 So are there times where you were sitting in the courtroom and you would feel yourself between a rock and a hard place and you would say, I wish policymakers understood X before they did Y because now I've got to navigate the reality of the situation. I wish every policymaker would understand that you can go not to federal court, you can go to your state court and learn so much about the health of your community. Because and I wish every policymaker would spend a day in court because again we're talking about people and you know it's very easy in the policy space to kind of crunch numbers or you know sit and be smart write a really good article but you're really going someplace and seeing it you know seeing what happens in a courtroom seeing having the experience of a sentencing where a defendant speaks for himself and the victims speak for themselves going to a prison and seeing a prison in jail is really an assault on every sense you got. Oh it's cold it stinks I mean it's everything it's ugly just you know everything's cold to the touch even you know and understand go to the places and meet the people about the policy that you're making and again like it helped me so much like so here's an example I had one case where it was a case where the in Ohio's Twin Valley Behavioral Health is what I'm dealing with so Twin Valley filed a motion so that they could forcefully medicate someone and so this man and he was probably about six four two fifty he was a big guy and he had schizophrenia and what happened though was that he firmly believed that they were taking his blood not to monitor his medication but he firmly believed that they were taking his blood and giving it to vampires now that might make some people chuckle but when you take a minute and realize if you really thought that was happening how terrifying that must be I had never come across that before you know what I mean I was doing a whole lot of big company avers big company b so you know it was so helpful the first that was my first case like that so it was so helpful to be able to say okay I've been to Twin Valley and I remember Dr. Kukor explaining how this works and I remember Dr. Kukor who was like the head psychiatrist at the time I remember him showing me the different wings at Twin Valley so I know that this person would probably go over in this way and be with these people you see what I'm so I I had just not an abstract view of what I was doing I actually could picture in my head what I was doing and where I was sending somebody yeah and that was so helpful to me as a judge and I'm convinced that it will be helpful to policymakers too I mean I think it's such great advice in terms of really making the investment and caring enough about what you're doing to make the investment to really understand the context and the consequences of the choices you're going to be making yes right so part of what I hear you saying is you really absorbed the gravity of what you were doing in that process and really wanting to know as much as you could about the the conditions the circumstances the implications of the choices you'd be making every day right and yeah I would also add also understanding what it means to have a felony it is a scarlet letter f it absolutely is and you can talk about that abstractly or you can go talk to somebody who has a felony and see what they're going through you know it's one thing for you to read about it it's another thing for someone that you are looking at that you can touch to tell you I have a felony so I'm having problems getting a job I'm having a problems getting housing I can't live with my mom because she lives in certain housing that won't allow a felony to a felon to live with her you know all these different things that people go through when they have a felony you know it's one thing to read it it's another thing to either do it or talk to someone actually affected by it yeah I want to shift gears and ask you about some of the other kind of policy issues you've been thinking about talking about during your time here as a Towsley and I know that UN professor Anne Lynn did an amazing session on the Supreme Court and the affirmative action cases you've been involved in conversations about the Dobbs decision and all of the different policy hot topic voting rights voting access and at one point you you worked for the Ohio Secretary of State I just wonder what policy issues are you following really closely right now and what perspective are you bringing to them as someone who's had the professional background that you've had one policy issue that I'm very interested in is expungement because again like I said having those experiences where I didn't think somebody should be paying at 50 paying for it 50 what for something that they did at 20 so that is absolutely a policy interest of mine as well as those alternative sentencing options because I think that prison is strictly punitive at least the way that it's set up now it is strictly punitive it doesn't have anything else to offer because we're most places aren't putting their money into the programming in prisons and so a lot of times with prisons people are coming out the same way that they went in but I still think there are people we need protection from so I'm not getting rid of the prison slice yeah I it's been fast because we've had a lot of conversations about this