Transcripts For CSPAN Recovering Wasted Food 20150531

More than that, its encouraging their development of agro ecological practices for the benefit of them and all of us. Of course these practices not only help Climate Change but they produce food and they make themselves more resilient against drought. So its one of these amazing win winwins, but very few of us appreciated. That is what anna is so good at getting across to us. But thanks for that great question. [applause] in this next part of the conference, food activists talk about reducing food waste. Speakers include the former trader joes president can 1. 5 hours. Hi, welcome. Were so glad youre all here today. My name is ona. Im a staff attorney at the food law and policy clinic here at harvard law school. For those of you who dont know clinics provide action based learning opportunitys for law students to get real lawyer experience. Our students are working with nonprofit organizations, advocacy groups to improve the food system in their community. Organizations, advocacy groups to improve the food system in their community. We have an excellent panel of experts here today to talk about how recovering nutritious food that would go to waste is a key strategy to achieving fod justice. To my left is emily broadleaf she is my boss. She is recognized as a National Leader in the legal and policy efforts to reduce food waste. Doug rowe is the former president of trader joes. Doug has been a long term client of our clinic and we are proud to be supporting his innovative effort in food recovery. Sasha is the executive director of food for free am cambridge based nonprofit that recovers fresh food to distribute those in need. In 2013 they recovered 1. 5 Million Pounds of food and served 25,000 individuals. Food for free has begun an Exciting Partnership with harvard university. My role is to briefly help us understand the scope of this problem. In the United States between 33 and 40 of the food we produce here goes to landfills. This problem is only getting worse between the 1970s and today food waste has increased in the United States by 50 . Why is this a problem . Well, first, one sixth americans are food insecure. Meaning they cant afford the type of nutritious food that would enable them to live a healthy life. We know that the commonly wasted food are fruits, vegetable seafood. Exactly the type of nutritious foods that are sometimes hard to afford for low income families. Food is also the largest component of municipal solid waste. Its the largest part of what goes into our landfill. It is a breaks down, it produces 23 of u. S. Methane emission. We dedicate 25 of fresh water in the United States to producing food that we never actually eat. Not to mention significant amount of petroleum and pesticides and other chemicals. Climate change will dis proportionately affect poor communities. I now going to turn it over to our panelist. Were going to describe their innovative effort to increase food recovery. We will leave ample time for questions and have a thoughtful debate. Im executive director of food for free. Food for free is a nonprofit based in central square. For other 34 years we go around to retail stores, wholesalers Farmers Market, we collect a lot of really good healthy edible food that would go to waste. We bring it to the folks who most need not just food but access to healthy food. We bring it to food pantries, shelters, Youth Programs serving over 25,000 people. Food waste is bad. Its not good to waste food and where we can control it we should control it. One of the places to control it is at the consumer level. Tremendous amount is a shocking percentage, which i dont have have food waste that comes to the consumer level. I would like suggest that at scale, at other levels, surplus foods that can go to waste is inevitable. I want to talk about a couple of scenarios. First let me start with the farm. Thats what i have experience on. If a farmer sends three of his staff out to pick beans for an hour and they come back and the numbers will be wrong here, say they have 100 pounds of beans. They sales those and makes enough money to pay the labor for collecting those beans as well as some profit. The next week he sends three staff back out to the beans. In an hour they come back with 80 pounds. Maybe next week its 60 pounds. At some point, it doesnt make sense for him to send people out to pick every last bean because at some point, the money hes spending on the labor will be less than the money he earns be a small amount of food theyre collecting. It is inevitable that on small farms in new england, theres going to be food left in the fields. What is not inevitable is that doesnt have to become food waste. Theres a group called gleensers and they pick every last bean and they bring it to free to a food pantry or shelter. The farmer isnt going to be able to do everything to run a business. It doesnt have to be food waste. If we look at super markets. Whole foods is our largest retail food donor. We go to four wholesale food stores. They also are a business and they have to make a profit. To make a profit they have to satisfy their clients. Their client have certain expectations and demands for example when i go to whole foods, i want to get when be in goes, we expect to get what we want when we want it. It maybe a tomato in january. If i go in, i expect lettuce. Whole food has to have a lot of lettuce. I dont want to go in and see one head of lettuce. That is a turn off to a purchaser. With my husband, we would have this huge pile of beautiful bunches of orange carrots. In two hours all of but one bunch would sale. Literally in the next four to six hours, that bunch of carrots never sold people dont want to buy the last bunch of carrots. People want to pick what they want. They dont want the bruised apple or lettuce. Additionally if i purchase lettuce from whole food, i want it to last a week. It may not not, if it doesnt i may have problems with whole foods. They cant sale me that lettuce if its not good for another five or six or seven days. Hopefully knits a situation if they want stay in business and serve us, the population, they have to make sure they always have everything on their shelves that is full and theyre pulling it off in it has fat for a couple of days. This that is inevitable that is inevitably to run that is inevitable to run their stores successfully. What is not inevitable that has to be food waste. Every morning we go to all the whole food stores and they load us up particularly with produce. Produce is parishable. It is one of the most wasted food. Its one of the top foods that folks need. The most expensive food. Its food they cant access in certain neighborhoods. At the retail level, theres produce available. This is a positive thing. Its going to be there. The third example i want to give is a university. As ona mentioned, last year we started partnership with hear verdict university. Theyre Dining Services serve 14 dining halls and i believe its about 138,000 meals a week to students. Buffet style. If any of you ever had a large thanksgiving dinner, theres typically left overs. Its hard to know exactly how much food to make. Just like at thanksgiving, if youre serving it and youre bringing in a bunch of people, you dont want people scraping the last bit of mash potato off that plate. If im harvard and i have students paid to eat there cant be two french fries and half soup, they expect to eat whatever folks ate earlier in the day. They have done a tremendous job at predicting and understanding how much food to prepare but it is inevitable that theyre going to have extra food at the end of each meal. Of that 138,000 meals, we pick up approximately 2000 meals a week. Thats the small percentage of waste. However that is enough to feed about 100 people three meals a day for an entire week. Thats fantastic. We take that food and get it to folks who live in motels and do have access to kitchens on wore who are homeless. There are a lot of people out there whereabout getting nutrition to folks who need it. Its produce. Theyve got to cook it. In many cases they cant do that. Now we have this harvard surplus food. The point im trying to make is surplus food is inevitable. Theres something called food waste and that is bad. I am not advocating over cooking meals, making too much food intentionally. Theres a reality to running a society at the scale in which we run this one. Theres going to be surplus foods at these larger scale institutions. That doesnt have to be a problem. That doesnt have to be food waste. Thats actuallial solution. This isnt solving the core issues of food and security, which has to do with poverty and jobs. Those things need to be addressed. People should be in a situation where they can buy their food. But the reality is, many people are not. 45 of the children in Cambridge Schools are on free and reduced lunch. Thats almost half the kids. The reality is theyre not. In the meantime, we have to this incredible solution. Its not only preventing a problem which is food waste but its creating a solution. Last thing i want to bring up and well pass it over to doug. When i was working with my husband on his farm, he was trying to create a farm and make a living in new england. That is not an easy thing to do. Sometimes at the Farmers Market people would comment on the price of his tomatoes. He would get frustrated. I saw this tension between need to grow local food system and to pay farmers a fair wage. I care deep billion our local food system and about hunger. All i saw was tension. When i joined food for free, it was fantastic. I discovered there doesnt have to be tension. One of the things we do in the summer is visit 11 Farmers Market at the end of each market. Say it starts raining and nobody comes to market. At the end of a long day, hes not too happy and hes got a lot of greens and that one bunch of carrot left. He knows he can load it back up hes going to have to load it up and drive it home and its either going to go to pigs or chicken or compose. Instead he can give that to food for free as do many of the farmers. It helps them in terms of ensuring their food doesnt become food waste but becomes a solution. It helps them they dont have to load up this food that dont add value to them. Thank you. [applause]. Thank you sasha. First thanks to emily and harvard to discuss this critical issue. I promise not to do death by powerpoint a picture is worth a thousand words. I want to give some pictorial context to some of the issues. To me, first thing i learned in my awakening about this, spent 35 years in the Food Industry 31 years with trader joes. I saw food throughout the chain being wasted whether its on farms, manufacturers or retail or wherever it was. When i graduated from trader joes, i had the opportunity to do fellowship here at harvard. I was looking at getting the mail from that one in six people in america are hungry. Theyre hungry. Its like, how can this potentially be. Were the richest nation in the world. Food is now a third less expensive when i started at trader joes in the mid 1970s. Its not a surprise. We tend no the to value it as much. The first thing is whats the real nature the problem. You got to understand the problem. I thought hunger was a shortage calories. It definitely is what part of the population. Much the population that sasha was talking about is in desperate need of services that shes providing and the food banks and soup kitchens around america are providing. Thats not just what food for free does. They do a lot of other things too. What i want to say is that im very aware that there are people in america whom shortage of calories is a reality. The one in six are mentioned as being hungry food insecure vast majority of those actually get enough calories. Thats not the issue. The next big awakening was to come to this. You heard about one in six americans. This is the part that gets interesting. You can get all of this from usda and data. 61 of food and secure are whats called basic there are people that make the wrong nutritional decisions due to economics. Bill gates if someone has to give their kid sugar water liquid candy, or chip and other junk, thats only calories they can afford, thats the type of food and security. What we discovered is that i think it was 39 . These are people that struggle with missing meals during the month at some time. It doesnt mean that 39 of people everyday dont have it. At some point did you go without food. Any of us ever gone without food for a day know that even a day is tough. In particular for a kid. Here are the things i want to talk about food justice thats really important. First is that, when you talk about black and hispanic, more than one in four, 26 or 27 . One in four is food insecure. One in three, thats 34. 8 of low income. Now you got a third of low income families that are food insecure. This is to me a chart i i stole this from Jonathan Bloom many of you know this is hung inner america. This is the evolution of man in america and hunger. It turns out hunger isnt a shortage of calories. The solution of majority of those one in six are getting plenty of calories. The problem is theyre getting the wrong calories. They can only afford to eat things that have been stripped in nutrition. Heres, again, youve seen those obesity maps. If not you can google it on cdcs obesity maps. It goes by year from 1985. I will give you the punchline. This is 2010. 1985, 25 years earlier not a state in the nation was yellow or light orange or dark orange. Not any state, louisiana mississippi, alabama, texas was more than 14 obese. Now were looking at obesity rates higher than 30 in one generation. This one in six that are food insecure, hunger and obesity coexist in the same community and same person. If you will solve a problem, you better know what the problem is. The problem turns out the majority, 61 at least is affordable nutrition it s what were talking about. Getting them fruits, vegetables, dairy and protein compared with empty calories etcetera. I also stole this slide. I was on a panel for partnership of Healthy America down in d. C. The gentleman who runs the largest Food Service Group in the United States, called marcon, he had this slide. Hes headquarters in Northern California bay area. This is exhibit a. What were talking about. This is a field of lettuce. You know the punchline already. This is after the harvest. Whats up here is about to get plowed under. Why is it going to be plowed under, what happens is, they go out and measure when is the arch head of lettuce is the right size. Why . This lettuce goes to a bag. If you noticed the top is in tact. This whole plant including the roots so its not chopped off the bottom and the leaves havent been trimmed. As a result, nature doesnt grow things perfectly. The only thing wrong with this food is its too small or too large. Thats it. Other reason you may know, thats this one here, code dates. Emily and her team did something work with the nrdc and put out a report called the dating game that has to deal with the challenges we face by the confusion over display codes being mistaken as expiration dates that sell by and best buy are completely confused by the customer at home is thinking, i cant use it after that. This is one of my favorite ones. Up know that code life for honey is . Its like forever. This product says best buy october 2, 2015. If i remember right. There are probably 99 , they will say, i cant have this. Inbetter throw this out. I want to put my kids at risk. I dont want to use expired. These are examples. Another example were up at the Farmers Market just introducing ourselves well looking around and seeing if you have excess food. We have 7000 pounds of mangos. Whats wrong with the mango . Theyre almost ripe. Thats what was wrong with them. Cant ship them to a store at this rate because theyre almost ready to eat. Yes, got to waste those. This is what were talking about. Its designed around tackling a part of the market that i saw the food banks werent tackling. This came out Harvard Research and talking to vickie who is ceo of feeding america. One of the key issues is this one here. Its the issue of well, to me, its dollars and not distance. Its the fact of affordable nutrition, not food desserts. You can put trader joes walmart or target. Every corner in america and many of these one in six cannot afford to buy produce, dairy or protein. Its not so much acceptability as affordability. Other one is this one here. 38 of our clients that are eligible for our Services Wont use them. Why wont they use them . Dignity. Large percentage of the population particularly that are working at the economic lower strata, they dont want a hand out. They dont want to feel that theyre being held up. They want to have that feeling i can provide for my family. Dignity issue is really big one. Im trying to think of if we will come up with a sustainable solution as a society of how were going to feed 49 million americans, we will get them affordable nutrition, right away we got a problem. The entire food system from the farm bill down is designed around cheap calories and expensive nutrients. You can start with high fructose corn syrup. Its tough to find a sustainable system thats designed around affordable nutrition. If we can go out and help try to recover some of this wasted food by the way, sasha heard me say this before, i actually think we would do ourselves a favor and anyone thats in this fight, never use the word food waste again. Food waste is food as a modifier of what kind of waste is it. Nobody in america wants a second helping of food waste. No one. However if you talk those two words and flip them, nobody in america think its a good idea to waste more food. Were talking about wasted food. Food thats excess. Thats healthy, than goes that are almost ripe. Lettuce thats the wrong food. Food added sell by date that have two weeks or more. Daily tables is designed around really to is designed on what we can do to bring it to a retail store and offer it for pennies on the dollar. The reason we are so when youre is true for first is. If you so people something, i do not care how cheap it is, bundles of california and cents kale for them cents. 10 the second is that if you can get people to choose something that will use it. The School Cafeteria puts an apple on the tray they will put it in the trash. Get them to pick in apple and it will be a High Percentage of usage. In retail, we can not them nudge them to a diet that is a healthier outcome. The challenge when you are poor is that you are not just poor economically. Short of time. All of america suffers with a shortage of time. That is why more meals or eaten outside of the house them in. When you move down the Economic Pyramid it is tougher and tougher. The focus groups in the inner cities churches, these issues come up over and over again. We do not have time. You can have all of this produced but we are getting off of a boss and we are tired and the kids are hungry. I cannot buy things and cook. I am expected to walk through the front door with dinner ready. Did change the model of bit. Ly table from a grocery 30 from a Grocery Store to computing with fast food. Computing with fast food. Computin co pmpeing0 competing with fast food. That is the percentage of executive time spent in fund raising america because if you are a nonprofit, fundraising is important. To me i did not want to build a model that had to have so much energy and time raising funds for admission no matter how for the Mission Matter how pure the mission is. There is no agency i know of that does not have a phenomenal mission. The challenge is funding. First of all if i can find a way in which we can get revenue by delivering mission instead of for delivering mission, to some degree i am not competing and they do not have to look at me as competing and taking money out of the charitable pool. Just doesnt importantly it allows me to do scalable work just as importantly it allows me to do scalable work. Daily table met in that area of dorchester. It will have a teaching kitchen. It will have a retail floor and a lot of kitchen space where we and do stuff. This is where we have children after school. This is not eternal, i wish it was not daily table, i wish it was. We have kids brought in to learn about education and feeds them at the same time. But photo for me, i think that we are gathered here because food is a Precious Resource. Whether you look at it from the environmental standpoint and what happens was wasted food and Greenhouse Gas or you look at it from the human side that we all went to ourselves owe it to ourselves and our grandkids that were using this Precious Resource so that every kid in america gets an opportunity to be their best, neurologically develop, and to have access to affordable nutrition. [applause] all right. I am really excited. I am always excited to be with such installation of people on a panel were out there every day inspirational people on a panel who are out there every day pounding the pavement. And the role that we play is really trying to figure out what are the laws and policies that make is hard. This is important we are getting foods from farms and Farmers Markets to people in need. Some of it for free and some of it for people who purchase it in a setting that allow them dignity. There are a lot of laws that get in the way. Reducing the work on food waste and food recovery is one of the key areas. And i think lets start here because a lot of people think what is the role of law in this space. Ive actually there is a lot of impact that laws and actually there is a lot of impact that laws have on getting food to people in need. Part of this is sort of a cross our food system. We have been doing business as usual for so long and treating food as this sheet thing as doug talked about. C heap thing as doug talked about. Because it is so cheap we throw it away and do not treat it well or think about people who do not have it. This is just one area of that context where i think the legal system has developed, that forcing people to make better choices and in fact not allowing people like doug and sasha and others with Creative Ideas to use those Creative Ideas. One example, current laws restrict abilities to innovate. I will talk about a few examples of these exact policies but this is something we have been working on. I didnt we encourage more people to be out there being innovative how can we encourage people to be out there being innovative. There is a lot of food lost around the edges and not used in ways that are sustainable. Laws failed to incentivize the reduction of food waste. There are some incentives but we do not say to people if you reduce food waste and get it to people in need and all the extra mile and spend the extra time to get food in your place we are not giving people enough rewards to do that. So we are not making it possible or easy. Laws failed to penalize people for making unhealthy choices. It is crazy to think that we would hold people liable for wasting food but in a way we are throwing away of this resource that we spent a lot of water and oil and pesticide to create and we throw it away like it is nothing. If we find things that really work if softs method really works, soft shots method really works, we can ashs sashas method works. You can be advocating for things that would make this more possible. I would like to start with this picture this upside down pyramid which was created by the epa, the Environmental Protection agency and it is meant to give us a sense of how best to use food resources i think it is important. Everybody knows that landfills are at the bottom, that is the worst place. Actually as we are thinking about how we can put into place policies and organizations, we stayed at the top levels. Both people much of the best. We do not want more food waste mentioned this. We do not want tmore food waste. The first thing we should do is reduce at the top and realize this is a valuable resource and be thoughtful about how much we are producing. If we are not doing that we want to be feeding hungry people because there are so many people in need. Beyond that, feeding animals and so on. A lot of the laws we have in place right now are thinking about and not remembering that we want to start at the top of the pyramid and work down. We will start with work on date labels which doug mentioned and which we started after i met dog and reluctantly looked at the work he was doing with daily table. He said we want people to use food that is close to or at the date and the law will not let us do this. And we said, why . What is going on with the dates . What do they mean . We embarked on years of research which brought us to this report and i will tell you about what we found. Every group that has been looking at date labels as a driver of food waste says that date labels are causing a lot of waste and someone should try to understand what they mean and how we can make them better. This was a challenge that we took on and it was a great challenge for the legal clinic because it is looking at laws. Let me tell you about the findings. The first one is that they are undefined in law and just a suggestion by manufacturers of when the food is that the quality is at the quality. If you have ever thrown food away because you thought people would get sick after that date that is absolutely wrong. It has nothing to do with food safety. There are no safety tests done on the food. If companies do any testing at all it is taste testing. They will find the date when most people start to say it did not taste as good as it tasted yesterday. And to be overly protective they will set the date a few days before that to make up for shipping and storage conditions. That is if they do anything. Some companies do not really do testing. They just pick a date. And there is no law behind that. Nobody is enforcing. At a conference in which we are thinking about this, there is this frame but on our food that we are following rather than thinking about it. Saying that the date past but it tastes fine. Especially honey, many of these things are fine. Modeled water will always be bottled water bottled water will always be bottled water. There is no federal standard. That is what we mean by this, there is no federal law that defines them or requires them to be created in a certain way. In fact, the fda has chosen not to regulate these as they say these do not have to do with safety. We care about safety and they are not within our mandate. This is really important. The next thing that we found is that the federal government does not regulate so the state has stepped in and regulated. This was a big piece of our research, looking at what states require as far as date labels. 41 states require that at least certain foods bear a date label. It has nothing to do with safety. As consumers got further and further away from the food supply consumers said we want to have dates so we can know when we should eat it. We want the indicator. States develop the charge them put together the regulations. What is most interesting is that state regulations are totally different from one another in terms of what they require. The second map shows that there are 20 states including massachusetts which restrict the sale and donation after the date. Lets think about it. We have just said that the dates have nothing to do with safety. Someone is very angry about this. I am also angry. We have just said that the dates have nothing to do with safety. We have safely massachusetts that require dates on food that is perishable or semiperishable. Any food that would go bad in 90 days is required. We will make it difficult for you to sell or donate food after that date so that the bulk of the food is in the trash because there is nowhere else for it to go. I will just give an example. Milk. It tells you how crazy the system is. Some states require that milk have a date label a certain number of days after the date of pasteurization. In pennsylvania it is 17 days and in montana it is 12 days. 12 days after pasteurization. There is not a different climate. It just points to how absurd it is that the dates are not links to science and safety. Massachusetts has some of the strictest requirements. The state of new york which has new york city does not require dates on any food. New york city used to require date labels on belt and they got rid of that milk and they got rid of it in 2010 because they say it is not linked to safety. I think this is important to keep in mind. I know sometimes i get into places where obviously foods with expiration dates are packaged foods and processed foods. But they are also the foods we put the most energy into creating. We took them from the farm, we transported them somewhere, we cooked them into something, we spent refrigeration energy. And then we are going to throw them away because the dates are unclear. And just to give evidence, this is a study from industry that shows no matter what the label is on the date, whether it is used by, enjoy before. People throw those foods away 90 of consumers. They say they throw them away because they are afraid of safety. This is impacting the way that consumers are using the food. This gets to why law and policy comes into this. As we said, the federal government does not regulate. States do but not based on science. The do not require that the label be something specific. Who do not require that there be any method. Nashville you do not require that there be any method they do not require that there be any method. This includes agencies that are restricted from giving it away or do not because they want to keep people safe. What we are pushing for is a consumer facing label that would make sense and the standardized and help people understand so that we can avoid the amount of food we are wasting. With preliminary focus groups we conducted we found about the term freshest before made the most sense to people. When you think about it, used by it sounds like what will happen if i do not use it that date. Freshest before it makes sense that it is about quality and that if it tasted fine and smelled fine you can eat it and it will not be sick. You want to make a commitment not to waste food or use it after that date . That is up to you and you do not have to have fear that you and your family will get sick. We also think that 1 of the food supply were there might be risk, these are foods like deli meats that could be previously contaminated and because we do not cook them they could increase the amount of listeria contamination. We are not telling anyone about those risks. Lets make it clear, the system is not serving anybody. Those could have a label and there is a list, the fbi knows what they are. Lets allow the sale and donation of food after this date. We can educate people and do not have to worry as much, all of these people getting concerned and throwing food away. I want to talk about one other. Two other areas were the law is important but i want to talk about one as it ties into the discussion and is timely right now. Going back to this hierarchy, i think expiration dates affect reduction because it means we are throwing away less food out of the foods i before we get to people but it food supply before we get it to people. Another way that it affects getting food to hungry people is the protection for food donors at incentives for food donors and this is an area we have been working on. We talked a lot about how many people are in need but if we redistributed 30 of the food that we lose that could feed all of the food insecure americans every meal that they needed. As i think about, people are eating think doug talked about, people are eating something. Get only 10 of food is recovered in the u. S. This is for a lot of reasons including liability concerns which i circled. Companies want to do business want to do business as usual and do not want to give food to someone with the fear that they will get sued. We have good protections in place that we are not getting that message to people and not making protections, they could be broader and protect even more. The other big issue is costs. Lets say there is a farmer that is on the last field of bneeans as sasha talked about and it does not make sense for them to pick them and send them to market. We need to give them an incentive and this is an area we have worked on. At the federal level there is a tax incentive that would pay a food donor for donating that food. The problem is that the incentive right now is limited to only the biggest corporations. For many years it was open to anyone so that farmers that are generally not the corporations, momandpop stores were able to get the incentive and that has expired. There is an attempt to get that back out there. I think it comes up a lot in the context of farmers because farmers often, especially Small Farmers are working at such small Profit Margins that any money they can get to support would help them to continue growing beans. It is fresh food, healthy food that is often getting wasted for the reasons that we have heard which are not good reasons. They are not linked to safety. It is really just the economics of getting it to the people in need. That is one issue, that only C Corporations right now are eligible for the Tax Deduction. The other point gets back to what doug said about making food recovery sustainable. People have good ideas about a revenue stream and there are people that are willing to pay some amount of money for the food. But right now the tax incentive goes away if any money changes hands. And i think this is an oldfashioned way of looking at food waste and food recovery, thinking that everything has to go to a big food bank to get to somebody in need of. When in fact there is opportunity for new models that we could be encouraging and allowing if we want to get it to people who need it. New businesses, farmers trying out new models. This is something that we have been working on. Several areas have statelevel tax incentives but at the federal level there is a lot we can do. The other area is around liability protection. The Biggest Issue here is that we have some great ones in the federal and state law but every corporation that is not donating food has said it is because of liability concerns. We have an awareness and education problem that not only can they dont make the food but that we as consumers do not want to shop at companies they donate the food but we as consumers do not want to shop at companies that are throwing away food. We are working to increase understanding of Liability Protections and to align policies so that we can figure out how to get to a Better Future where we are not wasting 33 to 40 of food in the u. S. With that, i am excited to have a conversation and hear your questions. [applause] thank you, everyone. We will open it up to questions. We will use the mic. I will ask the first question so you can walk slowly to the microphone. In a very timely way, molly anderson, the keynote speaker said something to the effect of and i am paraphrasing poor people do not want your food waste. It was very timely because his was actually my first question anyway and she gave was a punchy sound bite for it which is that there is not this pushback that recovering food that wealthy people waste and distribute is insulting to communities and i would love to hear the feedback on that statement from the presenters. I will start. Food for free was fascinating when i joined. We have been around for about 33 years. I came to learn that a large part of our staff are recipients of the emergency food system. We have this tremendous volunteer base that helps the drivers, gives them another form of dignity. They want to take the food home. Food for free, it is not wealthy people giving anybody their food waste. It is people in the community saying hey look at this insane thing that is going on. Why is that stuff going in the trash when the community could use that . And they are stepping up and collecting that food and eating that food and ensuring that food with others in the community and sharing that food with others in the community. I think for food for free anyway, there is nothing about outsiders giving poor people food waste. You know . It is people in a community making a sensible decision and saying, look at that, i am going to get that enduser use it if i need it and share with my neighbors. My husband was not rich, still isnt. The farmers are not rich. The folks at whole foods are not rich. This is a community of people working together to solve a problem and in my experience at food for free and from what i understand it has been a Community Building event. This issue just has not come up which is great to see. Doug so i have a slightly different take. Not one contrary but shall we say adding a different perhaps element. Which is in my work going down into dorchester and working also and talking about early work in the bronx, new york. First of all i absolutely resonate with the statement and i think it is fair to say if you ask poor people if they want food waste the answer is no. If you ask people, we are going to get some stuff out of the trash, would you like it . The answer is no, of course not. If you say listen, there is some healthy, good food here which is going to go to waste mangoes almost ripe, would you like a man go that is almost ripe . I would. It is about the framing of our we second class citizens, getting something are we second class citizens, getting something less than. We do not want to be treated like secondclass citizens. Which is why at daily table i happen to think, of course i do, right . If you are a hammer all of the world is a male. I grew up in retail nail. I grew up in retail so of course the solution is retail. One of the things in retail that i do like is that you talk about affordable nutrition, we understand that if you get into a real conversation with groups twice this size in a community they will start to ask you really pointed and tough questions because they are struggling. You talk about a lot of stuff. What is affordable to you might not be affordable to me. Who defines affordable . This is the nice thing about retail. If i am selling you something you define what is affordable. If i just am handing something you did not choose it. If you are choosing you will choose if it is healthy, if it is tasty, is it convenient, was it priced right, did it seems safe and is the store first rate . We do not want a store that looks like an outlet, second rate. We want a firstrate looking store. Spending the money to make sure that daily table, for as little money as possible, is first rate. It does not look like it is a salvation operation. That is not what they want. So i think there is some truth in the fact that if you simply frame it up, for many people are in favor how many people are in favor of obamacare . When you call it that, the percentage in favor. Many people like the Affordable Care act . Do you want food waste . No. Do they want to have access to affordable nutrition . Absolutely. Do they think food is a resource that should not be wasted . Absolutely. A lot of it is how we frame it and how we presented and it is about the community present it and it is about the community recognizing that it is the story of us and not the story of them. If me as an outsider i am trying to solve the problem it is not embrace. If we are creating the Community Within the community to solve a problem together that it is embraced. Emily i wanted to give two answers to that. One is zooming out one level from the discussion and talking about the food that is getting wasted. We talked about 33 to 40 of the food. Who do you think is impacted by the agricultural system . By pesticide runoff, fertilizer runoff, Climate Change . All of these negative environmental impacts. People who are poor. People who are in less well resourced communities. To the extent that we are not eating 40 of our food, we are putting all of the costs onto to these communities to throw the food away. I think the food justice component starts back there before the food finds a home at the end. To make sure that after we spend the resources that someone will get to eat it, that is so important. On the other side of it, looking at the things we talked about yes, he said that food in america is very cheap. But there is cost to the food we throw away at the retail level in particular. Stores know that a certain amount of food will be wasted because at the end of the night the Grocery Store feels like it needs to have piles of lettuce and apples and whatnot. They need to build that into the model and charge more to account for that. There are all of these other ways to make sure that food does not get wasted. No matter who ends up with the food we are benefiting everybody by making sure the system is not having as many externalities, that food costs what it is supposed to cost. What is interesting in working with doug is that so many people want to shop at the daily table. It is meant to serve the community that there are people who say they want to buy the food because they want a better and more Sustainable Food system. It is not food that not everybody wants and it is important to get it to people who are in need with it but the fact that many people are interested in buying it and eating it, the more that we can put into place things were people can access that do show that this is good and healthy food is important. Doug, this is a question for you. Daily table sounds like a fantastic idea and i am curious about a couple of things. One is, what percentage of your cost you cover with Retail Revenue in the first few years . How will your revenue model work . And also since it seems like a Mission Driven organization, are you planning to hold the organization responsible for specific Health Outcomes of the population you are serving just beyond the numbers of pounds served or people that come from . Sasha doug two big questions. At harvard i learned about the theory of change. Very few companies and certainly not at the size of sashas or daily table can afford to do the thorough social impact, that is difficult. Even outcomes are difficult. When you are talking about an ocean of factors. If we are able to get customers to regularly just eat dinner. Have Something Else for breakfast. We are nudging them and helping them. Here is the fundamental thing. And the focus groups we did we were told in no Uncertain Terms to things. One, the question is who can shop here. Who do you think should shop your . If it is shop here . If it is only a store for the poor i am not coming because i do not want to be seen by my neighbor. Is everybody cannot shop here you will not get your target audience if everybody cannot shop here you will not get your target audience. The second thing was interestingly enough that our model was really designed around as i said trying to be a trojan horse for Health Outcomes at retail. To me them where they needed to be met meet them where they needed to be met. They did not want it to be a Larger Program store. I was originally thinking that on saturday we could measure your bmi and your cholesterol and your prediabetic, we are your partner. No way. If you do that, i am not coming. I do not want to be reminded of my problems when i walk in here. Not talk to me about illness and morbidity issues and obesity and is the food is killing me. If you do that i am not coming. Negative, negative, negative. Talk to me about kids doing their best and feeling their best. I came up with these lame marketing things. We create food to die for and not to die from. And the other is that we are trying to create food that moves you forward and does not hold you back. Cannot talk to us about nutritious. That is the and word n word. Somebody said do not use the n owrd. , n word. Give somebody use the did somebody use the n word. The sensitivities in this, i am not saying this about everybody but in dorchester this community had a sensitivity. They do not want to feel they are a part of the program. It is a membership store. If you are not in zips that are economically challenged, you cannot shop with us. Anybody in those zips and those include a milliondollar homes so there are plenty of people who are economically middleclass or fire but the majority or higher but the majority is our target audience. And because we have Free Membership we are going to be able to track. It is a backdoor, not what we intended. The idea is that this is how we provide the service to the community. Give the zip code that you live or work in. Now we will be able to know how many times you, and what you buy and follow that up with Public Health. Ways that they can take that data and come back and say it did these outcomes. Economically, ideally, we will be raising funds. It is a nonprofit. Our intention is not to make money, our intention is to deliver nutrition. I hope we do not have to do much fundraising other than the initial brick to build the store out. I hope we are able to recover costs close to what they are. We want to feed people well pay people well, have benefits. We are paying at or better than the marketplace. You can get a job at kfc but we want to pay better than kfc and you have a mission you are proud of. It is idealistic and wonderful and we are perfect now because we have not opened yet. When we opened, the rubber hits the road. It will be interesting to see if it works. Awesome, thanks. My question is for emily what i wanted to mention very briefly i moved to london a couple of years ago and i remember the first time i went to the market and i was looking for eggs and i was in the refrigerator section and i could not find them and i said, where are the eggs . They said they are on the baking section. To me, eggs a refrigerated or they go bad. My question is when you have these findings about the meeting behind the dates and the misunderstandings, have there been Consumer Education campaigns . Is anybody working to spread the news . Is there anything we can do to help . Emily that is a great question, thank you. What was so interesting, our report, when we came out. We are at a law school and we are focused on the law and policy. We wrote this report that went through these things and said here is the policy change and it got a lot of press. There was a lot of News Coverage and it was great. All of the News Coverage was about the consumer. Moms at home, here is how you can waste less food. I am glad it got the press it did. The problem with a onetime thing with the message getting out is that it does not change things over time. It is not like we can every year have more news reminding people. And one of the Biggest Challenges with our current lack of a date label system i will not call it a system because it is not thought out, is that it is impossible to do Consumer Awareness because the dates say Different Things and may look different in different states. There is no education that we can put out a message on a federal level. That is one of the benefits if we change the policy to have one standard label. We can say americans, there is the label and what it means. If you see another label this is what it means. This is what you should do. You can see when the usda they have the best guidance on the best guidance on date labels and basically they say if your food expires on this date, is it is a refrigerated food and you keep it refrigerated it still should be good. This is meant to help people but it is hard to do Consumer Awareness. We are working on consumer legislation. We were approached by congressman and representatives saying, what can we do . We are working on that and to try to reframe the message and make it about policy. A winwinwin for everyone if we change this. We are working on a small film an opinionated documentary to get the message out. That hopefully will come out this year and will be alongside the campaign to get the policy change at the federal level. Educated and informed, not opinion. Emily educated and informed and opinionated as well. I am glad you asked because we are going to need as many people everybody in this room and your friends and families and everyone who cares to push and say this does not make sense. This is just the beginning, we in the u. S. Are so far behind on food waste. We are doing very little compared to you mentioned london, the u. K. Has done so much. They have had education and campaigns and are tracking data. They are saying that we have a National Mission to avoid this. France also has a National Mission. In the u. S. We do not have a National Mission to avoid food waste and we think that we should. I have to speak to the egg thing. It is about how the exit are prepared. In this country we do washing of eggs which is why they are refrigerated. If you get farm fresh you can leave them on the counter forever. That is not what this is about but i just discovered that because i did not understand it myself. Doug for the first 12 years i was at trader joes they were unrefrigerated. And what happened is that somewhere in america there was a salmonella issue someone was an issue with salmonella. Everyone refrigerated eggs. And now you would be terrified. A great panel and i want to thank you for the work you are doing because it is important. Emily, when you are talking about legal barriers to sharing food and nutrition, i was thinking about breastfeeding which is an area that i do some writing on. First food justice, right . One of the problems is when women have problems breastfeeding it is not easy to access access breastmilk access excess breastmilk because there is a huge regulation in place. It is elitist. I was wondering if that is anything your clinic has thought about doing. Emily that is a great question. It is not something that has been present in our work although as a component of our clinic we have a fellow in the mississippi delta who i mentioned in my welcome, that is where i got started doing food related work. Our fellow has been working on food related breastfeeding policies because in the low income communities it is free food which is important. Those same communities are often the communities that get the least resources and knowledge and advice about breastfeeding. On this topic it is not something that i know that much about but i think that you are right. We are talking about food all across the fujian and for all ages food chain and for all ages. How do we make sure we are doing it justly . Thank you for taking the time to talk to us today. My name is erin schultz and i am a student at the Business School so i am wondering if you can talk about the tension between nonprofit models and competing for fundraising models versus forprofit models and if there are other models you can see to capture more foodways on the nonprofit side or forprofit side that you have both considered and think there is potential in the market. Doug i will start and sasha can finish. So daily tables nonprofit not because i thought that nonprofits are better or more pure or that they are just an forprofit companies are unjust. It was because of the section 170. If we are not a nonprofit then those who are going to give us food could not take advantage of the Tax Deduction. There was also some feeling that in the community for coming down to a nonprofit would be easier to be embraced with the idea that we are not trying to make money selling food that i thought we would have to push hard on the expired food. Turns out probably the best majority of wholesale if not all of it would be within code because we are cooking up and preparing. Most of it has 14 days or so because we are cooking up on the spot. I do think that the people that started well the b corps and the idea, the social contract that a number of states have different ones. 31 or 30 five states that allow for a corporation, a Forprofit Corporation 35 states that allow for a corporation, a Forprofit Corporation allowed to have a charter were they make money but it is tied to a certain percentage based on social benefit. It is like social contract bonds. They started in england but there are some here now. There are a lot of different ways that you can hybrid. The nara, for instance, a chain that i have gotten to know panera, for instance, a chain that i have gotten to know has panwera cares where you can pay what you want. It puts them on the edge where 20 of the shoppers pay more. 60 pay whatever you ask in 20 pay nothing and 20 is nothing. Pays nothing. So it breaks even. There are innovative privates whether you are b corp, nonprofit, forprofit. For me it is about are you efficient, are you effective are you meeting customer needs. It is marketbased stuff. At the end of the day, funders get fatigued just as investors to. If you have a investors do. If you have a for profit that you seven to come back to the well, investors also get fatigued and say they are done giving money. Funders are the same way, if it looks like you are not making a significant contribution to the challenges, funding tends to be a competitive market. I want to say that each of the models can be great. It depends upon how you approach it what your purposes, your design and intent. Sasha i definitely think that if you are serving the people that food for free is serving for example and potentially the people that dog is serving doug is serving. If you are serving a population that does not have money to make a profit for you you are taking a risk if you set up that tension of i have to make a profit to stay in business. If the people who are paying you do not have money that is a challenge. Not to say it cannot be done. Whether you are for profit or b corp or nonprofit is not the point, the question is where is the funding coming from. One thing i think would happen longterm with the help of laws and incentives, if you look at the retail stores, the supermarkets that we go to, they get a significant Tax Deduction for giving us the food that they give us. They also stop paying significant waste hauling costs and composting costs. My opinion rubbing a nonprofit that is taking all of that food up is that there is some money ok . All of that benefit, financially, is going back to the retail store and not towards covering any of the costs to getting that food back into the community. And i think i do not blame the retail store, that is how it is set up and they are driven by profit and shareholders but i do think there is plenty of room there to get more creative about how we at community or as a nation address food waste is a national challenge, not as these poor people need food. The issue is that the food waste affects everybody and it is a responsibility to deal with that. That is where there could be room to at least deal with the funding, notforprofit or forprofit. I wanted to jump into really quick on that point. It is not necessarily about structuring the food recovery middleman, what doug and sasha do. On the private actors, massachusetts has passed an interesting law which is in the background of some of our work that we failed to mention. They know ban now ban institutions from sending more than one ton of food waste a week. The idea is that this is the responsibility of everyone and we are going to put the burden on private retailers or institutions to say you cannot keep sending food to landfills. It is one of the biggest contributors to methane which is a bad Greenhouse Gas. It should not be in a landfill anyway. It has been an interesting lobby because they are basically saying we are going to require private businesses to change habits so that this does not happen. Reducing the waste in the first place, getting it to people in need. One of the challenges is that a lot of it will end up in compost which is better than a landfill. But all of us are of the mind that the more of it that can go to people, the better. The law does not have incentive, they do not care where the food goes. If we start with this as a baseline and now there is a real incentive not just in hauling to the landfill but also you are going to get fined. Lets set up all of these systems and make a better profit so we can get it to people who need it. I think we have time for one more question. My name is andy and i am serving as an americorps volunteer this year. My question is mostly first thank you, i am excited for the work youre doing. My question is for doug and sasha. You are doing amazing work but in what you are doing you are going to have waste of your own. What do you directly do with it . Sasha we are already doing something with it. [laughter] sasha so we actually used to if you know central square, there is a house right behind city hall, a big white house and that is where we are housed. The Cambridge Economic Opportunity Committee gives us and we have been there as far as i know for 30 years. We used to have a big compost pile in the big backyard but there were red issues among other things rat issues among other things. Many of my drivers would go to whole foods down the street. Whole foods pulls a bunch of stuff from the shelves. The compost some of it and give it all to us. We say that some of it is not good enough. We passed some on to food pantries. There is waste along the way. We were trying to bring it to the waste composter and it was too much. It should not matter, it was their food to begin with, but i understand. Cambridge is starting to compost , starting a program where they are covering composting for us. Because we sure of the building with a food pantry where a lot of our food goes to and it is amazing. It is not entirely reduce it. Coming out of the food pantry is far more compost than ever leaves my house. It is a lot. We are at least composting it. And i think that actually one other thing we do in the summer is we go to the Farmers Market and bring a bunch of the pig farmer so he can take it back. There is at the end of the day organic waste and it is not food at that point. It is food, it is not edible food. Doug we thought a lot about this because one thing we want to make sure is that we are not spending money to collect food to ourselves and up tossing it. End up tossing it. One of the things is we have to change customers perceptions of what a store should look like an hour before they close. Because of england the first time i went to marks spencer, i walked into an a half hours before they closed in the mid80s and the place looked like it was going out of business. It was gutted. The perishable sections i thought there was a remodel. I went up to somebody and said, what is going on . They said, what do you mean . Is there a cuban missile crisis . That i miss something . No, come back tomorrow morning and we will be stock to fall. To full. But right now you are empty. Isnt that great . We sold out . But you are missing sales. That is the retail facing. Customer facing, though, as emily said and sasha said, if youre in there and are not starting until it 30 at night and i come in and 8 30 at night and automated you do not have letters, i am going to your competitor. And i come in and you do not have lettuce, i am going to your competitor. We are doing studies, fast food is not cheap. Breaking news to everybody. When you study what you get at kfc and burger king, forget about the cost of nutrients because there are not a lot of nutrients. In terms of what you paid, it is not that she. That cheap. Our promises that we will be less than that and if we get a batch of product and it is 3 00 in the afternoon and we are not going to sell it then everyone gets one free because we have to get rid of this. We want to get rid of this. We believe that if someone goes home and fries the product then they will think it is delicious. It is a demo. Buy one, get one free because we have too many. We are committed to making certain that we have as little as possible there will be product. We will get product that comes back and you cannot cook it, it will become organic waste and there is nothing we can do. But we do know we have for when we opened 40,000 pounds we have gleaned. And we have recovered 70,000 pounds that we cannot use. We have been given to other agencies everything from food banks that can use it. Piour intent is to reatch reach out. Lets call somebody else, they can use this product. Sasha we have received some stuff. Doug you have received some stuff. If we stop following and start working together, it would make sense. Nothing polyamide is, just ways that make sense pollyannaish just ways that make sense. Thank you very much. [applause] rugby for you guys leave thank you to our wonderful presenters. [applause] a quick word for boston area and tenders offenders, next week we are screening a documentary. We are excited to have them here. Thank you. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] the Macarthur Foundation on ways to reduce prison space in the u. S. Admiral joseph discusses the state of the navys Nuclear Armed submarines. Tonight at midnight, the patriot act expires, including provisions authorizing the bulk phone data election program. The senate is meeting today in an effort to pass on young extension. Pass an extension. President obama has called on senators to renew it. President obama i thought it would take the opportunity before we break for the weekend that on sunday at midnight, a whole bunch of authorities that we used to prevent terror attacks in this country expire. Fortunately the house of representatives was able to put forward legislation in the usa freedom act that received overwhelming bipartisan support. What it does is not only continue authorities that are not controversial, for example the capacity of the fbi or other Law Enforcement agencies to use a roaming wiretap. So we know when there is an individual, they might be engage in a terrorist act but we can move from cell phone to cell phone. Those authorities would be continued. What the usa freedom act also does is it reforms the Bulk Data Collection Program that is of significant concern and i promise that we could reform over one year and half ago. When you have democrats and republicans in the house and the senate who think this is the right way to go. We have Law Enforcement and National Security teams and Civil Liberties proponents and advocates who say this is the right way to go. The only thing standing in the way is a handful of senators resisting these reforms despite Law Enforcement saying lets get this done. We only have a few days. They expire on sunday at midnight. I dont want us to be in a situation where those authorities go away and suddenly we are dark and heaven for bid we have a problem where we could have prevented a terror attack or apprehended someone engaged in dangerous activity but we didnt do so just because of inaction in the senate. We will have live coverage of the senates sunday session beginning at four clock p. M. Et on cspan2 with possible votes around 6 00 p. M. Monday night on the communicators Jean Kimmelman and harold ross ive proposed merger between time warner cable. We would love to have more communication. Hardly anybody has two broadband providers. Wireless providers are available but cannot provide the video streaming you get from your Cable Company or fios, so the question is where do you get more competition . It is coming over that same wire. The Cable Company controlling two parts of the service. One is your tv package and the other is your broadband service. A lot of content Companies Want to provide to both and what to provide and repackage services in the Cable Company has an incentive to provide its own favored product. Law enforcement will have to make sure that there is no unfair benefit cable through this consolidation. Lots of americans have cut the wire. They dont have a cable subscription and they dont have it telephone wireds obstruction. They are purely wireless and they get the broadband that they want. They are not broadband illiterate. You have new companies coming online to compete wireless broadband offerings and the idea that there is any sort of market power or monopoly power in this industry is very difficult to understand. Monday night at 8 00 et on the communicators are co on cspan2. A way to reduce prison populations. Speaker michael botticelli. This is about one hour. We are thrilled to be one of the Partner Organizations working on the safety and justice challenge. I want to offer you our congratulations and a particular one of the 20 sites and welcome you to washington dc and the challenge. Our role is to convene all of the amazing talent assembled today to the sites who are receiving funding to the Technical Assistance fighters who will support the sites on their journey to creating better , safer and more effective systems. Welcome to the National Strategic allies who are rallying around this initiative over the next couple of years. The safety and justice challenge will help spark dramatic change across the country and we are honored to be a part of that. I must tell you that we are being broadcast live today on cspan. If you would like to tweet everyone you know, anywhere that you have ever met, please let them know they can be tuning in right now to see you at this event. We are grateful to cspan2 for being here today. Our first speaker is julia president of the foundation. Prior to joining she worked for the city of chicago, first as a commissioner or the department of housing and then as chief of staff. She also served at the companies and general administrator at the Service Administration here in d. C. Please welcome her as she kicks off the program. [applause] thank you to all of you, i am president of the Macarthur Foundation. We are one of the largest philanthropies and our headquarters are in chicago and we have offices in russia, mexico, and nigeria. Why we are here today is there is a growing consensus that the system of justice in our country needs great attention. The system of concern is a level of incarceration that not only leads the world but conflicts with the bedrock ideal of fairness. I want to thank each of you, our attempt to address it. We appreciate your thoughtful engagement and what is the start of a concerted National Effort to change and some support how america uses its jails. The collaboration that begins here is just a significant. We share your commitment to a fair commitment to justice at the local level and we stand ready to help at every juncture along the way. This is not a quick fix and it will be a long journey. Whenever you start a long journey it is helpful to remind ourselves of what the bearings are at the beginning. Let me share with you the thinking that led us to engage with adult criminal justice. How this relates to our identity as an institution and what our goals are. As i said macarthur now almost 40 years old is active in a range of issues. Id dont know how many of you have heard of our ambition to build a world you also may know about our genius grants and the macarthur fellowships. The awards for people who are exceptionally creative and effective and our supports for public broadcasting. These threats are central to our identity with the concern for peace a flourishing in farming creativity, the public good and just as. Our very first branch was to amnesty international. Grant was to amnesty international. Important signal at the beginning how we feel about rights and justice but since then we have worked to strengthen the system of International Justice and test and for the past two decades to improve criminaljustice. We also worked in other areas of social policy. In each area we have the ambitious goal not just to attack specific problems but encourage deep change in the complex system of governance and housing and education and health care to shape virtually everybodys life. Those contribute to a stronger and fair and more democratic america that brought us to the Justice System and the safety and justice challenge. We know it is so central hall society regulates itself when the Justice System fails it is safe to say virtually nothing else can succeed. What in criminaljustice is real success . That is a harder question we began with the concern of the high rates of incarceration in america. I cannot add value to what would be said today except to say i am extremely grateful the magnitude of the problem is now truly wellknown. I think it is enough to save we cannot be proud to have americans behind bars. Rededicate far too many valuable resources to practices for whatever the merits, they also can do tremendous harm to individuals and families and communities. We should do better. It is not a simple problem that could just be wished away. The truth is that people do bad things to one another. They have to be punished whatever the views about incarceration is the end product of a complex set of actions, reactions in the system probably will have an impact of over incarceration in our country, we should start at the beginning in the local systems. In towns and suburbs safety comes first that is where we put the word in our name. Safety is negotiable not just localities but civilization itself. The government that does not provide security loses legitimacy opening the door to fear that communities and freedom and prosperity are not possible. From deterrence to policing to punishment all based on the imperative of equal rational treatment it is the indispensable treatment of a free society. With regards to safety we have a way to be optimistic we have made Great Strides with Violent Crime and property crime is all down dramatically. We are safer today than we were in the early 60s but every success has its shortcoming we may have passed the point of diminishing returns and there is a consensus the war on crime has damaged from our society. What do i mean . The american ideal places less emphasis on the exercise to control power than the willing consent of the governed. Participatory democracy depends on trust, legitimacy and the inherent justice of the social contact. That is why it was the second element. It must be perceived to be reasonable and fair to be effective for citizens to internalize. When the rule of law seems interested for a repressive the social contract falters and in many places america sees that process in action. They have studied the experience of communities as a regular part of life. They show how wide of the net the Justice System is casting and in 1980 only 1 of 18 through 23 rolls of self reported no criminal behavior were exposed to parts of the system. By 2002 it was 13 and net was 30 years ago. Misdemeanor plea bargains created a whole generation of course, of the criminal record and many people were not serious criminals have the controlling effects of a criminal Justice System. Study show their profound leading to low levels of trust and a diminished sense threequarters of the people surveyed agreed leaders care very little about people like me so they will be less likely to report broken street lights we have many people withdraw from society who into the draw attention to themselves and this is the opposite of the civic engagement. So by its nature criminaljustice is extremely powerful. So with apprehension to incarceration as people have their rights curtailed it profoundly changes to individuals perceive themselves. If government seems to be capricious or dangerous people seem to be fully participating that if the system fails nothing else can succeed so now you see it is highstakes that is our word challenge comes from. How can work toward a criminal Justice System while ensuring democratic accountability . In particular, what were all about, change the way jails are used and perceive so they dont undermine the credibility and respect for the Justice System. Incarceration is powerful but blunt instrument can be more surgical or fair . We dont underestimate the scale of this challenge. Often encounters people at their worst but yet were asking them to be at their best. For well conceived and executed culture that raises the levels of trust to reduce those individuals and society. With a system that is chronically underfunded optimally designed, a subject of local politics and sometimes conflicting goals. It is a tall order but what we have seen in the proposal , and even those not in the final 20 there is a determination to make real and meaningful progress to innovate for communities the ordinary people can afford security. For further is proud to have found partners like you and we pledge ourselves to the task ahead it wont be easy but we are confident it is the right thing to do. Before i turn the podium over the will introduce the jurisdictions i will applaud you for the work you do every day but even more so for your aspiration to make that more accessible, accountable and in keeping with the democratic ideals. Thank you so much. Welcome. [applause] afternoon the director of the Justice Reform program at a Macarthur Foundation and. We have given you a picture of what brought us to the stage today and i want to thank you for joining us and for participating in the safety and justice challenge for i will go deeper into the nuts and bolts approach to think about the growth of incarceration in the United States we decide to focus on local criminal justice. Despite the growing National Attention to the large numbers of americans significantly less attention has been paid to criminalJustice Systems where primarily operate where incarceration begins 12 million local jail admissions every year. 20 times the number prison admissions equivalent to the population of los angeles and new york city combined. Phreatophytes people in jail are legally presumed innocent awaiting trial or a plea negotiation. Nearly 75 percent of the population of pretrial detainees r is in jail for nonviolent like drugs or violations of property 17 percent of Serious Mental Health many are there because they cannot make bail. With a core principle of our work is concerned about the disparity how people of color are treated by the system. We knew reducing racial and ethnic disparities would be a core focus of the work. For a the safety and justice challenge announced last february. The reason we had confidence is we know there are promising studies out there all across the country to safely reduce their reliance on jail with the disproportionate impact of low in the comp individuals and communities of color we set out to build a network of partners that were committed to local Justice Reform, the projects Public Safety to produce social outcome. When we announce the safety and justice challenge expected to hear from jurisdictions across the country to create meaningful criminal Justice Reform. We expect to show support and enthusiasm we were overwhelmed by the responses that we received. We had over 180 jurisdictions submit applications for 45 different states and territories. They exhibited a commitment to collaboration, understanding the need of a local solution motivation to redress racial fear disbanded deep commitment to local reform. With a team of reviewers we undertook the task to form a the safety and justice challenge and here are the 20 sites idaho, south carolina, cook county illinois, Harris County texas, of los angeles, california, with his county ohio, north carolina, mesa county colorado, milwaukee wisconsin, oregon, new orleans louisiana, new york new york, a Palm Beach County florida, pending countys south dakota philadelphia, pa. , a rizona, missouri, Shelby County tenn. , a spokane county washington. The jurisdictions include large cities to small localities like mesa county colorado and in south dakota. Those capacities are from just over 200 beds or as many as 21,000. Together they represent 11 of the nations jail capacity it could impact a large segment of the of population and to demonstrate the alternative to incarceration that others could adopt and implement. Geographically and with politics with the economic and social structure and how the jails are granicus governed. Regardless of the starting point but to systems reform and to change the way the jails are used. And they represent over 42 million or 13 of the total population. They have very diverse capacities that gives you an idea how we spit picked small through the make a large jails for or all of our representative of what we see across the United States. As i mentioned we were gratified by the quality and volume of their response we received of jurisdictions across the country. The site selected as a nations diversity to receive better leadership leadership, collaborative capacity and to make change that is needed and that commitment jihadist is addressing racial and Analysts Expect that exist. Also of the support of the of 171 who were not selected a leader committed to provide support to it is our aim to raise this as a safety and justice challenge as a national imperative in there are innovations out there that will help us reduce the misuse and overuse of jail. What will be accomplished together . In the next six months they will work in partnership with some of the leading criminaljustice organizations. The city is a tutor of new york, a center of innovation , a Justice Management Institute will partner and to create for end of molt more elective but with that disparity or usage there will propose with the alternatives to the incarceration as usual to be developed drafted by a large scale and to assess risk only when necessary. They will do all this while maintaining an emphasis on Public Safety. Together this work will create a momentum for change on a national level. It is important to note many of those jurisdictions have already made Great Strides of Justice Reform. Well learn to expand on the progress we will turn to collaboration. With those partnerships among judges or prosecutors or defenders that our necessary for meaningful and lasting change but to be with the second round of funding we live for word to work with you to share the experience of never 20 selected jurisdictions and of those and represented by their teams please stand. [applause] congratulations so now we will go a little deeper to what has been happening in our nations jails. Is my pleasure to introduce nicholas who joined in august 2013 and came to the foundation but he was previously with the is security workshop that this session of cruz is organizations offered to serve on the boards of the National Council and though living cities at the center for working families. Please join me to welcome neck to the podium. [applause] this is the second to dais amazon to data first one i topple off backwards with my chair and i assume todays talk will be better than that. I am the director and i am thrilled to be here today. If i am honest with myself i am on struck by first the challenge that we have before us that you had before you because there is so much sadness is the opportunity that we have of unprecedented National Attention on the work we are called upon to do with the unprecedented opportunity to make the most. Before i talk about the first challenger think it requires a brief digression about the organization that i run. Founded in 1961, vera was developed in the United States as a solution to unnecessary detention in our jails 54 years ago. The story of the great one his money made money on cigarette rolling paper. Of first guide was concerned of too many poor people in jail for too long just because they had the inability to pay bail. The brooklyn house of detention the Summer Reading 10 months for a the case is to be educated mostly because they could not pay bail. So what vera did was devised an entirely different system. What we know is the release on recognizance but to look at family and individual and Community Time that you can assess and also with the coming court date and that was the case the experiment proved to be more effective than bail. Of course, what happened after that it formed the 1966 bail reform act which was the first reform system since the late 1700s. I tell the story not only because i am proud that i have toward knowledge that we at vera have to face a bittersweet recognition. The fact innovation did not win the day. The work that we did 1961 with the manhattan bail project almost never happened. To reach an amount the specifics of 700,000 people in jail today but were also spending four times what we spent but i have more to say on that. Three out of five are there presumes innocence. En released that was invented without Financial Condition is less common now than at 25 years ago. There is a lot of work we need to do. Whats we need to know from this document is called a the price of jail. We have learned were spending a little bit more than we thought and that is part of the huge challenge that we have to undertake and what we need to solve because the cost of jail more than the public realized and it is almost certainly higher than the 22 million figure i just gave you that one of the significant jail cost. Vera conducted a survey and 35 responded and what we learned and 20 im sorry one quarter of the jurisdictions, a 20 have a budget dedicated is outside of the jail budget and it is over 50 percent in another so legal judgments, Health Care Capital costa your programming are not found in the Correctional Agency budget in various counties and cities. We have our work cut out for us and perhaps it is more work than we thought. But i am quite confident we can do this. First as tupac said he said all eyes are upon me. This could be a worse stumble that i did off the dais this morning some time to assess the audience safety and justice challenge as traders i will bring up tupac. [laughter] so never before has so much attention and showered on those of us in this room who were dedicated to developing Humane Solutions to mass incarceration coming from people like Grover Norquist in rand paul and the cold brothers and rick perry and eric holder and ralph reed and how Hillary Clinton put the last month when she kicked off her campaign with there first policy speech. There is something wrong when onethird of all black men face the prospect of prison in their lifetime. An estimated 1. 5 million black men are missing from their families and communities because of incarceration or premature death it is time to change our approach to send the era of mass incarceration we need as a True National debate about how to reduce the prison population while keeping our communities safe and then the kickoff for her president ial Campaign Medal think there is anyone who is of veteran of this work would have put smart money on that ever happening. Here is the second point of this group has the potential to make good on a promise of smart an effective reduction of incarceration and different from hillary, you are not debating, you are doing this group has the potential of the degree of skepticism to say there is a lot of talk out there and not enough action. One example is albuquerque, new mexico and we touched upon it briefly. It is indicative of the ability counties have to reduce incarceration quickly so facing a federal lawsuit decided it needed to take the problem on headfirst it created a commission to develop the emergency jail population Management Plan to contain 40 different initiatives including probation violation, using more citations and funding for misdemeanor arraignments for processing and the results were astounding and in just two years there was a 39 decline in the population. Less than that take massachusetts the reduced the population by 30 percent in six years saving 60 million annually as a result. So the punchline is these counties and cities are nimble with many levers at their disposal to safely reduce the jail population the judges and prosecutors and police have a lot of discretion to act and you are not sitting on a big stock a population serving long sentences that cannot move out quickly and to put into perspective what gatt new jersey or new york state that has been branded as the leaders of incarceration. Each has reduced their population by 30 percent but that is over 15 years that is the rate of 2 percent per year so the smart money should be on cities and counties not just debate but backed but frankly the smart money is so thank you to macarthur colleagues and juliet. Woodstock about justice reinvestment to take what you spent on corrections to figure of how to reduce that then reinvest and to the things that help the communities to succeed that is another reason why this work is important and why you must succeed the reinvestment of jail savings helps communities to thrive as a better chance to succeed here at the local level than anywhere else. You dont have regional competition for savings. You dont have a debate in this state house several Economic Development and what to do if it is close there is notified. Your constituents can benefit from the actions that you take not another senators constituents. And the leaders are closer to their communities they know how to best reallocate for positive purpose it is. Before because they pay for those services they could read direct savings to meet the needs of your citizens. We can talk about smart investment it is hard to get it right but it can be done there are some obstacles to make sure it does. One final point is why the work is important it is not contained in the price of jails paul of us who have observed the events of the past few months have an understanding of the degree of poignancy. It is important we bring it to the work that we do hear your path is not only to figure how to develop Smart Solutions to reduce population but to instill trust and confidence into the system so contrary to the news since ferguson or before that or even a cleveland entering into the department of justice decree the shooting unauthorized use of force with a criminal misgivings for those other other than police or Community Relations ask yourself, those people whose jobs are lost from expenses pile up, children may end up in foster care because they could not afford jail they cannot afford to pay bail bail, does that have anything to do with the uncertainty people have of the criminalJustice System and those that Pay Attention to their best interest . To their brothers and sisters and those of the missing black man like a cross the river or west garfield park, does the trust they have had anything to do with what has gone on with the past four decades and are we in a position to change that . The person who sees a sibling suffering from Mental Illness or Substance Abuse whether jail is a place for them to go or if there is a better place they can receive services to get a fresh start and in doing that if that instils trust into the system and why do we pay with the results that we achieve and what we have struggled with that is the very foundation of why we are here today. There is a lot here. With the undeniable excitement so with that work to leave with a simple fact what you were doing is exceedingly important for the country youre being watched by everyone including cspan2. [laughter] and it matters not just in jurisdictions all over the country. As tupac says. All eyes are on you. [applause] our next speaker knows well the jails have on individuals and families the committee has been concerned about over incarceration joining us today is the executive director of bates and Freedom Coalition he was a district director from the tax is concerned delegation from the Texas Legislature and missionary in asia and europe. [applause] of our creator. So as National Attention does focus more and more on the huge number of americans, state and federal prisons, not only that not enough attention is paid to our jail systems. You dont need to be educated anymore on the over rely ans on our local jails. A population that is over tripled in the last 45 years and expenditures are rising in keeping with that 12 million as we heard earlier. 12 millioned additions annually. And almost 20 times the number of the people that pass through the state in federal systems. This really is the core and the root of our incarceration and developments arise. And coming up so much focus is being placed and other admittedly needed places. This is really where our laser focus will need to lie. So my hometown is waco, texas. It can be said that in the middle of delicate situations like we are observing there, some of the other place thats were mentioned by nick that may actually divert us away from this conversation. I believe it should attract attention and conversation in our focus to this conversation of nationally. So this is a prime opportunity for us to zero our focus and to really investigate where are things going right and also where can things be adjusted. The prepurchase of the local jails of course is to detain those that are awaiting court proceedings. You dont need to be educated anymore on the over rely ans on our local jails. A population that is over tripled in the last 45 years and expenditures are rising in keeping with that 12 million as we heard earlier. 12 millioned additions annually. And almost 20 times the number of the people that pass through the state in federal systems. This really is the core and the root of our incarceration and developments arise. And coming up so much focus is being placed and other admittedly needed places. This is really where our laser focus will need to lie. So my hometown is waco, texas. It can be said that in the middle of delicate situations like we are observing there, some of the other place thats were mentioned by nick that may actually divert us away from this conversation. I believe it should attract attention and conversation in our focus to this conversation of nationally. So this is a prime opportunity for us to zero our focus and to really investigate where are things going right and also where can things be adjusted. The prepurchase of the local jails of course is to detain those that are awaiting court proceedings. Those that are a danger to the public or who are a flight risk. Jails have come to hold, far far more people involved in the two simple categories. They are often warehouses for low risk individuals too poor to post bail and too sick for the communities to deal. So my i actually was a therapist. I didnt mention that earlier but i have dealt quite a bit with mental eat will Health Issues and clients that are interacting formally or informally with the criminal Justice System. And i have seen far too often that the people that are really have their own personal and maybe psychiatric issues find themselves inadvertently dealing with a system that is not designed or maybe at the moment capable of appropriately handling them. So our system will protect public by separating dangerous offenders in society as large and will deter the crime. If we focus on the crime and punishment alone, we will miss the countless opportunities to break the vicious criminal psycheles that playing too many communities. When we carefully apply resources of root cause of criminal behavior. Substance abuse. And Mental Health. Child neglect and truancy. We will actually prevent some crimes before they happen. We can protect victims necessarily from that. And ultimately we can devote our limited resources to the design purpose that the limited cells were designed to serve which is ultimately just to keep us safe from dangerous people, right . So i do think that it is very important for to us point out that as we embark on the Justice Reform discussion we have to remember that victims are the ultimate those that ultimately suffer the motor so we must design to protect and remedy the damage done to victims first and not society at large but particularly to the victim themselves individually or in small communities and any reform conversation with a clear understand that can the local and the state police are our first responders. They put their lives on the line every single day. And we are thankful for the service they provide and also deeply indebted to Corrections Officers for probation and parole officers across the country that also put themselves in harms way, either in jails themselves or also out in the field. Law enforcement and engage in partnerships with communities and the latest technology. To protect both the officers themselves and the public. Public Awareness Community policing and faithbased programs will prove to be incredibly helpful to this enso in michigan, Governor Snyder just recently offered remarks of a renewed focus and vision for criminal justice there. The state has an arrangement now and in 30 cities across the state to incorporate people of faith and particularly clergy to make up what they refer to as a criminal incident intervener. So faith leaders are apart of the Quick Response teams that provide a calming influence in the midst of challenging circumstances. They also act as liaisons between the Law Enforcement and community. They are provided a specific training. To help to defuse the crisis and also houses of worship are holing Community Gatherings where Law Enforcement is invited in either to decimate the information on a regular basis or just simply to get to know each other. We also know that our federal and state laws are unwieldy unwieldy and out of date. There are codes today. You may or may not know this. The codes today is an i to accept adieu owe is punishable up to a year in jail. Do you have any inmates that are found guilty of engaging in dulz lately . And not to be out done reproach full language about the person that refused a dual. A sixmonth misdemeanor. You can. I will probably at some point hang it over my 7yearolds head. Should we challenge . What should we do if we turn it down . Thankfully, discussions are well underway right now nationally. And here in washington, d. C. And state capitals across the country to eliminate the redundant and outdated laws and to look at the penalties in place that are regularly enforced low left felonies we will review those to see if they will be misdemeanors and they will be reviewed to see if they can be civil and infraction thats do not have criminal imcages. So as we know, before a defendant goes to trial, as we have discussed on the bail Risk Assessment tools will need to be implemented. They are communities in the country that do this. And courts that do this. It needs to be a widespread practice so that we can divert people away in the event of recoming sense so if we can identify those that are eligible for the pretrial supervision in the electronic monitoring. This is the dreb that we will need to go. Thankfully we are seeing that more and more. That needs to be the norm rather than the exception. And it will need to be the practice being. Jail sentences are imposed on those that would be held accountable in any other ways. To improve lives and to prevent people from coming. Designed for avoiding a criminal record if they complete the record. Doing this will mach it easier as an employable citizen. And also more xh more widespread. Are better quipped to deal with the substance and alcohol abuse. Mental illness. Again we are seeing the veterans courts coming up across the country. These are a great practices. Because of the season judge. And experienced judge. And also Defense Attorneys that are also seasoned and in the law itself. Actually we see far better results to this end. And for individual thats are convicted of a crime that do not go to prison. And ultimately technical violations a cause of collar principles in the communitys supervision and set specific parameters along the confinement for technical violations. And far, far more effective than an absolute revocation. And absolute confidence that will reach fairly and in a timely way, we will hold fast to the constitutional right to counsel. And the prosecutors and he did fence attorneys have to be well trained and practices in the latest developments and criminal law. There are far too many instances and innocent people convicted of crimes. And false accusiations and perjured testimony. Effective council. And when guilty, sentences are delivered incarceration is a Critical Role of our criminal Justice System. Putting people behind bars is not always the answer. The time is now. You all have entered into this challenge for the very reason. You are trail blazeres to this end. And in texas the first gum judge that i worked for in law school after a trial, we where in a sentencing hearing. And found guilty. And the judge one of the finest men i have ever known actual other. A common practice would be to step off of the bench and to walk around in his robe he abld him a key. If you cuse use your time in in that case prison to rm deyourself to become a productive citizen. Lure return to this community as a constructive and contributing member. If you choose not to do that its your decision. We know that criminals will be released after they complete the sentence. To be a productive member. Instead the life of crime. And redemption is the heart of the faithbased programs across either jail visitation, prison ministries for not just decades but actually ultimately the millennium across the world as Christian Communities have stepped into jails and prisons for forever. As we sat listening to nathan deal. Justice reform issues and efforts in metro georgia, the man that is was next to me leaned over and nudged me and said i am a graduate of the very program that the governor is describing. He went onto tell me that is he a minister. And he leads the chapter of the fellowship of christian athletes in north atlanta. And he reaches out to students to talk about his time in prison and the choice thats he has made. And the way he has turned his life around. All kinds of examples of individuals like that man have committed crimes crimes and turned their lives around and are in places of respect and influence in their communities. We can reform our criminal Justice System so that we can have more and more Success Stories just like his. The best opportunity to secure communities is to secure the few of the children. We must find ways to divert juveniles away from criminal Justice System. And we will need to accurately assess the risk and the needs and treat the underlying causes of their behavior and invest in high Quality Community based interventions. As you all know. Juvenile justice is largely local. We end up with systems all over the country. Slightly different. And there are challenges that come in within that. There are strengths with that. And we are able to customize their interventions and communities that are all unique. And we have been able to assess Different Community assets that different immunity teedz may have that are different. And removing a juvenile offender from the home. Community to place him on the residential facility would be a last resort. And absent from the schools and as a child influences the a billty. Or likelihood of commiting crimes as an adult. Diversion programs could result in a criminal record. And Community Based programs are more effective and less expensive. Many of you do not receive the most appropriate placement or the right type of treatment and the failed placements could be disruptive to the youth and contribute to additional misconduct. And can do more harm than good. So as the factors take their told in identifying underlying issues, we find that the treatment will be within their families and in their homes and schools and communities lastly. And the criminal Justice System here. To punish the guilty. And offenderes to not reoffend. Thank fleechl the state level and local level to be involved in the work on the policy level and the practice level it is from city halls and state capitals and laws of congress right there that is unprecedented so i think that it is very safe to say that the change will happen. We are now in a place of what will that change be . How quickly will it happen . Our Justice System has to be designed in away that when it does engage it will maintain the ultimate liberty and is consistent with the law and order. And in so doing acknowledge every person in the Justice System. And people are the trail blazeres to that end and for that, i thank you. [applause] come forward. Thank you. It is my great pleasure and honor to introduce michael sworn in as director of the National Drug control policy. On february 11, 2015. Previously he served as acting director and Deputy Director of the National Drug control policy. He joined the office of National Drug control policy as Deputy Director in november 2015. And he has more than two decades of experience. Supporting the americans that have been affected by Substance Abuse. He has received numerous awards and honors for his participation in the field. He has also in longterm recovery from a Substance Abuse disorder celebrating 25 years of sobriety. [applause] good afternoon everybody. It is exciting to be here. I think that many of us have been doing this for a long time. And waiting for moments like these. And i really want to thank the foundation for all of the work that they have been doing on criminal Justice Reform. And for a willingness to enter into the journey. And folks have talked about the today, this is really a remarkable moment in time. And not just in temps of resolution in the criminal Justice System but the Affordable Care act as it relates to those with Substance Abuse and Mental Health disorders. I cannot remember a time that it has been cooler to be working in drug policy than right now as we think of the Historic Events before us and the Justice Reform bipartisan support and all levels of government. I remain convinced from the draconian measures and addressing mass incarceration. And i this i that with bipartisan support. And commitment creativity and perseverance to be applied to the move mentment incarceration can become a reality. We cannot sure Public Safety. And brought together to find the solutions to the disturbing problem. And incarceration and race and disease. And this is no small untaking. Have you been selected because mack earthy knows you are the best to take on this challenge. Like you, the administration is concerned over who is behind bars whether they belong there and how to make the Justice System more fair and humane and cost effective. The National Drug control strategy is the policy. And drug policies are anchored in the science and recognize thats drug use is a Public Health concern. Leveraging resources and coordinated manner to achieve the over arching goal in drug use and consequences and criminal Justice Reform is a critical platform of efforts in the drug policy. And drug policy is putting evidence against doing ma. And the health and concerns to use science to support our decision. And not locking people away because we are mad at them. Because they have a Substance Abuse disorder but because they pose a threat to the safety of our community. For too long we have use this to address Substance Abuse orders. When science began to study addictive behaviors. Those were thought to be morally flawed and lacking in will power. They were bad people