The latest News & Blogs written by staff, incarcerated colleagues & community members
NowThis Exclusive: Formerly Incarcerated People Question Elizabeth Warren About Ending Mass Incarceration
In August, a group of formerly incarcerated people, including our Co-Executive Director Adnan Khan, met with Presidential Candidates to discuss justice reform. NowThis captured a part of their conversation. Watch the video here.
String Of Fatal Overdoses At Lancaster Prison Points To Urgent Need For Treatment On The Inside
We are grateful that this important issue is being highlighted. We work with the incarcerated men inside Lancaster Prison and they desperately need help and attention. This is happening too often. Read the entire article [...]
Anticipation
By James King "They're coming in the morning." No need to ask who. In prison, "they" are the guards, and since we'd been on lockdown for five days at the time, it was also obvious [...]
A”dap”ting to Humanity
By Adnan KhanWhen I was in Corcoran (a “level 4” maximum security prison), strict racial politics existed on the prison yard. Races were divided into different sections of the prison during yard time. The division [...]
Preparing For the Parole Board
By James King When I first arrived at California State Prison-Lanscaster, with a fresh thirty year to life sentence, the older guys on the yard gave me a piece of advice. Get into self-help groups, [...]
Looking, and Seeing Too
By James King At breakfast, I sit at the front of the chow hall near the front door. Two correctional officers stand near the door and watch every one who goes in or out. One [...]
Paying My Debt
By Adnan Khan When I committed my crime, I realized I owed a debt to society. And in order for me to pay that debt, I was told to do two things, serve 25 years [...]
Changing Times
John, Sha, Emile, 2018 was a really good year. Tim, Earlonne, Muhhamed, Corey... I remember, when I first arrived on a maximum security prison yard in 2005, I never saw one person go home during [...]
Can We Work this Out?
By Adnan KhanI spent my first 12 years in different prisons that offered little or no programs, groups, or classes. For more than a decade, my days consisted of going to work, going to the [...]
Is San Quentin State Prison the Future of Prison Reform?
By James King I hear it all the time. “San Quentin is unique,” “If only we could take what’s happening here and reproduce it in other prisons,” blah, blah, blah. You know what? That was [...]
“Cell” Phones
By Adnan Khan I’ve known Ben for about four years now. He’s very social, a clown at times but stays to himself or his small circle of friends for the most part. Ever since I’ve [...]
One Day, Two Stories: The Same Yet Different
A couple of weeks ago I awoke to two news stories of senseless murders. According to the first report, Samantha Josephson, a young female college student, was kidnapped and murdered when she mistakenly jumped in [...]
The Next Willie Horton
“All it takes is one” is what I keep hearing. I hear those words echoed all throughout society, from local electeds to those in the highest halls of power as I advocate for change in [...]
Restoring R. Kelly?
Recently, a friend slid me a copy of an op-ed about R. Kelly written by Dream Hampton, the creator of a recent docu-series about the famous singer, entitled Surviving R. Kelly. In her op-ed, Ms. Hampton takes note of what she perceives as a contradiction from the women...
Seeking Change in an Unchanging World
Unless something changes, youth minister, self-help facilitator, violent offender, Fanon Figgers will never go home. Fanon grew up in Los Angeles, in a home with two older brothers and a single mother. At some point [...]
Why Rehabilitative Programming is Failing
A January 2019 report by the Auditor of the State of California found that there is no difference in recidivism rates for people who take advantage of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Cognitive Behavioral [...]
Friends: How Many of us Have Them?
In 2005 I arrived on a maximum security yard for the first time. After my conviction, the State of California had designated me as a maximum security threat primarily because of the length of my [...]
Blurring the Past and Present
Recently, I helped organize a forum that brought together currently and formerly incarcerated people, legislators, and reform advocates. The goal of the event was to assess the effects of recently enacted sentencing reforms, and show [...]
Young, Earnest, and Criminalized
I first met Nazhee Flowers when I was working as a teaching assistant for a college prep English class. Naz was twenty at the time and showed many of the contradictions you might expect from [...]
Light v. Dark
For as long as anyone can remember, a battle has waged in prisons, jails, and other incarcerated spaces between light and darkness. Not in the metaphorical, moral sense, but in the literal sense. Incarcerated spaces [...]
Let The Game Begin
The question almost always comes up around this time of year. First, the volunteers pause, as their inward struggle plays across their face. Is this question appropriate? Will asking it make him uncomfortable? Slowly, they [...]
Discipline and Consequence
I don’t like prison; not for me, not for anyone. I imagine that probably sounds pretty cliche. Whaat!? A convicted felon who wants to do away with prisons? Shocking, I know. Here’s the thing, it’s [...]
Racing Backwards: Part II
In a previous post, I wrote about racial politics in California state prisons and the hardened racial divisions that characterize incarcerated interactions. In California, members of most races are not allowed to share cells, showers, [...]
Racing Backwards
I will never forget the first time I was exposed to racial politics in California state prisons (politics is the term incarcerated people in California use to refer to our unwritten social rules.) It was [...]
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