Kim Kardashian is working to help formerly incarcerated people obtain jobs as part of her involvement with criminal justice reform.
Kardashian appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to promote her makeup line but ended up discussing criminal justice reform, according to instyle.com on Feb. 8.
“I think there’s such a stigma on people hiring formerly incarcerated people,” she said. “There’s so many people that are incarcerated for life. For murder, that maybe they were just next to someone, and there was a group of people, and a fight broke out and somebody unfortunately died.
“But they didn’t even hit the person, didn’t even have a weapon and were serving life,” she said.
Kardashian thinks that people who are pardoned should be given a second chance. “I would love to hire formerly incarcerated people,” she said.
Early this year she visited San Quentin prison, where she talked with men who were sentenced to extremely long sentences, including life imprisonment.
While at San Quentin, she listened to the music of people who committed crimes as juveniles and lifers. This music was produced by the Swedish Grammy nominated music producer David Jassy.
Jassy is a Swedish-born, Gambian-Estonian descendant. He is serving a life sentence for an altercation following an award show in Hollywood.
Kardashian heard about Jassy and the San Quentin Mixtape Vol. 1 through Van Jones and Jessica Sloan of #Cut50. Together Jones, Sloan and Kardashian helped Alice Marie Johnson, a first-time nonviolent drug offender get pardoned by Pres. Donald Trump last summer.
She believes people like Johnson should be given a second chance. Jassy said she shared the same belief about those featured on the mix tape. He said they also spoke about second chances, reentry, and bridging the gap between incarcerated men in the music program and executive producers in the industry.
After listening to the mix tape, “she was impressed, willing to support the mix tape and supported the fact that we don’t use profanity,”Jassy said.
“I could learn something from it,” Kardashian said, according to Jassy.
The mix tapes can be followed on Instagram @ Sanquentinmixtapes.
