The Detour: The Punishment Paradigm

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When you hear the words “criminal justice system,” what do you think about? In this episode, we’ll dig into ideas around punishment, accountability, and justice, and explore how those show up or don’t in our court and prison systems. First, we’ll revisit a 2018 conversation with Bobbin Singh, executive director of Oregon Justice Resource Center; david rogers, a program officer for the Ford Foundation and former executive director of ACLU of Oregon; and Rene Denfeld, author and criminal investigator. Then we’ll talk with Monica Mueller, a senior instructor of philosophy at Portland State University who also teaches in Oregon prisons.

Rene Denfeld is the author of the acclaimed novels The Child Finder, The Enchanted, and The Butterfly Girl. Her literary thrillers explore themes of survival, resiliency, and redemption, and have earned starred Library Journal reviews, Indie Next picks, and glowing reviews in the New York Review of Books. Denfeld was the chief investigator at a public defender’s office in Oregon and has worked hundreds of cases, including death row exonerations and helping rape trafficking victims. In addition to her advocacy work, Denfeld has been a foster adoptive parent for over twenty-five years. She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she is the happy mom of three kids adopted from foster care as well as other foster kids.

david rogers is a program officer on the gender, racial, and ethnic justice team at the Ford Foundation. He has over twenty-five years of progressive social change organizing and policy advocacy experience. Prior to joining Ford, he served as executive director of the ACLU of Oregon, where he sharpened the organization’s focus on criminal justice reform. He also launched one of the country’s first comprehensive district attorney accountability campaigns. Earlier in his career, david served as executive director of Partnership for Safety and Justice. He was also the founding director of the Safety and Justice Action Fund, and he served as an executive committee member for a range of successful ballot measure campaigns to protect and advance criminal justice reform, immigrant rights, and reproductive justice.

Bobbin Singh is the founding executive director of Oregon Justice Resource Center. He believes that mass incarceration, including over-incarceration, mass conviction, and wrongful convictions, is the greatest civil rights crisis of our time and that we must all take ownership of it. He argues that for individual rights to have any meaning, we must protect them for everyone, without exception. He served on the board of directors for ACLU of Oregon from 2011 to 2017 and served with the Oregon Council on Civil Rights, which produced a seminal report on juvenile justice that led to the passage to SB 1008 2019. His currently a member of the Chief Justice’s Criminal Justice Advisory Committee.

Monica Mueller is an instructor of philosophy at Portland State University and specializes in ethical and political philosophy. She published the book Contrary to Thoughtlessness: Rethinking Practical Wisdom and is interested in discussing the seemingly overwhelming problems of living together in a world with others.

For a full transcript of this episode as well as additional resources and further reading on criminal justice, visit the Oregon Humanities website.