Chris Cate: Welcome to the Fluent in Floridian Podcast, featuring the sunshine state’s brightest leaders talking about the issues most important to the people of Florida and its millions of weekly visitors. In this episode created by Salter Mitchell PR, our executive producer, Heidi Otway, the president of Salter Mitchell PR, talks to Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis, the executive director for the Institute for Justice Research and Development, at Florida State University.

Heidi Otway: Carrie, thank you so much for being a guest on the Fluent in Floridian Podcast. We are thrilled to have you today.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: I am thrilled to be here, thank you.

Heidi Otway: God, so you have a new role and I say new, you’ve been in Florida now for about a little over a year. And you’re at Florida State University, and you created this new program that actually has natural national region influence around criminal justice. Tell us a little bit about that.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Yes, it’s very exciting and I’m thrilled to be in Florida. I never thought I would live here, but I have loved every moment of it since I got here. So yes, I am the founding executive director of the Institute for Justice Research and Development, that is at Florida State University in the College of Social Work there. And this is a research center that is focused on data-driven solutions to criminal justice reform, and although we have the majority of our work occurring in Florida in a variety of different criminal justice contexts, we do have field teams across the country and are frequently visiting Washington DC to make sure that we are able to translate our research findings to have high policy impact, not only in Florida but across the nation.

Heidi Otway: Tell us some of the key things that you’ve done specifically here in Florida.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Yes, so we have several projects going on in Florida. One is we have been working with the Florida Department of Corrections to help individuals to transition from incarceration back to our Florida communities and really to thrive once they get out, to be able to reach their full human potential, be great positive contributors to our communities, to their families. So, we start in the context of research and delivering services that we’re trying to make sure that we refine and increase the impact of those services, is we start to work with people prior to them getting out of our correctional facilities across Florida, and then help them to do well based on what their goals are and their needs are after they get home.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: But we’re also working with county jails in Florida. So, we have a really exciting project in Seminole County jail there, which is looking at how do we address these really dramatic rates of trauma that people experience who have become incarcerated, usually prior to their incarceration experience. And really how do we help address those symptoms to make sure that once those symptoms are addressed again, that they can be operating at optimal psychological wellbeing, which of course, contributes to not only their wellbeing but the wellbeing of our communities.

Heidi Otway: Do you see the work that you’re doing here in Florida … are you replicating it in other states? How does that work?

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Sure, absolutely. The first project that I mentioned where we’re working with individuals transitioning out of Florida prisons is happening in 12 Florida prisons, but also in another … let’s see if I can get my math right, another 78 prisons across six other states.

Heidi Otway: Wow.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: So that’s Texas, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Ohio and Indiana. And in all of those States we’re trying to see how is what we are learning and what we are seeing is possible. How can we make sure that we not only see those successes in Florida, but that we’re able to scale those reentry reform efforts across the country.

Heidi Otway: What does success look like from these programs?

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Yeah, that’s a terrific question. You know, for years now, what people have solely relied on to see what success looks like is this term called recidivism. And that’s essentially capturing people’s re-incarceration or their return to criminal justice involvement.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: But what we’re really trying to do that’s different than approaches that have been happening over the past two decades across our country, is we’re really trying to say, you know, we know when things are going well, well before they come into contact with the criminal justice system again. And that is when people have community stability, they have positive family connections, they’re on meaningful work trajectories, they’re welcomed back in their communities, they’re able to participate in their children’s lives. So we’re making sure that we track those immediate indicators of success, so that we never even get to a point where we have to think about them getting involved with the criminal justice system again.

Heidi Otway: Right, right. But so you’re also working with folks who are already in the prison?

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Yes.

Heidi Otway: And I was recently at the Future of Florida Forum and they had a panel discussion about what’s needed to ensure that someone who’s coming out of the prison system or incarceration is able to become gainfully employed, because that’s really important to them and it prevents recidivism, right? That’s what studies prove. So is there a component of the work you’re doing that focuses on skill building, job training, where they can actually get a meaningful decent wage position?

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Yes. We are definitely doing our part and trying to make sure that people are job ready and also can be job steady. But I’ll tell you who needs to-

Heidi Otway: I like that, job ready, job steady.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Job ready, job steady. But I’ll tell you, there’s only so far that an individual can go and that we can do in helping to prepare individuals. And where the real missing piece is, is that our communities in Florida and and in other States as well, have not yet taken responsibility for making sure that people have employment opportunities once they are prepared. So, although people who go to incarceration come from our communities, once they return, we have a tendency to stigmatize them and systematically say, “You have an incarceration experience,” or, “You’re not welcome in our workforce.” But all that does is hurt everybody around us. So what we really need to see employers do, our Florida based employers, and all states employers, is we need to see them open opportunities, to take a chance on people who have had this life experience. Because many times, if not most times, they are eager to work, eager to prove their ability to thrive. And they can tend to be pretty steady employees compared to some others, you know, that don’t have as much to prove.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. And that was what I appreciated most about the panelists at the Future of Florida Forum, which was hosted by the Florida Chamber. And the whole point was to show businesses that we have people coming out of the prison system that have the ability to go to work.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Exactly.

Heidi Otway: And to hire them. So, it looks like we’re getting some alignment here.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Yes, it’s terrific.

Heidi Otway: That’s great. So, tell me what is different? The work that you’re doing, how is it different from criminal justice reform of the past or the more recent past?

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Right, sure. I think that’s a great question. So there’s a number of ways that it’s different, and I’ll start with the first way. A question that I get asked frequently is if there was one thing you could do for criminal justice reform that would make a big splash, what would it be? And my response is always don’t do just one thing, because it is a massive complex system. And so we practice what we preach and we look to find high impact data-driven solutions from first law enforcement contact all the way through people getting out of the criminal justice system, incarceration settings, whether it be jail or prisons.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: A second thing that we do that is really different, is that … I’m not sure if you’re familiar with this statistic, but I’ll throw it out there. There’s a statistic that says that it takes an average of 17 years from scientific discovery, for the adoption of that discovery into the field. Well, we’ve said as a research center, we don’t have time to wait 17 years. We have individuals whose lives are dramatically impacted when they come into contact with the criminal justice system. And we have entire communities that are suffering because of the way that we do justice.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: So, what we do instead is we have a rapid translation of research findings approach. We are releasing our research findings during the courses of studies, every three months. We’re not waiting until the end of a five year study, we’re not waiting 17 years. We’re looking at what we’re seeing, we’re making it publicly available. We’ve invited anybody who wants to learn, as we learn, to kind of look through the window and watch. And we expose things that we didn’t do right and expose things that we’re doing right in terms of us as a research team.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: And finally, what’s different? Well, there’s two more things that are different. One is we have really engaged the social work profession to become leaders in criminal justice reform. And we’re preparing the future workforce of criminal justice reform professionals at this intersection of social work, we’re the largest research center in the country at the intersection of social work and criminal justice. And we’re the only … Florida State University is the only university in the country that offers postmasters fellowships for social workers to become trained in this work. And we just hired our first cohort of 17 just a couple of months ago.

Heidi Otway: That’s great.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: And the final thing that we do that is different, there has been, over the past 20 or 30 years, there’s been a major focus on what people who come into the criminal justice system should avoid, right? What their deficits are and what they need to avoid.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: And we’ve said, you know, it’s really hard to work towards, zero as a goal or a negative as a goal. So instead we want to focus on what people can achieve. And we’ve pulled research from every other discipline you can imagine that focuses on what people can achieve and have started to shift our work to work individuals towards those goals, what they can achieve.

Heidi Otway: I have a follow up question about the social worker aspect of it. What does that look like longterm? You know, you got 17 in this cohort. What is their role moving forward when they graduate?

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Yeah, we hope that there are future heads of corrections and our future prosecutors, and our future judges, and our future … you know. I probably shouldn’t say this publicly, but I’m going to anyway, but I have a motto where we inspire and infiltrate, right?

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: So, we want to inspire our leaders to do data-driven types of work, to do work that values human dignity, potential wellbeing, and then to lead the organizations that are helping to implement justice in our country. I mean, it’s important that we have a justice system. It’s just the way that we’ve been doing our justice system for the past 40 years has been incredibly perverse and flawed. And we have a profession that is trained to pursue social justice. It’s trained to look at the impact of policy on individual’s lives and really to marry how policy in practical real world experiences play out. And that’s the social work profession, and the profession really abandoned criminal justice about four to five decades ago.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: So, I don’t claim causality there that things went wrong when the profession stepped away, but I will say I think we can help things go well with bringing the profession back.

Heidi Otway: When you talk about the social aspect of it, you know, the social worker … I’ve also experienced, you all are socializing interactions with people who’ve been formally incarcerated. I had the pleasure of attending a program that you held after hours at Florida State University. You had two formerly incarcerated individuals there speaking. I had no idea what to expect when I showed up, you know? But on the stage you had a gentleman who had been in prison for a long … two gentleman who had been in prison for a long time for various activity, criminal activities. But they turned their lives around completely and they shared their stories. One is an actor now, the other was pursuing his master’s degree. And he announced that he was becoming an employee at Florida State. Is he a part of the cohort?

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Absolutely.

Heidi Otway: He’s one of the cohort?

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: He’s out of out postmasters fellows.

Heidi Otway: Tell me, how did that program come about? Because I remember walking away with all the attendees and we were just like, “Wow.” We learned something new. We interacted with these gentlemen. And if you saw them, you would have never known they had been previously incarcerated.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Absolutely. So, I will say, we at the Institute for Justice Research and Development, again, practice what we preach and we hire people. We actively seek to hire people with incarceration histories. There is not an ounce of research or products that come out of our institute that has not been vetted by people who have incarceration histories, because I firmly believe-

Heidi Otway: Wow, that’s really good.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: … people with lived experiences are the true experts on what we should be studying, but also what we should be pursuing in terms of innovations. The event that you attended, which we have somehow short named it the June 27th event, we never officially came up with the title of it. But what that event was, was Florida State University just submitted for the largest grant proposal in its history this summer, and it was a hundred million dollar grant proposal. And I have led that team of 20 faculty and four formerly incarcerated individuals in the development of the proposal. That proposal was supported by every level of leadership at the university, and it was intended to signal to the state and to the country, that Florida State University is really committed to identifying data-driven criminal justice solutions.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: And so, what we wanted … as a part of the proposal, we needed to do a 90 second video demonstrating why this work was important. So I met Bill, one of the individuals that you mentioned with incarceration histories, that ultimately became our postmasters fellow. I met him when he was working on his bachelor’s degree in St. Louis. He reached out to me and he also attended, we had sponsored a leadership training event for people with incarceration histories led by people with incarceration histories, and he had attended that and he reached out to be an intern. And since then … So he was an intern and then he finished his bachelor’s degree and then he became a master student, and now an employee. [Lamont 00:15:57] I met at various speaking events around the country where we just happened to both be on the same panel. And the two of them, their stories are such different trajectories.

Heidi Otway: They’re very compelling stories.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: They’re very compelling. We had one individual from an urban, stereotypical scenario, and another individual from Missouri, rural Missouri, nothing stereotypical about it in terms of what people are thinking about for why people go to prison. And they both did a lot of time, and they both are incredibly successful. And they’re both very powerful speakers. And so, when I thought about what should this event be? I thought this event should be about everything but me, and everything but FSU, and we need to see what is possible for people who have had not the greatest paths. I think that we were effectively able to show that-

Heidi Otway: It was very effective and it put a face, a different face to criminal justice reform, if that makes sense. Or to people’s perceptions of what a person who’s been in prison looks like.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Right, exactly.

Heidi Otway: Really, it was very dynamic and you had some of the top state leaders in organizations in the room and we all walked away going, “Oh my goodness.”

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Right. I want to take that show on the road.

Heidi Otway: Yeah, totally different perspective. So is the grant still pending?

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: It is still pending. There’s five phases of competition for this proposal and we’ve gotten past the first two, so I feel successful so far.

Heidi Otway: Very good. So let’s talk a little bit more about you. I think you’ve given us, you know, our listeners a really good understanding of the work that you’re doing at Florida State University. How did you get into this profession?

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Yeah, it’s not as exciting as a story as some people might hope for it, but I will say that this is the only thing I’ve ever done my entire adult life. And I got introduced to this idea of prisons and criminal justice when I was a junior in high school, and I was part of a peer helpers program. And part of being a peer helper, you had to learn about helping people. And so we had to take this behavioral health sciences class and I watched this video on the Stanford Prison Experiment. And what I took away from this video is human beings treat each other really poorly in incarceration settings because of the climate or the organization of confining people, which is something that’s very unnatural.

Heidi Otway: Yeah, it is.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: And good people on both sides are not treating each other well. So I thought, that’s really problematic. I want to understand this more. So, the second I went off to the college, this was during the Clinton administration and there was an individual that was high up in the Clinton administration, Webb Hubbell, who had gone to prison for a scandal that came out of that administration. And I was able to connect with him and go interview him. And this was somebody who, okay, obviously had achieved great things in his life. And what he described about how incarceration destroyed his family, about how humiliating the experience was for him, publicly humiliating. And how difficult he was having a time, getting his life back together. I thought, you know, I’ve got to keep exploring this further. Yeah. And then after that, every internship, volunteer, employment opportunity, was a quest for me to get one step closer to really making a big impact on the system.

Heidi Otway: And so after that, what were the steps … what happened after all of that? What was your career trajectory that got you to Florida State?

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Yeah, so I staffed drop-in centers for homeless individuals, many of whom were cycling in and out of jail. I volunteered for political prisoner advocacy groups and oftentimes in that case, I’ve found myself on the outside of the walls, of prison walls. And I thought, well, I really need to be on the inside if I want to make a difference. I worked with the Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, was a maximum security penitentiary at the time, to establish an internship program in the psychology department when I was in college-

Heidi Otway: Really?

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: … and did that psychology internship. Then also worked with the Kansas Department of Corrections when I was going into my master’s degree to establish an internship program there, and did that, did an internship with them.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis:: And then also during that time was employed at a psychiatric hospital for adolescents, and really started to see the adolescents in those units cycling in and out of our court system. And I’ll tell you kind of the pivotal point for me, when I knew that there was just absolutely nothing else I was ever going to do in my career but this, was while I was working at the psychiatric hospital, I was also interning as a juvenile probation officer. And my supervisor had to go out on medical leave. So, I had to take on this caseload of juveniles, wasn’t very old myself.

Heidi Otway: Right, right.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: And there was one day where one of my clients from the caseload, who towered over me, 15/16 years old and had a really tough life and very limited affect, tough kid. And, I took him home one afternoon and he got out of my car and slammed the door and went to the front door, opened the door and closed it and turned around and came back and sat in my car. And there were just tears streaming down his face. And I said … I’ve never seen any expression of emotion. I said, “What happened?” You know? And he said, “Well, my mom’s finishing up with a couple of Johns and then I can go inside.” And I thought … and that of course means that she was doing prostitution for pay out of her home.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: And I thought then, if we want to influence the children of our country and the children of our communities, we need to make sure that their parents are doing well, and that their children never have to see their parents need to make an income like that. Never have to see their parents suffering, and instead can have parents that are thriving so that their children can thrive too. And, after I figured out I needed to work with the adults to help prevent children from becoming involved with the juvenile justice system, prevent them from becoming involved with the adult system, prevent them from going into poverty or performing poorly in school. I knew there was just nothing else I could ever do, but that working with those adults.

Heidi Otway: You know, the work that you’re doing is just, it just sounds so dynamic and just so challenging. But then there’s all this opportunity.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Absolutely.

Heidi Otway: What would you say is your biggest success or where you feel like you’ve done something significant to change the way criminal justice reform is done? Or how folks can stay out of prison?

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Well, so I would say a lot of this work, you don’t ever see that outcome. I do see the outcomes of our studies and people doing well with the studies, and where we disseminate our learnings and principles as quickly as possible. I guess I never really attribute those to me-

Heidi Otway: But I guess it becomes part of the bigger.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Right, right.

Heidi Otway: So you’re helping in that big regard, your data is helping move things forward, change. Create change.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Yes.

Heidi Otway: So tell me more about that.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Yeah, it is helping to create change and it’s helping to create change by us getting a different narrative into the American consciousness. So, I would say that’s when I feel most impactful, is that going to groups that have never thought about criminal justice reform, have never thought about the injustices that occur in our current approaches … and visually seeing gasps in audiences. Visually seeing head nods, hearing … I mean, you don’t visually see gasps. You hear gasps. Hearing gasps, seeing head nods, and then having people come up to you afterwards and say, “I’m a judge,” or, “My brother’s a Senator,” or, “I didn’t know and here’s what I’m going to do in my community.”

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: And what’s even more powerful is when they have their children with them. Because then their children are hearing, you know, there is something wrong and we need to do something different. But something a little more concrete than that too is, we were involved with some of the conversations around the First Step Act that was passed at the federal level. And it’s the single largest criminal justice reform bill that’s happened in the United States. And we were able to infuse into some of the thinking and some of the conversation that there be an expectation that we use evidence driven approaches. And after that bill has passed, myself and another colleague, Steven Chipote at the Institute for Justice Research and Development were invited to DC to help implement the bill and help guide the implementation.

Heidi Otway: So what are the key parts of the bill for our listeners who may not be familiar with?

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Sure. There are a lot of components to it. But one is to make sure that, again, that we use data-driven rehabilitative solutions, that we send fewer people to incarceration, that we use assessment tools that can help us to appropriately tailor resources to the needs of individuals. And also pieces that you wouldn’t even think that we need to be talking about. So, one of the practices that happens throughout the country is people still shackle women during childbirth, women that are incarcerated.

Heidi Otway: Yeah, I just read a article about that recently.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Yes. So in that legislation, it says that since that’s not allowed in our federal system-

Heidi Otway: Wow, that’s brutal.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Right. So you wouldn’t think we would be talking about that in 2019. Yeah. So, there’s still some really fundamental conversations we need to have about what we think is appropriate with this population.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. And so you all are involved in implementation of all of these new ways of doing this?

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Yes. Which is really exciting.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. What’s the future look like? You know, from the work that you’re doing? What do you think we should be looking forward to or what can we do as voters and citizens in our communities?

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: I think that’s a terrific question and I am going to start answering that question by talking about myself for a second. As I mentioned, I’ve been doing this through my entire adult life and really up until around 2011/2012 … it’s such hard work, and so discouraging many times, that I created a mantra. And that mantra was if the system has changed 50 years after I’m dead, assuming I’ve lived a long life, then my life will have been a success. And that’s what got me through every day. But around 2011/2012 it started to occur to me that something had shifted in our country, and that I no longer was going to have to think about 50 years after I’m dead. That I really could start thinking about 10/20 years from today, that we’re going to see a transformed criminal justice system.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: So, for those listeners who may not know it, we are at a moment in time in our country where we’re doing a major social shift. And we are moving from this era of mass incarceration that has happened for 40 years and before, into an era of smart decarceration. And what smart decarceration is pushing our country to do, is to start to think about how do we appropriately want to do justice and punishment in the United States? How can we stop using incarceration as a default response to behaviors that we don’t like? It’s starting to push and think about creating a robust public health and behavioral health system of care in our communities, so that we don’t have law enforcement officers and prosecutors and judges having to meet these health based decisions.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: And we’re really going to, I believe, see one of the biggest stratifying institutions, which is criminal justice around economic and racial lines, start to shift and be able to promote equity instead of disparities. And it is here and it is here to stay. And every single indicator suggests that it’s here to stay. So it’s really going to be important for voters and for community members to start to think creatively about ways that we can respond to people that helps them to get over barriers or difficult times in life, and have options that don’t require a crime, criminal behavior or criminal justice system involvement. So it’s pretty exciting.

Heidi Otway: It sounds exciting. And here in Florida, you know, last year we had some major reforms in our criminal justice here in Florida. Were you all involved in that at all?

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: I was still new to Florida, I think I hit toddler stage of Florida, but I was an infant then. But yes, I mean we’ve passed really important voter registration laws, some other really important measures. And there are a lot of Florida leaders that really want to see reform happen here too.

Heidi Otway: Well, thank you so much for being on the show. And you know, we always close with asking our guests a few questions. And I know you’re new to Florida, but you’ve been to Florida before, I’m sure, prior to moving.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: My grandparents actually had … they would come down here after they’d retired, they’d come down here every winter and live in Key West. Drove their red Jeep down from Arkansas to Key West every winter, and I would come visit. It was terrific.

Heidi Otway: Key West is one of my favorite places in Florida. All right, so I’m going to go right along and ask you some of our key questions just to learn a little bit more about you as a person. So, who is a Florida leader you admire? It could be someone from any different industry or field from the past, or someone who is still active in their work now.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: So there are two Florida leaders that I think of right off the top of my head. And I don’t think you’ll be surprised, they’re individuals with incarceration histories. So, one is Desmond Meade, who I believe you just recently. Yes, who went from homelessness to incarceration, to leading criminal justice reform efforts. And we also have another local to Tallahassee community member, Rebecca Kelly Manders who runs Refire, and was able to not only generate her own business and opportunities, but give opportunities to other people releasing from incarceration, which is terrific.

Heidi Otway: Well, I think everyone will be familiar with this, talk a little bit more about Rebecca’s business because it’s pretty dynamic.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Yes, so she has a shop that’s open, I can’t remember exactly the hours. But it’s entirely run by individuals with incarceration histories, and has a little bakery cafe where people can come in and get food. Yeah, but then she also does a catering service as well. I’m so fortunate to get to see her at all of our events and learn more, and I hope that they continue to grow and expand.

Heidi Otway: And she could potentially be a model for the rest of the state for others, you know, who come out of prison and are looking for something to do. The entrepreneurial piece is the one thing that we’re seeing a lot more from people coming out of prisons.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Yes, absolutely. And that takes a whole lot of courage to do, she’s definitely demonstrated how to put that courage into practice, and then create opportunities for other people.

Heidi Otway: Right, create jobs.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Exactly. Exactly.

Heidi Otway: So what’s the person, place, or thing in Florida that deserves more attention than it’s currently getting?

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Well, I would say our correctional facilities. So, and I’ll say that this doesn’t have anything to do with the Florida Department of Corrections, but I think if residents of Florida really want to understand what it’s like to be incarcerated and the appropriateness of incarceration as a response to certain types of behaviors, they should visit our correctional facilities. Any correctional facility, there’s nothing unique about Florida correctional facilities, but they should visit our correctional facilities, volunteer in our correctional facilities, get to know the people that are living in our correctional facilities and their hopes and dreams and aspirations. And I think that any individual that does that for the first time, and then if they do it multiple times, their lives will be changed in ways that they could never expect.

Heidi Otway: And they could potentially change the lives of those who are incarcerated.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Absolutely, absolutely.

Heidi Otway: What is your favorite Florida location to visit?

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: I can’t say correctional facilities. It is, actually. I mean for the various reasons, the very reasons that I was talking about is, you know, these locations, although sometimes distant from where our houses are in communities, they’re a very real part of our state, and the people that work there and the people that live there are invisible sometimes. And I don’t think they should be invisible.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: And you know, we seem to support legislation and budgeting decisions and things like that, that maintain these institutions that we have no connections to as a community. And I think that it has to stop.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. And then my final question is, do you have a favorite Florida sports team?

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: So one thing that I learned shortly after moving here … of course, I’m Seminole. But I know not to take sides in sports, but I do want to call out one sports team actually, the Tampa Buccaneers.

Heidi Otway: Tampa Bay Bucks! That’s my team.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: So they launched a social justice initiative in January of 2019, and that social justice initiative funds youth empowerment programs, police reform programs, criminal justice reform programs, and other types of social justice work specifically in Florida-

Heidi Otway: I did not know that.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: … which I think is really great leadership from an NFL team in our state, and something that I hope more people become familiar with.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. We probably need to get them on Fluent in Floridan to talk about that work.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Yeah, absolutely.

Heidi Otway: All right. Well Carrie, thank you so much for being a guest on our show. Very informational, enlightening, and I love it when I learn something new. So thank you so much.

Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis: Thank you so much.

Chris Cate: Thanks for listening to the Fluent in Floridian Podcast. This show is executive produced by April Salter, with additional support provided by Heidi Otway and the team at SalterMitchell PR. If you need help telling your Florida story, SalterMitchell PR has you covered by offering issues management, crisis communications, social media advocacy, and media relations assistance. You can learn more about SalterMitchell PR at saltermitchellpr.com. You can also learn more about the Fluent in Floridian Podcast and listen to every episode of the show at fluentinfloridian.com or by searching for the show using your favorite podcast app. Have a great day.