You moved to Florida when you were 16 from NY. Most 16 year old girls are not thinking, when I grow up I want to be a Probation Officer. Where did that idea come from?
I majored in Psychology because I've always been interested in the criminal mind. God made all of us so why are these brains different? What makes their mind work differently from others? I especially focused on the minds of serial killers. I wanted to uncross the wires to see why one brain function was different than another brain’s function. When I joined the Department of Corrections, after my internship, I focused on the word rehabilitation. My Mom was very big on helping people. She would feed the homeless, do very impactful things to help people live better. I wanted to do the same. The word rehabilitation stood out to me. It took me about a year to understand what was really going on; this was not a system of rehabilitation.
How did that affect you? That realization that the system was not about rehabilitation?
There were a lot of things that were bothering me. Initially I didn’t fight it, I learned it. But me being a natural advocate for the underdog, of course I began to call out the injustices and the unfair processes. For that I became an outcast. I finally undertsood why no one understood. I had a supervisor directly tell me to stop asking questions. I laugh when I think about that; because I did the complete opposite. I began an entire Radio show about educating the masses about the ‘Factory’. Probation Station was born in 2014.
You have a degree in psychology. So if our justice system were a person what would be their mental problem?
Bipolar. One way one day, and another way the next day. However, their ailment was cured the same way most ailments are; the more money one had determined which way the ‘polar’ would swing. The system is not racist; the system is elitist. Just happens to be those who are less likely to have means to defend themselves, are usually Black or Brown.
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