Imagine being one of the more than 200,000 people in America sentenced to life in prison. And then, after decades behind bars, laws are changed, your sentence is shortened, and the parole board approves of your release. You become tasked with re-entering society, finding stable housing, employment and a healthy social life.
These are things that everyone seeks, formerly incarcerated or not. But for people who’ve spent time behind bars, and more specifically the people who were serving life sentences – the lifers – these challenges can be insurmountable.
To the many lifers released early in California in recent years, their prison record is like a scarlet letter following them wherever they go – a different sort of life sentence.
Last month, photographer Brandon Tauszik and I published the multimedia documentary project, Facing Life. The Pulitzer Center-backed project follows the paths of eight people who served decades behind bars, mainly as lifers.
All eight have been recently released, due to a decades-old supreme court ruling, changed California laws and improved individual behaviors, as well as connections to advocacy groups championing the causes of incarcerated people. Most of them were given a $200 debit card upon leaving the prison gates, directions to a halfway house to live in for six months and a parole officer to check in with. Beyond that, they had their connections to friends and family, but a question remains unanswered for them: who is there to ensure their successful return to the community?
The eight people hail from across California, have spent time in different prisons, and they all represent a small part of the state’s huge prison population – the second largest in the US, a country that incarcerates the most people in the world.
In 2011, the US supreme court ruled in Brown v Plata that health conditions within California’s overcrowded prisons were a violation of people’s eighth amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment. At the time of the case, the state’s prison system, which was designed to hold roughly 85,000 people, was housing 156,000 people. The state was ordered to decrease its prison population by a minimum of 46,000 people, with the target population of 137.5% of the capacity the system was designed to hold, or a max of roughly 110,000 people behind bars. The state later passed a handful of laws and made efforts to reduce the population in its facilities.
The Covid-19 pandemic further forced prison officials to attempt to create space within the state’s overcrowded prisons by releasing people, moving people to other facilities and slowing the intake process. In 2020, the state’s prison population dropped by more than 27,000 people, the largest ever one-year dip in the state’s prison population.
But even with these changes to laws, “realignment” efforts, closures of prisons and more, the prison population – which finally dropped to about 102% capacity, or just over 95,000 people at the end of 2021 – has recently begun to rise once again.
As of 11 May, the state’s prison population is currently at 113% of its designed capacity, or 97,074 people in a system supposed to house nearly 85,330 people. That’s an increase of 579 people since this time last year, and more than 270 people since just last week.
In California, as is the case in most states, people of color – specifically Black people – are overrepresented in prison populations. As of March of this year, Black people accounted for 29% of the state’s prison population, but only 6% of the state’s overall population.
The legacy of mandatory minimums and the war on drugs, coupled with the three strikes law, which advocates are currently fighting to overturn, are still impacting communities in California – inside and outside of prison walls.
The state is currently experiencing a push-and-pull when it comes to theories on what justice looks like. On one side of the coin, there’s the “tough on crime” approach, and on the other there is the “restorative justice” ethos. This is a battle that’s reflected in prisons, communities and legislative sessions all across the country, according to Alexandra Bailey, campaign strategist for the End Life Imprisonment campaign at The Sentencing Project.
Bailey said it was clear that this country’s carceral rate hadn’t improved public safety and falls severely short of adequate solutions. She believes being reactive to tough on crime legislation is imperative to keep the US from moving backward, but it is important to push for progressive laws.
“This is not working. Mass policing. Mass incarceration. Mass supervision has not worked, so we need to move on to something else,” Bailey said. “This is not solution-oriented, this is punishment-oriented. And we have already spent as much money as anyone else in the world on punishment, to no avail.”
Several Second Look bills, which would allow people who are incarcerated for long periods of time to apply to a judge to determine whether or not continued punishment is necessary, are making their way through the legislative process in a number of states, including Oregon, Vermont, Washington and Virginia.
It’s a mechanism to gain release, added Bailey, whose main focus is serving those sentenced without the possibility of parole (LWOPs). She is often asked: why them?
Bailey brings up the example of Jamie Meade, who was recently featured in The Sentencing Project’s report, Felony Murder: An On-Ramp for Extreme Sentencing. Bailey said Meade is incarcerated for the commission of a crime, meaning he wasn’t the person who pulled the trigger.
“He’s serving a life without parole sentence, and during that time he’s gotten a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and is currently working on [another] master’s degree in the Chicago Theological Seminary,” Bailey said, adding that the program made alterations to allow him to participate.
And then there’s Susan Brown, another person serving life without parole. While she was pregnant her former spouse stabbed and sexually assaulted her. Brown was later convicted for killing him during that attack, Bailey said, adding that Brown is also an extraordinary artist.
The number of people serving life sentences is staggering. About one out of every seven people behind bars, over 200,000 people, are serving life sentences, according to a 2020 report by The Sentencing Project. In California’s state prisons, about 33,000 people are serving life sentences, according to this report by the Public Policy Institute of California. Add to this discussion that former lifers have a recidivism rate of about 1%, and the picture becomes even more clear.
“If we really believe that people need to pay a penance to society, sitting in there really doesn’t make our society better. Them being out here and taking people off of that bad path – that’s what we need from them. And that’s why we should focus on the lifer population,” Bailey said.
Facing Life was made possible with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. On 11 May, Alexandra Bailey hosted a panel discussion with Myra Burns and Fahim Reese, two of the eight people from Facing Life. They were joined by the creators of the project, writer Pendarvis Harshaw and photographer Brandon Tauszik. To view this discussion, click here. And to view the full project, visit Facing.Life.
