 Hello everybody, this is 15 Minutes and I am here with Ryan Forbes, who is the marketing manager at Longmont Public Media, but we're not going to talk about Longmont Public Media today. We're going to talk about a previous chapter in Ryan's life and how it relates and why he has made himself an expert on restorative justice. So this is segment two in our series on restorative justice. I'm Ryan. Thank you. Yeah. And can you tell us why a marketing manager at LPM has made himself an expert on restorative justice? Okay. Well, before I got into marketing, I actually went to school for computer science at Montana State and I actually spent about nine years working professionally as a software developer. And at the end of that time, I actually went out one night to meet people in a new town I had moved to and I got blackout drunk and got into my car and then accidentally killed someone. And I had driven into them and then after that I got locked up for six years as part of a ten-year sentence. In Texas, there's two phases of the hearing. There's the guilt determining guilt phase and then there's the sentencing phase. Guilt phase didn't happen because I was guilty and I said from the beginning I told my lawyer I said I'm guilty, I did it. But this sentencing phase, even though I'm guilty, the way that our justice system works is you have to, like, if you just leave it to the powers that be, they'll just try and, at the time, with the district attorney I was working with, they just wanted to give me 20 years and then be done with it. And that's a long time. It was a long time to be away from my family. That's just a long time to be in prison. So I went to the sentencing hearing in front of a judge to try and lessen that sentence and that sentencing hearing not only did it, it caused a lot of stress between me and my family. It also caused even more pain with my victim's family and his loved ones that were there. And while I was inside, I got a degree in sociology, specializing in social welfare. And that's when I learned about restorative justice and I wanted to know why I had not heard about it sooner and why it was not used more often. So do you think that if you knew about restorative justice, it would have been a mechanism that would have helped you not get to the point where you got blackout drunk and got into a car? I don't know about, I don't know if it would have gotten to that point. It might have because there had been other incidents where I had blacked out because I had a drinking problem, but it was not one where I was constantly running into the law or anything like that. But the biggest thing that I feel like would have come from it is that it could have prevented the additional pain, at the very least the additional pain that caused that family. And it may have even gotten to a point where I could have done things directly for them. Because from the very beginning I wanted to do things for them, but I was told I was not to contact them and I was not to reach out. And I would have gladly done that. And I would have gladly, instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a lawyer to keep me out of prison, I would have gladly given it to that family instead. Would you have welcomed a dialogue with them that would have increased their understanding as well as your understanding of what had happened to you? Do you think that it would have given them a better process to get through understanding the death of their loved one as well as you? I think it would have been very helpful. And I think it would have, what happened in the sentencing hearing was there was a lot of witnesses called up for either side to present and basically the story of that night was told. And even before that, the family was presented evidence. There was, there's basically, I didn't see any security camera footage, but there was security camera footage of like me at my apartment and me at one of the bars and also like, there's also like testimony from people from like, from bar owners because I'd gotten, during my blackout, I'd actually gotten kicked out of a bar. And it is, it's me on my absolute worst night and I, like, any bad thing you could say about me, you could probably fit it in that night on what happened. And that's the story going with it. And as far as, I guess for my end, like, it's, I don't want that to be like, I was just this careless guy who wasn't thinking about it because I didn't even drive that night to the bars. I just walked there. And the only way they got me back was because they had put me in, they forced me into a cab because I was that belligerent at that point. I don't know if it, how much it would help them when the, when the mother left the courtroom that night, like the at my sentencing hearing, she was basically busy telling me how horrible I was and like, how she can't believe this thing happened. And that is a hurtful way for everyone involved to feel at the end of it. And I don't think it had to be that way. And I think it would have brought them, I don't know about comfort, but I think there's more, there would have been a way to bridge that gap and to actually do something for them aside from just, just putting me away in a box that they don't have to think about for X amount of time. This is a, this is a scary question because, you know, you're a good marketing guy. You had enough savings from before that you were probably a pretty good software engineer. You'd probably be a pretty good criminal if you had chosen not to restore yourself after a stint in prison. Is restorative justice as a part of the reintegration into society? Do you believe that those techniques apply? Or do you believe that this is mostly something that keeps people from getting as far into this, the level of offenses that you did? I believe that it's something that can hit that right now we have it at every level. And I think it should stay at every level because not everyone is going to be like me who can take, who will take responsibility for it. And it's also this is, we, the system we have, that's what it's set up for. But the earlier that everyone can get involved, the more it's going to help long term. But I think as people come in, as people are in the system, once people are in, like if they can get involved with it on their way out, it will help, it can give them more possibilities and actually use it to, like one of the big points about restorative justice is about finding strengths as opposed to focusing on weaknesses. And prison is a place where everyone is looking for your weakness. And so to actually have people looking, telling you what your strengths are, it makes a huge amount of difference. And it can really, it can really change a person's path they're on if you can give them that path. Sometimes I offend people by telling them that I don't believe in punishment because it doesn't fix things. But at the same time, I understand that there are times when a person has to be detained because we don't have a way, any other way, we don't know of any other way of keeping the rest of society safe from that person. Could the restorative justice techniques that we've just heard described something that we could involve people while they're incarcerated? Would it change the nature of incarceration? If it was built around that? The analogy I like to say about punishment is if your car breaks down on the highway, you don't yell at your car and tell it what a bad car it is and sit there and point fingers at it and hope that it gets better. So you might have to take the car off the road for a minute and then look at the problem and fix it. Talking about how bad the car is and trying to shame the car isn't helping anyone. And the same thing goes for prison. Prison, the way it's set up now, is a punishment. When I was there, they would like to tout that there was like 12-step groups and there was lots of programs, they would love to talk about their programs. But the thing is, before I went to prison, I went to treatment. And because I went to treatment, I knew what it was like to be in an environment where everyone was trying to help me and to try and get me into a better place. And because of that, I chose to remove myself. I was only supposed to be in treatment for 30 days, I stayed for 90. And then the rest of my time on bond, I could have traveled the planet. And I could have gone wherever I wanted and did whatever. But I decided to stay in sober living. So this was between your arrest and you were on bond and your sentencing? So how long the time was that? That was a year. So basically I got arrested, I spent a few nights in jail after the accident. My family bonded me out. They picked me up from Texas, took me back to Colorado. And then shortly after, that's when I went to treatment. And we had no idea how long the sentencing trial was going to be, or how long this whole process was going to take. So it takes up to two years and it ended up being almost exactly a year. So yeah, I spent three months in treatment and then the rest of the time was in sober living. During that time, you were treated like someone who needed to be helped. Here's the thing is like, both in prison and treatment, there's not a whole lot of privacy at times. There's not a whole lot of your own time. And you always kind of get the feeling that someone's over your shoulder and you're always surrounded by people. And I was even explicitly told once in treatment that people were watching me. But when they were telling me that, they were telling me that because they were saying, we see what you're doing. We see you trying to help other people here. Because we were encouraged to help the other people in treatment. And they strongly believe that everyone here can help everyone else out, from the staff to the people who are currently there. And so every part of it was encouragement. And we were told, if you want to leave, there's the door. But like, you're here for a reason. And we want to help you with that reason. And everyone really got that message for the most part. And it was very rare that there's people who wanted to go. And if they wanted to go, a lot of times it was because the issue was so severe that there was more that needed to be done. And that's like, really, it's not about punishment at that point. It's like your heart breaks at that point. Can you contrast that quickly with what the attitudes toward you were when you were in prison? Yeah. When I was in prison, also no privacy. And then you knew people were scoping out what's in your locker. How much commissary did you get? What can they take from you? And then the officers were the same way. They'd be like, you're in violation. Your bunk isn't made. You haven't put your stuff away. You need to clean this area. You need to report to work at 4 a.m. You need to like, or like you leave to go to lunch and you left a book out, then they're going to take your book. There's everything you do is being monitored and watched. But they're looking for you to trip up. They're looking for you to mess up. So it doesn't even become that you want to become a better person because there's so many conflicting rules and so many people watching you that you can't just, there's not like one set of golden rules that if I follow these rules, then I'll make it. Because I tried that. When I first went into prison, I assumed, oh, if I just follow this pamphlet that they give me when I get in or this rule orientation book, then I'll make it and I'll be good. I'll make my first parole and I can go home. No, no, what ends up happening is when you're there for any extended period of time, you learn how to break the rules properly. I, like you said, be a very good criminal. Have practice at it now because I had to break the rules in prison. That's, you have to learn, you have to learn how to steal, you have to learn how to sneak. You have to learn how to get around the officers. Because if you don't, your life will be very, very hard. So this is something that we need to change. We don't have time to talk about it because you said there's restorative justice that can be applied at every level and is, which is not something I knew. It's something that I didn't know it. I bet there are a lot of other people who don't know it and should. So I hope we can talk about it again. You're gonna talk about it again. Yes. And I'd like you to just tell us that, what you're doing now and then we'll have to close up. Okay, so on April 27th, 2023 at Longmont Public Media, we are doing, we're basically doing a behind the bar storytelling event. This is for people with first-hand experience behind bars or who currently have, are dealing with family members and loved ones behind bars. And we're gonna be telling their stories live. We're gonna be recording it. And we're also going to be having groups like Longmont Community Justice Project, Boulder County Restorative Justice. We're gonna have Adopt-An-Inmate. We're trying to get in touch with the Marshall Project. We're also trying to get in touch with like the Boulder Bar Foundation. And we've also lined up one really great storyteller who has already had her story published in a few places and she's gonna come up and tell her story live. And yeah, the big thing is like, it's one is to get the word out, get all these people in one place so you can hear their stories and hear what it, get people to like hear what it's like and get an understanding. And then the other part is, is to hear about the different projects, hear about these different things like the restorative justice of products and places like the Recovery Cafe where people can go and get support and like the youth center and where people can get help right now. Great. So watch for that date, April 2023. There'll be more. You can hardly probably hear about it, but what we need to tell you is that understanding is the first thing so that we can change this system to something that works. Thank you for being here, Ryan. Thank you for opening up to a degree that I wouldn't. So thank you very much for being here and this has been 15 Minutes. Bye everybody. ["Pomp and Circumstance"]