An episode of “Changing the Conversation” podcast
Jacinta Hunt and Erica King discuss how Motivational Interviewing strategies can help support people who are and have been incarcerated.
December 18, 2023
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Ali Hall, Host (00:05): Hello and welcome to Changing the Conversation. I’m your host today, Ali Hall, joining you from San Francisco, California. Our topic today is public policy and serving the justice involved with motivational interviewing. My guests today are Erica King and Jacinta Hunt. Erica is Senior Manager with the Center for Effective Public Policy. Jacinta is a justice impacted person in recovery, both calling in from the east coast of the United States. Thanks, Erica and Jacinta, for joining us today.
Erica King, Guest (00:39): Thanks so much, Ali, for having us.
Jacinta Hunt, Guest (00:42): Hi. Thanks for having me.
Ali (00:43): Yeah, absolutely. Jacinta, how is it that you came to know Erica?
Jacinta (00:49): Erica and I met through a mutual movement within the prison. She had come in to support some of me and the other residents in a few different policies that we were trying to bring to attention. From there, I just felt a great connection with Erica. She came in and watched my film with me for the first time. From there, we just really started doing some great work on the outside together. Erica has guided me through or walked with me through my three years of reentry.
Ali (01:24): Oh, Jacinta, you referenced your film. Please say more about that.
Jacinta (01:28): There is a documentary out based on my struggles with intergenerational trauma, addiction, and incarceration. It’s on Hulu. It’s pretty intense and raw but it displays the struggles of active youth, the intertwining levels of family and generational incarceration.
Ali (01:51): Thank you for that I know our listeners are going to be really excited to access that, and so I want to encourage everyone right out the gate to please check out those show notes and they’ll be able to see how to see your documentary. Thank you, Jacinta. Erica, I know that you’ve been dedicated for quite some decades now to the heart and spirit of MI and holding space sacred. What are your thoughts here on this moment?
Erica (02:20): I feel super blessed to have Jacinta invite me to walk alongside her and her journey home, I guess, in the three years since she’s been home, or what you just called your reentry, Jacinta, to walk with you to see all of the things that you’re doing now, not just this impacted person, but professional policymaker, director. I think in the best moments that we’ve had, I hope that I’ve been able to hold that space with mutuality, with compassion. Jacinta is someone with a huge faith and a huge heart, and so that’s a point of connection. While my role is not as an individual clinician and I was never counting the number of reflections I did compared to use MI as a formal style, I really don’t know a better approach to use to help someone find what is true for them. She has so many hopes and dreams as a woman, so it’s just amazing to be able to walk alongside and see her crush every single one of them.
Ali (03:31): Thanks, Erica. That’s truly inspiring. Our listeners are used to us talking a lot about things from a provider’s perspective. I think one of the luxuries we have today is to really hear from someone who has directly received support that we know is in the heart and spirit of MI. I’m curious, Jacinta, what was it like to receive Erica’s support in this MI way?
Jacinta (03:56): I don’t think I really noticed with Erica. The conversation just seemed very natural. My first impression of Erica was that things were going to be very clinical, very social worker-y. Through my reentry and having her there to talk to, the conversations never felt like they were scripted. I would’ve never caught on that I was being guided to find my own solution or encouraged to try different ways. Erica made MI much easier for me. But thinking back on it, I can identify the moments of like, “Okay, these were the times that Erica stepped in and did it this way.” Like she has said, there’s been times where there has been no technique to our conversation, that it’s just been genuinely two people trying to figure out what the next right step is together.
(04:50): It’s been a bunch of things. It’s been confusing, it’s been helpful, it’s been hard, but overall, I would say how it felt was independent and inspiring. It made me understand who I was. It made me understand that I did have the ability to come up with my own decisions and that talking to somebody about what’s going on or ways to get through things isn’t always a therapeutic type of way, that there are other ways of approaching conversation and filtering through a lot of emotion and a tough time.
Ali (05:25): Yeah, that’s really powerful. Really a testament to a motivational conversation at its best because it’s not a script and it’s a way of being with people. The genuine presence and ability to walk alongside and with someone as they’re sorting things through and self-exploring, I got to say, it sounds like MI at its best, so people being together and working things out together. I’m glad that you had that support with her. Erica, my guess is that there were times that you may have felt a fixing reflex slip in or something like [laughter] that because we’re not perfect even when we intend our best. But what was it like to feel a fixing reflex, if you had any, and then how was Jacinta receiving you? What did you do to pull yourself out of that?
Erica (06:19): Oh, Jacinta’s being super generous. There were some MI moments, there was some confrontation, for sure. There was some righting reflex, me trying to solve it for her, and it never works. I always try to lean back on those foundational principles and then just ask her, figure out what is the right question that I can ask her to get in touch with her deeper knowing, but many moments where I fell from grace and wasn’t able to get there myself. I think, like you said, we’re all human, but of the various interventions when anybody, and Ali, you’ve taught me this as my mentor from MI, after a while, it just becomes the part of the rhythm of how you speak with one another when the stake you have is in their well-being and nothing else, holding their regard and their well-being at the highest and then helping them get in touch with how to get there.
Ali (07:24): Yeah, absolutely. It sounds like the grace was flowing in both directions really.
Erica (07:28): Yeah, I think so. It’s just listening. It’s really the power of listening. Jacinta’s someone who wants to be a mother, who wants to have different friends and experiences, and wants to travel and loves the ocean, and has just every day figured out more and more about what she loves and who she wants to be. It’s beautiful to help. It helps me too because she helps me to do the same, so there’s a lot of mutuality in our different roles.
Ali (07:59): It sounds like, too, and I’ve heard Bill Miller say this, that the people we serve are always our best feedback and we know what’s working and what isn’t. We can adjust ourselves accordingly when we’re really listening to the deep values, and passions, and joys that people have, and we hear where people want to go, not just what keeps them where they are, but where their eyes are looking, what that horizon line is and how they might want to grow and flourish in that direction. Speaking of growing and flourishing in that direction, I understand, Jacinta, you’re up to leading recovery efforts and also working to bring MI training to those in your orbit. Please say more about that.
Jacinta (08:44): I am the director of community-based programs at Hometown Health in Newport, Maine. In Newport and coming onto the team as it was just like an early stage entry level, very low barrier care MAT program, trying to transition that into a full behavioral health program to access or be able to offer wraparound services, the basics or the fundamental of things as I think about my own recovery is that mindset and getting other people to understand that as people in recovery and we’re trying to rebuild our communication skills, our honesty, and we need that in our surroundings, so I have asked Erica to come in to Hometown Health to just basically help us understand what motivational interviewing is, the benefits of it, and then also highlight the outcome.
(09:42): You can have great conversation with somebody and it just be that, and then you can have a session with somebody where you are using motivational interviewing and the difference in the outcome is one individual might walk out feeling like they just had a great therapy session. They were able to get things off their chest, the other’s going to walk out feeling like they just resolved some issues. They were able to talk to somebody who connected with them, who understood with them. Trying to get people to understand the difference in how you approach conversation, how you lead conversation, what good healthy motivational interviewing truly is, and just keep trying to spread it through the organization. I know that myself, when I walk in somewhere from the medical receptionist checking me into the doctor I’m visiting with, if I don’t feel like there’s a good sense of communication, if I feel judged, if I’m responded to in a particular way, all of those things affect how I walk into that office the next time.
(10:42): I’ve been trying to use motivational interviewing within the healthcare, getting people to understand that every encounter with somebody can be a life or death situation and make it or break it. Just basic motivational interviewing from a person you connect with on a long period day to day or even just one time, the way we conduct those conversations is super important and can be detrimental to somebody’s recovery or their willingness to ask for help or accept help.
Ali (11:14): Yeah. Thanks for that, Jacinta. Really, the data is in about the effects of confrontation and judgment and that people continue to persist in that way of being has always been a bit of a mystery to me. It feels like, too, really there are lots of right ways to come into motivational interviewing, and sometimes we’ve experienced it and we’ve experienced the difference between that and other ways of being. That really, I think, it gives us a profound genuine presence in helping others when we know what it feels like to be served in this way. Thank you for sharing that. Erica, hearing about Jacinta’s experiences, how does this inform and continue to inspire your work in public policy?
Erica (11:59): I can’t imagine doing my work without directly impacted people, Jacinta being one. Jacinta’s perspective and everyone that is directly impacted deeply inform the work that I do. Everything that’s personal is political. Jacinta has helped me to understand what the impact is on children of incarcerated. Jacinta and women like her have helped me to understand what dignity is, what intersectionality is, and how women organize, how women heal in prisons, how women build relationships and social networks with them. How I work with them directly to develop change strategies in the criminal justice space is a direct result of Jacinta and women like her. I couldn’t imagine doing the work without those perspectives.
Ali (12:55): I wanted to ask you, Jacinta, about your social impact campaign. I understand you’ve been working particularly around maternal incarceration. What’s that all been about for you?
Jacinta (13:07): That actually started when I was incarcerated. I was in a class and the class was like, together, we were collectively trying to figure out what was the best thing to tackle. I just stayed really persistent that there was a huge gap in either mothers having access to their children, children having access to them. Being incarcerated is a sentence in its own, so getting people to understand that reunification and relief planning really needs to start from day one. It also needs to include the family as a whole. Everybody likes to say addiction affects the whole family, not just an individual. Well, so does recovery and all the things that it takes to get there.
(13:48): I started tackling the parental incarceration loosely. As I continued to move through schooling and work and personal, I just really realized that there was a huge gap in reunification and incarceration when you feel… You always want mom or dad, I should say, in this controlled environment so they can get the services that they need, but nobody was understanding that you can put a mom in jail and offer all of the services that they have there, and she can very well take them and absorb them and do everything with them. But until mom has those services and gets to have their child to practice with, the only thing we’re doing is teaching them skills and then sending them out to figure out how to do them on their own.
(14:37): Much like everything else in life, you can tell me how to do something, but until somebody shows you or somebody walks you through it or you really truly experience it, it is only information that’s given to you. I’ve been trying to get it so moms can have furloughs outside of the prison with their kids. I’ve been trying to get people to understand that having mom involved with teachers and doors, all of the things, special visits, visits in normal clothes, visits with normal food, just trying to open the door to moms having access to their children, especially while in a controlled environment where we can hopefully better the chances of the bond or the repair that needs to be done if we’re doing it as a team.
Ali (15:24): Yeah, thank you. It really is changing the frame and creating a more holistic and wholesome environment to really create a path and a runway so that folks can be successful. It sounds like you’re in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.
Jacinta (15:41): It’s super important for providers, above all, to be aware of how they’re speaking to people, what’s happening in the conversation, who’s guiding it, who’s leading it, and really what are the objectives in the conversation, because we, as providers, are the ones who people come to for the answers. As much as we would like to think that we have them proven time and time again, that it’s in the individual. As we like to think that there is a one way for everybody, there really isn’t. Conversation and getting to know somebody and building strength and independence within them is going to be the best thing you can do as a provider for any individual.
Ali (16:30): Erica and Jacinta, thank you so much for joining us today and for all that you do, making the world a better place.
Erica (16:37): Thank you, Jacinta. Thanks, Ali.
Jacinta (16:40): Thank you.
Ali (16:41): To our listeners, please join us next time on changing the conversation.
Erika Simon, Producer (16:46): Visit c4innovates.com and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube for more resources to grow your impact. Thank you for joining us. This episode was produced by Erika Simon and Christina Murphy. Our theme song was written and performed by Peter Hanlon. Join us next time on Changing the Conversation.
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