UnCommon Law

Long-term incarceration is the wrong response to crime, even in cases involving violence. We cannot eliminate mass incarceration while more than 200,000 mostly Black and brown people are serving life sentences. Their release depends on parole commissioners whose own biases and broad discretion are a barrier to decarceration. A person’s release from such a sentence requires them to address the ways in which their own trauma histories contributed to their incarceration; however, there are few opportunities in prison to actually process those trauma histories. Led by formerly and currently incarcerated people, our Home After Harm program creates therapeutic communities inside prison, where participants support each other in this introspective work to revisit and process their trauma histories and develop the emotional intelligence and language to articulate their transformation to the parole board. In addition to helping to release thousands from prison, the program will model a healing response to violence that can be scaled in a way that dramatically reduces our reliance on incarceration. Prisons will also become safer spaces for those who live and work inside. The Elevate Prize will help us leverage the state’s existing support for our program to sustainably scale for statewide implementation.

My family has, like so many others, known the pain of incarceration. My oldest sister’s unresolved childhood trauma led to drug abuse, other crime and lengthy imprisonment. Prison offered little opportunity to understand and heal from the trauma she had endured as a child. Her story is the story of millions of others. 

I founded UnCommon Law because I reject the notion that anyone is incapable of change. In nearly 15 years, I have gotten to know hundreds of people serving life sentences for murder and other serious crimes. With few exceptions, these crimes are rooted in responses to childhood trauma. Motivations for violence are often indistinguishable from the motivations for “nonviolent offences” that are  typically perceived as more deserving of alternatives to incarceration. It’s a false binary: prison isn’t a fit for anyone.

I am working towards a world in which, rather than accepting the dangerous lie that crime is solely the result of individual decision, we focus on the systems that continue to produce the conduct we label “criminal.” Our Home After Harm program will show the transformative power of healing at an individual and community level, even as a response to violence.

The U.S. houses more than 200,000 of the world’s 500,000 people serving life sentences. Though most of these sentences are for violent crimes, the violence itself is often a reflection of systemic failures and unresolved trauma rather than individual incorrigible bad actors.

As recent decarceration efforts have focused on people convicted of nonviolent offenses, the proportion of people in prison for serious and violent crimes has risen. California’s 35,000 life-sentenced people are mostly Black and Latinx and make up a third of the state’s prison population.

90% of people serving life sentences are survivors of violence. Their release requires them to explain how their trauma histories contributed to their crimes, but there are few programs or safe spaces in prison to support introspection and open exploration. As a result, only 16% of parole candidates can demonstrate the requisite growth to satisfy California’s parole board. 

UnCommon Law counsels clients in addressing the factors that contributed to their crimes and represents them in parole hearings. Our parole grant rate is triple the state average. 99% of our released clients have remained out of prison, where they are overwhelmingly housed, employed, and feel connected to their communities.

UnCommon Law is unique in our advocacy for people convicted of serious and violent crimes. Our singularity has been recognized and celebrated at both the state and national level by organizations like the Obama Foundation. Home After Harm is unlike any existing program in California, both in the population targeted and the approach of training people inside prison to scale the program internally. It is also the first program to center the expertise of formerly and currently incarcerated people in therapeutic and legal counseling.

Our Home After Harm program represents a critical opportunity to implement trauma-informed programs for the thousands of people appearing before California’s parole board while providing an alternative, healing-focused response to crime that can replace our reliance on prisons. 

Research on therapeutic models in prison has shown improved outcomes for individuals during and after incarceration. Our program will build on these results, increasing parole grant rates while transforming the prison experience into one that is more trauma-responsive. Staffed by formerly incarcerated people, the program will also train currently incarcerated people to do the work currently undertaken by outside lawyers, therapists, and advocates, allowing the program to scale organically inside prison. 

We have partnered with the Urban Institute and The Bridging Group to conduct an evaluation of Home After Harm that will lay the groundwork for statewide implementation: the State is primed to move towards a more trauma-informed prison system and has demonstrated its buy-in by funding our initial pilot. The Elevate Prize would help us leverage this initial support to sustainably scale the program statewide via a multi-year handoff to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.