May 11, 2025 • 31 mins
Newt talks with Jessica Jackson, a leading advocate for criminal justice reform and CEO of REFORM Alliance. They discuss REFORM’s mission to transform the criminal justice system, particularly probation and parole, to reduce incarceration rates and improve reentry into society. Jessica shares her personal journey, which began with her former husband's incarceration, and highlights the systemic failures she witnessed. REFORM Alliance, founded with the support of high-profile figures like Meek Mill, Jay-Z, and Robert Kraft, aims to implement common-sense solutions that enhance public safety and support individuals transitioning from supervision to productive lives. They discuss the success of the First Step Act, which significantly reduced recidivism rates, and the upcoming Safer Supervision Act, designed to modernize federal supervision practices. Jessica introduces the "You Belong" initiative, encouraging community integration for those on supervision, and emphasizes the importance of Second Chance Month in promoting rehabilitation and reintegration.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
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
(00:28):
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,
(00:58):
welcome and thank you for joining us again on newch World.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
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
(01:35):
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
(01:58):
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
(02:20):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
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
(03:03):
college and from law school. You're pretty remarkable.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
How did you find the internal strength raising a daughter,
going to school? All that must have seemed like a
real mountain to climb.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
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
(03:51):
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,
(04:13):
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
(04:36):
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
(04:57):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
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
(05:43):
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
(06:03):
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
(06:25):
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
(06:46):
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
(07:07):
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,
(07:28):
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
(07:49):
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
(08:09):
most unlikely board, everybody from Bob Kraft to Michael Rubin
to jay Z Meek Mill. He pulled everybody together and
Reform Alliance was born.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
That's an amazing story. How long have you been with
Reform Alliance?
Speaker 2 (08:24):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
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
(09:41):
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
(10:04):
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
(10:26):
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
(10:47):
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
(11:07):
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
(11:29):
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
(11:50):
to go back to prisons in jails.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
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
(12:14):
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
(12:35):
in thirty and forty year old attitudes that actually make
it more likely people will go back to jail.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
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
(13:03):
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
(13:24):
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
(13:48):
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
(14:08):
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
(14:29):
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,
(14:53):
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
(15:13):
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.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Right.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
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.
(15:52):
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.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
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
(16:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
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
(16:58):
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
(17:21):
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
(17:42):
can't afford to have an employee who has no notice
have to leave the job and not come back for hours.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
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
(18:26):
reform oriented position.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
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
(18:51):
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
(19:11):
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
(19:32):
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
(19:54):
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
(20:17):
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
(20:40):
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
(21:01):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
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,
(21:36):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
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
(22:09):
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.
(22:31):
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
(22:52):
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.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
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.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
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
(23:34):
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
(23:57):
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.
(24:19):
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
(24:39):
entry very difficult and ending up resulting in them being
sent back to federal prisons.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Part of what you've done to get people more involved
is you've launched an initiative called You Belong. What does
that mean.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
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
(25:14):
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
(25:34):
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,
(25:58):
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
(26:20):
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.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
How can people get involved with reform and with the
You Belong initiative?
Speaker 2 (26:41):
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
(27:03):
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
(27:25):
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.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Part of all this is involved in Second Chance Month.
What does second Chance Month mean?
Speaker 2 (27:49):
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
(28:10):
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
(28:31):
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
(28:53):
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
(29:14):
that this is a core value to America, really making
sure that everybody can achieve the American dream.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
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
(29:43):
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
(30:07):
have a remarkable future at you, Jessica, are a key
part of that process.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
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
Gaglishtree sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll
(30:50):
go to Apple Podcast and both rate us with five
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what it's all about. Right now, listeners of Newtsworld consentive
for read free weekly columns at ggristhree sixty dot com.
Slash newsletter. I'm Newt Gingrich. This is Newtsworld.
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
(00:28):
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,
(00:58):
welcome and thank you for joining us again on newch World.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
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
(01:35):
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
(01:58):
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
(02:20):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
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
(03:03):
college and from law school. You're pretty remarkable.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
How did you find the internal strength raising a daughter,
going to school? All that must have seemed like a
real mountain to climb.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
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
(03:51):
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,
(04:13):
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
(04:36):
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
(04:57):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
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
(05:43):
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
(06:03):
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
(06:25):
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
(06:46):
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
(07:07):
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,
(07:28):
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
(07:49):
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
(08:09):
most unlikely board, everybody from Bob Kraft to Michael Rubin
to jay Z Meek Mill. He pulled everybody together and
Reform Alliance was born.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
That's an amazing story. How long have you been with
Reform Alliance?
Speaker 2 (08:24):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
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
(09:41):
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
(10:04):
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
(10:26):
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
(10:47):
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
(11:07):
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
(11:29):
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
(11:50):
to go back to prisons in jails.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
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
(12:14):
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
(12:35):
in thirty and forty year old attitudes that actually make
it more likely people will go back to jail.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
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
(13:03):
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
(13:24):
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
(13:48):
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
(14:08):
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
(14:29):
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,
(14:53):
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
(15:13):
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.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Right.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
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.
(15:52):
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.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
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
(16:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
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
(16:58):
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
(17:21):
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
(17:42):
can't afford to have an employee who has no notice
have to leave the job and not come back for hours.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
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
(18:26):
reform oriented position.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
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
(18:51):
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
(19:11):
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
(19:32):
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
(19:54):
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
(20:17):
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
(20:40):
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
(21:01):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
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,
(21:36):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
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
(22:09):
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.
(22:31):
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
(22:52):
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.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
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.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
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
(23:34):
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
(23:57):
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.
(24:19):
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
(24:39):
entry very difficult and ending up resulting in them being
sent back to federal prisons.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Part of what you've done to get people more involved
is you've launched an initiative called You Belong. What does
that mean.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
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
(25:14):
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
(25:34):
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,
(25:58):
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
(26:20):
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.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
How can people get involved with reform and with the
You Belong initiative?
Speaker 2 (26:41):
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
(27:03):
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
(27:25):
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.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Part of all this is involved in Second Chance Month.
What does second Chance Month mean?
Speaker 2 (27:49):
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
(28:10):
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
(28:31):
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
(28:53):
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
(29:14):
that this is a core value to America, really making
sure that everybody can achieve the American dream.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
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
(29:43):
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
(30:07):
have a remarkable future at you, Jessica, are a key
part of that process.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
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
Gaglishtree sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll
(30:50):
go to Apple Podcast and both rate us with five
stars and give us a review so others can learn
what it's all about. Right now, listeners of Newtsworld consentive
for read free weekly columns at ggristhree sixty dot com.
Slash newsletter. I'm Newt Gingrich. This is Newtsworld.
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