In this episode of news World. Reform Alliance is a coalition of philanthropists, activists, bipartists and experts, advocates and policymakers working on common sense solutions to transform the criminal justice system and probation and parole with the goal of dramatically reducing the number of people trapped in the criminal justice system and significantly increasing the number of people moving from supervision to work and well being. I'm really please welcome
my guest and good friend, Jessica Jackson. She is a remarkable pioneer and has made a huge difference in the lives of people. She's joining today to discuss the U Belong program they just launched for Second Chance Month. Jessica, welcome and thank you for joining us again on newch World.
Thank you for having me on.
You know, I think people be very anteresoed. Can you share a bit of your own personal journey, What drew you to the work of criminal justice reform and how did that experience shape your mission at Reform Alliance.
Yeah. I first became invested in this work about twenty years ago when my former husband and father of my first child was incarcerated for a drug related offense. In Georgia. That was a shock to me. I saw the failures of the system up close, and I saw that he never got the addiction treatment that he needed while he was inside, and that he actually struggled to find work when he was released, despite having been an electrician prior to going into the prison and working the entire time
he was in the prison. He had a parole violation at one point that was basically a paperwork mix up by the sheriff's office that sent him back to jail for almost two months and completely derailed all of the progress that he had made. So, you know, at first, when he went into prison, I thought, gosh, there's been a terrible mistake. They must not realize that, you know, they've sent this man who's a wonderful father and son and employer and not a danger at all to society
into the prison. But then I came there for a visit and I looked around and I saw that there were so many families just like mine that were in the same position, and that millions of Americans actually had a story similar to mine. Because there's more than one hundred and thirteen million Americans that have had a family member who are incarcerated and about seventy nine million Americans who have a criminal record.
But meanwhile, before you go on, I just want to make sure that our audience understands how truly remarkable you are and why. From the very first time I met you, I just thought working with you was a great privilege. You were a high school dropout with a two month old daughter, and when your husband goes to jail, you go to school, and you end up graduating both from college and from law school. You're pretty remarkable.
Well, thank you. You know, I think I was blessed in the fact that I didn't realize how tough the journey would be, and frankly, it gave me a purpose. I knew that I was in a position to do something about the system, and that I had a duty to do. So.
How did you find the internal strength raising a daughter, going to school? All that must have seemed like a real mountain to climb.
Yeah, it was. And I remember when he actually got sentenced. We didn't know he would be sentenced that day. We thought we were just going for, you know, hearing, and he ended up taking a plea and being sentenced in the same day. And I brought my daughter, and he drove a big four to f two point fifty. At the time, I couldn't drive it. I was a small car girl. So he drove us to the courthouse in Gwinnett County and Georgia, and I remember I was carrying
our two month old daughter. We go in and they had the proceeding, and I really didn't understand what was happening. All I knew is that suddenly the bailiff came up next to him. I heard him say he was guilty, and I heard the judge accept the plea and then they said remanded to custody. And the bailiff came up to him and he handed him his wallet and his phone and his wedding ring and he just turned around and blew me a kiss. And that was it. And so now I'm standing there and I'm holding car keys
to a truck. I can't even drive home, and it was just so overwhelming. I remember going to the bathroom and I'm trying to nurse my daughter and I was looking down at her and my tears were just falling on her face. And I remember just thinking, oh my god, what am I going to do? How am I going to provide for us. And it took me a couple months, and then I realized I wanted to go to school
and I wanted to get it done. And my mom made kind of a checklist for me, like, you need to go to college, you need to take the l set, you need to go Aloft school, you need to take the bar. And I just focused on putting one foot in front of the other and just getting it done.
It's a remarkable story, and I can personally attest that you came out of it all as a remarkable person. Part of your career has been a passion for the Reform Alliance and the work it does. Talk about the Reform Alliance, how it came together, what it's trying to do.
Yeah, so I'm incredibly proud of all the work that we've done here at Reform Alliance. You know, we focus exclusively on making communities safer by improving our supervision system. Probation and parole actually make up the largest segment of our criminal justice system, twice the number of those who are incarcerated, and yet nobody is really advocating for changes
to that system. In fact, so much that it's become a major driver of incarceration, with about forty two percent of our jails and prisons being filled with people who committed a violation of probation or parole. And sometimes those aren't even new crimes. In fact, a lot of the time is just a technical violation like the one that they thought my ex husband had done with not reporting.
So ultimately this ends up compromising our public safety because so many resources are going into this system which could otherwise be spent on preventing crimes, solving crimes, treating the really serious crimes, making sure they're supervising people who really need it. So we set out at Reform Alliance to bring change to the system, and of course it started
with one person. It started with artist Meek Mill, who was a big rapper in Pennsylvania who had been convicted of a crime when he was eighteen and had been on probation for his entire adult life, about twelve years at that point, and he had a judge who was
a real stickler. She looked for ways to send him back into prison, and at one point he received a technical violation because he had broken up a fight at an airport and he had popped a wheelie on his motorcycle in a music video, which apparently is not legal. So she said, you know what, You're going back to prison, and she sentenced him to two to four years in prison. But luckily for meek Mill, he had some very powerful
friends and they pulled together and ran a campaign. I was honored at the time to be a part of it, and were able to actually get him out. They spent about seven million dollars on getting him out right. And the kicker there is that later the underlying crime that he had been sentenced for and the reason he's on probation in the first place. He was actually exonerated for. So he was innocent and just placed on supervision for
this whole time. But when he came out, he did something that I think surprised a lot of us, and he said, listen, I could go on tour and keep making music, and I will do that, but I also feel like I need to do more and I need to help the men and women that I left behind. And so he pulled everybody together and we have the most unlikely board, everybody from Bob Kraft to Michael Rubin to jay Z Meek Mill. He pulled everybody together and Reform Alliance was born.
That's an amazing story. How long have you been with Reform Alliance?
So I like to say I was here pre Reform Alliance, since I worked on the campaign to Free Meek, but I've been here since its inception, which was January twenty third, twenty nineteen. I started out as our Chief Advocacy Officer, so overseeing all of the policy work, all of the organizing work. And I was named CEO last year in August.
And you all have been both effective at the federal level but also at the state level. And I want to start at the state level. Now. I think passed twenty bills in twelve different states, and you just passed two major reforms in Virginia and Maryland. Can you give us a flavor of what you're doing.
Yes, And I will say we also had another win in Virginia just Friday night, So we've now passed twenty one bills in twelve states. Very exciting. So we just passed two major reforms in Virginia and Maryland, both of which had strong bipartisan support, which you don't see on
a whole lot of issues these days. They also had an incredible coalition, so people on both sides of the aisle, business leaders, faith leaders, community leaders that came together along with the backing of law enforcement and said that they felt strongly these changes needed to be made to the system. There So, in terms of what our bills do, they offer people who are on supervision, probation or parole a way to earn their way off sooner by taking life
changing classes or working or seeking treatment. If they have any mental health or substance abuse issues, they can earn credits that help them get off of probation and parole sooner.
This is both in the interest of the individual but also really in the interest of the community, because what we've seen is when people are getting their education, when they're working, when they're getting the mental health help that they need, that they're actually able to turn their lives around and are way more likely to be successful and become employed, tax paying citizens than people who just come out and don't have those kind of programs available or
aren't incentivized to do those programs. So it's really in the interest of public safety, which I think is why you saw such a broad support. We also work to make sure that the conditions that are placed on people actually bear a rational relationship to the crime that was committed. For example, right now, if you were to shoplift in some states, you might get a long list of conditions when you're put on probation that include things like you
can't be in the presence of alcohol. Well, that means that you can't go to mom's house on Christmas Eve if she's going to have a glass of wine without being in violation of your probation. Right Or you might see a condition that says you can't open a bank account or take out a loan, So how are you going to get that car to get you back and
forth to work. So we work to make sure that the conditions that people do have on them while they're on probation or parole are actually ones that are in the interest of public safety and ones that make it manageable and don't just create a trip wire for people to go back to prisons in jails.
Partally I'm struck with is that we've inherited a system that grew up randomly in all fifty s in the federal government, and which was a very control oriented system rather than a success oriented system. It put lots of power with the parole officer in a way which could be abused, and it put a lot of things that in abstract makes sense until you get into the real world,
and in the real world they're nuts. Talk just from it about the gap between the possibilities of a really effective system and how in many states it's still mired in thirty and forty year old attitudes that actually make it more likely people will go back to jail.
Yeah, and I think it goes all the way back to the beginning of probation and parole. In fact, back in the eighteen hundreds, there was a man who convinced one judge instead of incarcerating someone, to let him take them under his wing and let them work with him, and that he was going to guide them. I think they had a bit of an alcohol problem. He was going to help them turn their life around. And that
was really the foundation for probation and parrole. It's supposed to help people get the resources and get the mentorship that they need. It wasn't until the seventies when it took a turn and became more of a corrections model itself. And that was for a myriad of reasons, but one being that probation officers themselves wanted to be classified as law enforcement and that would mean better benefits and more pay.
But that also meant a real change in the culture, a real shift in the culture of probation and parole officers. So you started having more people from law enforcement and fewer people with counseling backgrounds who had initially been called to the work because they wanted to help counsel people and mentor them into their new life. So even the word supervision, right, no adult wants to be supervised, they
want to be supported. So it sets people up for this situation where there's so many people who are on probation.
The caseload numbers are absolutely insane. When we talk to probation and parole officers, that's often the first thing they say to us is I wish I didn't have this many cases on my caseload because then I could actually focus on the individuals who need help, or then I could take the time to help somebody find housing or help somebody find a job, as opposed to just violating them when they haven't magically been able to find it on their own. So it's really important that we change
the culture of probation. And there's some good organizations out there that are working on this. I know the American Probation and Parole Association where I've spoken a few times. They're doing a lot of work with the probation officers and parole officers to make sure that they have the
resources they need. But you also need the legislative changes, right, and that's where reform steps in because we're able to work and decrease some of those caseloads by creating these incentives, by creating early termination programs, and that way you see the caseloads shrink and people can focus a little bit more on those individuals and get them the help that they need. But there's still a lot of work to
do on the culture. And I think you nail it right on the head when you say, you know, these are antiquated attitudes that they've got. I'm hoping that with some of the technology improvements that we're able to see a more rapid shift in the culture.
Right.
What if you can give everybody who's on probation a tablet that helps them with an AI assistant who can help provide mental health support, can help them find a job, can do a skills assessment, right, figure out what their next steps should be to get into a real career, not just a job, but a real career with some actual economic mobility, or even just helping them find housings.
So I'm hopeful that technology can rapidly advance the shift in culture and reprayori tize helping people who are on probation and parole succeed versus just trapping them and sending them back.
One of the experiments we should be trying is to just use smartphones so that when somebody on parole has to check in, they don't have to leave their job, lose a half day's pay, et cetera, to go to
a physical point if there was a way. And again, with a GPS feet you're on the phone, you can know where the person's calling from, so if they're actually calling from work, they shall be able to check in at minimum disruption, which maximizes they're keeping the job and also minimize the time it takes for the parle.
Officer right one hundred percent, And think how stigmatizing that is for somebody who's on probation or parole. Here they are at their job. Let's say they're out working in an open bay in an office or working in a factory, whatever it might be. Currently probation officer would show up there ask the employer, you know, where is so and
so have to walk over there physically check right. That isn't a good system, and it probably discourages the employer from hiring somebody who's on probation and parole in the future. And then you've also got, you know, on the flip side,
if they don't go to their place of employment. A lot of the time, people on probation and parole are required to go down to the office, and that can be hours and hours out of their workday that they're having to sit on a bus, go sit in a crowded office, sometimes without any notice because of random drug testing, and then make it back to work. And by then the employer is put in a hard position, especially small
business owners. We hear from them a lot that they can't hire somebody who's on probation and parole because they can't afford to have an employee who has no notice have to leave the job and not come back for hours.
One of your great successes was President Trump embracing the whole concept of the First Step Act, and really I think having his eyes opened to being a very positive force in this area. Can you talk a little bit about the first step practice up, but also how you managed to get Trump to adopt what's really a remarkably reform oriented position.
Well, first and foremost, I'll say it took a whole village. It took incredible coalition, yourself included, to get him to adopt this issue. But I think President Trump's leadership on this issue shattered the false choice between being tough on crime and or supporting sensible reforms that dramatically improve an outdated system. It's absolutely a model for conservative led criminal justice reform that actually enhances public safety. And you know,
it wasn't just other people that were shocked. I think being a Democrat from the Bay Area, I was at that point mayor in a very blue city in the San Francisco Bay Area, Mill Valley. You know, I don't think that I ever anticipated working with President Trump. I'd done a bunch of work with you in the past few years prior to that, But when Jared Kushner called over to Van Jones and said, Hey, I have an issue that I think we might be able to work
together on, I was shocked. And you know, I'll be honest, the left at the time was not very open to people within the Democratic Party working across the aisle with that administration. And I was very concerned what was going to happen for Van and even for myself if we went to the White House and worked with the Trump administration. And I remember I talked to Van about it. I approached him and I said, you know, do you really
think this is a good idea? And he said something that stuck with me for a very long time, and he said, listen, Jessica. At the time, there were one hundred eighty thousand people in federal prison. He said, Jessica, there's one hundred and eighty thousand people that he's got in the palm of his hand. And I can't be worried about what people are going to say on Twitter, because my worst day on Twitter is better than anybody's best day in prison. And we need to make some
changes if we can. And so we did, and we went to the White House, and you know, we worked with conservatives, and since then, many conservative governors, state legislators, lawmakers in the House and the Senate have kept the ball moving forwards. So it wasn't just the First Step Act, which by the way, has helped about seventy thousand Americans
behind bars. It had a trickle down effect across the country where the next year after the First Step Act was passed, you saw about thirteen First Step Act bills introduced on the state level. You even saw on the local level leaders starting to look at how they could reduce the cost of jails in their communities and bring people home in ways of to what we had done in the First Step Act. And a lot of law
enforcement leaders as well had joined us. So it's absolutely amazing what was able to happen, and it took a whole village, but it couldn't have happened without President Trump's leadership.
You coined a great phrase at one point, you said, tough on crime can mean smart on solutions. Yes, I
just think that is a fabulous explanation. And of course, the First Step Act reduced recidivism going back to jail to nine point seven percent compared to fifty to eighty percent, which means there are thousands and thousands of people who, because the system has been improved, are working, paying taxes, being citizens, being with their family who before the First Step Act probably would have ended up going back.
To jail absolutely. And of that nine point five percent, about four percent of them are people who are being sent back just for technical violations. And that's where reform had kind of an ah. You know, We've done a lot of work on the local level, We've done a lot of work on the state level. We've even done international work. In fact, last year we passed the first resolution in the United Nations Human Rights Council on reentry
and creating social reintegration guidelines for member States. But we hadn't done anything on the federal level yet. And it wasn't until I saw that report on the First Step Act to come out and I realized what a large percentage. I mean, that's almost half of the people being returned.
We're just being returned for technical violations. So we saw a real opportunity to continue building on the great success of the First Step Act and these smart on crime reforms that we'd been doing at the state level, and update our severely outdated federal supervision system with the Safer Supervision Act, which is legislation that we have worked on for the last three years on the federal level that's about to be reintroduced into Congress that would bring some
of those same evidence based, data driven reforms to the federal supervision system.
Describe the whole notion of the Supervision Act and what it will do, and again it's in the bipartisan tradition of bringing people together.
Yeah, So, Congress had originally established the federal supervision system to help high risk people safely return to their communities after serving long terms in federal prison. Crucially, supervision was meant to only be applied where it was absolutely deemed
necessary for public safety. But somewhere along the way, that distinction was lost, and federal supervision is now being applied in almost every single case, which means they've expanded the system to a completely unmanageable and by the way, very
expensive size. So the probation officers that we have spoken to are just absolutely overwhelmed, and in some jurisdictions they manage caseloads that are more than double what's recommended by the best practices, meaning they're not able to actually spend time with the individuals they're supposed to be supervising. And so that's why we've seen law enforcement leaders join this bill.
Last year, we introduced the bipartisans say for Supervision Act, which builds on the proven principles and evidence based public safety policies like earn Time Credit that are in for a Step Act and that have been such an incredible success. So we're hopeful to get it introduced again here soon.
Like I said, it's got huge support on both sides of the aisle, and huge support across the country because you've got people coming home all across the country that are facing these incredibly difficult circumstances that are being imposed by the supervision that they're on, that are making re entry very difficult and ending up resulting in them being sent back to federal prisons.
Part of what you've done to get people more involved is you've launched an initiative called You Belong. What does that mean.
Yes, so we've been working with organizations all across the country. You Belong as another piece of that. So oftentimes you'll see that people who are on supervision don't feel like they have a voice in their community. They feel ostracized, they feel stigmatized, they feel like they're left out of their community because they're dealing with so many different circumstances that the average person isn't. In fact, they're dealing with so many more circumstances than a person who has a
criminal record that is not on supervision. Right, Like, they can't leave their jurisdictions. So let's say you live in New Jersey and there's no jobs in the town you live in, but you're able to find employment in New York. You can't leave your jurisdiction without specific permission, and sometimes you can't get that permission because it becomes harder to supervise you. So you're locked out of an employment opportunity. Or let's say you find a job, but it's working
the third shift. How do you make that work when you have a curfew of your probation of six pm? Right, So there's so many different circumstances that people are dealing with because of their supervision that the average person is completely unaware of. And we wanted to send a message to people who are on supervision. And again, this is about three point six million people across the country, it
was about four point four when we got started. We wanted to send a message to them that they do belong in the community, They should be a part of the community. They do belong in jobs, they belong in housing, they belong in their families, and we're going to work alongside them to make sure that they have the opportunity to do so.
How can people get involved with reform and with the You Belong initiative?
Yes, they can go to the Reform Alliance website Reform Alliance dot com. They can also follow us on social media on Instagram or Facebook, they can find the Reform Alliance. We are constantly asking our members to take an action to be a part of the movement. Especially with this
federal bill. We're going to need everybody across the country to join us in this fight and to make sure that their members, their representatives understand that they care about this issue and they don't want to see resources being spent on locking people up just for being late for a meeting, or not being able to pay a fine, or not being able to find a job right away, but that instead they want to see these resources being spent supporting people and getting them back on their feet
and giving them meaningful opportunities to show that they are ready to come off of supervision and be in society completely. So we are asking everybody to sign up, become a reformer, join our List Reform Alliance dot Com.
Part of all this is involved in Second Chance Month. What does second Chance Month mean?
So April is the National Second Chance Month. It is an opportunity for people to reflect and think about our values as a country, and we do believe that people deserve second chances. In fact, one of my favorite moments at the White House last administration, President Trump held a prison reform summit and he brought tons of people to this prison reform summit, and I showed up. There were about seventy men and women who had been incarcerated. Now,
of course you had no idea who they were. At one point, one of the speakers did stand up, and I remember seeing some of the cabinet members who were there. Jeff Sessions was there at the time. Their jaws dropped because here's this little red headed grandmother, Sue l and Allen, who had been incarcerated, who had been speaking to standing
up saying she had a criminal record. And Toabeka sam an African American woman and faith leader from New York standing up, and it was just shocking how many people who had been walking around the room had actually been really impacted. And I remember President Trump standing up and talking about second chances, and this was the April Second Chance Prison Reform Summit, and I remember him saying, you know, it's not just about a second chance. Sometimes it's a
third or fourth chance. But it's about giving people an opportunity to show that they have rehabilitated themselves and that they can be tax paying, successful members of society, and that this is a core value to America, really making sure that everybody can achieve the American dream.
You are accomplishing remarkable things both at the federal level and at the state level, and in helping educate all of us. I'm very honored to know you. I think you are a genuine heroin for the intensity and the effort you put into saving people, literally saving lives, and I want to thank you for joining me. Our listeners can find out more about the work you're doing at a Reform Alliance by visiting your website at Reform Alliance
dot com. And I encourage people to go to your site and watch the video about Adam Clausen and how he's rebuilt his life. Because our goal here is to get most people, unless they're extraordinarily violent and dangerous. We want people who happen to have done something wrong, to be reintegrated into society, to lead complete lives, and to have a remarkable future at you, Jessica, are a key part of that process.
Well, thank you so much. It's an honor to be on and it's been an incredible honor to learn from you over the last ten years. And you know, I'm just so grateful for the opportunity and for all the work that you've done.
Thank you to my guest, Jessica Jackson. You can get a link to Reform Alliance on our show page at Newtsworld dot com. News World is produced by gager Street sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnseie Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at
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