Inspiration from ACE Interrupters in Great Britain
Iain Smith – the revolutionary Criminal defence lawyer, Keegan Smith Defence Lawyers, Livingston During the spring of 2018, Iain Smith’s friends were growing increasingly concerned about his eccentric behaviour. Iain, a Scottish criminal defence lawyer, had recently stumbled upon some research on childhood trauma and how it affected development of the brain. “They thought I was mad and that I was having a mental breakdown,” he says dryly. “One of my friends texted me to ask if I was feeling okay.” The evangelical zeal with which Iain was broadcasting his new knowledge also bemused his colleagues in the criminal justice system. “They would think, ‘This is a bit odd, you’re a bit odd’ – I sensed that from judges and I still sense it from judges.” To some extent, his friends and colleagues were not far off the mark. Iain had undergone something of a conversion. He describes his discovery as a genuine lightbulb moment. The scales fell from Iain’s eyes in March 2018 – he had found himself in an education centre in Wester Hailes watching James Redford’s documentary, Resilience. The film explores the science behind adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and the long-term effects of toxic stress on the brain and the rest of the body. After the screening, it dawned on Iain that the ACEs research was applicable to his own clients – young men and women whom he regularly defended in the law courts for drug charges, breaches of the peace, petty theft, assault and other such offences. “This is about my clients who are not only the perpetrators of crime but actually the victims of neglect, of crimes to some extent, like being abused,” he says. “And this was an explanation as to why these angry, resentful, anti-authority young people would creep into my world and often stay there.” Most “… Addiction wasn’t would re-offend and almost none overcame their drug addictions. “As it really the issue – the issue turns out, addiction wasn’t really the issue – the issue was the trauma, was the trauma …” what was hiding underneath and how they coped with it.” The research on ACEs provided a missing piece in the puzzle. For years, Iain had assumed his clients were following in the path of parents and grandparents, ground down by poverty and the communities they lived in. Now there was a more complex explanation. He realised his clients may have been stuck on a path of self-destruction since childhood, their brains biologically affected by their dysfunctional upbringing. “Their stress response is such that they would rather medicate themselves on heroin to take away the trauma they suffered [which] is more logical than saying, ‘I’m going to copy Mum and Dad’.” This new knowledge did not sit well with Iain. “I felt for 25 years I had failed the people I thought I was trying to help,” he says flatly. “I never felt they were bad people, but I thought there was an element of choice… whereas now I think a lot of it is not controlled.” As a young lawyer, Iain trained at a prestigious Edinburgh law firm before deciding to set up his own partnership, Keegan Smith Defence Lawyers. He grew up in Livingston and was the first person in his family to go to university. From a young age, he took a keen interest in human nature, often wondering why “nice children” in his class sometimes bullied the other kids. “People become criminal lawyers because they care about people,” he says. “They care about people who are the most marginalised in society, the downtrodden, the homeless, broken people, people who are 7
