Redirected Lives

Background

Most educated Americans are acquainted with the fact that their country has a severe mass incarceration problem¹. At the rate of 583 per 100,000, the United States has the largest per capita incarcerated population of any nation on earth².

Better late than never, there does seem to be a current uptick in the United States of interest and activity around criminal justice reform, including prison reform. Prison reform assumed a new level of meaningful advancement when the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, announced, in March of 2023, his initiative—The California Model—to transform the prisons under the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation along the lines of Scandinavian-influenced approaches to incarceration explicitly grounded in philosophies that privilege rehabilitation over punishment. For its initial demonstration project, the California Model set its sights on a thoroughgoing transformation of the infamous San Quentin State Prison (built in 1852).

Preferential Bias

While there is so much regarding prison reform that urgently needs to be addressed, the proposed project seeks to steer clear of contentious philosophical debates, particularly with respect to notions of prison abolitionism.  Rather, the proposed project has an intentionally circumscribed focus on the low hanging fruit associated with the broken parole system in state prisons. The focus of the proposed project is the parole release of every currently incarcerated person who (a) no longer deserves to be imprisoned by virtue of equitable administration of justice or (b) no longer needs to be imprisoned for reasons of public safety. The latter, of course, would be by virtue of a demonstrated level of achieved rehabilitation.

Implicit Theory of Change

1. Rehabilitation is the optimal, let alone most humane, pathway to preparation for and successful return to community, as materially expressed through parole release
2. To achieve the desired rehabilitation outcomes, the adoption of prison policy favoring rehabilitation must proceed in tandem with system-wide strategies of pragmatic measures to scale that policy up, across carceral institutions
3. To accomplish this degree of change, publicly elected officials (especially at executive levels with particular emphasis on the gubernatorial level) will need to experience clear and convincing levels of support and consent from their respective electorates to move decisively in this policy direction
4. In order to generate the level of public support necessary to manifest as political will to move prison reform toward rehabilitation, considerable historic barriers must be overcome. There is a pervasive and longstanding animus in public opinion regarding the trustworthiness of the incarcerated. This extends to an entrenched skepticism regarding the genuineness of the remorse expressed by incarcerated persons as an integral aspect of their rehabilitation efforts.  Large segments of the public continue to suspect that the rehabilitation of incarcerated persons is fake; that such claims to rehabilitation behind bars is merely another “con,” the connivance of an indelibly criminal personality. Therefore, to create the kind of significant change in public opinion that elected officials will have to rely on to reset prison policy in a rehabilitative direction, the public will need to be convinced that rehabilitation in a carceral context is a “real” and enduring phenomenon.
5. The proposed effort, therefore, is geared to changing public sentiment by providing the public with persuasive evidence to help them appreciate the reality of radical personal transformation made possible, pointedly, through prolonged and determined rehabilitation striving.
6. A secondary gain of the proposed project will be to generate awareness of—and spark motivation to meet—the need for greatly increased rehabilitative programming within every carceral institution. An eventual scaling up of rehabilitative programming is also seen as a strong benefit in that it would provide an excellent source of employment for formerly incarcerated individuals.

The Proposed Project

working title  Redirected Lives: Voices of Carceral Rehabilitation

• This project is envisioned to take the final form of a book of curated first person narratives— highly specific in detail—by currently or formerly incarcerated persons (domestic and international) about their processes of rehabilitation within a carceral context. The narratives will concretely reveal the inextricably individual character of the rehabilitative arc of radical personal transformation: the hows; the inflection points; the moments of flashed insights; the epiphanies; the contributing microevents; the formative relationships and dialogues; education and programming; critically helpful books and resources; stages in a cultivated awareness of and alignment with a transforming selfhood; etc.
• The narratives will be accompanied by a chapter on the psychology of rehabilitation in a carceral context.
• There will also be an introductory chapter presenting an overview of all the selected narratives
• Regarding “ownership” of the project: With the exception of the chapter on rehabilitation psychology, the project should be driven by the energies and instincts of either currently or formerly incarcerated persons, and informed by their collective lived experience and accrued wisdom
• The widest possible distribution of the book should be sought and secured. The launch of the publication would include a distribution plan (gratis) to all CA Legislative Assembly members.

Who Am I Pitching To?

This project, as currently conceived, is necessarily a big lift, one that is dependent on intensively collective activity. To have the optimal chance of being realized, the project will need to roll out with a widely distributed aggregation of stakeholders and with a widely distributed elaboration of functional roles and responsibilities. Consequently, I am pitching to anyone and everyone—all comers. The goal is to broadcast the project into the etheric universe and see what comes of it. In this manner, I am trying to reach and pitch to anyone who might feel moved to put themselves forward to be:

• a creative contributor or participant of some kind (e.g., writer, editor, book designer, web designer, social media specialist, literary agent, videographer, filmmaker, etc.);
• a financial backer, sponsor, or nonprofit partner (could include publishers and foundation officers to fund project costs, including publishing, focus groups, and conferencing, or to provide project management, project incubation, web hosting, social media coverage and curation, etc.);
• an institutional host;
• a collaborator of any sort, especially individuals with natural synergy with the project and individuals inclined to be catalysts of the process that will bring the project to fruition;
• an ally; a booster/promoter/cheerleader/fan; a moral support;
• “buzz” generators and low-level influencers operating out of a nodal position within a unique social network.

Everyone who reads this pitch document automatically has the idea of the project embedded in their consciousness and thereby seamlessly becomes a latent supporter, activating that potential whenever they share this pitch document with someone else or, even, just tell another person about it.

Be a Part of the Project!

Anyone with an interest in learning more or, especially, in collaborating to help realize the aims of the project described in this document is encouraged to contact me at dr.etmargolis@gmail.com

1.  See, e.g., Michelle Alexander’s 2010/2020 book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
2.  https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#slideshows/slideshow1/1