Could crime prevention begin with addressing childhood trauma? An expert weighs in

CATHY WURZER: I'm glad you're with us. It's Minnesota Now on MPR News. I'm Cathy Wurzer. As you know, the issue of crime is top of mind for many voters this fall. Dealing with crime, how to police people is contentious.

Have you noticed when we talk about public safety the conversation is mostly about how we treat people after they've committed a crime? What if our system looked at individuals with a troubled past and try to intervene before that person acts out? For instance, data show that 90% of juvenile offenders in this country have experienced some sort of traumatic event in their childhood.

What happens when you get troubled kids and adults talking about their lives and communities, integrating trauma-informed practices into their agencies and systems? Dave Ellis gets these conversations started. He worked in the Minnesota Department of Corrections for a number of years before becoming a consultant. He's the recipient of a Bush Fellowship, and he's on the line. Dave Ellis, welcome.

DAVE ELLIS: Thank you.

CATHY WURZER: So I understand you worked 20 years in the Department of Corrections.

DAVE ELLIS: Yeah, a little over 20. I've worked in Minnesota prisons, started out as a correctional officer and held positions, pretty much everything short of warden or superintendent level.

CATHY WURZER: What did you learn about folks who are convicted of a crime while you held that job?

DAVE ELLIS: I worked both adult and juvenile and the men's and women's facilities. But the one thing that always stood out to me was just how human people are even when they're incarcerated. The quote that comes to mind is that we are all better than the worst thing that we have ever done. We are not that thing.

Most of the people that we've been dealing with have had some sort of trauma or something in their lives. And that doesn't make them bad people. It means that they had something that happened.

I train lots of foster parents around trauma. And one of the things I have to get people to understand is that when people wake up in the morning, nobody woke up and said, I'm going to be Johnny or Susie this morning. That something happened along the way. Yes, accountability is still there, but compassionate accountability as we start to do this work.

CATHY WURZER: Can we back up for folks who might be scratching their heads and saying, OK, I understand that 90% of those young offenders have had some kind of trauma in their lives? That's a huge number. But what are we talking about when we say trauma? What are adverse childhood experiences?

DAVE ELLIS: Well, in the original study, you're talking about things like domestic violence in the home, chemical use, having a parent who is incarcerated, looking at neglect and abuse, whether you're talking physical abuse, sexual abuse, or emotional abuse. One of the things that I found out as I worked at the correctional facility in Red Wing-- I designed Minnesota's re-entry system for serious and violent juvenile offenders-- as we started to go back and look, one of the things that always happened was that we found out that most of these kids, that they had experienced chemical use.

And they would tell you, I didn't use chemicals for the rush. I used chemicals for the pain. When you start to self-medicate and especially at a very early age, you really don't have the brain matter, as I like to refer to it, to make those rational decisions. And you want to numb the pain. And adults do the same thing.

And so as I came up through the correctional system working with young people, the one common thing was that they were dulling their pain. There's nothing wrong with our kids. I will tell you that right now. For me, there is no such thing as being a maladaptive kid. I believe that every behavior that we see is an adaptation to an experience that those young people have had.

CATHY WURZER: Can you help us better understand then how is it that some people who suffer childhood trauma don't get involved in the criminal justice system? I mean, what's the difference in their lives?

DAVE ELLIS: The support systems and luck. I'm one of those kids, Cathy. I really do look back at my childhood and believe that but for the grace of God. My high school coach, Jerry Scott, in southern Illinois stepped in and literally guided me to a different path, which led me to play basketball at a junior college, going to play at a four-year school, get my degree, and really help to launch where I'm at.

And so as you think about those young people that are out there and even adults, what we know from the research is that we always talk about there being a caring adult. Well, first of all, it's caring and competent, OK? But let's not leave out the competence part of this.

There are a lot of caring people who want to love other people. But they don't have the ability to do the other parts. It is about figuring out, what is it that this person truly needs?

And part of that is being able to sit and listen to them and hear their stories and help them figure out what it is that truly needs to be done. They need to be a part of the solution and not just incarcerated. I think that's a big mistake that we make, is that we incarcerate people. We wait until they're getting ready to get out.

We ask them to do all of these things as they're getting out and once they get out. But we don't really provide the support that's needed for them to be successful. And we end up with this we'll refer to as recidivism.

CATHY WURZER: And are you saying using ACEs, Adverse Childhood Experiences, ACEs-- you're saying that using that knowledge early on in the incarceration process, these discussions to try to do some healing, in a sense, before these folks get out?

DAVE ELLIS: Absolutely. Even before they go in. We always wait until the end. If we stop and think about this, in the research language, 85% of all brain development happens prenatal to three years of age.

There's a book. It's called Upstream by a guy named Dan Heath. And one of the pieces in this talks about if you want to change the trajectory of children, you have to change the trajectory of the mother. And you have to do it early on. And so the further back that we can go, the better off we are.

If we know that that's what happens, why do we wait until children are in school to start the remediation process? Why do we wait till then and have them assigned to special education and other places? If we know what the research tells us, we should be stepping in much earlier. Maybe we can reduce the number of people who end up in prison.

The first time I heard the information around ACEs was the first day I realized I wasn't crazy. That was only 10 years ago. Can you imagine what would have happened if 70 years ago when I was born, that the trauma and things I was going to experience if they never happened?

CATHY WURZER: Uh-huh. I'm wondering, by the way, about the people, the kids. Obviously, a lot of suffering has happened over the last couple of years because of the pandemic for everybody. But then you put George Floyd's murder on top of that.

And I'm wondering, are you concerned about the kids that went through this very difficult period? Maybe they might experience more adverse childhood experiences than most. I mean, should we be concerned about the future of these kids moving forward?

DAVE ELLIS: It certainly exacerbated a lot of the current adverse childhood experiences. And I think that it's worth noting that even with COVID-- I remember the tornado that came through North Minneapolis. It missed my house by about three blocks.

I was dealing. I used to work at Jerry Gamble's Boys and Girls Club. And I would have young people who I had seen grow up during that time that I saw as adults who still could not sleep when it was raining.

We tend to forget that when trauma happens, that it's not just an event that happens to a person. People live in families. Families live in communities. And so there is an exponential impact that happens.

CATHY WURZER: So can I ask a question about law enforcement? How can police agencies lead-- but I guess would be a holistic community effort to address the trauma that we've been talking about, especially when they are increasingly short-staffed, and there is this mistrust, distrust between police in communities?

DAVE ELLIS: The very skills that you need to be a good law enforcement officer, the things that make you hypervigilant, edgy, quick to make decisions are the very things that are born out of trauma. Those are the skills that you learn when you've been traumatized. That's why I was, from my perspective, really good at being a correctionalist with law enforcement.

No one has started to ask the question of, what's your trauma history? Do you recognize it? And have you began to address that? Not as a disqualifier because you want people with those skills.

My hope is that trauma-informed practices will become part of the very culture because it's not about a program. This cannot be a program. It has to be the way Minneapolis Police works. It has to be ingrained at the cultural level of the department.

CATHY WURZER: I tell you what, Dave Ellis, I wish I had more time with you. There's a ton to talk about. It's been great at this point. So thank you for laying out some interesting ideas for us. We appreciate it.

DAVE ELLIS: Thank you for the invitation.

CATHY WURZER: That was Dave Ellis. He worked in the Minnesota Department of Corrections for more than 20 years. He's now a consultant working on trauma-informed crime prevention strategies.