This interview is with Paul Bamberger and Noble Williams from the Transformational Prison Project, an organization that WPF is collaborating with on a research project, Restorative Justice and Reentry: Nurturing Community Care through Anti-Carceral Organizations. Here, they discuss TPP’s work to end lifetime parole for people convicted in their youth. This transcript has been lightly edited for readability, you can listen to the full interview below.
Bridget: I am very pleased to have with me today, Paul Bamberger and Noble Williams from the Transformational Prison Project (TPP). Noble, can you say what is your position at TPP?
Noble: So happy to be here. My position is the Senior Director of Programming. So my responsibility is to continue to create programming and making sure that we have the integrity from day one till today. I also focus on continuing to bring healing to our communities, and what that looks like when it comes to repairing harm versus punishment and really uplifting the voices of people that’s closer to the problem.
Bridget: And Paul, what’s your role with TPP?
Paul: I’m the Policy Coordinator, so I’m mainly working on legislation.
Bridget: So that brings us to the topic at hand. TPP has proposed some new legislation this year, and I wondered, Paul, can you tell us what is the key thing that this legislation aims to change?
Paul: Sure. Thanks, Bridget. People who are sentenced to life, who were children or adolescents when they committed the offense, are still on life sentences, even after they get parole. These are individuals who have served 15, 20, 30 years incarcerated, and have transformed their lives. They have been granted parole by the parole board, and are now out on parole, but they are on parole for life, so they will die on parole currently under Massachusetts law. Our bill is very simple and straightforward. It would end parole for these individuals called “transformational youth,” after three years on parole, as long as they do not violate the law. That is what this legislation does.
Bridget: And for either of you, can you talk about, who are this group of people called “transformational youth”? What does that term capture?
Noble: We know that words are powerful. This group is often called “youthful offenders,” but when you say “offenders,” it gives this taste of something negative. And we’re discussing children. These children went into prison at the age from 13, 12 years on up, and they developed while they were incarcerated. According to brain science, their brains are not even fully developed yet. By the time they come home, they are in their 30s and 40s, but they went in at the age of 13 or 12 years old, and are coming home 15 or 20 years later. They spent their whole life in prison, from the juvenile system to the adult correctional system. They are actually experiencing life in the free world for the first time when they come home in their 30s and 40s. We also know from statistics that when you get to a certain age, you age out of crime. So all these transformational youth have already aged out of crime. We are using the words “transformational youth,” to bring awareness and support for the fact that they need to transition back into the community with empathy, compassion, and patience.
Bridget: Just to make sure I’ve got this right, what you’re trying to do, is to address the situation of people who went in as kids, right under age 21 or so, before brain development is complete. After they have served their sentence, this law would change conditions, so they don’t continue to serve that sentence in the form of parole for the rest of their lives. Right?
Paul: Exactly.
Bridget: Okay. Why is this change necessary? I mean, you’ve talked a little bit about some ideas, but for you, Noble, for you in particular, why is this a necessary change?
Noble: For me? Why is it so important? It’s because when you see parole, their responsibility is to say, is Noble ready to come back to society? Is Noble rehabilitated? And them giving me parole is answering those questions: it is safe for me to come back to the community. Noble is reformed. Noble is a member of the community. But then coming home, the system contradicts itself when you still have a bracelet and you’re still on parole for the rest of your life. And the parole case load is extremely high. They have a very important job. A lot of anxiety comes with their job to make sure that the community is safe, but they already deemed me safe. Why are we spending still so much, thousands and millions of dollars to make sure that I stay safe, when they could pay all that money somewhere else.
People on lifetime parole remain afraid. We’ve got homeowners, we’ve got people that have families, we’ve got fathers, we got mothers with a curfew and in fear of violating a curfew. How can you be a mother or father when there’s a curfew on when you can leave your home? How can you be confident on being a homeowner when, if you come home a minute late, or you get in a disagreement with your parole officer, you could be deemed in violation, and you lose everything you’ve work so hard for.
In California, they’ve been extremely successful on ending lifetime parole for juveniles and emerging adults. I’ve seen how much they impact their community, how they are building businesses. They are homeowners. They are also in the community and make a community better. Without fear, right?
In Massachusetts, where we are at the lowest level of crime right now. I’m just looking at how we want to enrich our community and everyone that’s coming home and back into our community. How do we get the resources and support them and make sure they’re successful? And so if I’m on parole for three years and I commit no crime, I should be off. Parole gives you stipulations. I can’t go to certain locations, I have to have a job, or I have to be in school. So the things that they already told us to do, we have to do these things. If not, we are in violation and go back into prison.
If I’m doing everything I need to do to return back into society and maintain my citizenship and be a member of the community, and now, I’m 37. I gotta do that for the next 40 years or 50 years? How much money are you really spending on me doing the right thing already, where you can use that money to pay towards other resources and support other people. Is that what we really want to spend our millions on? When they already said that I am rehabilitated to come back to the community, but yet still we’re paying money towards that.
Bridget: Paul, do you want to add anything to that response?
Paul: I mean, Noble says it best. I’ll just give you some technical backup. There are 230 transformational youth currently out on parole. Over half of those, approximately 140 have been out for more than three years. It costs about $6,800 a year that the state has to pay to supervise people on parole. So just multiplying the numbers, for one year after the bill is passed, it would save the state $900,000. For 10 years, it’s over $9 million. Like Noble said, instead of making it difficult for people, for the Transformational Youth, why not have programs that can support them and help with their transition into the community?
Bridget: One of the things that Noble mentioned and, Paul, it also came up in your comments, is that in Massachusetts, the population of people who are incarcerated each year is going down and down and down, which is great. We have not seen a spike in crime, and the state did make an effort after 2018 in particular, to invest in helping people with re-entry and with housing. So it seems like we’ve done something. I’m not going to say 100% right, because we always know that so much more support would be helpful. But it does seem like the savings that you’re talking about with this bill would be a way to really capitalize on the changes that have already come.
Noble: I agree with that. When we talk about housing, so you could give a person an opportunity to get housing, but at the same time, a landlord makes the final decision. So if the landlord feels as if this person is here for a violent crime or a loss of life, ‘I don’t want her with my property.’ It’s extremely difficult for us to find housing.
On another note, the reason why I’m speaking to you instead of a person who is on lifetime parole, is because if you had a personal lifetime parole having this conversation, they could easily be [[considered a violation]] and you could get sent back to prison. When you are on lifetime parole, the Constitution don’t really apply to you. You don’t have a freedom of speech. So if you are my parole officer, and something I said upset you, Bridget, you can decide, I don’t like the way he was talking to me. And then tomorrow you say I’m in violation. Now, I’m sitting back in prison because I might have said some things that upset you as a human being, with nothing to do with policy or law. It’s about how you’re feeling right now in the moment. That’s the scary part when you’re on lifetime parole.
You can never really, truly be a community member, because you are constantly living in fear. You have to live with the crime you committed, you’re responsible for. But I am talking about the fear of: I can’t even be a father. I can’t be a husband. I can be a community member. Say it is summertime, and someone called me like, hey, let’s just go out and go to the park. I need permission for that. And so those type of things are so dehumanizing.
I’ve been searching for so long for statistics on whether people being on parole stops them from committing crimes? I have found nothing, and I want to go on a record saying that when I was on parole/probation, there was nothing that they did to stop me from doing not one crime. If I felt like I wanted to commit a crime, there is nothing that they did to help me to not commit a crime. The only thing they do, is check up on you once a month, and you have to give a urine sample probably twice a week, or once a week or once a month. If I see you twice a month, how is that preventing me from crime?
Bridget: Can you say a little bit more? And Paul, you’re also welcome to join in. What are some other restrictions? Noble said that you have to check in once a month with someone. You have to do urine tests. You have to abide by rules about when you’re in your home, I would assume when you’re at work, what are some of the other restrictions that people face while they’re on this lifetime parole?
Noble: If you want to travel to another state, you have to know 30 days in advance. And how about working with some emergency? If you lose someone you love? Or what if your auntie, your cousin, come into town and they want to go out to eat, you can’t do that. You need permission. If my curfew is nine o’clock and I get home at 9:01, I go back to prison.
I’ll give you a perfect example. I lived in New York, and I went to the park, got my laptop, my puppy, my hot spot, and I’m doing a meeting. And for some reason, something happened in the area. A whole bunch of police was in the area, right? And something took place, but it had nothing to do with me. It was on the other side of the park. But I knew that if I had any contact with police officers, I have to report that to my parole officer, and if I don’t report that, it’s a violation. And even if it’s positive or negative, you have to report it no matter what it was 80 degrees out summertime, and I was stressed out, depressed, I was angry, because I was like, and they come over here, I’m going to have to explain to my parole officer why did the police speak to me? So I packed everything up and went back home, and I stayed home for the rest of the day because of the fear of, what if they come to me and they find out I’m on parole? And if the parole officer says, tell us what happened, but I don’t know what took place or what happened at all, so I just left the place. Every time something happens, I have to leave so I don’t get in trouble, even though it had nothing to do with me.
Imagine every day living in that type of fear. It destroys you mentally. My mental health, being on parole, it destroyed me so much. Where I’m in fear of everything, even if someone else does something wrong, I feel like I’m gonna get in trouble. Every time the parole officer called me, I had to fear going back to jail, like, what did I do? I didn’t do nothing wrong. But it’s that, that power they have over us, over our mind and our body, where I’m constantly in fear. To be honest, if I could have just climbed under a rock and lived under that rock the rest of my life, so to not get in trouble, I would have done just that.
Bridget: Thank you, Noble, that explanation is powerful. Paul?
Paul: Just to underline everything that Noble said, 89% of violations of parole are what’s called technical violations. Those are not violations of law. They’re not a new crime. So parole, like Noble said, does not prevent crime. It actually undermines people’s ability to transition into the community after the parole board has already had a full hearing, gone through the person’s entire life, granted them parole. 89% are technical violations. So we are saying, if you can make it through three years of that, you should be liberated. You should be emancipated and have your life back.
Bridget: Yeah, and the way Noble described it, as well, is that parole actually forms a wedge. It stops people from fully reintegrating. It creates a distance between people in their community and their society, rather than protecting anyone. Where does the legislation stand right now?
Paul: The bill was introduced on January 17 into the state legislature in both the House and the Senate. The House co-sponsors are Chris Worrell and Brandy Fluker-Reid, and the Senate lead sponsor is Jamie Eldridge. The bills were assigned to the Joint Committee on the Judiciary on February 27. This is the only bill that we as TPP are advocating or lead sponsoring, because it’s so important to our group. We have an event legislative briefing, and Noble’s been doing a lot more on that than me. I’ll just mention that it’s on April 3, from 10 to 12 at the members lounge on the third floor in the state house.
Bridget: And is that event for people who want to learn more about the legislation, or is that for people who already know want to start doing outreach?
Paul: Noble might be able to talk to more about that, but I’ll give you the quick answer is that it is for everyone. We want everyone to come who supports the bill. We want all the legislators to come and know what you want to pick up from there.
Noble: Yeah, so this is going to be introductory information around the bill, why it’s important. So it’s going to be the first of many. In my experience, a lot of people don’t even know that juveniles are on lifetime parole. It’s sad to know. It’s sad, but we’re gonna make that difference on bringing that awareness and educating people around that a person winning at the age of 13,16, coming home at the age of 30, 40, 50 years old, and it’s a first time coming back into the community. So we’ve been getting a lot of support around it, but it comes with a lot of education as well. So on April 3, we’re going to have a panel, and we also want to speak about the educational part of it, to inform people about what’s going on in Massachusetts. We show them the success that these young men and women, and older men and women — they’ve been very successful since they’ve been home. They are homeowners. They are taking care of their families. They are parents, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, and they all pay taxes. They’re a part of our community. We want to put them in a position where they could fully enrich our community without the fear of going back to prison because of a technical violation. We also want to show that they all aged out of crime as well. Today, through TPP and other organizations, they have the support that they need to re-enter, back into society. We also want people to not forget that the parole board already said that these men and women are capable and able to be citizens, back into our community, and yet we’re still living in fear.
Bridget: Okay, and if people want more information, can they find it on the TPP website?
Noble: Yes. So you can find it on the TPP website and also on our on our Instagram page, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Bridget: Well, we don’t advocate for any particular legislation, but we do advocate that if people are concerned about issues that they learn more about them, and try to understand the background, the stakes, and what people like TPP are doing to change the situation. So thank you both for speaking with me.
Paul: Thank you, Bridget.
Noble: Thank you for having us.
