Restorative Justice In Action, Changing Lives One by One
A story about how a young boy’s rebelliousness landed him behind bars
Justice comes home to roost on the shoulders of a young inmate who had been locked up for ages thanks to his prosecutor. The inmate had been locked up since he was 15, finally had the hope of getting a second chance to live adult life outside of a jail cell. He went in as a boy and came out a man.
Renwick “Little Ren” Drake Jr. was sentenced in 2012 to 24 years in prison as an accomplice in a 2009 robbery at the age of 15. He found his new home over the years at the High Desert StatePrisonn where he was unable to receive visitors and very little mail.
Having never gotten hardly any mail, when one letter arrived in 2020 his curiosity was peaked as it was a letter advising him about a new law that could undo his too-harsh sentence and that the district attorney would look at his case after having being incarcerated for 11 years.
Not wanting to get his hopes up as in the past, he viewed the letter with much suspiciousness, because it was similar to the beaurearcy that put him behind bars 11 years ago at the age of15. He put the letter aside as he resigned to serve his remaining term of twelve years.
Yolo County Dist. Atty. Jeff Reisig, three years on the job, had a history of…
