#VisitAPrison: The Difference Between Knowing and Truly Knowing
By Maria Goellner
The day after FAMM launched its #VisitAPrison campaign last week, July 11, I walked into a Pennsylvania state prison to meet a lawmaker and other government staff for a visit. The prison is in a small, rural town that has about the same population as the prison itself — 2,000 people.
What happened on that visit, and on many other bipartisan visits since our launch, is amazing. For half of our time at the prison, we spoke to men sentenced to life without parole. The lawmaker and their staff heard from a man in his 60s who has been in prison for more than 39 years, despite the sentencing judge saying from day one that he would not have imposed life without parole given the circumstances if it hadn’t been mandatory. The man also had Dept. of Corrections support for commutation, but was inexplicably denied.
He explained how demoralizing it was to work so hard to redeem himself and do the next right thing year after year, decade after decade, and then be given no reason at all for the denial. We didn’t know this man prior to the visit, but FAMM has been advocating for the Board of Pardons to give reasons for its denials. That’s one of the top complaints of our families, along with the wait times and the fact that commutation — though improved in recent years — is still like winning the lottery in terms of the chance to get one.
Another man had been in prison for 50 years, and was turning 71 a few days later. His hearing and vision were clearly declining. He’d finally applied for commutation two years ago — 48 years into his sentence — and has not heard anything back from the state about his application.
Do you see how impactful this is for a lawmaker to hear personally? A lawmaker with the power to affect change on these very issues? I guarantee no one who was in the room that day will forget it.
On another day at another facility, a different lawmaker whom FAMM asked to #VisitAPrison sat down with a small group of men who are lifers and leaders. This lawmaker was considering introducing legislation that would significantly help some people with life sentences, but exclude many with certain convictions. The lifers introduced themselves by stating their names, ages, and the age they were when they first entered prison: “I’m now 66. I came here at age 19.”
This introduction alone moved the lawmaker immensely. Later, he said that even if he assumes that the convictions and the sentences were just, the weight of those decades behind bars is not something he’s going to forget. We need all lawmakers to feel the weight of the decisions they make about real people in real prisons.
It naturally came out during the lengthy conversation that several men the lawmaker met inside had the type of conviction that the lawmaker was considering excluding. After the visit, the lawmaker said he would be reconsidering the exclusion.
Coincidence? No way. And even if the legislation doesn’t change immediately, there’s no doubt that #VisitAPrison strengthened the inside/out relationships and long-term resolve.
#VisitAPrison is about getting close to people. It’s about lawmakers talking directly to impacted people inside prisons, building relationships with them, and those inside prisons speaking for themselves. It closes the empathy gap, so there is incredible value in anyone and everyone participating.
We call on lawmakers, government staff, legal workers, faith leaders, and the public — everyone — to take part. Every time someone participates in #VisitAPrison, it’s another ripple that builds toward the tipping point we need in the United States for FAMM’s Second Chance Agenda to be real; to be law.
Contact your lawmakers today and ask them to #VisitAPrison!
Maria Goellner is FAMM’s Pennsylvania State Policy Director. You can reach her at mgoellner@famm.org.
Update (9/28/2022): The incarcerated men who participated in the visit above were Kevin Charles, George Bane, and Henry Williams.
