Josh Dubin & Sheldon Johnson

Who is Josh Dubin & Sheldon Johnson?

Josh Dubin is the Executive Director of the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice, a criminal justice reform advocate, and civil rights attorney. Sheldon Johnson is a criminal justice reform advocate. He works with at risk youth at the Queens Defenders in New York. https://cardozo.yu.edu/directory/josh-dubin

Topics and Timestamps

• 01Josh Dubin and Sheldon Johnson discuss systemic issues in the criminal justice system and wrongful convictions
• 02The conversation covers how poverty and lack of legal resources trap people in cycles of incarceration
• 03They explain the work of the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice in fighting for exonerations and reform
• 04Discussion of how at-risk youth in Queens are affected by the criminal justice system
• 05The guests highlight racial disparities and bias in policing, prosecution, and sentencing
• 06They advocate for alternatives to incarceration and rehabilitation-focused approaches to criminal justice
• ▶Introduction to the Perlmutter Center and its mission0:00:00
• ▶Discussion of wrongful convictions and exonerations0:15:00
• ▶How poverty and lack of legal resources trap people in the system0:30:00
• ▶Sheldon Johnson's work with at-risk youth in Queens0:45:00
• ▶Racial disparities in policing, prosecution, and sentencing1:00:00

The Show

Joe sits down with criminal justice reform advocates Josh Dubin and Sheldon Johnson to dig into one of America's most broken systems: the criminal justice apparatus. These guys aren't theorizing from ivory towers, they're on the ground fighting wrongful convictions and watching firsthand how the system grinds people up, especially poor people and people of color.

Dubin runs the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice and comes at this from the legal angle, while Johnson works directly with at-risk youth in Queens, seeing how the system fails kids before they even get a real shot. The conversation gets into how the combination of poverty, inadequate legal representation, and systemic bias creates a machine that's basically designed to keep certain populations trapped in cycles of arrest, incarceration, and re-arrest.

They talk about wrongful convictions, how people get locked up for crimes they didn't commit, and how hard it is to overturn convictions even with evidence that someone's innocent. The criminal justice system isn't actually about justice for a lot of people, they argue. It's about processing, profits in some cases, and clearing cases off the books.

One of the key points is that if you're poor, you're basically screwed. You can't afford bail, you can't afford good lawyers, so you plea out to crimes you might not have even done just to get a shorter sentence and get out. That's not justice, that's coercion dressed up in a suit.

They also discuss the real alternatives that work, like community programs, rehabilitation, mentorship, and addressing the root causes of crime instead of just locking people up and throwing away the key. Johnson's work with at-risk youth shows that when you give kids real opportunities and genuine support, the outcomes are completely different.

The whole conversation is a reality check about how American criminal justice isn't actually about rehabilitation or even about public safety most of the time. It's a system with deep racial and economic biases baked into every level, from who gets arrested to who gets convicted to who gets long sentences. These guys are trying to fix it one case, one kid, one policy at a time.

Best Quotes