About this Episode

We hope you found value in part one of this podcast. Thank you for joining us for this second segment. Welcome to today’s episode of The Communication Solution podcast with Casey Jackson, John Gilbert and Danielle Cantin. We love talking about Motivational Interviewing, and about improving outcomes for individuals, organizations, and the communities that they serve.
The episode focuses on the intersection of communication strategies and the justice system. Judge Mary Logan, with 35 years of experience as an attorney and a judge, shares insights into how communication, specifically motivational interviewing, can be integrated into legal practice. The discussion revolves around balancing compliance-based models with behavior-change models, improving outcomes for individuals in the legal system, and innovative approaches in judicial settings.

In this podcast, we discuss:

• Adapting Communication for Impact: The podcast delves into how judges like Logan are seeking to adapt their communication styles to maximize impact in limited timeframes.





• Empowering Individual Change: Logan discusses the concept of empowering individuals to identify and work towards their values, using tools like the Focus Mountain.





• Integrating Personalized Approaches: The potential for personalized approaches in judicial settings, including the use of symbolic items like rocks representing personal strengths, is explored.





• Response to Judicial System Critiques: The podcast acknowledges the current criticisms of the justice system and looks at how innovative communication and empathetic strategies can contribute to reform and improvement.





• Fostering Community Reintegration: Logan emphasizes the importance of judicial practices that support community reintegration and reduce recidivism.





• Potential for System-wide Change: The conversation suggests the potential for systemic change in the justice system through improved communication techniques and empathy-driven practices.

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Thank you for listening to the communication solution. This podcast is all about you. If you have questions, thoughts, topic suggestions, or ideas, please send them our way at casey@ifioc.com. For more resources, feel free to check out ifioc.com. 

Transcribe

 We hope you found value in part one of this podcast. Thank you for joining us for this second segment.

Hello and welcome to the communication solution podcast with Casey Jackson and John Gilbert. I’m your host, Danielle Cantin, here at the Institute for Individual and Organizational Change, otherwise known as IFIOC. We love to talk about communication. We love to talk about solutions and we love to talk about providing measurable results for individuals, organizations, and the communities they serve. Welcome to the communication solution that will change your world.

And when you say that Mary, the thing that I just, I mean, we’re in the middle of this, but I can tell right now, just between you and I right now, I, now it’s making my brain. I think because when you were talking about what, when you’ve watched the officers and those videos that I have there, there are just profoundly short.

I mean, these interactions that are 8 and a half minutes long and life changing, truly life changing suicide prevention, just things that change people’s lives. And when I developed the motivational interviewing competency assessment that might get a measure. Conversations when you and I, when you submitted the 1st,  recording of chambers that was, that was okay for you to submit to me to, to review,  the tool that I used at the time required a 20 minute sample size of an M.

I. based conversation. Part of the reason I developed the Micah instead was. So many doctors and nurses I worked with their conversations are five to 15 minutes long. They don’t even get it. So it’s like, how do we, how do we use this in a way that’s truly looking at fidelity and not just good communication?

Good communication is, is important. It’s great. Good communications, great communications. Yay. But where does evidence show that we’re going to impact behavior change? And that’s why when, when I was working on the mica to think about how can we measure this and get feedback? Now, my obsession with you is now I want to sit in the community court and watch these three minute conversations and just analyze those and go, okay, how do you maximize time?

How do you maximize time? How do you maximize time now that. Now, if the judge has maybe four minutes of quality time, other than the three minutes of doing the required reading,  how do you maximize that four minutes? And, and I don’t know if it’s possible, but I think this is where I get excited about innovation because people didn’t believe that this could happen with law enforcement.

When I started working law enforcement, officers did not believe it could happen. When I first showed up, they were the, they were the, they were first in line to say this won’t work. As I’m sitting there standing in front of them in trainings, and now that they see it working, I see this now on the judicial side that it’s like, wow, if we can maximize three to four minutes and the more that I’m studying on brain science, like the precision, if your brain, Mary Logan’s brain is so precise around law and application of law at this stage in time, wouldn’t it be fun to come to that level of precision of being able to understand language and have both of those skillsets to be able to master.

Like to me, that truly is the next frontier potentially in, in restorative justice is like, how do we think from that perspective and use every time I open my mouth, I can see the impact it’s having on the brain. And I’m not even the therapist, you know, I’m sitting on the bench and thinking about how can I help this person reintegrate into their community, which reduces crime.

And, and I don’t see these people again, because they’re, they’re moving on with their lives. I mean, that to me is wow. I mean, fairytale. But fairy tale in a good way. It’s like, oh my gosh, let’s read that book and see where it goes. Like, I . That’s right. I wanna go, I wanna go sit in. I, I really do. I think I, if you know, if it’s appropriate, if I can sit in on some of those,  situations, my brain is just gonna be, that’s like open court.

We’re, we’re an open, but what you just said, also as I’m thinking about in community court, ’cause I have the luxury of time in community court, and I was just, as you were saying those things, I’m like, and I waste it. I have to do it and it’s part of our, I mean, like what I’m thinking about here is I,  sit face to face with our participants in community court.

So they’ve just by fundamentals, they are referred in, they come to the downtown library, they are, um. met by the attorneys, the strength of the cases measured. Can it go to trial? Do they want to go to trial instead? Because our court’s an opt in, you don’t have to. But if they opt in, then they immediately get evaluation to see what their needs are, and then they craft up what’s known as the stipulated order of continuance, with the conditions being Get your identification, have,  maybe a SUD evaluation, follow through with treatment, and then, you know, sign up for housing and, you know, all of the details of their lives that are lacking, that they need the support for, then become the conditions they have to meet in order to have the case dismissed, along as, as well as, you know, don’t pick up new charges.

 And that’s all discussed with them with, by their attorney, and then they come to me. And I go through that. So my, my, it’s this, I’m having an epiphany right in front of you. My, my first moments with them, other than I always greet them. How are you doing today, sir? You know, they, they, they’re very, very open, free flow conversation to a point.

I have to put some stops up to begin with or at some points, but, but then when it comes down to we’re going on the record and they’re entering the deal, I spend. All of that time going through that contract with them, what, you know, so you’re going to be with us for the next three months. And then I go through the details of it and reiterate the same thing that they’ve already heard.

And then that’s it. That’s it. I don’t, I mean, I try to imbue more into it. But at that point, again, I’m at the very end of all of that process, and they have been handled now for anywhere from probably at the very least 20 to 30 minutes and probably upwards more of 30 to 40 minutes. So coming into the court and you know having their stuff set aside and then talking to the attorney and then talking to our probation officer and having that evaluation and then striking the deal and then coming to me.

So they’re like, I want to go, they’re done with the super gritty stuff that’s there. And while I, I tried to talk to them at, in that process, and there’s times where there are revelations that are made about the agreement where I’ll bring in the attorney because it’s like, this doesn’t, Seem to make sense in terms of where we’re at.

So they see me not advocating for them, but listening to them and then addressing those kinds of issues. B