Joshua Hoe: Walk into Every Room Like You Belong - Season 6, Episode 1

In episode of Amplified Voices, Amber and Jason chat with Joshua Hoe about incarceration, reentry and renewal. During the course of the conversation we get a front-row seat to accountability, reentry built on constraints: registry rules that make simple walks risky, five-hour weekday windows on parole, and landlords who rarely open doors. Josh turns that maze into a practice of workarounds—writing web content with a word processor offline, uploading from monitored terminals, and negotiating permissions with persistence. The throughline is strategy: learn the unwritten rules, solve for the next step, and document every decision. That mindset carries him from a volunteer seat to national reform tables, where sharp questions at conferences and targeted online campaigns open unexpected doors.

Then comes the inflection point: consulting on criminal justice reform during the First Step Act push, pressing forward to help others, realizing injustice even when it isn't his own, watching a U.S. senator read language he helped craft on the Senate floor. It’s a reminder that power can start from a shared kitchen in a halfway house if paired with understanding, connection, discipline and an eye for moments that matter. His closing advice is simple and invitational: walk into every room like you belong there, and keep hustling to create your next opportunity.

Joshua B. Hoe is the Senior Policy Manager at Dream.Org
Josh has a background in public speaking, debate, and public policy research. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Political Science and a Master’s Degree in International Relations, is a former national college debate champion (1990), and was a long-time college debate coach.

Since returning from incarceration in 2013, Josh has been a Policy Analyst, a lobbyist, a social media and messaging consultant, an organizer, a debate consultant, and the host and creator of the Decarceration Nation Podcast. His work is guided by bringing people back from incarceration better.

Josh loves alternative music and used to DJ as well as play in several punk and post-punk bands in the 1980s

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Transcript

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Opening And Guest Introduction

Intro 0:12

Everyone has a voice, a story to tell. Some are marginalized and muted. What if there were a way to amplify those stories? To have conversations with real people in real communities. A way to help them step into the power of their lived experience. Welcome to Amplified Voices, a podcast lifting the experiences of people and families impacted by the criminal legal system. Together, we can create positive change for everyone.

Jason 0:46

Hello and welcome to another episode of Amplified Voices. I'm your host, Jason, here with my co-host Amber. Hi, Amber.

Amber 0:53

How are you, Jason? I'm really good today, Amber, because today we have someone that we've wanted to have on the podcast for a really long time. Joshua Ho. Hi, Josh. Hey, how are you doing? So, Josh, we're gonna start with the same question we've asked everybody. I before I do that, I'll tell you you were a big inspiration for us in terms of even creating this podcast.

Life Before The Charges

Jason 1:19

So thank you for being here. We'll thank you again at the end. But the question that we start with is could you tell us a little bit about your life before entering the criminal legal system and what brought you into it?

Josh 1:33

Yeah, well, I mean, first, thanks for the kind words. That's very nice of you. Just I don't know what uh originally got me going in the podcast space. Well, I do, but it was it had nothing to do with any criminal justice related stuff. It just ended up that's the kind of podcast that I did. Now, as for the other actual question you just asked, before this I was a uh debate coach for 25 years, college debate coach, and you know, my life was not that dissimilar to what it is now. I worked pretty hard, I traveled a lot, and I was very involved in the day-to-day of trying to be competitively successful with that team. You know, what changed, I guess, is that one day I was actually about to fly to Florida to meet a friend, and I heard a knock on my door, and there were, I think it was 11 or 13 officers outside, and next thing I knew, I was in a jail cell, and mostly uh because of some things that I'd done, including mostly related to sending inappropriate messages to people who were underage on the internet.

Amber 2:36

So, Josh, where are you from? What made you want to go into being a debate coach? How did you get there?

Josh 2:45

I lived all over the country. I was born in New York City. I've lived in Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, all kinds of places over the time of my life. I ended up being a debate coach because I was a very good high school and college debater. I ultimately won the one of the college national championships in 1990. I thought I was going to go into some kind of security service or foreign service because that's what all my educational background was in. And I just kept getting debate offers. And I decided, worst case scenario, I can come back and get my higher level education, my master's and my PhD if I want to, or I can just try to get into the foreign service or some kind of diplomacy or some kind of security services. And I just never stopped being a debate coach. I liked it enough that I kept doing it for 25 years. Where was your home base? You say you traveled all over, but what was home? Well, like in any career, you move around a lot as you're moving up the ladder. And so I was an assistant coach in Kansas City, Missouri, and then I was an assistant coach in Tempe, Arizona,

Debate, Research, And Work Ethic

Josh 3:48

and then I was an assistant director in Texas, and then I was a director in Texas and successful enough as a director that I moved to the University of Michigan, where I was the director for eight years at their debate program.

Amber 4:01

And for those who think that debating is just arguing, what do you have to say about that sort of thought process? Tell us a little bit about debate.

Josh 4:09

There are multiple kinds of debate. The kind of dominant one is called policy debate, which is what I was involved in. And, you know, it's really you get a topic for the entire year and you research that topic. Every team, which is two people, goes and researches and finds an example of that topic that they want to defend for the entire year. So, like the year that I won the national championship, our case, our affirmative case, was about the United States taking global warming seriously, which is ironic given that it's 2025 and we still haven't taken it seriously. And that was 1990. The year after that, when I was a senior, we did a case, our case was about the drug war. You spend the whole year researching and you research your you're trying to continue to make it so that you'll continue to win on the affirmative against everything that everyone's going to argue against you. And then you also have to answer all the different cases that exist for other schools and other teams. So it's uh very resource and research intensive. We didn't have the internet back then, so we had to physically go to libraries, and so and sometimes we'd go to multiple libraries across the state every single week. And I'd say I probably worked 80 hours a week easily on debate, probably more. And then you also have school, and then you also had travel because you travel for debate around the country. I think it got a little easier with the internet and with technology because it's like when you're when you said when I was a kid, I had to walk up stairs, you know, both ways through the snow and whatever. It's the same kind of deal. When I was debating, we had to carry all of our evidence in tubs, and that was back before 9-11. So you could still fly with all that stuff. And then as technology has progressed, now everything's just in your computer. You usually bring up a printer, and there are programs that help you organize it all and print it all in the moment. It's a lot different than what I debated, but it's still very res research intensive and still very time intensive. You think at a school like Michigan, those kids are going through like one of the hardest educational experiences that you can have at the same time they have to travel at the same time that they're competing. It's a lot.

Jason 6:14

What was your living experience at the time you were arrested? Oh, I was living in an apartment, yeah. And then the 13 people show up for you. Can

Arrest Shock And Media Fallout

Jason 6:24

you talk a little bit about that experience and what was going on in your brain?

Josh 6:28

You tell yourself a million times that what you're doing is maybe immoral but not illegal, and then you find out it actually is illegal. I just had never I'd never even had a parking ticket at that point, really. And all of a sudden there's like a task force outside my door. I think I was 42 at the time, and then you know, I it was a pretty crazy day. I didn't really know what to do or what to say, and you learn a lot, obviously, when you do time, but I did a lot of dumb things. When I first got to the jail and they asked you the screening questions, they were like, How are you feeling? I'm like, I'm a little down, and next thing I know, I'm in a bam suit in a in a psych ward for three days before I bailed out. So, you know, uh, I sort of saw the worst end of a lot of things, both when I first got arrested and then after I got sentenced. I kind of went back to one of the worst jails in Michigan. And so I was able to see a lot of the really bad end of jail. It was a bad day. I'm not gonna, it certainly was a bad day. I remember when I finally bailed out walking home, and the one of the reporters from Detroit had driven all the way to Ann Arbor, which is where I lived at that time, and was following me in a van as I walked home. I was like, oh, that's that's great. I didn't have my car because of, you know, it was just a crazy set of circumstances, and I was literally walking home from the jail with the press following me.

Jason 7:49

So did the press like sensationalize it because you were involved, you were at a university and a setting and that sort of thing?

Josh 7:56

Yeah, I mean, they basically saw it as an opportunity to go after the university and opportunity to go after what I was a fairly middle high administrator. So I was fired. I had to, I was allowed to come in with the assistant dean of students, and he walked through my office with me as I picked up my stuff and left.

Amber 8:18

So so you were you were fired before any resolution.

Josh 8:24

I was fired within days.

Amber 8:26

You were fired immediately.

Josh 8:28

There's been a recent thing at the University of Michigan where the football coach got fired and arrested. He was having an extramarital affair. And when he got fired, he went, at least allegedly, went to the person he was having an affair with, who I guess had turned him in to some extent, and broke into her apartment and that wasn't good at all. But I'm probably the only person in the world who understood to some extent his mind space because I had been a coach at the University of Michigan who'd gone through a somewhat similar thing. And so I was actually trying to reach out to people at the time to connect us because I thought at the very least I might be able to give him some some hope or some words of wisdom or something like that, having gone through what he was going through at that time.

Amber 9:15

I don't know there's many other people who've ever gone through that at that level with he got a lot more scrutiny than I did because he's football's a lot bigger than debate, but and so we, you know, you said uh you referred to something, different people might have different perspectives. You said that you had sort of rationalized what I'm doing. Yeah, I might know it's not really that moral, but I didn't think it was illegal. Can you expand or expound

Plea Deal Collapse And Sentencing

Amber 9:42

upon that a little bit?

Josh 9:43

Yeah, I came to a totally different conclusion after the fact. This was before the fact. I don't want it to make it sound like I'm making excuses for what I did or anything like that. I'm just saying that previous to me being arrested, I was telling myself that it was just free speech, and I was just saying things on the internet, and that while all the stuff that I was saying and sending was stuff that anyone could get commercially and whatever. And obviously it was delusional. I'm not I'm not saying that it was the smartest moment in my life, but that's what I was telling myself.

Jason 10:15

So then what happens on your journey? You're you were you say you walked home? Were you out for a while before you were incarcerated?

Josh 10:24

Yeah, I was out for I think it was five or six months, something like that. I had luckily had money saved up to some extent, and I could continue to live or whatever, and so I went, spent a lot of time at bookstores reading, a lot of time going to coffee houses, anywhere I could go and just feel somewhat normal or like I was doing something that I would normally be doing. And I was trying to learn as much I as I could about what I was about to face and what I might want to do next with my life. And none of the things that I actually was working on turned out to be things that I actually did. But it was important, I think, to keep my brain operating and to at least have myself invested in kind of some kind of positive future. So I think that's what I was really just trying to do was every day trying to make that day somewhere where I knew bad things were coming, but maybe there was hope for a future. I think I was trying to learn everything I could learn about like the internet and how to build websites and how to do all kinds of stuff like that. And I've never done any of that stuff since. Just anything I could come up with that might seem like a plausible career path. And of course, I wasn't really thinking that they might sanction me on like the internet and stuff like that. We were in kind of the second wave of Facebook. I was one of the early adopters at Facebook. If you've watched the movie, you see when it expands to a bunch of universities. I was actually part of that and was pretty active on Facebook at that time. I used to have a very large Facebook account until this happened, to be honest with you. Wow.

Amber 11:57

It's funny that you say that because like most people's experience that weren't involved in like academia or whatever was like, oh, that's that thing that the college kids used. So that's really interesting. Tell us a little bit about family, friends, colleagues, how this sort of impacted those types of relationships.

Josh 12:17

I mean, my family was mostly supportive, not supportive, like they didn't think I'd done something good. They were, they just weren't, they didn't kick me to the curb, which is great. And they helped me throughout. I'd say probably about 90%

Jail Conditions And Early Lessons

Josh 12:30

of my friends disappeared. Some of them quite demonstrably disappeared. And then there were about 10% that stuck with me are still friends. So you feel like the world has fallen on you, and then everyone you hoped would be there if the world ever fell on you is gone, and you're still trying to make it work. And it's definitely hard. I was lucky that I'd gone through some things before in my life that made me a little bit more resilient, maybe. Things I struggled with addiction in college a little bit, uh, well, a lot of it. And I had a rough upbringing, things like that. I come across as some somewhat academic. I I didn't grow up that way necessarily, although I my parents were very smart about getting me good education and stuff like that. Especially when I was younger, we were not exactly wealthy. I'd seen some hardships throughout my life. I'd been through some stuff. I'd even been dis essentially disowned by my parents at one point because of drugs. And so I bounced back from things like this before, not this serious, but I at least knew it was possible. You can be addicted to a lot of different things throughout your life, and things move left to right. I mean, if I was gonna say I was addicted to something, it's probably basketball shoes. I have a gigantic basketball shoe collection. I'm a what they call a sneakerhead. Luckily, I'm pretty sure you can't get in too much trouble from shoes, Knockwood. But I mean, I played basketball in high school, not very well, but I did and uh played pretty much my whole life. I even coached and played in prison. So basketball is a big part of my life. All right.

Amber 13:59

All right. So you were you're trying to be forward thinking, right? As you're in this period of time between knowing that this is probably going to turn out with you serving some time. What was that what you were thinking? Or were you thinking maybe I might be able to have a different outcome?

Josh 14:22

I knew I was gonna serve some time, probably, just from what was being told to me by my lawyer, etc. Now, originally I thought I was gonna spend two 10 months in county, do a five-year probation, and then obviously be on the registry, but for 25 years. That was the that's what Michigan's registry was at that time. I went to court and the judge threw out my plea bargain and sentenced me to one to seven years in prison. And I had no idea, A, that was possible, and B, that was gonna happen. And so that was a pretty, pretty shocking day. Now, my attorney, who will remain nameless and is not my favorite person in the world, came back to the cell afterwards, and I'm like, you know, part of me is like, why the hell didn't you tell me that was possible? But he was kind of like, oh, don't worry about it. You've got a one to seven, that's only a few months more than the one to what you were gonna get in in jail. And what he didn't tell me is that in the state of Michigan, although they won't tell you this officially, but it's just factually true, until you've gotten into the sex offense program in prison, you're not gonna get out, you're not gonna get a parole. Wait, I this you hit us with a lot.

Jason 15:36

So let

Prison Levels, Violence, And Survival

Jason 15:37

me go back a second. So you had a deal. I had a deal. And then it you went in front of the judge, and the judge said, I don't care. Judge said, I don't care.

Amber 15:47

Okay, so I think that this is a really interesting part of the story. Again, thinking about people who like yourself before this encounter have had no interaction with the criminal legal system. A lot of people don't know how often that cases are resolved by plea deal.

Josh 16:07

About 96% of the time.

Amber 16:09

Yeah, so highlighting that. And then the those that do know that would never think that you could have a plea deal, have worked it all out, go into a court and have a judge throw it out. And again, hindsight for folks who go through the system tends to be pretty clear, but while you're in it, you're just trying to figure out what to do moment by moment. So you had a you seem like a person and have told us that like you you researched, right? You're a person that does research, you were trying to be very prepared, you were trying to do all the things. And even with all of those skills under your belt and your personality and all that you do, you walked into the court and it was like almost a bomb exploded. Am I characterizing that correctly?

Josh 17:02

Yeah, I think actually it's one of the times where being articulate and having some information and having support. So I had over 40 letters of support because I'd done other charity and good works in my time before I got arrested. And a lot of people wrote to support me. And the judge, I think, took a lot of that as that I was some kind of that I was a more a skillful manipulator than I was whatever, sincere. And so I think he actually held it against me that I was all those things.

Amber 17:36

I think that's really an important factor too, because again, every every person who is part of the system is still a human being. So perspectives come into play, discretion comes into play, and that's a really interesting example because in the situation I'm most familiar with that affected my family, military service rather than being seen as something that was positive, patriotic, this and that, was this person is dangerous because they know how to use a firearm, which had nothing to do with anything in the case. But then to be like, we have to have a higher bail because this person is dangerous. So things that are positive can be weaponized as bad.

Josh 18:25

Yeah, there were a

Parole Delays And Program Bottlenecks

Josh 18:26

lot of pretty crappy days throughout that whole process. I would say the first time I got arrested, because I actually there were two counties, so I got arrested twice. That's a whole different story. Actually, within a week of each other's were they not talking to each other? They did it because they could do it. I don't think they really cared. But the first time was probably the worst day. Really, I would say after sentencing and going to the Macomb County jail was probably the second worst day. It wasn't it's the combination of the two, I think, the sentencing where he threw out my plea and just how god-awful quarantine was at the McComb County jail. Now, to understand the Macomb County jail, in the two years that was, including when I was there and before, I think 23 people had died in that facility. There was a black mold problem. You walk in and you're in the holding cell, and the holding cell has fecal matter all over the walls. And you, if you wanted to use the toilet, you couldn't, it's just jammed with stuff, and you're there for like 10 hours, and everyone in there is like the cast of characters from some kind of one of the what's that DC or the suicide squad? I remember the first day when you get to prison and they take you to quarantine, and you're in this line of people, and all of us have to strip off our clothes and get inspected, basically. That's a pretty weird day, too. There's lots of weird days. Of course, at the time I was thinking, at least I'm not the guy who has to do that job. I'm only going through this for five minutes.

Jason 19:52

Now, do you think the fact that you were educated, that you were a debater, that you do the research, did that hurt or help you in that environment?

Josh 20:01

I did surprisingly well in jail and prison. I I could give you a million possible explanations. The first one is that I had some pretty good advice. I'd gone to a therapist on the outside, and he'd hooked me up with someone who had just gotten back and was doing very well, uh, who had had similar charges. And he really gave me the 411 on what I should expect and how I should act. And the advice he gave me was really good. And I think most people probably know most of it. It's just stuff like don't talk, listen, learn all the unwritten rules before you do anything. Don't try to make friends. Eventually you'll find the people who are the right people. Everyone's gonna be trying to come at you early, so don't seem eager. Don't try to be anything you're not. I'm not a I'm not a badass fighting gangster type, so I wasn't gonna act like one. A lot of people go in and think that's what they're supposed to do. I think that's terrible advice. I actually did you know very well both in jail and prison. I can't really explain why, because I was a 42 42-year-old white guy in on sex offense, so the odds were pretty low that I would do well, but I did. I would even say that I was pretty well liked in prison, to be honest with you.

Amber 21:13

So, what surprised you most? I know there were a lot of surprises, but if you could think about in the early days, what surprised you most?

Josh 21:21

What surprised me most about prison? Just I think it was a little bit shocking because I was a so when I started out, I was in a level two, which isn't too bad. It's two men's cells. But then after four months, I got moved to level ones, which is the lowest security level, but also

Reentry, Housing, And Parole Limits

Josh 21:37

the most dangerous, which I can explain later. But those are a hundred and I think it's 140-person pole barns. And just how easy it is for everyone to get to everyone and how violent those places were, I think that was pretty, pretty shocking. I don't like to do prison porn or violence porn. Right. But I was in two of the more violent prisons in Michigan, and so it was pretty crazy.

Amber 22:00

And what is the difference between jail and prison for those who don't know?

Josh 22:04

Jail is usually county, and you if you're sentenced to a year or less or you're awaiting trial, you're in jail. And once you get sentenced, if you're sentenced to a year or less, you'll stay in jail. Or if you're fighting your case a lot of times, you'll stay in jail. But once you're sentenced and you're not trying to challenge your case, you're going to prison, most likely, if you got sentenced for over a year. And prison is run by the state, and every state does it differently, but there's a certain number of prisons around your state, and you get sent to one of them. Almost always people get sent to a place. Everyone has a different name for it, but we call it quarantine in Michigan. And it's the place you go where they decide what security risk you are, and they go through, take you through all the tests, and they give you medical tests and psychological tests, and and you're basically there for about a month, and then you get assigned to a prison. Basically, you sent to that prison, and there you go. And then you just do your time.

Amber 23:06

Based on your sentence, what was your expectation going in of the actual time that you would be serving?

Josh 23:14

Well, my office, I mean my uh attorney had told me that it would be the one year because I was coming, I was on a one to seven. And in Michigan, we have truth in sentencing, which means you have to serve 100% of your minimum. So if I'm a one to seven, I have to serve 100% of a year, but that means within six months I'm coming up for parole. Given what he had told me, I assumed that I would be paroled pretty quickly because I didn't have any tickets, I wasn't causing any problems, I wasn't locked up or any of that stuff, I didn't get any fights, none of that stuff. And that's when I started to learn, people started to tell me that's not really how it works. There's a long waiting list for the programs. And even if you're on a short bit, what the one to seven is a short bit, you're gonna be at the back of the line for getting into the program. And they've got a really long backload. So basically, even though I had no disciplinary actions in the whole time I was in prison, I ended up doing three years because there wasn't enough space in the program. And I know that's true for two reasons. The first reason

Workarounds For Internet And Work

Josh 24:16

is that the minute I got a favorable report after I finished the program, I was paroled. That that tells me that had something to do with it, because nothing else had changed. And the second thing is I was actually going through a grievance procedure that had made it all the way to the ombuds before I got paroled. And they said I had a very good case, and it was based on all this stuff that we're talking about now. But that since I was in the parole process, it probably doesn't make sense to upset them before I get a parole decision. So I got paroled before we continued that process, but it seemed like I was going to get some relief regardless because of the way they'd handled it all. Because they say up front that's not the way it works, but it is actually the way it works.

Jason 24:59

And what you're saying is it had absolutely nothing to do with you or your behavior or the original charge or the sentence and everything to do with capacity.

Josh 25:08

In fact, they made up the reason they flopped me twice. We call when you deny a parole, it's called a flop, at least in Michigan, within the prison within incarcerated people, we call flops. The first time I was both time I was flopped, they said they flopped me because I had substantial drug problems, addiction problems that were going to follow me back in. Now, you have to understand two things about this. The only thing I'd ever said, and the only thing they had in records was in my pre-sentence investigation, I had admitted that in college, and remember at the time I was 42, so college was a long time ago. In college, I had tried marijuana and tried cocaine twice. That was what they're referring to, because I had no drug arrests. I had no so in when I was 18 to 20, apparently that was enough to say when I'm 42, 43, and 44 that you can't release me because I have a substantial drug problem, even though I've never been charged with any drug crimes, never been arrested for any drug crimes, all that stuff. I was talking about addiction. That was just per they didn't know that. I didn't have any record of any of it. So they were they would just make up a pretext for keeping you in there until they could get you with the pre program because by all their metrics and the risk metrics that they're supposed to use, I should have been left out after one year. So, Josh, was the world safer because you were locked up for all that extra time? I can't really say. I think the therapy probably helped. I think the therapy I got because we have it where you have to take six months inside and then six months outside. And the guy that I went to on the outside was actually very helpful and really made a big difference. I'm glad I had those people. I was very lucky to get the therapists I've got because I've seen the other therapists and what they do. Again, a lot of surviving all this stuff is just luck. A lot of people do all the right things and don't have a very good prison experience.

Amber 26:57

There are rays of light in the darkness.

Josh 27:00

I mean, there I was more angered and I think still angered by what I saw happen to other people than anything that really happened to me. I largely a lot of times I'll be on panels or things like that, and people when they get to did you do it or whatever, I always like, I don't

Resilience, Support, And Hard Choices

Josh 27:17

like those kind of conversations anyway, but I'll usually end up saying I'm the only guilty man in Shawshank or whatever, because I did what they said I did. There are a few things that I didn't do that were in my list, but but a lot of things I did do. And after I got my head right, I knew what I was what I did was wrong, and I didn't I don't think it's wrong for me to see consequences for doing something wrong, but that doesn't mean that prison wasn't awful, or that there aren't a million things in prisons that are terrible, or that I think it couldn't be done a million times better if it has to be done at all that way, or that you can't think of better ways to deal with problems than what we do now. But there are some, I don't like a lot of correctional officers, but there were some that I really enjoyed while I was in there, and there are a lot of people who are inside who I like a great deal and still care about a great deal. You meet a lot of very just great people who, you know, bad periods of their life. So at some point you went in front of a parole board? Yep, three times. So if I'd been uh once you come up for parole in Michigan, then it becomes an annual thing, unless there's some crimes where it can be every two years or whatever, but it was an every year thing. So I went in front of them three times. In the third time, did you expect to be I didn't really know, but I had a pretty good idea that something was different because the first two times they talked to me for 45 minutes and asked me a billion questions that really had very little to do with anything. They were just trying to find pretext. And then the third time the meeting was like five minutes long. So I was like, either they've really decided I'm not even worth having a meeting with, or I'm in pretty good shape. And then how long before you found out three weeks or something like that?

Jason 29:01

Three weeks. Three weeks is still a long time. And then what did they tell you? You're gonna go home, you go.

Josh 29:06

I just give you a piece of paper that says you've been paroled, basically. Yeah, just the same thing happens when you get denied. You get a piece of paper that says your parole's been denied.

Jason 29:14

And then how long after that piece of paper did you walk out the doors? It was probably a couple weeks, three weeks. So it was like a five weeks between the time you saw them until you got till you were home. And then when you finally you you went back to that same apartment? Oh no, no.

Amber 29:32

All right, let's walk through that. I see the look on your face.

Josh 29:36

No, in Michigan, there's very few places that'll run to people who are on the registry, very few. Here's another little thing about the DOC that actually get along with the uh the DOC probably better than most in Michigan and work with them on things to help get phone fees down quite a bit. The last couple of years, the last two years I actually was working in Michigan. But there are some peculiarities about their system. So one of the rules is that you can't be in proximity to anyone else who has a felony. That's a violation of your parole or whatever, except when they find a place for you to be housed. And so I'd been helped throughout this entire process by the guy I told you about before, who had similar charges, et cetera, et

From Freelance Writing To Advocacy

Josh 30:19

cetera, et cetera. And they wouldn't let me talk to him. Luckily, he had worked with my parents to find one of the only landlords that does allow people to live there, and he had more or less what you'd consider halfway houses. Everybody has their own room, but the kitchen and the bathrooms are shared. Uh, and you know, not the nicest place in the world, but it's a place. And so I lived there, I actually lived there for seven years, and so that's where I didn't ever live in back in a normal apartment again until So you had, I'm sorry, but you had a room in a house, and it was shared. There was no like staff there, it was just the people that lived there, and they were all formally incarcerated people, a lot of people with different kinds of problems, some people on the registry, some people not. And you were reporting to a parole officer, but not because that the it had to be approved. The parole place had a relationship with that landlord, so it was approved. But everyone who lived there was formally incarcerated, felon, etc. So they have this rule that you can't meet anyone, and I couldn't meet with the person who has actually been keeping me on the straight and narrow, making sure I was doing the right things, keeping I couldn't talk to him, even though he's fully successful, remarried, has a business, all that stuff. But I could live in a house with six other recently released uh people who are struggling at different levels, some of whom got rearrested for cracks, some of whom got rearrested for prostitution, some of them who you know, the logic is a little bit before you were sentenced and the time that you were in prison.

Amber 31:54

What did you know about what it meant to live on a sex offense registry?

Josh 32:01

Well, uh, not a lot. I actually had to register before I went to prison, right after I got sentenced, I think maybe before that. It might have been right when I got paroled, but it was somewhere in there. So I'd been on the registry for a while, at least six-month-ish before I went to pr jail or prison. I learned as much as I could. Like I said, the guy who was mentoring me was also in that situation. So I had some understanding of how all that worked. And then I had been connected with the person at the ACLU, who actually is Miriam, who's been in charge of versus Snyder and all that stuff. And all she said is, You should plea bargain your way out of it. You don't want to be on that thing. Yeah. And I was like, that'd be great, but it doesn't seem to be an option for me. And we've stayed friends, we're still friends.

Jason 32:44

Yeah, so you definitely have uh learned how did it hit you right away? It must have, because then you were in this living situation, and that whole address is on the registry, and you're dealing with that.

Josh 32:57

Yeah, and also I was still on parole, which in Michigan for people on sex offenses is pretty onerous. I was only allowed out five hours a day from I think it's eight in the morning until three in the afternoon, something like that. And only on Monday through Friday. So I had to be in the house all

Breaking Through: Conferences And Campaigns

Josh 33:12

weekend 24 hours a day. Is that because of parole or because you were on the registry? No, that's parole. So there are parole rules and there are sex events and there's registry rules. Yeah. The parole rules for people who have sex offenses are very onerous in Michigan. I had to get permission for pretty much everything I did at some level or another. And really the first time I think it really hit me is my officer would let me go for a walk every afternoon around the neighborhood. And at one point, some kid ran over to try to sell me something, and I pretty much had to run away from the kid. And that was the first time that I really was like, Oh, yeah, this is pretty fucked up. For my French. I don't know if her.

Amber 33:49

And so when you're thinking about like how you were trying to rebuild, right? You're trying to move forward and re-enter back into the community, even with all the preparation that you had done, the supports that you had, navigating the registry and just like re-entering life. How did those onerous parole restrictions affect your ability to work or provide for yourself or have relationships?

Josh 34:19

I was able to figure out a way around pretty much everything in some way, but it was complicated. The way I survived until I started getting hired doing the work I do now was I had a freelance writing business writing web content. And this was something that my brother had suggested that there were sites online where you could connect with people who needed web content and people who provided web content. I forget what the name of the main site was at the time. It's changed since then. But I I the problem with that is I couldn't be on the internet. So, like for instance, when I was home all those times, one of the things I did was play, I had an old Nintendo 64. They said I couldn't play gaming machines. I said, why not? They said, well, because they can connect to an internet, the internet. And I was like, what if I have one that doesn't connect to the internet? And they're like, oh, that'd work. And so I was able to play my Nintendo 64 all the time. But the same thing ended up happening with this. They allowed me to be on the internet only at this place called Michigan Works because it was government computers and there was a room full of people, and there was monitoring on the computers or some kind of something like that. And so what I figured out in talking to my brother's tech guy, we figured out that you could buy a basically a word processor that doesn't have interconnect net capabilities, but can upload to a computer. And so I would get the jobs while I was at Michigan Works, and then I would do the work at home on the word processor, and then the next day at Michigan Works, I would upload all the stuff that I'd get paid for, basically. And so, like, I just most everything I did, I'd just try to find a workaround and get it approved by my officer.

Amber 36:02

And did you do you think that you were able to do that because you were in that mindset of problem solving? Because to be fair, it it must have been demotivating or what

First Step Act And Legislative Wins

Amber 36:14

we see a lot. And I know even I've experienced, and I'm a supporter of someone on the registry, that sometimes when you see a barrier, it becomes very demotivating, and there's a lot of emotion involved in trying to move forward.

Josh 36:29

Yeah, I mean, it is it's all very depressing. You pretty much have to make a decision if you're gonna get up and find new ways to succeed or not get up. But I was gonna try to find, and maybe that's just my personality type. I was gonna try to find ways to make it work. I knew that I wasn't gonna be happy or it wasn't gonna work, not because I have anything against it. I actually used to stock shelves when I was younger, but I just knew that's not what I wanted to do with my life, and so I wasn't just gonna accept any job they wanted me to take. I wasn't gonna go work as a as a uh burger flipper or whatever, right? Not because I have anything against it, I just knew that wasn't what I wanted to do.

Jason 37:08

I think it's really important to highlight, to stop here for a second and highlight the fact that, first of all, it speaks a lot to who you are and your character to be able to say you didn't wallow in I'm not gonna be a debate coach anymore. You figured out what are the things that I can do, and you found a way to make it happen. You talked to people, you found the resource, you made it happen. And as because uh you talk to lots of people, we talk to lots of people who just get stuck, they don't want to do something different, they don't, they just want to keep uh living in the past versus moving forward and figuring out within there's always that there's always that solution somewhere. Like you don't have to sit at home, and so I think that's a great it's a great lesson that people can learn from you, and it speaks a lot to who you are.

Josh 37:57

Yeah, as I say, change is the one constant. And I was pretty sure like a day after I got fired that I was never gonna work as a debate coach again because part of doing that work is being around high school age people and stuff like that, and college-age people, and that's just I don't see a world in which once you're on the registry, consistently being around those folks is gonna be acceptable to anyone and puts a lot of people at risk legally and things

Podcasting Journey And Burnout

Josh 38:22

like that. So why are they gonna take that risk? So I I was trying to find things that would work for what I needed to do to be successful, but wasn't going to put me in a position or anyone else in a position where they would have to explain me being part of what they were doing, or if they did, there was a good explanation for it.

Amber 38:44

So you did that, you were resourceful and found some different ways to to navigate what you weren't navigating. And I I do want to say that support and stability, however non-ideal, right, has a lot to do with that. So again, every single person's journey is different, personalities are different, circumstances are different, barriers are different. And so when we think about a journey, and I've heard you say some things we're just lucky, right? Some things have to do with grit, some things have to do with lucky, some things have to do with things that popped up. So I just want to make sure that anyone listening to this that might be in a hole to know that the main thing is that you were able to imagine something ahead, right?

Josh 39:37

I think the important thing is just to if one thing, one door closes, you have to open another door. You just have to keep opening yourself to possibilities. And you have to know what you need, and you have to be willing to make some tough choice. Like one of the things I did is I chose to, I think about three or four years into living in the place that I was living, I probably could have moved out. But I chose to stay there, even though it was awful, and we could go and die everything from bed bugs to all kinds of stuff. I chose to stay there because A, it allowed me to really build up my credit, and B, I wanted to make sure that the next moves I made were going to be stable moves, and that I was in a place where I could that I would be safe in whatever choices I made.

Amber 40:26

And so I heard you say a little earlier that some of the things that really bothered you maybe were not things that happened to you, but that you saw through the journey and happened to other people. And what we know about you now is that you did some things with that. Tell us a little bit about how you got from doing a freelance writing business to advocacy work and some of the amazing things that you're doing now.

Josh 40:57

Yeah, a freelance writing business where I was writing online content when I was very rarely ever online, which I think that's still one of the things I'm probably more proud of than a lot of other people.

Amber 41:06

It's amazing.

Josh 41:07

And if you if you'll just a little quick, and I can't really say much, but I joked about this at the at the conference you all saw me speak at, too. One of the jobs I had as a freelance writer was writing

On Surveillance, ICE, And Civil Liberties

Josh 41:17

content for a very popular country singer who I can't say because I had a non-disclose with, but I was working nine to five is the joke that I was making. I I actually did pretty well as a freelance writer, which is crazy. I don't really understand why that happened or why anything happens. It's just a thing. But really, again, I think leaving myself open to possibilities and always trying to move forward within the doors that get open for me was really a lot of it. I think the short form is that I was volunteering at a place that did criminal justice reform work. I wasn't getting paid to do it or anything like that. I was just helping them out. I think I was helping write their newsletter. And one day the person who was running that organization put her head out the door and said, Hey, there's this conference in DC. I can't go. Do you want to go for me? And I was like, sure. Because this was after, I think this was right after I was off off paper. And because before then I couldn't travel. And my parole agent was not gonna, she was not the kind of person who was gonna approve me to travel to DC or something like that. And I said, sure. And that's really where it all started. I went to this conference and I said in my head that the two things that I was sure were gonna happen when I was at the conference are I was gonna find a way for everyone to know who I was, and second, I was gonna make sure I met every single person at the conference. And I pretty much did both of those things. I did this weird thing where I figured out that I could position myself to be the it was a big conference and a lot of big people were there, and I could position myself to be the first question that at every single panel. And it got so normal that people were just coming to me at the beginning, and by the and I went to the second exam, that same conference happened the next year, and at the beginning there was a joke, they would just come to me the first time every time. And the question now that would only work if the questions were good, right? So ask really good questions, and then that got everybody interested in talking to me, and then I did meet everyone at the conference, and I got several opportunities out of that. That was also when I started being active on social media, and I think the combination of that and my first organizing campaign that I did in social media a long time ago, there was a government shutdown, and the correct Federal Correctionals Officers Union had gone

Advice: Hustle And Owning The Room

Josh 43:32

crazy about how they weren't getting paid, but people inside were getting their Christmas meals or holiday meals. I remember and so I organized a campaign that ultimately got a whole bunch of people, everyone from Alice Marie Johnson to a lot of people joining in. And we got covered in everything from USA Today to a bunch of other things. And so I think a combination of meeting everyone at that one conference and successfully organizing online broke me through. And so I started to get hired to do things and started to have success in activism. And then just out of the blue, I was yelling at Tom Cotton one day online. The senator from Arkansas. And I even have the screenshot of this. Van Jones from CNN, who is the founder of the organization Cut50, which is now called Dream.org, and Jessica Jackson, who's now the CEO of the Reform Alliance, but was at the time the leader of Cut 50. And they're talking about my tweets about Tom Cotton. And Van says we should either hire this guy or steal his stuff. And Jessica said, I hired him yesterday. And that was pretty much the start of my actual journey in legislative work and messaging. And I worked there as a consultant for a couple of years through the whole First Step Act, which is a bill that passed in 2018. And I think now over 44,000 people have come home as a result of that bill. Excellent. And then I've been part of, I think it's now 32 pieces of legislation that have passed. And the joke I always say is I I've been part of 32 pieces of I'm not the only person, obviously. It's a lot of people in all of those. It's I'm just saying that I've been part of all those bills. And despite that, not one of them has helped me at all. So when I say that a lot of things that moved me were things that didn't happen to me, that's a lot of my work is based in things that don't really have much to do with me. And it's also we're in a situation, all of you probably know it's much harder to get relief for our issues than it is for a lot of other issues. And that doesn't mean that I'm not trying to do those two. It's just that it's

Dream.org Cohort And Closing

Josh 45:37

a lot harder to move those things.

Amber 45:39

Somewhere along the way, you had you carved out time to do a podcast amongst all of those things that you just described. How did that come about?

Josh 45:49

Uh I had one of I was trying to do 20 things at once uh and see what stuck. And one of the things I was doing was writing about television, and I had a blog, and it would be it did okay. It didn't do terrible, it wasn't making me any money, but it would get hits. I think the most popular piece I wrote was a Game of Thrones piece. I think it got something like 75,000 reads ahead. But my main thing was this show called Mr. Robot. And I don't know if anyone knows that show or not, but I was a real early adopter writer about Mr. Robot. And the third the last season, I solved the every season was based around a twist, and I solved the twist in the last season a month before it happened in writing. And so that got me some notoriety, and I got asked to be on a Mr. Robot podcast to talk about that, and so I did, and while I was on that podcast, it went pretty well. And on top of that, I was like, that doesn't seem so hard. I could probably do that. What are the entry costs? And I went and looked, and it was really buying a mic, you had to have a host, you had to have some way to do sound, and that was more or less it. There's some other costs too, don't get me wrong. But it's not a lot of money if you really are if you can do all the little things that need to be done. You at least at that point, it might have gotten more expensive since then. And I just said, Why not? And I'll do it. And I didn't at first it was me and a friend of mine from church, and I was talking about the I was the lived experience person. He was like the Greek choir. And about five episodes in, maybe it's four episodes, his wife got pregnant again. He said, I just can't do this anymore. And I was like, What am I gonna do now? And I reached out to one person, said, Do you want to come on? I'll do an interview. And it was uh, what's her name from the Brennan Center? I don't know why I'm skipping on names. Usually it comes right to my anyway. I'll tell you, it'll come to me in a second. But and she agreed, and I liked it, it went pretty well, and then I just started asking people to do my show. We always started every season on Martin Luther King Day, so it'd been it would have started this next season if I was still doing it, it would have started Monday.

Jason 47:57

So recording the Saturday before Martin Luther King Day, so that's very appropriate that we have you on today. Yeah, you'll notice right behind me on my bookshelf.

Josh 48:06

Is uh I'm a pretty big fan of he's holding a picture of Martin Luther King.

Amber 48:10

Right. That that that's wonderful. And so just for those who aren't familiar, which many people I'm sure are, your podcast was called Decarceration Nation. And you had some amazing different authors and political folks and experts and researchers, and how many seasons?

Josh 48:33

It was seven seasons before I burned out, and then I really burned out. It was just too much work to do all the stuff I was doing in my normal work as uh organizer and as a and in my job, and also doing the podcast, and I just it I was just it's just too much when you're if I'd had a I'm sure you all come into this problem too. Yes, but like the people who do podcasts that like your Joe Rogan's and stuff, they have a whole team that put all that stuff, and he shows up for the couple hours. I was doing all the pre-prep, all the getting the guests, all the promotion, all everything. I had a couple people were helping me. I had one guy who helped me with the website, and one person who helped me with the transcripts, and then Andy, who you all know, Stein, did my sound, and I was very lucky to be friends with him, and he did a great job on my sound for most of the time wanting to kill me because I was very I don't know much about tech, and so a lot of times it was very hard for him to explain to me the things that he wanted me to do, and that would drive him a little crazy. But aside from that, it was a one one-person show, and I did it for seven years.

Jason 49:38

That's Andy from Registry Matters, who has his own podcast.

Josh 49:42

Yes, his podcast was going at the same time mine was for the most part.

Amber 49:46

All right, and so uh we we are approaching the end of our time with you, and we're not gonna go to our last question yet, but when you're thinking about like the journey teaser right there. That's a teaser. When you're thinking about like from the release, from the freelance writing, moving into your advocacy work, what really stands out to you as some special moments in that advocacy journey? I know you often talk very fondly about the first step act and that process. Was that a highlight?

Josh 50:22

Uh yeah, sure. There was a point at which it was almost time for the Senate vote. And Tom Cotton, oddly enough, Tom Cotton again, had put forth a bunch of amendments, and they were on the floor. And I actually had C-SPAN, so I was watching it on C-SPAN, and Dick Durbin got up and read the answers that me and a guy named Alex had written to his amendments. He was literally, you know, to go from being in prison, I was literally living in a halfway house, sitting on a bed. Like I said, we had bed bug problems, we had all kinds of stuff, and someone who is as powerful as a U.S. senator is on the floor of the Senate reading things that I'd written on the floor of the Senate, and we won. That was a pretty you really can have power from wherever you are. And I think a lot of times we forget or don't realize that we do have power.

Jason 51:16

It goes back to your ability to research and communicate and the debate and all that stuff. You talked about being at that conference and meeting everybody, those are that that's your core skill set. And so I I have a question before we get towards that final question, Amber. My question is if we were if you were recording uh The Incarceration Nation now, like coming up now, I imagine you'd probably would be talking about what's happening with ICE. Do you have any thoughts you want to share?

Josh 51:49

Well, I don't really care what political party you affiliate with or who you support, but the idea that we want to give the government absolute unchecked power in the police to create almost total surveillance and to it just seems the opposite of freedom to me. It just seems to me that if you started your journey saying that having the government out of my life is good, and now you're supporting this, I really don't understand where you're coming from because what they're doing is terrible, and it is the opposite of freedom, and it is dangerous on an hourly basis. We're seeing terrible things happening in in Minnesota, across the country, where people are just, for instance, driving home, and because ICE misinterprets what they're doing, they threw flashbag bang grenades in a car window where there's a baby in the back of the car. Now, I went to prison for sending messages to underage people on the internet. They're throwing grenades in a car with children. I did three years of time for what I I mean. That's a crime to me. Like that's uh that's like that's incomprehensible to me. They're putting young people at risk for what did that accomplish? What does this accomplish? What are they doing? All they're doing is trying to make it so they have absolute power, and nobody has the guts to say no to them. And I think it's very important that we have the guts to say no. And from my perspective, I'm not saying I'm out there like rushing at ice or anything like that, but at the same time, I'm not gonna step down from those. What are they gonna do? Worst case, they put me back in prison. I've been to prison. I'm not scared of that. I care. I had more freedom in prison than the way they're treating people right now. And that's just that's just it's not okay. It's not what this country is supposed to be about. All right, thank you.

Jason 54:05

Amber, do you want to ask your final question?

Amber 54:08

Yeah, so first, Josh, thank you so much for coming on and speaking with us today. I know for certain that we could talk to you for hours and have so much to go over and talk about. What I do want to ask you though is if you had one piece of advice for someone who was embarking on a similar journey to your own, which every journey is different, but a similar sort of perspective or story, what might that be?

Josh 54:42

You know, I think you probably heard me say this at the end of the speech that I gave not so long ago, but I think that hustle, and for those of you, anyone listening who's done time, hustle just means the willingness to constantly put yourself out there and try to make things happen for yourself, is much more important than talent. No matter what level of talent, you have to put the effort in to create opportunities for yourself. And that doesn't mean everything's gonna work out or that everything's gonna be rosy or whatever, but if you don't do that, the only way you're gonna succeed is through blind luck. And so I guess that I'd say there are two things. The first thing is you have to walk into every room like you belong there and not walk in like you're ashamed and not walk in like even if they try to make you ashamed, you got to walk in there like that's your room. And the second thing is you always have to you have to be hustling all the time. You have to be pushing to try to create opportunities for yourself. And I'm not saying be rude to people or anything like that. I'm saying you just have to always be trying to find new ways to move what you're doing forward, to find opportunities, to open doors, to open windows. And I think there's so many people in our situation who've done that and no one ever hears about it because there's a lot of people who are on the registry who have been employed for a long time. And that's because they kept on trying until they found the thing that they can. And you it's easy to get disappointed, it's easy to get depressed. I get depressed, but you still got to find ways to pick yourself back up and get out there. And I'm not that's no shade on anyone who isn't doing that. I get it. It's very depressing, it's very scary. A lot of times you're like, why do I even bother? But there are reasons to get up, and there are things that can happen for you, and there is a life you can have. You just have to keep pushing things until you find that life.

Amber 56:30

All right, Josh, thank you. We appreciate your insights and sharing your experience here on Amplified Voices. And are there any things that you want to promote to make sure that we get in the show notes, organization, or a website address, or contact info, whatever it is that you feel you might want to share before we say goodbye?

Josh 56:54

I mean, our model at Dream, I work at a place called Dream.org, and our model is always to build from the grassroots up, and we train people every year at a cohort so that they know all the stuff that we know, and we mentor folks and try to bring them along. Because our goal is to have a million people like me out in the world, not just me. And so every year you need to pay attention to our website and wait for the cohort application to come up. And yes, we have had plenty of people on the registry in the cohort. Obviously, I teach at the cohort and I'm on the registry. That's not to say they accept everyone, it's a long process. You have to go through a lot of in you have to go through a lot of interviews. A decent amount of people make it every year. It's a really good program. And at the end of it, you come out with a lot of skills that you wouldn't otherwise have access to from people who do real organizing and campaign and legislative work on a day-to-day basis. So I couldn't uh give a bigger thumbs up to that part of our my organization's work.

Amber 57:52

All right, and that's dream.org. Is that correct?

Jason 57:55

Yep. All right. So speaking of dream, it's been a dream of ours to have you on our podcast for the longest time. We uh we appreciate you coming and talking with us today, sharing so generously of your story. It's inspirational for me, it's inspirational, it could be inspirational for others. It continued to be. I know it has been and will continue to be for others. And I learned about sneaker, your sneaker collection today. So that was cool. And with that, we're gonna say thank you very much, and until next time, Amber.

Amber 58:30

We'll see you next time.

Outro 58:37

You've been listening to Amplified Voices, a podcast lifting the experiences of people and families impacted by the criminal legal system. For more information, episodes, and podcast notes, visit amplifiedvoices.show.