Meet the Expert: Jaspal Bhatia

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Jaspal Bhatia works with the AIR Equity Initiative, where he leads the Public Safety and Policing grant portfolio and supports the Educational Equity work. Prior to AIR, he worked at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the Pew Charitable Trusts.

POSITION: Program Officer, AIR Equity Initiative

EXPERTISE: Public safety, justice systems, youth justice, education

YEARS OF EXPERIENCE: 12
 

Q: What piqued your interest in a career in justice and equity?

Jaspal: My interest in equity and racial justice stems from navigating the contours of my own multiracial identity. I grew up in the state of Georgia as a light-skinned guy with a full Punjabi name—my dad grew up in India, and my mom is white from South Georgia. I often heard, “What are you?” and my name got constantly butchered. I understand what it’s like to have multiple identities, and how that affects one’s experience of different facets of life. 

In high school, I was part of the Georgia Department of Education’s Student Advisory Council, which selects students from across the state to represent their counties. Being part of the council opened my eyes to the resource disparities between my well-funded county and some of my peers in the Deep South. That really reinforced the idea that identity has significant policy implications and ultimately led me to racial equity and justice work. Early in my career, I realized how deeply related justice is to all other systems, like education, voting, health care access, community development, and so on. By focusing my efforts there, I thought I could have a far-reaching impact for folks with marginalized and multi-marginalized identities. 
 

Q: What is the most common misconception about how criminal justice works in the U.S.?

Jaspal: Sometimes, people believe that there’s a silver bullet—some immediate, powerful response—that could fix our existing system if we just had the will to implement it. 

My personal and professional lives recently converged in an interesting way. I’m live in Washington, D.C., which has experienced a surge in youth-instigated crimes. In my own alleyway, my neighbors unfortunately experienced carjackings and vandalism. Some neighbors were adamant that we should crack down on these youth, saying they should be “locked up.” After these incidents, I petitioned for a vacant seat on my local Advisory Neighborhood Commission, where I’m trying to share my expertise and promote alternatives to policing and incarceration that lead to truly thriving communities.

The evidence tells us that youth incarceration is also a terrible return on investment for public safety outcomes. Like my neighbors, people often want an immediate response to crime; they want punishment. That may feel good in the moment, but it actually creates more destructive outcomes, including exacerbating mental health disorders, food insecurity, housing instability, poorer health and school outcomes for their children, and more. Instead of amplifying police presence in the streets and increasing the size and number of jails, we could devote those resources to the systems that help communities thrive, like education, access to health care and meaningful jobs, and so on. It’s not a silver bullet, but it would be much more effective in the long term.

Q: At AIR, you manage the AIR Equity Initiative’s justice portfolio. What are your goals for this body of work?

Jaspal: We have two main funding streams; the first focuses on the present. How do we improve the existing justice system? How do we reduce the harmful effects of policing on communities? The second focuses on the future. How do we start funding a transformation in our criminal-legal system? What are new and emerging models of safety that we can evaluate, options that will help communities thrive?
 

Q: Can you share one example from each funding stream?

Jaspal: It’s hard to pick just two—we fund so many worthwhile projects! But I’ll mention our Justice Equity Fellowship, which brings individuals who’ve been directly affected by the justice system to AIR as colleagues on our justice-related projects. This initiative is a big step toward meeting our goal of engaging more diverse voices. At the same time, it has huge potential benefits for the justice projects themselves because the individuals who are closest to the inequities are informing how we invest in the solutions. 

Another great project is Equity Measurements for Accountability to All People in Policy Solutions. Its goal is to support states in understanding how communities of color have experienced drug policies and help them align their drug-policy spending strategies with restorative justice. Many, many people have been incarcerated for the use of marijuana. Right now, several states are expanding the legal cannabis market, which creates a lot of economic opportunities. This project aims to figure out how to reinvest in communities and individuals that have been most harmed by marijuana-related incarceration.
 

Q: The AIR Equity Initiative has published a wide-spanning essay series, covering integration, equity, housing, health, and many other topics. How did you choose which issues to include? 

Jaspal: In the summer of 2022, we wanted to capitalize on the public’s interest in the resegregation of schools. We hoped that advancing new and reinvigorated approaches could attract new funding, research, and advocacy for integration efforts—especially with the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education in May 2024. We invited a diverse group of stakeholders, including policymakers, school leaders, advocates, researchers, and student leaders, to submit short essays on the topic. We did not want to be too prescriptive with the call; we didn’t want to limit the content with our own imaginations. Just as we hoped, the essays we received covered a diverse range of disciplines and sectors—from early learning to housing and transportation policies.

A primary goal of the AIR Equity Initiative is knowledge translation. We’re very proud of the essay series, but we also acknowledge that it’s quite dense and technical. To help make the essays more accessible, we worked with a graphic artist to develop visual depictions of each chapter of the essay series, which we’ve turned into a coloring book. We’re always thinking about how we can disseminate information in new and interesting ways, that will reach lots of potential audiences. 
 

Q: Where can we find you on a typical Saturday?

Jaspal: I’m usually at a workout class—HIIT or yoga—or playing tennis. Then I might grab coffee with a friend, and then host a dinner party or check out a new restaurant. Working from home has taken a toll on me, so I make a concentrated effort to get out of the house and be social on weekends. 
 

Q: What book would you suggest anyone read?

Jaspal: I recently read The Radium Girls, by Kate Moore, which is nonfiction but reads like a novel. It follows female factory workers who worked in radium-dial factories during World War I, painting watch dials and radios. They literally licked the radium paint in order to create fine-tipped dials—ingesting radium in the process. At first, these girls were glowing, and everyone thought they were beautiful; the jobs were well-paid and coveted. But of course, they started to experience terrible health impacts from radium poisoning. The factories denied that the work was toxic, and the women couldn’t access necessary treatments. But these horrible events ultimately led to the enactment of many of our current industrial safety standards.