The Harm We Don’t Speak About…
Author: Felice Upton | Connect on LinkedIn
Published November 7, 2025
In 2009, I sat across from a superintendent who'd spent forty years in corrections; a man who'd worked at the state penitentiary during the era chronicled in Concrete Mama.
He was getting close to retirement, and I was hungry for wisdom, expecting war stories or tactical advice. Expecting some life changing wisdom or maybe just a cantankerous old guy...
Instead, he talked about a pendulum. I think about him and that conversation often and if we've talked ever...you know...I talk about this too.
"Every five years or so," he said, leaning back in his chair with the weariness of someone who'd seen it all twice, "someone discovers 'reentry' like it's brand new. Or 'tough on crime' comes roaring back like we haven't tried that already. New language, same arguments. Different administration, same cycle."
He paused, looked at me directly.
"The only thing that ever actually mattered, the only thing that kept me sane and kept our people safer, was refusing to lose sight of the humanity. Theirs. Ours. All of it. When we could sit with each other's humanity instead of speaking past each other, that's when real work happened. But we almost never do that. We just pick a side of the pendulum and swing."
I nodded like I understood.
I didn't. Not really. Not yet. I was still naive. I still believed as someone from a community that had lost so many of my friends to incarceration and death before our 21st birthdays that systems wanted to help and were designed to.
Now I'm that old guy...I feel it in my bones and hope that I can help change it in whatever small way that I can.
Sixteen years later, and I've watched the same pendulum swing back and forth so many times I've lost count.
Different branding. Same exhausted dance. People profit from it. They come and go. Harm occurs on the backs of those incarcerated and closest to the line.
"Trauma-informed care" gets repackaged. "Accountability" gets weaponized. "Reform" and "public safety" get pitted against each other like they're mortal enemies instead of two sides of the same urgent need. I like to ask people their definitions of these things and how they believe they look in action...always very telling.
And with every swing, with every rebranding of old arguments in new language, people get hurt. Really hurt.
Youth who needed consistency get whiplash from policy changes. Staff who needed support get contradictory mandates. Communities who needed healing get sound bites. Parents are left powerless. Communities are torn apart. The pipeline keeps pipelining.
And the systemic problems, the deep, structural, uncomfortable ones we're terrified to name never get actually solved. It's like we all learn in 12 step programs- the secrets keep you sick. We talk around the problems. We refuse to name the real problems.
Because the pendulum isn't progress. It's avoidance. It is surface level and not actual work. It keeps people comfortable but not those we are supposed to be serving.
It lets us feel like we're doing something while ensuring we never have to sit still long enough to face what we're actually avoiding:
The hard, messy, uncomfortable conversation about what we're really trying to accomplish, and whether anything we're doing could ever possibly get us there.
The questions we must ask.
Nationally leaders may be debating whether we're being too soft or too tough. We swing that pendulum and call it strategy.
But we don't ask the question that actually matters:
What are we trying to accomplish here?
Not what the policy says. Not what sounds defensible in a legislative hearing. I have been thinking a lot about the heart of dialogue and resolution. How are we sitting in the hard stuff together? How are we starting with the end in mind? What are we working for? Towards?
What do we actually want for our children, our communities, our collective humanity?
Do we want people to come out better than they went in, or do we just want them contained? And before you answer that please be honest about what your reaction is when things get too close to YOUR home....
Do we want staff to thrive, or do we just need warm bodies in positions?
Do we want accountability that leads to transformation, or do we just want punishment that looks like justice?
Because until we can sit with those questions...really sit with them, past the political posturing and the fear of admitting we don't have easy answers... we'll keep extinguishing fires while the whole structure burns.
We Keep Treating Symptoms Because Naming the Actual Problem Requires Too Much of Us
Here's the truth we keep dancing around:
We've built systems that require human beings to do inhuman things...and no I am not shaming the people...it's not that easy.
We've created environments where caring too much is a liability. Where noticing pain is unprofessional. Where the best way to survive is to stop feeling.
And then we act shocked when those systems produce exactly what they were designed for: disconnection, trauma, and an endless cycle of harm.
Staff are drowning. Youth are breaking. Leaders are trapped between impossible mandates and impossible realities.
And what do we do?
We rebrand. We reorganize. We launch initiatives that look good in PowerPoint we dog and pony. We have the same conversation with a new look.
We hire consultants to "fix culture" without examining what's creating it. (You should totally still hire us.) We add wellness programs for staff while keeping the conditions that make them sick. We talk about "evidence-based practices" while ignoring the evidence that our entire approach is fundamentally flawed.
Because we're still asking the wrong questions.
We're asking: How do we get staff to stay? When we should be asking: What are we asking them to participate in that's making them leave?
We're asking: How do we reduce recidivism? When we should be asking: What are we doing that guarantees people return more broken than when they arrived?
We're asking: How do we manage behavior? When we should be asking: Whose behavior? What's driving it? What would healing actually require? And are we willing to create conditions where healing is even possible?
The Pendulum Keeps Us Comfortable, and Stuck
That superintendent was right about something else too: the pendulum gives us the illusion of movement.
It lets us pick sides. Debate tactics. Point to the other administration and say, "See? They had it wrong. We know better."
But it keeps us from facing what's underneath all of it:
The fact that we've designed systems around punishment and control, then wonder why they don't produce healing and accountability.
The fact that we've treated incarceration as the solution to poverty, mental illness, addiction, trauma, and decades of systemic neglect, then blame individuals when that doesn't work.
The fact that we've asked underpaid, under-supported human beings to manage the overflow of every system that failed before their system education, healthcare, housing, economic opportunity and then called it "corrections."
What if the pendulum itself is the problem?
What if swinging between "tougher" and "softer," between "accountability" and "treatment," between "public safety" and "reform" keeps us from asking what a system designed for actual transformation would even look like?
What if all our pendulum debates all our rebranded initiatives and newly packaged old ideas are just sophisticated ways of avoiding the deeper, messier, more uncomfortable questions:
Do we actually believe the people inside these walls are worth the hard work of real change?
Do we believe our staff deserve systems that don't require them to abandon their humanity to survive?
Do we believe we, as a society, are brave enough to admit that what we've been doing for decades isn't working and that not knowing the answer yet is still better than pretending we do? That we cannot just participate in incrementalism but that perhaps we've never seen the solution...not yet anyhow.
The Conversations We're Not Having Because They Cost Too Much
Here's what the pendulum lets us avoid:
Talking about race and power. Not as abstractions, but as the actual architecture of who gets locked up, who does the locking up, and who makes the rules for both.
Talking about class. About the reality that incarceration has become the de facto social safety net for people our economy has discarded and that those who are often blamed for the systemic failures are blue collar workers who also come from poverty.
Talking about trauma. Not just trauma as a buzzword in a training module, but as the lived reality shaping every interaction the trauma people bring in, the trauma systems create, and the trauma staff absorb until they can't absorb anymore.
Talking about what accountability actually requires. Not just from incarcerated people but from systems, from leaders, from communities, from all of us who've participated in building and maintaining what isn't working.
Talking about what we're willing to give up. Because real change requires sacrifice. It requires admitting we were wrong. It requires investing differently. It requires sitting with discomfort and uncertainty and the possibility that transformation is slower and messier than any pendulum swing promises.
These conversations are hard because they don't have heroes and villains. They have humans; flawed, trying, sometimes failing embedded in systems that were never designed for their dignity or success.
And the pendulum lets us skip all of that.
It lets us keep arguing about tactics while never examining what we're trying to accomplish or whether our methods could ever possibly get us there.
What We Keep Avoiding
This isn't an operational problem. It's a human one.
And it requires us to look at truths we've been trained to sidestep. It's going to suck. I have certainly personally looked at this and it will break your heart when you do.
For leaders: When was the last time you created space for someone to say, "I don't know if I can keep doing this" and actually listened, instead of problem-solving or pivoting to policy?
Do you reward emotional honesty, or do you promote the people who can perform the most control with the least visible struggle?
When budgets get tight, what do you cut first and what does that tell you about what you actually value?
For staff: When you see a colleague unraveling, do you reach out or do you look away because you're barely holding it together yourself?
When a young person lashes out, do you see the behavior as the problem, or do you ask what pain is underneath it? This question is also for our schools. For our social services systems.
When you hear yourself saying, "That's just how it is here," do you hear resignation or an invitation to imagine different?
For communities: When we talk about "those people" whether incarcerated or working inside do we flatten them into statistics and stereotypes, or do we honor the full, complex humanity of people trying to survive systems that were never designed for their dignity?
When we demand "accountability," are we asking for transformation or revenge? For healing or performance? For change or comfort?
For policymakers: Are you designing for soundbites or sustainability? For what polls well or what actually works?
Are you willing to invest in prevention even though it won't pay off in your election cycle?
Are you willing to admit that some problems don't have quick fixes and that pretending they do causes more harm than good?
For all of us: Are we willing to admit that the way we've been doing this isn't working and that not knowing the answer yet is still better than pretending we do?
Are we willing to sit with each other's humanity, even when we disagree? Especially then?
What It Actually Takes to Stop the Cycle
If we want different outcomes, we have to be willing to sit with different questions.
Not: How do we manage this population? But: Who are we asking them to become, and are we willing to model it ourselves?
Not: How do we reduce incidents? But: What conditions are creating them, and what would prevention actually require?
Not: How do we fix retention? But: What are we asking people to do that's incompatible with their own humanity, and are we willing to redesign that?
Not: Which side of the pendulum should we be on? But: What if we stopped swinging and started building something entirely different?
This means getting upstream. Way upstream.
Before the behavior plan. Before the disciplinary write-up. Before the crisis that pulls in supervisors and unions and lawyers and legislators.
It means asking:
Where are we causing harm without meaning to and are we willing to stop, even if we don't know what comes next?
What are we solving for compliance or growth? Order or healing. The appearance of safety or actual transformation? Dog and pony shows or real change.
Whose voices are missing from the decisions that shape their lives and what would it cost us to actually include them?
What would it look like to design a system for humanity first, and figure out safety from there instead of designing for control and wondering why humanity keeps breaking?
The Cost of Continuing to Avoid This
Here's what happens when we keep swinging the pendulum instead of doing the deeper work:
Staff meetings become performative. We talk about numbers, quotas, compliance. We don't talk about the person who stopped showing up to lunch. The one whose hands shake now. The one who used to care deeply and doesn't anymore.
Debriefs become defensive. We reconstruct incidents to assign blame, not to learn. We don't ask: What did we miss? What might we have done differently? What does this tell us about what our people actually need?
Policy becomes a shield. "That's not how we do it" becomes a way to avoid asking, "But should we? Could we? What would it take?"
Youth stop believing change is possible. Not because they're broken, but because we've proven again and again that we're more committed to our systems than to their humanity.
Staff stop believing too. They show up, do their time, protect themselves. The ones who still care learn to hide it. The ones who can't, leave.
And communities? We keep incarcerating the same neighborhoods, the same families, the same manifestations of the same systemic failures and calling it public safety.
The pendulum swings. People break. Nothing changes.
And we all pretend we're doing something new.
Redesigning for Humanity For Real This Time
Imagine a system where:
Mental health support isn't an afterthought added during the "reform" swing. It's embedded. Daily. Structural. Not just for incarcerated people, but for staff. Where asking for help is normalized, not stigmatized. Where we prepare people to survive the work instead of watching them break and calling it inevitable. Where we don't talk about things being cost effective but effective. Where we talk about love. I say this as someone who has literally begged on many a Friday night to help get adults and then youth into mental health placements instead of carceral settings. We need REAL solutions that work in real time.
Staff meetings include reflection, not just metrics. Where someone can say, "That incident yesterday is still sitting with me," and the response isn't "Shake it off" or "That's the job," but "Tell me more. What do you need?"
Debriefs are about collective learning, not individual blame. Where we examine systemic patterns, not just personal failures. Where "How did we get here?" matters more than "Who screwed up?"
Emotional regulation is taught with the same rigor as defensive tactics. Where we prepare people to de-escalate their own nervous systems before we ask them to manage someone else's.
Leadership models vulnerability without apology. Where a supervisor saying "I made a mistake" or "I need help thinking this through" doesn't undermine authority it builds trust.
We design for connection, not just control. Where relationships aren't "soft" they're the actual mechanism through which accountability and transformation happen.
We measure what matters. Not just incident rates and bed counts, but: Are people leaving better than they came? Are staff thriving or just surviving? Are we interrupting cycles or perpetuating them?
This isn't soft. It's structural.
Because when people are seen, they show up differently. When teams can be honest, they respond faster and smarter. When care is normalized not just talked about during the compassionate swing of the pendulum but built into operations safety improves.
And when we design systems for healing, we don't have to keep choosing between accountability and humanity.
We can hold both. We have to hold both.
This Is Everyone's Work
To those outside the walls: this is not someone else's problem.
The person who experiences trauma inside doesn't leave it behind when they're released. They bring it home to your neighborhood, your school, your workplace, your family.
The staff member who absorbs harm every day doesn't check it at the gate. They carry it to their partners, their children, their bodies, their breaking points.
What happens inside the walls doesn't stay inside the walls.
If we ignore the mental health crisis in carceral systems, we're ignoring one of the most direct public health crises of our time.
Healing inside is safety outside. Harm inside is harm outside.
And until we stop treating incarceration as separate from the rest of society — something that happens to "other people's" kids, managed by "other people's" staff, solving "other people's" problems we'll never break the cycle.
These are our children. All of them. Even the ones who've caused harm. Even the ones society has written off. Even the ones we'd rather not claim.
These are our people. All of them. The ones working impossible jobs under impossible conditions. The ones who came to help and are drowning. The ones who stopped believing change was possible.
This is our collective failure. And it requires our collective reckoning.
A Conversation, Not a Conclusion
That superintendent told me one more thing before he retired.
"The hardest part," he said, "isn't the violence or the politics or even the impossibility of the job. It's watching good people give up on each other. Watching us stop talking to each other and start talking past each other. Watching humanity become a casualty of our certainty."
He was right.
The pendulum gives us certainty. Clear sides. Easy enemies. Simple solutions. A lot of pretending and numbing.
But our children don't need our certainty. They need our courage.
The courage to sit with complexity. The courage to admit we don't have all the answers. The courage to stop performing progress and start doing the deeply uncomfortable work of actual transformation.
That work starts with conversation.
Not debate. Not posturing. Not another rebranded initiative that lets us avoid the hard questions.
Conversation. Honest. Messy. Human.
About what we're actually trying to accomplish. About whether our methods could ever possibly get us there. About what we're willing to sacrifice, change, and rebuild. About whose humanity we're willing to sit with and whose humanity we've been avoiding.
Just Us
Not just those incarcerated. Not just those who supervise. Not just the policymakers or the advocates or the families or the communities.
All of us.
Refusing to let the pendulum distract us from the deeper work. Refusing to speak past each other when we could sit with each other. Refusing to rebrand old failures and call them innovation.
Building systems that see people all people as whole. Complex. Worthy of the hard work transformation requires.
Choosing questions over answers. Humanity over habit. Courage over comfort.
Because in the end, it's never been about the pendulum.
It's about whether we believe our children all of them, even the ones who've caused harm, even the ones we've failed repeatedly are worth fighting for.
It's about whether we believe our staff the ones showing up to impossible conditions deserve systems that don't require them to abandon their humanity to survive.
It's about whether we believe we, as a society, are brave enough to stop swinging and start building.
Not because we have all the answers.
But because our people all our people deserve more than our exhausted cycles and our fear of the deeper questions.
They deserve our willingness to sit in the discomfort of not knowing. To have the hard conversations we've been avoiding. To care more about our collective humanity than about being right.
That's the work. That's the reckoning. That's Just Us. I cannot wait to engage in these conversations. The time is now.
The pendulum will keep swinging as long as we let it. Or we can finally stop, look at each other, and ask: What are we really trying to build here? And who are we willing to become to build it?
