San Quentin News

Written By Incarcerated - Advancing Social Justice

Advocates in Oakland push to end LWOP

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Participants gather after the event for a photo

California has an estimated 5,000 people serving life without parole (LWOP), and their plight is almost never discussed—especially the way the sentence affects female prisoners.

A campaign to drop California’s use of LWOP received a public airing late last year. Kelly Savage, Tammy Cooper-Garvin, Brandi Taliano and Susan Bustamante shared their pain and the trauma of serving a LWOP sentence with a packed audience.

The Oakland event marked the first time the women were able to participate in a town hall meeting similar to one that first created public awareness of their situation. Then-Governor Jerry Brown commuted the women sentences.

Their stories and those of others still imprisoned are described in an audio storytelling project titled “A Living Chance,” released through the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP).

“The event was eye-opening; people really don’t know what LWOP is,” said Laverne Shoemaker, another panelist, whose sentence was commuted. “Once I was in a group of 23 San Francisco police officers, I had to explain and I mean really break it down to them what an LWOP sentence is and what a life sentence is.”

In criminal cases involving “special circumstances” a person may be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole instead of condemned to death in the penalty phase of a trial. The sentence is not restricted only to the person who pulls the trigger, but also to anyone else who was a participant in the crime as well, under California’s “felony murder rule.”

The advocates are fighting to have LWOP eliminated from the state’s penal code. They argue that it is worse than the death penalty, because it is really a living death sentence.

“I was praying that I wasn’t going to get the death penalty,” shared Taliano. “I was praying for LWOP, ironically—it seemed like the lesser of the two. Then I go to [prison]… and my counselor says, ‘do you understand that you’re going to die in prison?’ And it hit me. It literally hit me.”

Shoemaker said she was distressed to discover that many law enforcement officers have no idea what LWOP means, “I was frustrated and couldn’t understand it, because they really did not know. I had to ask them are you guys freaking kidding me? Am I being punked? They were really, like, shocked and flabbergasted.

Drop LWOP group addressing the audience about the struggles and problems they are facing

“I could see the confusion—they were perplexed and had mixed emotions that they could potentially be a part of giving someone ‘the other death penalty,’” added Shoemaker.

“We also needed to bring awareness to intimate partner battering,” Tammy Cooper-Garvin, told SQ News. “When I tell my story it makes me feel better and I pray that I am helping someone.

“There are many layers to my story and I get emotional when I tell my story, because I can still feel that little girl who wanted to be loved.

“I don’t regret coming to prison,” added Cooper-Garvin. “I needed to be incarcerated for that period of time to work on myself, and to show society that I was a changed woman who valued, and respected others, and also valued myself. Taliano and Cooper-Garvin both joined the Long Termer’s Organization, while incarcerated, a group of like-minded people serving LWOP supporting each other. They credit the program for helping turned their lives around.

“Prison taught me how to be a better person, it showed me how to deal with life,” said Cooper-Garvin. “I went to many self-help groups. I wanted to know what was different from me and my siblings. I knew I wanted to change, so I surrounded myself around positive lifers.

“I also knew I was a LWOP and that I had to make a life for myself. I didn’t have a good life in the world but with change I could have a life in prison, so I took full advantage of what CDCR had to offer,” added Cooper-Garvin.

With a second chance at life, the women are taking their stories and plight to Sacramento, lobbying for policy changes legislator by legislator. With support of other reform organizations such as CCWP, All of Us or None, Legal Services for Children and many others, the women are giving their time, energy and resources to change the narrative for all incarcerated and those finishing their sentences and returning home.

“We’re working on things like getting fair wages for all the incarcerated,” said Shoemaker. “We’re also trying to get the gate money raised to $1,000 (currently the funds upon release are limited to $200, unchanged for decades). We’re fighting for things that will make your conditions better in there and make your transition easier in the free world,” added Shoemaker.

CCWP hosted the “Drop the LWOP” event. Adrienne Skye Roberts moderated the affair and has work tirelessly to bring the “A Living Chance” campaign to Californians and legislators through the audio stories, portraits and postcards of the women who are still serving the LWOP sentence.

The newly released women thought they were supposed to die in prison. They felt they were held in bondage and captive to their shame and guilt, but have made that transition for success.

“If I could achieve my freedom anyone can,” said Cooper-Garvin. “It was hard work for me and it will be hard work for you also, but the pay-off is truly worth it.

“We may think people are closed minded about giving us a chance and it is just the opposite— they welcome us with our past because many see the good in us,” she concluded.

Adrienne Roberts examines portraits of female LWOPS

What role does society play in the development of felons?

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Entrance to Pasrchman State Penitentiary in Mississippi

Be it California or Mississippi, when news of suicides, murders or riots reaches any prison population the feeling is always the same: “damn”—if it’s spoken or not. Especially if you’ve been through it or witnessed these things.

Society might think “there goes those violent monsters acting up again.” What is rarely discussed is that we are a product of the society. Most of us incarcerated and are Americans, and America is filled with double standards (we’ll get to that later) and most of the time breeds intolerance.

Black people and others are still suffering under racism, and we don’t have to go back to slavery to see this. Black people can’t BBQ, sell water or lose cigarettes without the police being called. A Black man was even arrested for eating a sandwich at a San Francisco BART transit station platform. We can’t even sit in our own homes without being shot and killed.

Have we ever talked about collective trauma? It’s not just individuals who suffer. It’s whole communities. Our immigrant community is being detained, and kids are/have been separated from their parents—OK, more trauma. Our President even ordered the assassination of a Iranian general using violence in the name of stopping violence.

Have we been raised to be intolerant against any and everyone who is not like us (on both sides)? Has violence been shown as a way to solve our problems? Is this learned behavior?

We witnessed our President say that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight and not get charged. Damn! That’s a criminal threat, or what we incarcerated call a “terrorist threat,” and people in here are doing three to five years, if not a life sentence, for a statement such as that.

During President Trump’s House impeachment trial started by the Democrats—more separation—Trump was alleged to have attempted to strong arm, bribe or leverage—or whatever a good word choice would be (quid pro quo)—to get the Ukrainian president to investigate his rival, excuse me, his possible political opponent, for his own advantage.

Once again, there are hundreds of thousands of people serving long sentences for attempting to do a crime. But what really was most interesting to those incarcerated was how the Republicans, Trump’s “homies” (supporters), kept touting that all the evidence against him was just hearsay. Wait, wait, wait—how many people are sitting in U.S. prisons and jails convicted on hearsay evidence? And I haven’t yet mentioned the venomous call to reveal the name of the whistleblower. Trump’s supporters came just short of calling the confidential informant a “snitch.”

When the smoke cleared Trump was impeached in the House (by his rivals) on “Abuse of Power” and “Obstruction of Justice.”

But, he was acquitted by the majority Republican Senate. Imagine that! a jury of one’s peers. I think most people incarcerated would have loved to have their friends, supporters or homies on their juries. It wouldn’t be hard to guess the outcome.

Now let’s talk about prison violence and reform. When people are sentenced to 800 plus years, what is expected? They have officially written their lives off and wonder what they have to live for or if they will ever see the streets again. Add to that, they are incarcerated in harsh and questionable conditions.

Biden reverses his past position on criminal justice

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Presidential candidate Joe Biden says his history of tough-on-crime legislation that led to mass incarcerations needs changes, The Intercept reports.

With upward of one in every two? families suffering the harms of mass incarceration, “Too many people are incarcerated,” Biden is quoted as saying in the Sept. 17 article.

During his time as leading Democrat in the U.S. Senate, he led a number of legislative actions to increase anti-crime laws.

He supported increased funding to states to build prisons and criticized then-President Jimmy Carter, a fellow Democrat, for not being tough enough on the war on drugs, the story says.

Under Carter the federal prison population actually fell by a quarter, though rising at the state level. A federal program Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) provided resources to states for policing and prisons was being dismantled in the last days of the Carter administration, the article states.

“The American people believe we have waged war on crime and failed. Therefore, they concluded that nothing can be done about it,” Biden said at the time.

Biden worked to shed his party’s image of being soft on crime, reported The Intercept.

“As most old-line Democrats view it, the only ways we can deal with violence will have a negative impact on civil rights and liberties… I think that’s malarkey,” Biden told the New York Times.

A Biden-Thurmond bill would have increased penalties for drugs, expanded civil asset forfeiture, eliminated parole at the federal level, and would have created a drug czar position. Reagan vetoed the bill.

Biden supported the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 that lengthened sentences for many offenses such as 100:1 crack cocaine sentencing disparities.

These new laws led to an explosion of federal prisoners from 24,000 in 1980 to 216,000 in 2013, the article said.

In 1994, Biden pushed through a massive crime bill that authorized more than $30 billion in funding to expand state prisons and local police forces, the story noted.

LA jails become costly mental health facilities

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Sixty percent of mentally ill inmates in county jails are eligible for diversion, but there are not enough facilities to provide supportive care, reported the Los Angeles Times.

Thousands of prisoners could be removed from the criminal justice system, ending the cycle of arrest, release, re-arrest, release and homelessness.

Sending such inmates to a diversion facility would save Los Angeles County thousands of dollars a day in incarceration costs. Individuals can be housed in a diversion facility for $70 a day versus $600 a day for incarceration, according to the article.

Thirty percent of the people in custody each day, about 6,000 prisoners, are either mentally ill or receiving psychotropic medication, according to a study by the non-profit research agency Rand Corp.

The Rand report confirmed an earlier study by the Office of Diversion and Reentry, (OODAR) which attempted to determine how much the county should scale up its community based mental health services.

Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors created the Office of Diversion (OODAR) four years ago. Since then 4,400 prisoners convicted of felonies or ruled mentally incompetent to stand trial have been released, the L.A. Times reported.

According to retired Judge Peter Espinoza, who now directs OODAR, getting such inmates out of jail benefits both their clinical outcomes and the public’s safety.

“Often forgotten is that the vast majority of the people we’re talking about, they’re coming out of jail eventually –either to us or they’re going to be on their own,” Espinoza said.

“And we are satisfied that when they come to us, their outcomes are greatly improved and their recidivist behavior is greatly reduced,” he concluded.

“This makes sense. The outcomes for people will be so much better,” said County Supervisor Janice Hahn, while expressing frustration at how difficult it would be to win community approval for new locations of such facilities.

Other supervisors praised the diversion program but expressed concerns about scaling up to provide additional mental health facilities.

Supervisor Kathryn Barger, the board chair, still remains committed to building community clinics.

“It is all about access to outpatient care, until we do that, diversion is going to fail,” she said.

Facebook and CDCR join to stop criminal activity

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CA-DOCR Badge Patch

Facebook has policies in place to thwart inmates who use their system to harass, threaten or make unwanted sexual advances.

“Access to social media allows inmates to circumvent our monitoring process and continue to engage in criminal activity,” said former Secretary of Corrections Matthew Cate. “This new cooperation between law enforcement and Facebook will help protect the community and potentially avoid future victims.”

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), said that previously it was made aware that a convicted child molester had sent mail to his 17-year-old victim. This mail included current sketches of the girl although the offender had been in prison for seven years, according to an article by CNET News.

“Details of the victim, such as how she wore her hair and the brand of clothes she wore were accurate,” said CDCR.

CDCR’s investigation found that the inmate had a cell phone that he had used view the girl on Myspace and Facebook web pages. The offender then used this access to draw his pictures

As a result of this crime, Facebook’s security team is working with CDCR to prevent inmates from using their “user accounts” to threaten or harrass.

An inmate can have or

possess an account that was created prior to their incarceration. However, Facebook user policy prohibits users from sharing their password so that others can create posts on that account.

“If a state has decided that prisoners have forfeited their right to use the Internet, the most effective way to prevent access is to ensure prisons have the resources to keep smart phones and other devices out,” said Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes. “We will disable accounts reported to us that are violating relevant U.S. laws or regulations or inmate accounts that are updated by someone on the outside. We will also take appropriate actions against anyone who misuses Facebook to threaten or harass.”

Investigation of LAPD falsifying documents leads to larger scandal

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Lady Justice

The elite Metro Division of the Los Angeles Police Department is under investigation for falsifying documents that identify people as gang members, newspaper stories report.

The probe was prompted by a mother who said police improperly identified her son as a gang member. The resulting preliminary investigation uncovered discrepancies between video recording of police stops and written reports.

“An officer’s integrity must be absolute,” Police Chief Michael Moore explained to civic leaders from South Los Angeles who demanded changes. “There is no place in the department for any individual who would purposely falsify information on a department report.”

Metro officers assigned to patrol South Los Angeles are suspected of falsifying data, after interviews with people stopped in the field, and inputting incorrect information about those questioned to bolster statistics, a Jan. 6 Los Angeles Times article reported.

The investigation began after a San Fernando Valley mother received a written notice in 2019 that her son had been identified as a gang member and added to the CalGang criminal intelligence system, the LASentinel.net reported Jan. 23.

Believing her son misidentified she reported the mistake to someone in a supervisory capacity at the Van Nuys Police station.

According to the LAPD, that supervisor reviewed the circumstances, including the footage from the body camera along with other information, and found that the officer’s report did not match up with the facts, the story said.

The mother who first brought this to the attention of the department was notified that her son was misidentified as a gang member and any documentation to that effect would be deleted.

These events led to an internal investigation focused on three officers, but has since grown in the coming months to include as many as 20, LASentinel.net reported.

The office of the LAPD Inspector General uncovered additional false documentation by the same officers, as well as others, the story said.

All the officers involved were assigned to the Metropolitan Division, “Given the serious nature of the alleged misconduct, all involved officers have been assigned to inactive duty or removed from the field,” the story reported.

An investigation by the Los Angeles Times published last year revealed Metro officers stopped African American drivers at a rate five time their share of the city’s population.

LAPD has historically targeted and criminalized men of color; this has to stop, a group of community leaders said during a meeting with Chief Moore, the LASentinel noted.

Those assembled did not mince words when they outlined their concerns, blaming the LAPD and racist cops as the problem, asking that all the officers involved be fired and that the gang data base CalGang be eradicated.

Moore said he was not in agreement with eliminating the gang data base, which was created and is maintained by the States Attorney General’s Office.

He does however want changes to the CalGang protocols, such as changing the way officers document individuals as gang associates and eliminating officers and informants as reliable sources, the LASentinel article reported.

In 2015 the size of the Metro unit was doubled to about 200 officers, to combat a surge in violent crime throughout the city.

Moore said Metro’s vehicle stops had not proved effective, netting about one arrest for every 100 cars stopped, with innocent drivers complaining they were being racially profiled, the Times reported.

The union which represents officers released a statement saying that it was “aware of reports of discrepancies contained on a limited number of field interview cards that the department is looking into.” The statement also said that the union expects Moore “will oversee a thorough and fair process to determine the facts and to also ensure that any impacted officer is accorded his or her due process rights,” the Times article reported.

As a result of the statistics, LAPD announced last fall that it will reduce the number of random vehicle stops, Metro officers will instead track down suspects wanted in violent offenses and use strategies other than vehicle stops to address flareups in crimes such as burglaries and shootings, the story notes.

Attending the meeting were Michael Lawson, president of L.A. Urban League Yvonne Wheeler, labor leader; Khalid Shah, executive director of Stop the Violence, Increase the Peace; Horace E. Frank, assistant police chief, director LAPD Special Operations; Charisse Bremond-Weaver, Brotherhood Crusade president; Abdul Malik Sayyid Muhammad, representative for the Nation of Islam Western Region; Danny Bakewell, publisher of the L.A. Sentinel and L.A. Watts Times.

New San Francisco DA to reform criminal justice system

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District Attorney Forum

Recently sworn in as San Francisco’s new District Attorney, Chesa Boudin has bold plans to reform the city’s criminal justice system.

“Our criminal justice system is failing all of us. It is not keeping us safe,” said Boudin in a recent SF Examiner article. “It is contributing to a vicious cycle of crime and punishment.”

As the head of San Francisco’s investigative division, Boudin said he will form a Conviction Integrity Unit of special advisers to address wrongful conviction allegations and excessive sentencing.

Boudin, a Rhodes Scholar and Yale graduate, ran for district attorney on a platform of reducing mass incarceration.

“There have been debates about how sympathetic Boudin will be to victims of crime, with some questioning if his policies will be empathetic to them, and others arguing that he will stand up for crime victims,” the SF Examiner reported.

We have a shared understanding that “there is a balance between justice and fairness,” said San Francisco Mayor London Breed. “I appreciate that Chesa Boudin understands that balance. We can hold people accountable, and we can make sure there is fairness in our criminal justice system. I am looking forward over the next four years of working with him to do just that.”

Opposed by the San Francisco police union, Boudin who has been labeled a “radical” for his extremely progressive plans.

“Radical simply means, grasping things at the root,” Boudin said, quoting one of his supporters, activist Angela Davis. “For far too long, criminal justice policy has been shaking the trees, when the plant itself has rooted out. The solution lies beneath the surface.”

Boudin views the criminal justice system as failing and points to current tough-on-crime sentencing enhancements, immigration prosecutions, and “illegal searches” after minor traffic violations as problematic.

During his inaugural speech, Boudin told a crowd of public defenders, former mayors, and police brass, “These failures (of our criminal justice system) have led us, as a community, as a nation, to accept the unacceptable. Join me. Join this movement. Join us in rejecting the notion that to be free, we must cage others.”

Boudin is the son of radicals who were convicted for a robbery that led to the deaths of two police officers and a security guard. In his speech, he described visiting his parents in prison as a child. Although his mother was there to hear his speech, his father is still incarcerated.

Speaking of his father, Boudin said, “He taught me that we are all more than our worst mistakes.” And in a spoken aside to his father, said, “Thank you for teaching me about forgiveness and redemption.”

Oakland bans the box for housing

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Ban The Box

Oakland is the first city in the state to ban landlords from using criminal convictions to reject renters applying for private or public housing.

The City Council unanimously passed the Fair Chance Housing Ordinance that prohibits landlords asking about a previous criminal conviction or denying an applicant with such a record.

“This is incredibly timely, given our collective commitment and my personal commitment to addressing homelessness and housing in our city,” said Councilwoman Nikki Fortunato Bas, a co-sponsor of the ordinance.

It is routine for anyone applying to rent an apartment to have a background check conducted and often people with criminal convictions are denied. This makes it difficult if not impossible for a formerly incarcerated person to find housing, the Bay Area News Group reported.

Wayne Rowland, president of the East Bay Rental Housing Association expressed concern about the new ordinance.

“As rental housing providers, we have responsibility to provide a safe environment to residents, and a huge part of that is knowing the background of each applicant,” Rowland said in a written statement.

San Francisco and Richmond have similar ordinances, but those measures apply only to subsidized housing. Berkeley City Council is poised to vote on a similar ordinance banning tenant background checks, with similar measure being proposed for Emeryville and Alameda County, the story reported.

A supporter of these type ordinances, Margaretta Lin, executive director of Just Cities, said landlords still have access to credit reports, references and employment information – all things needed to determine if an applicant will make a good renter.

The Oakland ordinance does not apply to single-family homes, duplexes, triplexes and in-law units if the owner is living on the property. Roommates seeking to replace a roommate can use background checks to exclude a potential tenant.

A landlord can still look up a prospective tenant on the states sex-offender registry, but only after providing a conditional offer to the potential renter.

The new ordinance also exempts owners of government subsidized affordable housing like Section 8 to continue to use criminal background checks to comply with federal law. At this time, federal law requires landlords to reject potential tenants who have been convicted of manufacturing methamphetamine or are on a lifetime sex-offender registry.

Oakland can fine landlords up to $1,000 for each violation of the ordinance.

USC Law Professor fights to give lifers a second chance

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Law professor Heidi Rummel fights to give thousands of men and women a second chance—many of them sentenced decades ago to life-terms for crimes committed as youths.

As co-director of the University of Southern California’s Post-Conviction Justice Project (PCJP), Rummel teaches and leads a team of certified law student interns. They represent incarcerated clients in courtrooms and parole boards throughout California.

“I fell in love with the work,” said Rummel. “I first started working with women at CIW [California Institute for Women] back when no one was going home.

“We’d take these women to the parole board and hear their stories, and I could see for myself that they were just amazing human beings—truly amazing people.

That’s when Rummel started to realize the systemic hurdles she was up against statewide. The legal battles weren’t simply case by case—there was fierce legislative advocacy work that needed to get done.

“You can’t just keep denying people parole forever—based on their crime,” she said. “That’s essentially LWOP [life without the possibility of parole].”

Together with Elizabeth Calvin of Human Rights Watch, Rummel committed herself to “heavy policy work.”

They came and sat side by side with KidCAT members for the first time at a San Quentin symposium in 2012.

Original KidCAT member Nou Phang Thao remembers the impact Rummel made.

Rummel with Elizabeth Calvin and artist Ruben Ruiz

“Heidi’s an exceptional person,” he said. “I’ll never forget hearing her say she believes every child who commits a crime—any crime—deserves a second chance.

“That meant so much to me—to know there was someone out there who believes in us, even before we learn to believe in ourselves.”

Calvin and Rummel spent hours listening to the stories of youth offenders, who, at the time, faced little hope of ever getting released.

Since then, PCJP has co-sponsored or authored almost every juvenile justice reform bill in California.

Thanks to Senate Bill 9, SB 260, SB 261 and SB 394, youth offenders sentenced to LWOP and life-term sentences are now allowed the chance to appear before the Board of Parole Hearings (BPH) after serving 24 years.

“These laws recognize that young adults should be treated differently,” said Rummel.

When Rummel spoke to KidCAT about her experience as a parole attorney for PCJP, the guys half-joked with her that she should represent their fellow member, Gary Scott, who was approaching his first BPH.

“She took down his information and promised us she’d do it,” said Thao. With Rummel’s guidance and support, Scott was found suitable for parole later that year.

PCJP’s co-director Michael Brennan currently oversees students working to get Thao successfully through his own BPH difficulties.

“The best piece of advice Heidi gave us was ‘Do not buy a cell phone,’” said Thao. “Man, later I had to write her a letter apologizing for getting caught with one.”

Rummel holds workshops at prisons all over California to help youth offenders who never believed they’d be offered any legitimate chance at freedom prepare for their BPH.

Because they thought they’d be locked up for the rest of their lives, many of these youth offenders spent much of their incarceration not caring at all about positive programming or rehabilitation.

“They never thought about parole,” said Rummel. “At the higher security prisons, they simply had no access or exposure to anything but violence, gang activity and substance abuse.”

Rummel mentioned one of her clients, Ruben Ruiz. Involved in gang activity from the age of 13, Ruiz entered the prison system with LWOP for a murder committed when he was 17.

Despite his record of violence and illegal behavior behind bars, Ruiz became eligible for parole and earned his release—with Rummel’s help—in 2017.

And after 25 years of incarceration, Ruiz became one of the men who returns to prison with the PCJP workshops.

“These guys need to share their experiences with each other,” Rummel explained. “We bring them together in our workshops so they can open up and see their own vulnerability.”

Bringing formerly incarcerated LWOP and life-term youth offenders face-to-face with their currently incarcerated peers might be the most powerful component of the workshops.

“It’s amazing when they see someone who survived the process and was able to go home,” she said. “They can’t believe this is true until they meet one in person.”

One incarcerated participant met Ruiz and called him a “unicorn”—something people talk about and hear stories about, but never see. Rummel brings these unicorns into prisons to show the real possibility of second chances.

“She’s one of those unsung heroes who does so many things that impact so many other people,” said Anthony Ammons, a KidCAT member and one of Rummel’s PCJP clients at San Quentin.

Sentenced to 102 years-to-life for crimes committed when he was 16, Ammons had his sentence commuted by then Gov. Jerry Brown in 2018 and appeared before a BPH panel in 2019.

Rummel visited Ammons several times to prepare him for the board’s scrutiny.

“She gave me the confidence to start believing in myself,” said Ammons. “Just having her tell me that she believed in me—that helped a lot.”

But when Ammon did face the BPH, they issued him a three-year denial.

“Heidi was so angry when she heard the decision,” he said. “I think she was even angrier than I was at the time.

“That made it a whole lot easier for me to feel okay with what happened.”

Rummel wants all her clients—and, really, anyone going before the BPH—to have a firm grasp on what they’ll be required to speak on.

“There are three questions you need to answer—simple questions with really difficult answers,” she said. “What did you do? Why did you do it? And how have you changed?”

In the workshops and one-on-one visiting sessions, Rummel and her team encourage the deep introspection necessary to achieve full accountability and honesty.

“Fully own your part and understand your crime,” she said. “What was the impact? What was the harm? The board already knows, more or less, what you did.

“They’re trying to figure out, ‘Are you going to do it again?’ There’s always the assumption—right or wrong—that if you don’t know why you did it, you’ll most likely do it again.”

Rummel says it’s ultimately about understanding the choices one made and being able to take responsibility for those choices.

“What happened while they were growing up?” she continued. “Why did they have a gun, join a gang? Was there some underlying shame that led them to commit their crime?”

When Rummel sits down with her clients to prepare them for the board, she never lets them skirt around these issues.

“She made me see my crime and really myself from a clearer perspective. Now I understand why I did what I did,” said Ammons. “I can connect all the pieces that contributed to my thought process at the time, my belief systems.

“Having the eyes of an ex-prosecutor, Heidi catches everything—and calls you on it. Nothing slips past her.”

Rummel chuckled at what she called her “deep dark secret.”

“I was a federal prosecutor for the first half of my career,” she said. “And, I felt good about my work as a district attorney. We prosecuted a lot of hate crimes and police misconduct.”Rummel spoke fondly of her time working with Eric Holder in the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

“At the beginning under [President] Clinton, we were taking over a very Republican office,” she said. “Holder always told us, ‘If you don’t think it’s just, go to the next level. Go to me.’

“I’m not going to say I did it perfectly, of course. But, I like to say we were fighting for justice.”

Calvin and Russell recently went to Sacramento to voice their opinions at an Assembly Public Safety Committee hearing on Jan. 14.

Two proposed bills, AB 665 and AB 1641, aimed to bring back LWOP sentencing for juveniles and demolish the Youth Offender Parole process.

“The committee voted them down, so those bills are dead,” said Rummel. “Last year, it didn’t even reach a committee vote.

“But there’s a lot of interest in Sacramento right now to roll back the gains we have made.”

NFL players identify an urgent need to transform the youth justice system

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“Youth of color are more likely to be targeted in the school-to-prison pipeline…”

Criminal justice reform has becomes a key issue in the 2020 presidential race, but some National Football League players say the candidates are not addressing the urgent need to transform the youth justice system.

“Our work with young people has made it clear that youth justice reform is critical to tackling mass incarceration and advancing equity,” Carl Davis and Anquan Boldin are quoted in the Des Moines Register in December of 2019.

Davis is a defensive tackle for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Boldin is a former wide receiver. As members of the player’s coalition, both men dedicate their time to working with youth and promoting both social and racial justice.

Davis and Boldin say the future of America requires someone with the vision and courage to transform the youth justice system.

Today more than 2,000,000 people are incarcerated in prison — a stark contrast to the less than 200,000 in the 1970s. According to a 2017 report by Vera Institute of Justice, the rise in the population was largely due to Criminologist John J. Dilulio’s 1995 prediction that there would be an explosion of juvenile super predators.

This prediction caused wide spread panic and caught the attention of then First Lady Hillary Clinton, ushering in a wave of intensified policing and harsher sentencing.

Over the past 20 years Dilulio’s prediction has been largely debunked as a myth. He retracted much of what he said, but a lot of damage was done. States like California locked up thousands of youth—mostly minorities.

“Youth of color are more likely to be targeted in the school-to-prison pipeline and to be punished more severely than their White peers, despite having the same rates of delinquent behavior,” Davis and Bolden wrote in the Register.

Too many youth are often sent to adult court and sentenced to prison where they face abuse, solitary confinement, and over use of restraints.

Davis and Boldin are of the opinion that presidential candidates should commit to reducing youth incarceration and closing youth prisons. They should also encourage, gubernatorial candidates, assembly persons and city councils to get involved.

Candidates should commit to removing young people from adult courts, jails and prisons which increase the likelihood they will re-offend. Federal authorities should also hold states accountable for using harmful practices like solitary confinement, say Davis and Bolden.

They say young people should be set-up for success upon re-entry. Their record should be sealed or expunged. They should be provided educational and employment opportunities, and youth voter registration should be encouraged. Young people and their families should have a seat at the table during policy decisions so they can use their personal experience to help others.

“In our work with children and youth, we have seen firsthand just how much they have to offer their families, their communities, and this nation,” Davis and Boldin are quoted. “It’s a win for all of us when we give them a real shot at success.”

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