most underrepresented among lawyers today: people who have actually spent time behind bars.
Tejada pitched that vision for a future with more “justice-impacted” lawyers on the latest episode of WNHH’s “Criminal Justice Insider with Babz Rawls-Ivy and Jeff Grant.”
The 28-year-old Norwalk native said that the four-and-a-half months he spent in Connecticut prisons at the tail end of his teenage years instilled in him a desire to become a lawyer.
Not one who could succeed despite his criminal record. But one who could succeed because of the connection, empathy, and understanding that he believes his own direct experience in prison allows him to have with the men and women he hopes to represent.
“I have a duty to use my experience,” he said.
“I’m justice-impacted,” he continued. “That’s how I identify. … Going into jail, going through that experience, gave me an identity. That’s why I do what I do.”
Thomas Breen photo
Dieter Tejada (center) with WNHH hosts Jeff Grant and Babz Rawls-Ivy.
Tejada’s first experience with the criminal justice system came at age 19, when he plead guilty to a first-degree felony assault charge that earned him a five-year sentence suspended after nine months. Tejada was just 17 when he committed the crime to which he ultimately pleaded guilty.
“It revolved around a fight in high school,” he said. “You can turn your life upside down very easily.”
After pleading guilty, Tejada spent three months at Bridgeport Correctional Center (BCC), followed by another month-and-a-half at Manson Youth Institution in Cheshire.
“I was 115 pounds and terrified,” he remembered about his first night in lock up. He had just finished his first year at UCONN, but would have to take the next semester off.
In prison, he soon learned to stop feeling bad for himself. He looked around and saw men locked up for much longer sentences, and facing much steeper challenges to reintegrating into society post-release
“I started realizing that, one, my life doesn’t have to be over,” he said. “And two, this thing might be good.”
At Manson, he wrote directly to the warden, asking for early release so that he could pursue his dreams of earning a law degree and becoming a mentor to youth who might be on the same path to prison that he had found himself on.
He got out after four-and-a-half months, finished his bachelor’s at UCONN, then earned his law degree at Vanderbilt.
He passed the bar exam in Connecticut, but is still waiting for the outcome of a requisite character and fitness training before he can be admitted to the state’s bar.
In his work with NYU’s PREP and in his experiences returning to prison this time as a law graduate, and not an inmate, Tejada said he has realized just how few lawyers working today truly know what it’s like for their clients who are behind bars.
“They don’t know the full extent of how it impacts someone’s life,” he said about most lawyers who work with incarcerated clients. They’ve never worn a belly belt or shackles around their wrists and ankles.
So now he’s working to start a bar association for lawyers and aspiring lawyers like himself, people who have had direct personal experience with the criminal justice system. What the National Bar Association has done for African American lawyers historically excluded from the profession, he said, this new organization will do for the justice-impacted.
He’s also hosting a justice impact roundtable with 16 other justice-impacted lawyers at NYU on April 3. The meeting will be streamed live on YouTube, he said. And he’s worked with PREP to set up a scholarship that will provide around $5,000 a year for justice-impacted law school students.
His goal, he said, is to bring more and more of the actual experience of incarceration to the legal profession. “I believe in the value it brings to the field,” he said. “This is a launching pad for the forming of a national bar association for the formerly incarcerated.”
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Careers after Incarceration: a Roundtable Discussion by Formerly incarcerated professionals, students, and attorneys. Free.
Wed, April 3, 2019 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM EDT NYU Law School Vanderbilt Hall
40 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
A roundtable discussion on professional barriers after incarceration with directly impacted students, professionals, and attorneys.
In conjunction with its newly launched scholarship, NYU Law’s Prison Reform and Education Project (PREP) is hosting a roundtable discussion for formerly incarcerated attorneys, students, and activists to discuss professional barriers after incarceration. Attendees aim to start a conversation and community that will increase accessibility to the legal profession and support formerly incarcerated professionals. The discussion will cover both concerns for current practicing attorneys as well as advice to those interested in pursuing this path.
For more information on the scholarship, and to register (free), click here.
Friday, March 15, 2019, 9 am ET, Dieter Tejada, J.D., justice impacted criminal justice advocate, was our guest on Criminal Justice Insider with Babz Rawls Ivy & Jeff Grant – The Voice of CT Criminal Justice. Live on WNHH 103.5 FM New Haven and live-streaming at newhavenindependent.org. Rebroadcast at 5 pm. Sponsored by the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven – Now More Than Ever.
Dieter Tejada is a Justice Impacted Criminal Justice Advocate. Mr. Tejada expertise in the field of criminal justice is partially based on the traditional legal training and education he received while attending Vanderbilt University School of Law. Though he is incredibly grateful for the education, training, and Juris Doctorate degree he received as a scholarship student at at National powerhouse (top 15 ranked) law school, Dieter respectfully cannot credit Vanderbilt and traditional legal training for his expertise and passion for criminal justice advocacy. Rather Dieter derives the bulk of both his passion and expertise in the field of criminal law from personal experience—as a high school senior Dieter was arrested for the first time and eventually incarcerated based on a plea conviction. This arrest and its aftermath serve as the basis for Dieter qualification as a “Justice Impacted” Criminal Justice Advocate and Expert.
Dieter has utilized his expertise by helping to provide direct representation services at three of the premier public defense offices in the Nation, across three States—in NY (The Legal Aid Society’s Criminal Defense Practice), in TN (The Nashville Defenders), and in CT (The Office of the CT Public Defenders).
He has also served clients in clinical settings, and pre-trial diversionary settings with such notable organizations as CTs Family ReEntry (the largest ReEntry service provider in his home state).
Additionally, Dieter has lobbied for, and helped spearhead legislative criminal justice reform efforts with such notable advocacy organizations as the Smart Justice Initiative of the ACLU, and Yale Law School’s Legislative Advocacy Group. Though it has been more then 11 years since his arrest and incarceration, Dieter still remembers how it was to be a juvenile in the system of criminal justice—and ever since his release from prison Dieter has made sure use this memory to serve others. He has done so, by speaking to-sharing his story and its hard-learned lessons—with high school and middle school-aged youths. He has specialized in mentoring at-risk youths, and even helped found and facilitate a mentoring program at the high school from which he graduated. Mr. Tejada is also a widely sought after speaker on the subject of criminal justice advocacy and reform. He has spoken at, and led panel discussions at some of the most distinguished settings in the legal field, including at Yale Law School’s Rebellious Lawyering conference. Dieter has, and continues to focus efforts on bridging barriers and loosening the locks to the legal profession for his fellows-the Justice Impacted. Dieter has worked extensively with the Prison Reform and Education Project (P.R.E.P) of NYU Law. Beyond collaborating with P.R.E.P in organizing the Roundtable Event that he will discuss on the show, Dieter helped setup and launch the first ever Law School Scholarship reserved for Formerly Incarcerated and Justice Impacted individuals and their family members. Finally Dieter has been interviewed and profiled and quote on criminal justice related podcasts and in nationally syndicated publications such as Law360 (LexisNexis’ legal news affiliate).
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Criminal Justice Insider with Babz Rawls Ivy and Jeff Grant is broadcast live at 9 am (ET) on the first and third Friday of each month from Sept. to July, from the WNHH 103.5 FM studios in New Haven, live-streamed everywhere at newhavenindependent.org. It is also on live on Facebook Live (video) at https://www.facebook.com/wnhhradio. It is rebroadcast on WNHH at 5 pm the same day. Find all of our shows archived on SoundCloud at https://soundcloud.com/new-haven…/…/criminal-justice-insider. An article about each show is published a few days later in the New Haven Independent (newhavenindependent.org). Please “like” us on Facebook! Contact us: jgrant@prisonist.org
Season Two Guests:
Fri., Sept. 9: Kennard Ray, CT Unlock the Vote and Candidate for CT State Legislator Fri., Sept. 21: Louis L. Reed, National Organizer for #Cut50 Fri., Oct. 5: Sue Gunderman & Beth Hines, CT Reentry Roundtables Fri., Oct. 19: Venice Michalsen, Assoc. Professor of Justice Studies, Montclair State University Fri., Nov. 16: Andrew Clark, Director of the Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy, Central Connecticut State University Fri., Dec. 7: Glenn E. Martin, Founder/Consultant of GEM Trainers and Past-President and Founder of JustLeadershipUSA Fri., Dec. 21: Ferando Muñiz, CEO of Community Solutions, Inc. and Rosa Correa, Community Leader Fri., Jan. 4: CJI New Year’s Retrospective Show Looking Back at Past Guests Fri., Jan. 19: Peter J. Henning, Professor of Law, Wayne State University & “White Collar Watch” Columnist, NY Times Fri., Feb. 1: Jeffrey Deskovic, CEO of The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation who was Exonerated after Serving 16 Years in Prison Fri., Feb. 15: Jeffrey Abramowitz, Executive Director for Reentry Services, JEVS Human Services, Philadelphia. Fri., Mar. 1, Rollin Cook, CT Commissioner of Correction Fri., Mar. 15: Dieter Tejada, J.D., Justice Impacted Criminal Justice Advocate Fri., Apr. 5: John Rowland, Former CT Governor Fri., Apr. 19: Gregg D. Caruso, Ph.D. Professor of Philosophy at SUNY Corning & Co-Director of the Justice Without Retribution Network at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland Fri., May 3: Michael Taylor, CEO of Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center in the Greater New Haven area Fri., May 17: Tarra Simmons, Esq., Attorney & Criminal Justice Reform Advocate, Washington State Fri., June 7: Louis L. Reed, National Organizer for #Cut50, Part Deux! Fri., June 21: Marcus Bullock, CEO of Flikshop
Sponsored by the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven – Now More Than Ever.
