[00:00:50] Host: Welcome to the fifth installment of the Chapters podcast series. I'm your host, Jon-Barrett Ingels. In our Chapters series, we focus on stories surrounding the exclusion, forced removal, and incarceration of Japanese Americans. In this chapter, we explore the word incarceration in the wake of the Los Angeles Times' decision to commit to use the word incarceration when describing what happened to 120,000 Japanese Americans after Executive Order 9066. We want to look at how language changes the narrative of US History. We compare the incarceration of Japanese Americans to our current carceral system, examining the laws, the rights, the livelihood, and the aftermath of being incarcerated. We connect with artists, educators, journalists, lawyers and social justice advocates to reassess the challenges of our past and the challenges that lay before us.

In this episode, we connect with Ricardo Garcia, Public Defender for Los Angeles County, to discuss criminal justice reform and prison reform.

I'd love for you to give us a little history about the Public Defender's office in general, specifically Los Angeles, as it's the oldest in the country. What is the role of the Public Defender, and how has it changed and evolved over the century-plus of its existence?

[00:02:17] García: That's a great place to start with the office. Well, first of all, I like saying it's the first Public Defender office as opposed to the oldest. It is the first by almost 50 years before Gideon V. Wainwright, which is the seminal case that established public defense across the country. Sixth Amendment guarantees a right to an attorney. Before Gideon, that really just meant that, if you had the capacity economically to hire a lawyer, you could go out and hire your own lawyer, anybody you wanted when you were facing criminal charges. That meant nothing for people who didn't have economic resources, and it made the criminal legal system completely imbalanced. The person who had means could go out and hire a lawyer to stand in and protect them, and a person who didn't was either stuck with no lawyer or, sometimes even worse, the random friend of the judicial officer who happened to be an attorney that had nothing to do with criminal defense. Under both circumstances, they were always faced a trained, resourced, and skilled prosecutor, and so that created a complete uneven system.

Then Gideon in '63 really changed that for the entire country when the Supreme Court said that, no, everybody is entitled to a lawyer regardless of capacity to pay for it, and if they can't pay for it, then the state has to do so, government. They put that responsibility on the states, but it also gave the states a little bit of leeway on how they were going to implement it. In California, that was squarely placed on the responsibility of the counties.

Well, when it came to LA County, it was nothing new. LA county had already had a public defender system since about 1914. That system was the vision, and really of a visionary woman, Clara Shortridge Foltz, who was the first woman to practice law in California to be able to get a bar license. She had to sue the state, the bar, to do that. She was the first woman, obviously because of that, to be a deputy district attorney.

What she saw in 1914 was that, for the system to be in any ways equitable or just, for that word justice to mean anything, that people who had no money, oftentimes the largest population who was being pulled into the criminal legal system, the poor, needed to have professional lawyers that the state paid for. She came up with that structured system where the county, the city at that time, within the county would pay for a team of attorneys, public defenders, who were professionals, to represent those who were indigent, who didn't have the means to hire a lawyer when pulled into the criminal legal process.

She also understood something in 1914 that we still struggle with today, which is the resourcing of indigent defense. What she realized was that, for that word justice to mean anything, you didn't just need to have lawyers that represented the poor. Those lawyers needed to have the same access to the power of the purse as the prosecutors did. That is something that, today in 2025, we still struggle to get people to understand and accomplish across California. That resourcing is disparate in some really unfortunate way.

That's how public defense came to be in, not in a nutshell, but a little bit more than a nutshell, and really how it was built in Los Angeles before it existed nationwide.

[00:06:11] Host: I know one of the things I heard in another talk of yours, one of your hopes and goals is to kind of create a statewide connection. What do we currently have in place between the different counties of California to have this clarity of thought and speaking of the same language with regards to the Public Defender's office?

[00:06:35] García: It isn't a vision I have. It is a complex reality because California, like some other states, but California is so different from border to state line, from ocean to the other state lines. The systems of government, although all one system, essentially, and their values are very different. What it is to be a Public Defender as far as in practice operations is different in San Diego even than it is in LA, in Alameda, Contra Costa, Siskiyou and others. Particularly the small rural counties have a very different impact.

In California, we have what's called the California Public Defenders Association, which is really a group that tries to bring Public Defenders both in leadership as well as not together for trainings and education. That is a great group, and we also have the Public Defenders, the directors get together and we meet to try to find that balance to make sure that at least where we can we're speaking the same language. Where we can't, we're helping each other tackle complicated issues that we may be different in each county, but are essentially the same.

With all that difference, there is a core value that every Public Defender has. That is the value that the client is first, that we are here for the client. We're here for the person we represent. It doesn't matter that they aren't paying us. We're their public servant, and we're there to fight for them, or as I like to say, we are their constitutional guardians. That is a sentiment that is shared, I would say, not just across Public Defenders in California, but across the country. I've had the opportunity to travel and meet Public Defenders from other countries, from Mexico, from Chile, from Peru.

These Public Defenders share that same value, that same belief in the client in the importance of standing in front of them as the force of the state comes at them. That is something. We have a State Public Defender which is growing in influence, we'll say, that it's primarily purpose is educational, to make sure that there's a uniform access to knowledge and information across the whole state, to partner with the California Public Defenders Association on that, to look at what the challenges are for the rural county which may not have institutional Public Defender systems and help them either develop those systems or find resources that the lawyers who are working in those non-institutional systems to be able to zealously represent their clients with the same resources, at least potentially, that we have in larger locations.

Just an aside or I must say a footnote on that is that, while LA has an institutional system, San Diego, the majority of the counties have institutional systems, meaning institutional Public Defenders for that county. That's not the only model. Some counties have law firms that have exclusive contracts with that county to take all court-appointed cases. Other counties have law firms that take partial contracts. The obligation to provide indigent defense doesn't mean there's an obligation to establish an institutional system, which in my opinion is the best way to do it in the way we do it here in LA and other places. It's an obligation for the court to ensure that people have court appointed attorneys.

[00:10:12] Host: I'd love for you to talk a little bit about-- I know your role, your career could have started in San Diego. While we're only 100-plus miles away here in LA, what was the big difference that you noticed between what you did in San Diego and then coming into this larger pool of Los Angeles?

[00:10:37] García: First, I'll start with in San Diego I worked as a Deputy Public Defender. I was not the Public Defender. I was not an executive manager. I was a line attorney for 22 years of my career there and spending the last 10 years as a capital litigator, homicide litigator in the multiple conflicts major cases unit. My career and experience was very, very different in that sense, my obligations. Physically they're not comparable. Really Los Angeles is unique to any other Public Defender’s county system in the country.

We are more like a state Public Defender. We have the same trappings and benefits of a state defender. Our geography is bigger than some state Public Defenders. We have the challenges of we have urban and suburban, rural. We have communities that are extremely wealthy and communities that are well below the poverty line. We have communities that have high crime rates and are overpoliced. We have communities with very low crime rates where, other than bringing their community members coffee in the mornings, the police are very much hands off about what goes on there.

We have an incredible distinction over a great range. From Lancaster as you know to Pomona and from the San Gabriel Valley, Pasadena to Long Beach that is an incredible geography. That doesn't exist that way in other locations. 32 courthouses, we are the largest Public Defender's office, nearly 1,300 staff plus the inclusion of the bar panel, which we've taken over the management of, which is of almost 300 attorneys. That staff that runs those contracts, those are contracted lawyers, not deputy public defenders. They're still contracted. We run that contract.

In size it's completely different. Also because, in a smaller county, you can have a more homogenous culture and political reality within the courts. When you have four courthouses, two courthouses, three courthouses, one courthouse, the court culture is very similar to each other. In Los Angeles, it is as diverse as the community is itself. The values and the way our judicial officer interpret their responsibilities are as different as the judicial officers themselves. That is big difference. Our population is incredibly different in Los Angeles than it is even in a county like San Diego, which is becoming more diverse.

[00:13:18] Host: I'd love to have you talk a little bit about your time working with ACLU of Southern California, and how that role prepared you for this role of Chief Public Defender?

[00:13:32] García: I landed at the ACLU of Southern California in some ways the same way I land in a lot of the professional world that I've had the blessings to be a part of. In that there's a time for change. I need to make a change. I put myself out there to see what's there. Then when something comes to me, I embrace it. I fully engage it. That's how the ACLU happened. It’d been a challenging economic time in San Diego.

Although I'd been there for a long time, I had moved to the Alternate Public Defender's office, which is an independent office at that time. It's not that way now, independent just the way we have here. There were some potential layoffs. I was flagged for layoff. I got the notice. The date of my layoff just kept getting put off, put off, put off. I'll be candid. I was not particularly enamored with the way my executive leadership was treating the fact that I might be out of a job. I was young, and I didn't know what to do. Fortunately, my direct supervisor, Dan Mandarin was fantastic and really kept me in love with San Diego in many ways.

I looked for work, and the ACLU decided they needed someone with my skillset to lead their criminal justice unit. When I arrived there as the director, it was a completely new world, something I was unfamiliar with. As I learned about it, what it did for here is it gave me a broader view of the criminal legal system and policy and government and the influence of legislation and community values on the work that I'd been doing as a Public Defender. There, was one client at a time being, in my mind, forced a direction by the system, and with the ACLU it was looking at those systems.

It gave me really a much more comprehensive understanding about justice reform, about use of force, not just cross-examining an officer, about their use of force, but understanding how law enforcement thought about it and how it was trained. It taught me about relationships with members of LAPD and LA County Sheriffs to understand how we would review the consent decrees for the Rampart scandal, which was my responsibility to make sure that that was being moved forward.

I met other attorneys who weren't Public Defenders, who were involved in justice reform, or who were involved in implementing justice changes that I learned from. It really did give me this broad perspective. When I went back to San Diego, it was a little bit stifling because I went back to being a line lawyer. Public Defenders don't really necessarily always have that perspective, even in management. When I came to Los Angeles, I was appointed here, I brought that knowledge and understanding at least the capacity to see it a bigger world than the one I'd seen as a line attorney.

[00:16:39] Host: For another version of this series, I had the opportunity to speak with Abdi Soltani, the director of the Northern California ACLU. In that conversation, criminal justice reform, he told me was the high priority for the organization. I'm sure, as you mentioned, it was the same in Southern California. What place does prison reform have in criminal justice reform?

[00:17:08] García: In some ways, prison reform or the way we look at caging human beings is central to justice reform. The criminal legal system focuses oftentimes more often than it should on the notion of retribution, punishment, and warehousing human beings without really thinking about what happens, really deeply thinking about what happens to this person while they're being placed in a cage for years on end or even weeks or days, depending on what's going on.

Sometimes a very short, an overnight or a weekend, jail time can be more adversely impacting to a person's life than a long sentence when their life has already been a repeat of that. Sometimes it's hard for people to understand that. I can go into that if you want.

When you focus on jail and warehousing as a solution without thinking about how are we going to make sure that when people come out they're in the best possible place to move their life in a forward direction, that challenge, I think, means that reforming the way we look at the carceral system is essential if we're ever going to expect to see a change, long-term, lifelong change in the criminal legal system.

[00:18:32] Host: You said that sometimes being in jail for a couple of days or a week could be worse or more detrimental to your life or livelihood than being sentenced to a longer period of time?

[00:18:49] García: Oftentimes what happens is, if you get picked up for an offense, whether you end up being found culpable for it or not, whether you are guilty or not, if you are living paycheck to paycheck, if you are working in a place where you have to show up every day and your boss isn't particularly supportive, if you are in the service industry, a lot of these different jobs, even the jobs that are not like that, and you miss a few days of work, you are going to lose your job. If you get pulled in on a Thursday, you may not end up in court until following Tuesday if you don't have a way to get out of jail. Imagine being out of your home but not being able to access the world around you, being trapped in jail knowing that you didn't do what you're being accused of. Then finding out on Tuesday that they didn't even file charges, but your job is gone, your rent, maybe your apartment, maybe your manager, or the landlord saw you being arrested, and they already started eviction procedures. All these adverse impacts that can happen to an individual right away when they're pulled into the system. That someone who's been in it for a while doesn't always experience the same thing.

[00:20:02] Host: Right. This concept of prison or jails, at its core, I think it should be a deterrent against committing crimes or this opportunity for rehabilitation, as you mentioned. Are we succeeding at these things? Is jail a deterrent, or is there a high rate of recidivism?

[00:20:33] García: I think recidivism is the wrong way, honestly, to look at the process. This word, I was in a meeting earlier today, and it became the centralized phrase in the conversation. Well, deterrent. In the 30 years I've been doing this work, in the 22 years that I had directly represented people, my clients were not thinking about punishment when things were happening in their lives, even those who intentionally committed acts, regardless of what that act is.

Forget those who were rolled up accidentally or whatever. Let's assume those who were intentional about their behavior, they were not considering or concerned about deterrents. They weren't saying, "Golly, if I do this, I might go to jail and get punished." In fact, it was very eye-opening early on in my career when I started representing some young men who were engaged in criminal behavior, when they told me, they expected to go to jail. They assumed that was part of the lifestyle they were in. That's not a deterrent. How do you change that thinking? Well, it's really expensive because you got to start in community. You got to start in poverty. You start in education, libraries, parks, sports, medicine, in prenatal care. All these things that we know help make a person productive and healthy and strong because we see it in communities that are affluent on a regular basis, or even middle-class communities.

We understand that, if we want change, it's got to focus in the communities that are the most underserved or neglected by whatever we want to say is neglected and underserved. I want to point your fingers because it's a variety of things. I don't think incarcerating people is a deterrent in any way whatsoever. It's unfortunate that people keep going back to thinking that's going to have that impact.

We know it doesn't have that because we filled our prisons in the '90s, and we still had the same challenges that we did before. Yes, someone will say, "Well, Ricardo, if they're all in jail, won't crime go down?" We can't incarcerate. We already have one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. It's not going to make us any safer to keep adding more people to that.

The other challenge with our incarceration process, which I think, for me, eliminates us even beginning to talk about it as an option for either deterrent or rehabilitation, is a systemic racism about which it was built. In Los Angeles itself, the Black community makes up 8% of our population, 8%, yet they are 30% of our jail population. That's outrageous. That is offensive. When we talk about tearing down jails or rebuilding jails or reducing the jail population, we should be focused on how to reduce that jail population, how to make that discrepancy non-existent. I'm not saying there should be any percentage in, but as long as that level of difference exists, that is a fundamental problem in the criminal legal process. It's a problem that everyone in the system knows about and has spoken about, yet seems hamstrung to figure out how to fix.

I'll give you an example. Even when we brought the population down in COVID from nearly 18,000 people in the county jail to 15,000, and now down to in the 12,000s, huge difference. That percentage ratio hasn't improved. 30% of those incarcerated are still Black Americans.

[00:24:13] Host: I guess connected to this, when you were appointed, Jackie Lacey was a district attorney, and then we elected George Gascon, who was known and also maligned for his support for prison reform in bail reform, very vocally maligned. Now we have Nathan Hochman. What differences did you experience in your role under these three district attorneys?

[00:24:44] García: I can say that Jackie Lacey was a more, what I'll call traditional prosecutor who wanted to be progressive. I think her heart was in the right place, is in the right place, but maybe because of the history that she'd experienced in her time as a prosecutor challenged it. She was one of the first prosecutor in LA to begin the justice reform ideas of treatment for clients as opposed to incarceration. A champion of the Office of Diversion and Re-Entry. That was started there.

George was completely different. His vision of prosecution is what I think all prosecution visions should be, which is the humanization of the people who are pulled in the system. Human beings are beautiful and complex. They are, as Brian Stevenson said, more than the worst thing they've ever done and should not be judged just on that. George understood that, understands that. What he brought was that hope amongst some community members, certainly amongst Public Defenders, that we would begin to see a change in the way of the prosecuting agency looked at our clients. We did to a certain degree.

As a capital litigator, I have the dubious honor of having tried the second longest capital case in California history. The first one being, I think, the Westside Strangler, the Rojas case. As a capital litigator, I never thought I would see no death penalty in LA because LA sent more people to death row than any other county, as far as I was aware of. Here he came in and said, "No more capital case." We went from 75 capital eligible cases in our office to zero. Zero. Overwhelming. Fantastic. We have 27 today since Nathan (Hochman) took over. That's a radical change. I don't know how he's going to implement what his ultimate policy is going to be, but just that we have 27 back creates new challenges and strains for our system.

George got rid of gang enhancements. Started looking at people for what they were charged with, not for what was in their pocket or what community or neighborhood they came from. That's coming back. It's come back. That makes us focused, I think, on problematic issues rather than focusing on what is the underlying challenge. That's made a big difference, I think, and will make a difference in what goes on in LA. That said, I've been doing this, like I said, for 30 years. I'm not unfamiliar. I think there's always opportunity for people to grow and to see, and to understand that the system, as they look at it from the outside, is very different from the system once they're inside.

It may take time. I'm the eternal optimist, and I hope that Nathan will move more my direction than I move his. I know I won’t move that direction, primary to my DNA. Maybe there's space for him to move this way a little bit. When I say that in case someone from his office hears this, or I don't mean become a Public Defender, I don't see that. That's not what I'm talking about.

[00:28:00] Host: I think there's a perception. I think that this may have led to the distaste for George Gascon, the news media has fed us over the last five years with what seems like an increase in crime. During the pandemic and after, we were seeing property crime and business crime, and home invasion, seeing footage, whether it's from the ring camera footage or cell phone or whatever. How does that perception of increased crime compare to the reality, and how does that perception that the public has affect your work?

[00:28:46] García: That's fantastic because it is, I call it, fear mongering. Even the Sheriff or the Chief of Police will tell you that the crime stats tell them the crime is down, violent crime. Well, some might be up, minor thefts, but the major crimes are down. That has been consistent year after year after year for the last 10 years. We are as safe today as we've ever been.

Then, the other part, I teach a class at Southwestern Law School called Holistic Advocacy. We got a little sidetracked the other day in class about this very issue. In doing some quick research, I learned that 1.24% of Americans in 2022 were the victims of crime. That is the minimus proportion. Of those individuals, less than 50% of them were victims of stranger crime, which means a tiny fraction, because that's what people are afraid of. People are afraid of being hurt by a stranger when it’s a tiny fraction of people are unfortunately the victims of some form of non-lethal, non-fatal violence. If you're that person or the family member of that person, the statistic doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether because you are that one person. But when we're looking at policy decisions, when we're looking at reform decisions, when we're looking at who we're electing and why we're electing people for different things, the data matters.

However, I think the failure, unfortunately, one of them that George confronted and didn't seem to understand is that that's not what moves people. Unless a person is involved in collecting and understanding and processing that information, that data, personally, a number like 1.24% has 0 value. What people care about is what they see.

In today's day of instant gratification through your phone, you see things constantly. When you walk down the street and have to step over a person or walk around tents and onto the curve when you're worried about human feces or the erratic behavior of someone who's mentally ill and you see that every day in your life, it's not hidden to you. It's when you go to work. It's when you take your kids to school. It's when you go shopping, when that is a reality experience, no matter how big or small, then it impacts your sense of comfort.

I call it chaos. When you perceive chaos, you feel less safe. My wife explained it wonderfully. She's more progressive than I am. She's a teacher, and she's an incredible humanist, and she's a runner. She's not afraid. I don't think there's anything she's afraid of, but she goes running, and it concerns her when she has to step off the curb, off the sidewalk onto the street because something like that is in the way, not because she's afraid of the person who's on the sidewalk, but because the car [crosstalk]-

[00:31:41] Host: Right, oncoming traffic.

[00:31:43] García: -see her. She's going to get hit by the car. That's what concerns her, and I understand that. Fentanyl, no one wants their child to overdose. No one wants anyone to overdose, anyway, but fentanyl is not the boogeyman. Fentanyl is just today's boogeyman. In the '90s we talked about crack cocaine. It's a way to focus on a particular group and provide resources for law enforcement to do something that they don't need to do at any higher of a level. It's the new one.

Yes, fentanyl deaths were on a high, were on a steep climb in California. Thankfully they've leveled off, and they'll probably go down, but the fear mongering has already happened. It's how people feel. I think we have not done a good enough job of countering that fear narrative because data, statistics do not make people less afraid.

[00:32:43] Host: There's another element to this as well, these reportings of break-ins and lootings. There's this portrayal of immigrant criminals now calling crime tourism or showcasing people of color and the mass lootings of stores. I want to focus on this concept of these immigrant criminals or crime tourism because we're at a stage now, I just read today the leaked documents of this potential multi-department-led immigration enforcement action happening in Los Angeles at the end of this month.

As Los Angeles county's first Latin American Public Defender, I wanted to hear your personal opinion, but also find out what the Public Defender's role is with regards to this current crackdown on immigration.

[00:33:48] García: I appreciate you mentioning, I am the first Mexican American to lead this department. It's in 111 year history. I'm also the son of immigrants. My mother came here, as my kids like to say, in the late 1900s. She was a single mother raising four children, an immigrant. She was a legal resident, but we had all the same challenges. My grandmother, who also immigrated to the United States was a matriarch in our family, and so that's how we were raised, like so many immigrant families here today.

My father was not in the picture. He was here also but he was here illegally, but he's became a legal citizen. This is personal to me. My grandmother raised us to believe in service. While initially it wasn't really public, it was a service to our community. She worked part of what she did as a passion play in her life, where she helped recently immigrated people from Latin America get settled in Los Angeles, find jobs, open businesses, find housing, schools, these things that at the time I didn't realize how important they were, but were part of my DNA.

The question of immigration and how people that look like me or speak Spanish like I do being a danger, a threat to our community is personally offensive and abhorrent. On a personal level, it is hard for me to see it emotionally. What I can do as the Public Defender is to make certain that my teams have the best possible training and access to resources to ensure that the people that get pulled into the system who are in danger of being excluded or threatened by these new draconian policies have the best possible representation within the criminal system, that they're connected to the appropriate support should they face removal proceedings.

Quite frankly, we've done trainings to train, not just our attorneys, but to train the attorneys from a private panel to work with county counsel and other legal agencies within the county to provide support, education, and knowledge. Quite frankly, I'm so fortunate here in Los Angeles to have one of the leaders in immigration and crimmigration both I think forefront in California, if not the country, Garcia Martinez.

When she tells us what we need to do, I listen. She's the expert. We're lucky to have her and have that, especially in this time. I know for her it is particularly painful for some of the same reasons that I've mentioned for me. Being the first Mexican American, the first Latino leader of this office is an incredible honor and something I take with great pride and appreciation. Seeing what's happening and knowing what is being planned makes it even ever so more important.

One thing also is that, working with the Board of Supervisors, we were able to change the rules for indigent defense and who we could hire. I can hire attorneys into my office who have the right to work, who are immigrants, who are not citizens yet. Having those lawyers on my team who have a very real first-person experience on what is going on on the ground, makes us more accessible and more competent to address these challenges as they happen.

I will continue to support and hire individuals who, whether they're citizens or not, particularly, they're not citizens, who will be competent and exceptional public defenders. I think that sends a critical message to our immigration community and to those enforcement individuals that were here to stay, and we're here to support those communities.

[00:37:53] Host: We'd like to thank Ricardo Garcia and the Los Angeles County Public Defender's Office. Chapters podcast was produced by Past Forward and made possible with support from Chapman University and California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library. For more information, visit pastforward.org, chapman.edu, and library.ca.gov.