Week 7: My First Interview

Welcome Back, Everyone!

This week I had the pleasure of starting my interviews. My first interviewee was Joshua Pacheco of the Red Hook Community Justice Center(RHCJC).  Joshua Pacheco is the Youth and Community Programs Associate at the Justice Center. He has been in this position since he came out of college. Joshua, who does not believe in being called Mr. Pacheco, also happens to be one of my (favorite) supervisors in Youth Impact. 

During our interview, I was able to ask him a series of questions divided into categories as explained in my last blog post.  Although Joshua wasn’t alive around the time the case happened, he became more familiar with it because his dad was very vocal about it as well as when he went to college he studied Constitutional Law.  Studying this type of law allowed him to become more familiar with the case itself. It was very interesting to interview him because although he can look at both sides of the case: the civilian side and the lawyer’s side.  For example, when I asked how he felt about the victim’s identity being hidden from the public eye, he explained to me it’s for the “safety of the victim” but the young men should have been given that same courtesy.

I also was able to ask if he thinks the justice system has changed since the 90s.  He explained to me that in a way it has changed due to a generational shift. However, we’re using the same police protocols from the 1990s so if you think about it, it hasn’t changed as much as we might like. Judges, police/correctional officers, and other personnel need to have that real-world humanity instilled in them from sociology and anthropology classes before they get put into a job where it allows them to lock people away,” says Joshua.  This made me think that maybe we need to change the training especially in things such as implicit-bias. If you think about, most use color as a way to associate with criminals so a negative cycle just repeats especially for African Americans.

I hope you guys enjoyed this week. I can’t wait to conduct my next interview. Stay safe!

Kayla