Sep 8, 2026 · 54 min · 13 segments
In early August of 2026, Just City launched a campaign to remember and honor the 68 people who died in the Shelby County Jail since 2018. We wanted to tell their stories and make them known to the…
Scott HechingerGuestLaramie WheelerHostAnd that also kind of really shows like in real time the gap between how the public thinks something goes and how it actually goes and that gap.
Do you have any thoughts on that gap? I mean, there's so many people who are like, oh, I watch Law & Order or I saw this on the news and they think that that's it because they think that it's true.
And then we're all over here going, this is so not true and here's the harm that it's doing.
I mean, I think the gap is huge and I think it's important to not only recognize the gap, but recognize sort of why the gap's there.
And part of me, I get frustrated and angry with people sometimes, but I'm like, I have to remind myself that like, really since birth, We are, as a society, at least in the United States, like met with a complete lie about how the criminal legal system works.
I realized this from birth to present because I have an 11-year-old and I remember the realization and it even like went over my head that Paw Patrol was actually copaganda.
And beyond that, to like arrest someone beyond that, it was like, Who are they arresting every time? They're arresting the one kind of person that is very rarely held accountable, like the powerful white mayor of whatever town they were in.
But really, we're met with, from Paw Patrol all the way to Law & Order, met with a very different in a saturated way, met with a different version of reality.
And so we are not forced to, but we just grow up thinking that police solve crime, that the only solution to get to a place of public health and safety is police prosecution in prison, that the court... doles out things fairly, that the right results ultimately wind up happening, and that things are fair.
But on a base level, when we're talking about that decision about, you can talk about a lot of decisions, but that decision about bail.
What people imagine also about arraignments is what they see in those rare sensational outlier cases when there's someone that shows up, first of all, in a black SUV.
And they walk in, and then they walk out of court, and then the case proceeds.
But the reality is just hundreds in a given corporate at a time, but tens of thousands across the country every day are just sped through the system with very little time.
A decision is made about whether you're going to be locked up pretrial solely because you can't afford to buy your freedom.
or released, and it's the most consequential part in any case, because very few cases go to trial.
And that also kind of really shows like in real time the gap between how the public thinks something goes and how it actually goes and that gap.
Do you have any thoughts on that gap? I mean, there's so many people who are like, oh, I watch Law & Order or I saw this on the news and they think that that's it because they think that it's true.
And then we're all over here going, this is so not true and here's the harm that it's doing.
I mean, I think the gap is huge and I think it's important to not only recognize the gap, but recognize sort of why the gap's there.
And part of me, I get frustrated and angry with people sometimes, but I'm like, I have to remind myself that like, really since birth, We are, as a society, at least in the United States, like met with a complete lie about how the criminal legal system works.
I realized this from birth to present because I have an 11-year-old and I remember the realization and it even like went over my head that Paw Patrol was actually copaganda.
And beyond that, to like arrest someone beyond that, it was like, Who are they arresting every time? They're arresting the one kind of person that is very rarely held accountable, like the powerful white mayor of whatever town they were in.
But really, we're met with, from Paw Patrol all the way to Law & Order, met with a very different in a saturated way, met with a different version of reality.
And so we are not forced to, but we just grow up thinking that police solve crime, that the only solution to get to a place of public health and safety is police prosecution in prison, that the court... doles out things fairly, that the right results ultimately wind up happening, and that things are fair.
But on a base level, when we're talking about that decision about, you can talk about a lot of decisions, but that decision about bail.
What people imagine also about arraignments is what they see in those rare sensational outlier cases when there's someone that shows up, first of all, in a black SUV.
And they walk in, and then they walk out of court, and then the case proceeds.
But the reality is just hundreds in a given corporate at a time, but tens of thousands across the country every day are just sped through the system with very little time.
A decision is made about whether you're going to be locked up pretrial solely because you can't afford to buy your freedom.
or released, and it's the most consequential part in any case, because very few cases go to trial.
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