Dr. John Irwin passed away at his home in San Francisco on January 3 at the age of 80. A memorial service was held in The Garden Chapel on February 19 to honor his memory and celebrate an accomplished life of a true pioneer and frontline soldier in the struggle for justice.
For those of us fortunate to know and work with Dr. Irwin, he will always serve as an example of what can be achieved by an “ex-con.” John Irwin did not hide from his past; instead he embraced it while using his status as a convicted felon to carve out his own niche in academia, teaching for 27 years at San Francisco State University after earning degrees at UCLA and UC Berkeley. In criminology circles Dr. Irwin is referred to as the Godfather of Convict Criminology in a field of academia consisting exclusively of ex-cons.
I personally became familiar with Dr. Irwin in the late 1990s through my parents’ work on prison reform. When I first heard of this person who was a former prisoner that had accomplished so much I became inspired to pursue a path of education. I was very fortunate to land at San Quentin where I had the opportunity to earn a college degree, and also meet John Irwin.
The educational opportunities that were afforded him as a prisoner were no longer available to prisoners. With the elimination of Pell Grant funding for prisoners in 1994, post-secondary education in prisons essentially came to a halt. Another issue that troubled John was the plight of lifers; that is, indeterminately sentenced prisoners being incarcerated arbitrarily past their eligible release dates for up to decades. This issue was so important to John that his final published work was a book titled “Lifers.”
John was not only interested in helping prisoners. My work with him revolved around educating the public, who John considered the true victims of our current criminal justice system. John would coordinate with university colleagues to bring in classes of students studying criminal justice, criminology, law students, and just about anyone he could get in.
A group of us prisoners would talk with the students. These meetings were not random casual discussions; they were highly organized by John with each prisoner having a role and points to hit on. If we were not on our game John would let us know. Dr. Irwin recognized the importance of communicating to students why their tuition kept getting raised each year while services were being cut. John hammered to us the cause and affect of California’s draconian criminal justice policies and then had us pass along these truths.
Along with John’s advocacy work, he was a family man with a wife, two daughters and a son. He would often share details of his life, vacations he would take, places he had been and activities he enjoyed. I shared with John a love of surfing and would frequently take pleasure in the stories he told of big waves and tropical beaches. So as John takes that last long paddle out it becomes our duty to pick up the torch he carried.