Criminal justice reform advocate David Garlock, who returned to Emporia State for a second time on Sept. 29 to give his presentation “Blood Brothers: Escaping Abuse Through Murder,” addressed criminology classes and the audience for his Monday night talk the way he always does: by opening with the question “What do you think I went to prison for?”
But as he sat in a pale room on the fourth floor of Plumb Hall for an interview, the topic wasn’t what Garlock went to prison for, but the trauma and abuse that landed himself–and many others–there in the first place.
Garlock and his brother killed their abuser in June of 1999 in what he described as an “irrational decision” following eight years of sexual and physical abuse. The brothers each received 25 year sentences for murder and were paroled in 2013. In 2021, they were pardoned by the state of Alabama.
Garlock’s story is just one of many he says is shaped by the trauma-to-prison pipeline, which refers to how childhood trauma can influence future involvement with the criminal justice system. Without the trauma and abuse he and his brother endured, he said, there would have been no crime to commit.
“We have to be able to look at individuals as a duality of being a survivor and somebody that has caused harm,” Garlock told The Bulletin. “For so long before 2020, our criminal legal system couldn’t comprehend that, and they only wanted to categorize somebody as a survivor or an offender. There was no way for them to understand that you could be both.”
“And so it’s important to have that conversation and allow people to realize that, okay, this horrible event happened, a life was taken. But a life was taken initially by the abuse that happened, so what can we do to change things in the future for this person who’s still alive?”
Recognizing the impact of trauma and abuse is only the first step; there must be tangible action to help individuals work through what they’ve experienced, said Garlock. But all of that trauma is often compounded by trauma inflicted by the justice system. Healing is stymied by the lack of quality support systems and rehabilitative efforts in American prisons.
“Typically people that are incarcerated don’t have a lot of help and support from social workers or psychiatrists, psychologists while they’re incarcerated. I think a lot of that has to do with the different systems and then preventing social workers, psychiatrists, psychologists from actually doing beneficial, helpful work,” he said.
The work needs to start early by talking to children, Garlock said. If more time is spent talking with children who have experienced trauma and helping them heal, future interactions with the justice system can be reduced.
But for individuals already incarcerated, healing work can start within prison walls if treating trauma is prioritized by the system.
Which is part of the reason why Garlock, as someone formerly incarcerated, is doing the work he does–to give college students a “holistic view of the system” that informs their perspectives as the next judges, district attorneys and police officers.
“Kids that are in school, in colleges and universities, they’re here for that education aspect, and I don’t want them just to get the one side of the criminal legal system or social work or psychology,” he said.
“I want them to get the experience of somebody who has the lived experience. Somebody that has experienced that trauma, somebody that has experienced going to prison and coming out and being successful because that gives them the holistic view of the system.”
The effort is made as Garlock pushes for a system that supports survivors who are incarcerated and implements initiatives like 20 year sentence caps, rethinks the length of probation and parole and gives reprieve to survivors. That reprieve, he says, needs to apply to all survivors in the system, not just new ones.
“We can’t just say, okay, we’re going to do this now and be okay with it. We have to take the same mentality and make it retroactive, where individuals who committed offenses in the 80s, 90s, 2000s, 2010 up until 2020 get that same type of reprieve,” said Garlock.
He points to a “survivor’s bill,” something that states like New York, Oklahoma and Georgia have signed into law. These bills allow individuals who are incarcerated and had trauma and abuse play a direct role in their offense request to have their case revisited. It can result in resentencing, release and parole eligibility for survivors in cases where that initially wasn’t an option.
The bills are just one part of the bigger picture in addressing the role trauma and abuse play when a crime is committed. Holistic consideration of trauma and abuse, from understanding it’s role to implementing real change for survivors, curates the justice system Garlock advocates for through his work on college campuses and beyond: a system that provides healing, not punishment.
“It’s imperative that we think about trauma when we’re looking at people who have committed offenses, and that’s just not murder, that’s any offense,” Garlock said. “Because if we’re really thinking about a transformative system or a restorative system, we need to help that person heal in a holistic way.”
