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Amplified Voices
Amplified Voices is a podcast that lifts the voices of people and families impacted by the criminal legal system. Hosts Jason and Amber speak with real people in real communities to help them step into the power of their lived experience. Together, they explore shared humanity and real solutions for positive change.
Amplified Voices
Gus: A Powerful Community Advocate - Season 5 Episode 7
Gus Marks-Hamilton shares his powerful journey from teenage arrest through incarceration to becoming an advocate for criminal justice reform with the ACLU's Smart Justice Campaign.
• Growing up in a stable middle-class family with teacher parents before first encountering the legal system at age 16
• Finding structure and purpose through employment at Blockbuster Video after his initial arrest
• Experiencing the devastating impact of policy changes while incarcerated that arbitrarily extended his sentence
• Navigating the challenges of halfway houses and probation during reentry without meaningful support
• Pursuing education after release, earning a Master's in Social Work despite barriers for people with felony convictions
• Successfully receiving a pardon in 2023 after a lengthy, emotional application process
• Channeling lived experience into advocacy work to create systemic change in Connecticut's criminal legal system
After navigating the challenges of halfway houses, probation, educational discrimination, and the emotionally grueling pardon process, Gus now works with the ACLU's Smart Justice Campaign. His powerful insight – "I'm the best version of myself when I'm connected to other people" – has become both personal philosophy and professional mission. He's transformed from someone caught in the system to someone working to fundamentally change it.
Whether you're personally impacted by the criminal legal system, work within it, or simply want to understand its human toll, Gus's story offers hope. Connect with him on social media to learn how you can join the movement for a more just system that truly enables rehabilitation and community connection.
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About Gus:
Gus Marks-Hamilton is the campaign manager at the ACLU of Connecticut. He joined the ACLU-CT Smart Justice campaign in 2018 to advocate for fair, just and humane policy reforms to the criminal legal system. Gus’s primary responsibilities include building the ACLU-CT’s advocacy infrastructure, strengthening its partnerships with key stakeholders, prioritizing directly impacted communities and individuals, and executing strategic issue-based campaigns. Gus is passionate about promoting the civic and political engagement of people who have been directly impacted by the criminal legal system and has lobbied for dozens of pieces of legislation to protect people’s civil rights and liberties.
Gus is a Licensed Master Social Worker and received his master’s degree from the University of Connecticut School of Social Work, where he is also an Adjunct Professor. He is a board member at Community Partners In Action which provides services for people affected by the criminal legal system, proud uncle to his nieces and nephews and compliant human companion to his dog, Frank
Everyone has a voice, a story to tell. Some are marginalized and muted. What if there were a way to amplify those stories, to have conversations with real people in real communities, a way to help them step into the power of their lived experience? Welcome to Amplified Voices, a podcast lifting the experiences of people and families impacted by the criminal legal system. Together, we can create positive change for everyone.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to another episode of Amplified Voices. I'm your host, jason, here with my co-host.
Speaker 3:Amber. Good morning Jason.
Speaker 2:Amber. Today we have Gus Marks Hamilton, who we've both been friends with for quite a while.
Speaker 4:Good morning.
Speaker 2:Gus, we start off the same way. We're going to start off the same way we always start off, and that's by asking you could you tell us a little bit about your life before you entered the criminal legal system and what brought you into it?
Speaker 4:Sure, so thanks for having me on. I grew up in Connecticut. I grew up in the eastern half of Connecticut, actually in a town named Mansfield, which is the rural part of the state, but it's also where the University of Connecticut is located, that's the Big Stores campus, sort of the flagship campus for UConn. I grew up just sort of in the shadow of the university. My parents were both public school teachers. My father was an art teacher in Willimantic and my mother was a music teacher in Willimantic as well, and I was the eldest in my family. Among my siblings. I have two younger sisters. My parents have been married for close to 50 years, so we had a pretty, a very stable family, I thought. Generally speaking, growing up, my mother had some challenges in her life.
Speaker 2:But other than that we were. We are a pretty stable nuclear family, solidly middle class. Are you an artistic guy, or was it a musical? Or did you like? No, I don't want any part of this. Was it a musical or did you like? No, I?
Speaker 4:don't want any part of this. I think I have a greater appreciation of the arts than I do a pursuit of it myself. I know that I'm not a particularly artistic person in terms of like creating art, but I certainly do love learning about it. I have a lot of appreciation for artists and the art they can create appreciation for artists and the art they can create. In middle school and high school I played trombone for maybe nine or 10 years, which I enjoyed a lot, but I never had sort of like the creative part of it. I enjoyed being part of a band, you know, being sort of like. Trombones typically are sort of you sort of like the foundation of a band, but you're never like the star necessarily of a concert or musical piece. You're sort of like the backbone. Speak for yourself man.
Speaker 3:That's so funny because Jason is also a trombone player. My husband is also a trombone player, so you're speaking to trombone people, so tread lightly when you say they're not the most important people in the room.
Speaker 4:I love playing the trombone.
Speaker 2:You should have heard me play Over the Rainbow in high school. That was something. So you went through normal high school years right, Went on to college.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I was a solitary kid. When I was growing up I liked to spend time by myself. I was kind of a shy kid and the first time I ever started getting in trouble with the law, first times I would have encounters with police officers when I was a teenager. I was a young teenager. I got arrested for the first time when I was 16 years old after encounters with the police a couple of times over some stuff that in retrospect seems pretty insignificant, minor stealing stuff like that, but you know at the time was a huge deal and really kind of like was a big deal in my family and for me personally. I would get caught and I would be really humiliated and feel guilty and embarrassed. I would get punished in ways that I thought were significant. I didn't want to minimize sort of the repercussions that I would face.
Speaker 4:But the first time I got arrested I was 16 years old and got put on probation for three years Didn't get locked up or anything you know.
Speaker 4:But that was my first sort of interaction with the criminal legal system, was during that arrest and part of my sentence was going to a AIC, an alternatives to incarceration program, and when I would I kind of laughed because I would go to this program and I had to do community service in addition to being in this program for a certain number of hours a week and I would go there and sometimes there were classes we would have to attend where we would learn about addiction issues or anger management stuff.
Speaker 4:That did not appeal to me necessarily in my situation, but I would be in a class with maybe a dozen other guys, all different age ranges I was 16, 17 years old but there were guys in there. They were in their 50s and 60s and just all over the place and it seemed kind of like meaningless, like I would go to these programs. Sometimes, if there wasn't a program, we'd play pool or we'd just hang out for like two or three hours On Saturdays. Sometimes we would have to do our community service and we'd go to like a local soup kitchen or a YMCA and we'd clean up the gym or hand out food supplies or make deliveries and I enjoyed doing that. I thought that actually was kind of meaningful.
Speaker 2:Did you determine, like what was driving this, like why did you steal and what was going on? I mean, obviously you came from a home, that it wasn't because you needed to. You know there wasn't stuff you couldn't afford, right. I mean, like what was driving it?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I was very curious kid. I was a shy kid, so I tended to spend a lot of time by myself and I was also really curious about things, particularly in retrospect when I think about it rules and I was always curious about how things operated and the way that they did and what were sort of the rules that made things be this way and how you could follow the rules. Or you could also sort of like go around the rules. You know whether it's subverting them or circumnavigating them, and I would sort of think, like you know, if I see something in a store that I liked but I knew that I couldn't afford it, but it was something that I wanted, how could I get it?
Speaker 2:And you were testing boundaries and you were using a 16 year old's brain.
Speaker 4:Yeah, With 13, 14, 15 years old, this wasn't something that I could have gotten arrested for. But I was in school one time and I was taking a math class and I knew that the teacher had a had like an instructional manual that had all the answers to the assignment in that manual and one day I was struggling with an assignment and I stole the manual and I took it with me and I found the answers or whatever I needed to complete the assignment, but I got caught. The teacher of the class confronted me in a hallway and snatched the manual out of my hand. In retrospect and I kind of see the journey my life has been on. I can certainly see where I leaned into doing things in a way that were not always the most straightforward way of going about trying to get things.
Speaker 3:And so you mentioned the system and it not necessarily connecting with the classes. Having a problem with testing authority or stealing things is not necessarily in need of anger management or addiction services or whatever. So there's that, but you did connect with the community service. How do you think your families respond? What happened in your family when, like this started to happen? Tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, my parents really struggled with when I would make a bad decision. I was their first child, I was the eldest child. You know, I have two younger sisters that I've turned out really, really well and I think my parents have, you know, just kind of looked at themselves as if, you know, were there things that we could have done to make us make better decisions? Ultimately, I certainly don't put that in my parents at all, but they faced a lot of shame and a lot of responsibility when I would do something, as I think a lot of parents do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we hear that a lot on our podcast from parents.
Speaker 4:Yeah, later in life, my mother had a moment where she wondered if, when I was an infant and she was nursing me and there was an issue with nursing, she used to think that somehow was that a reason that I would later make bad decisions in my life, 15, 20 years later?
Speaker 2:That's a lot to carry. Yeah, I mean, is there anything anybody could have said or done to you or with you when you were at that age that would have gotten through to you?
Speaker 4:The thing that I have thought about a lot over my life is that I'm the best version of myself when I'm connected to other people, when I'm connected to communities, when I'm invested in the success and the health and the well-being of other people, and I feel like those people are then invested in my success and well-being.
Speaker 4:And I mentioned that I was a shy and kind of solitary kid growing up and I think that's fine and I like spending time by myself. I continue to be an introverted person and at the same time, there is a lot of value in being in community with other people and whether it's having role models Like my father was my hero growing up, but as a teenager my father and I had a very strained relationship and maybe having mentors. I also do very well when I live in structures. I've noticed that about myself. I do great when I'm in school. You know, when I was incarcerated I did very well because I do well with structures, and when I don't have them and my thoughts go in a whole bunch of directions without them being channeled in a particular way, those become the opportunities when I sometimes get into trouble.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I had a couple of thoughts as you're talking.
Speaker 2:The first is that if you take you know, we typically have one size fits all responses to people acting out and doing harm. If anybody took the time to sit with you and say, gus, you know what's going on here and really get to the bottom of it and help you with those connections, because that community service was the start of something right. And what's interesting, as you're talking, you have people who know you know you. You have people who know you know you. But the people who are just meeting you today through this podcast for the first time are going to find out the amount that you do in the community and the amount of connections. Like, if you say, gus, and you're somebody who works in an advocacy type space, they're going to know exactly who you're talking about because everybody knows Gus. Gus shows up to everything. Gus, you think community, you think Gus. So it's you being connected to the community and not feeling that as a young person, where you are today versus where you started, it's just incredible.
Speaker 4:I think you always hear that question like if you could go back and do things over again and, generally speaking, I'm pretty satisfied with the person I am now, but I'm aware that I had to go through a lot of difficult circumstances to get to where I am now, and when I think about being a teenager, I wish I was involved in more group activities, like I wish I joined a sports team when I was in school. It could have been track or a baseball team or a football team. I wish I'd done something like that. I was in band and I really enjoyed being part of a larger system of people that were all coming together to create music. I really enjoyed that and I wish I'd done more of that.
Speaker 3:And I love this conversation because I think that in my own journey as a mother, I've seen a little of this and that in terms of kids being involved in things, kids being connected to things that are meaningful to them, and also kids stepping a little bit outside of their comfort zone, because everybody has their own personality, gus, so you talked about some of these challenges started when you were a teenager. So you talked about some of these challenges started when you were a teenager. Talk a little bit about the progression. So you said, ok, I was 16. I was arrested at that time. You were put on probation. What?
Speaker 4:happens next? I've completed my probation. You know I had three years I had to do. I was a juvenile, I was 16 years old, so my record was sealed. So I was fortunate enough that once I turned 18 and I completed my probation, that got sealed. And it was a thing in the past. When I got arrested and I was in probation, my life was in a crisis. At that moment I really felt like things were falling apart and I was humiliated and I felt awful about what I'd done and also that I'd been caught, that I'd been arrested and my family had to deal with that as well. One of the things that I did after being arrested was I got a job. I got hired at a Blockbuster video about 15 minutes away from my house.
Speaker 3:Wow, blockbuster, we're dating ourselves right here.
Speaker 4:But it was incredibly meaningful to me. I was a teenager, it was my first job, it was my first paying job and having being able to go to school and then having a place outside of school where I was really not happy about being in school because other students I knew had been arrested and that kind of there's a certain stigmatization that I was feeling because of that. But when I would go to work I kind of flourished there. You know. You know I was making money but I was also. You know I had a purpose and you know I was part of a team again and I loved movies. A lot of movies were very important to me and so I really enjoyed doing that. And when I turned 18 and I went to college in Philadelphia, I transferred to a store in Philadelphia. I really wanted to get away from Connecticut. I wanted to get away from my town because of, you know, wanted to get away from Connecticut. I wanted to get away from my town because of, you know, having been arrested there. But I loved the job that I had. So I was able to kind of take what I felt connected to in here in Connecticut and I was able to keep that when I went away to Philadelphia for a year. I was studying video production at the time film production because I wanted to get into movie making in some way, sort of like behind the camera, whether it was directing or writing screenplays or just kind of in the film production area of it. But after a year I missed Connecticut and so I ended up transferring from the school I was going to in Philadelphia back into Connecticut.
Speaker 4:I enrolled at UConn, I moved back in with my parents and returned to the store the Blockbuster that I've been working with, and went through the rest of college. I lived at home for the first year and then I got an apartment, an off-campus apartment they kind of tied into. What sort of led me getting into more trouble was that I was working with a guy at Blockbuster who had a scheme for stealing money from the store. I'm responsible for what I did, but he had this idea for stealing money from the store and I kind of got wrapped into that, for one thing because I wanted his friendship. He was my boss at the time, he was my supervisor and I wanted to be friendly with him supervisor and I wanted to be friendly with him and I ended up kind of taking this scheme that he had originated and I really kind of blew it up where we were taking quite a bit of money as a young person it felt like it was quite a bit of money from the store and that went on for about three years, all the way through the rest of my time at UConn.
Speaker 4:I graduated from UConn and in 2005, we were finally caught by Blockbuster's loss prevention folks who were not smart enough to catch onto this scheme early on, but finally, after three or four years of us doing it, they figured it out and they fired us. They fired me and two other people that we worked with and that was something that really devastated me. When I got fired, I fully recognized that I deserve to be fired, like there was no doubt about that. But Blockbuster had been this huge part of my identity. At the time I'd been at Blockbuster for about seven years seven and a half years so as a teenager, you know starting at Blockbuster when it felt like my life was falling apart and I really felt like that job had saved me in a lot of ways, you know, all the way through college. And then when I got fired, it was like I had this huge void in my life. We were fired in October of 2005 and warrants weren't issued for our arrest until, I think, april of the next year. So there was about a six or seven month period where we weren't sure if we were going to be arrested or not and eventually we all were. We had separate cases, but all three of us were arrested.
Speaker 4:I was really struggling with how to sort of address not having that job in my life. I got another job. I was bartending at a place but I was really drinking a lot. I was not communicating how I was struggling with other people. I had this idea that maybe I could rob a blockbuster to kind of address the absence of having blockbuster in my life, which was a crazy idea and didn't make any sense, but without me talking about it with another person, kind of you know, it could have been a friend, it could have been a family member, it could have been a counselor and this is something I've thought a lot about without having the ability to sort of communicate and get feedback about what's going on inside my head. They snowball and they get bigger and bigger and bigger and I've often thought that if I could have mentioned I was having this idea about robbing another store and somebody could have said something as simple as well that's crazy, right? It would have been a reality check that I could have been like, oh yeah, that is nuts, like, don't do that. And you know, who knows what would have happened otherwise.
Speaker 4:But unfortunately, I had this idea that grew and grew about robbing a store and it grew over a matter of maybe four or five months, particularly after we were arrested for larceny from the store and I was living at the time with my sister and her boyfriend, who is now my brother-in-law. There was a gun that my brother-in-law had and I had access to it. He kept the gun very secure, but I knew how to get to it and that became the tool that I saw this robbery as being possible. So I connected the availability of a gun to the ability to rob the store and eventually grew it, like I said, over the course of maybe three or four months that this was something that I could do. I thought about how I would do it, so I sort of planned it out, you know, and then eventually, you know, pulled it off in August of 2006, was immediately caught.
Speaker 4:I was caught about, you know, nine hours after I did the robbery, which was right after the store had closed Not the same store that I'd worked in, it was a separate store that I went to rob. Incredibly stupid like not thought out in terms of like how I could do it, but more like in terms of like how I could psych myself up to be able to walk into a store with a gun and pretend like I could rob it. But not in terms of like thinking what would happen next. And I was caught nine hours later. The robbery was like at midnight. I was on my way to work around 830 the next morning and the cops pulled me over. The employees in the store had known who I was. One of the people actually went to high school with me and recognized me. I didn't know who they were, but they knew who I was, so they told the police and the police came and got me. I confessed and got locked up the same day and spent the next seven and a half years in prison.
Speaker 3:So it sounds a little bit like a spiral, right For sure. So it's like one thing leads to another and, in the absence, I think it was really interesting that you said, had I been actually like talking or communicating to someone, they would have been like Gus, what are you thinking? That doesn't seem like a good idea. That doesn't seem like it is going to make your life go in an upward trajectory rather than a downward trajectory. But I think that this is really really important for people to understand the importance of community and connections and being with other people doing positive things, Because it's what I'm hearing is there's a lot of positive analytical thought, extreme intelligence. Actually, I'm pretty impressed by that and, knowing the person that I know now, I'm just like where could interventions have happened to make something different happen? You know, then, with the understanding that anybody who makes rationalizations is ultimately accountable.
Speaker 3:So what are your thoughts on? You ended up in this downward spiral. Thoughts on you ended up in this downward spiral. It seems like there was some connection to being upended by not being with Blockbuster anymore, which had been such a big part of your life, and then you know feeling angry and somehow acting out towards that and then ending up in this situation. When the police come and get you, what are you thinking Like? Oh, the gig is up. Like what's going through your mind.
Speaker 2:Wait before you answer that, though, gus. I just want to underscore and thank you for sharing what you've shared so far, because I've known you for a number of years and I didn't know this story. I know it's something that you hold in, so I think having you here talking about it, hopefully that's part of your healing journey as well, and I just want to thank you for being so open with us. But now back to Amber's question.
Speaker 3:What are you thinking when the police come and get you?
Speaker 4:Oh, like you kind of just said, that the jig is up. But I was devastated. You know I, the police arrested me. They held me in a police station, they questioned me and during the course of questioning me they were going to send a SWAT team to my house and my sister or her boyfriend, if they were there, the SWAT team was going to approach them or they were going to. I forget exactly what it was, but the idea of like a SWAT team telling my sister and her boyfriend to lie down on the floor because that I can't even imagine that was the thing that really made me. So I immediately not immediately, but I confessed at that point and I said okay, this is where you can find the gun.
Speaker 4:And you know I did it and I did it all by myself. You know my sister and a boyfriend knew nothing about it. You know the two people that I used to work told anybody about my plans to do this, and that's true. Everybody that I knew my family, my friends, anybody that I worked with was shocked that I had done this. It seemed totally out of line with who they thought I was and what I was capable of doing. So there was a lot of shock.
Speaker 4:At first there was an inability to communicate because I was in a police station at first and then I was in county jail in Hartford and the ability to communicate with people was very limited. At the very beginning I didn't bond out. I had a crazy high bail like $350,000, and I was guilty, you know. I knew that I had done what I had done and there was no sort of getting out of it, and so I took it on. I felt horrible and I was devastated. I didn't know how much time I would be facing and sort of what the next steps of being locked up and going to court would look like. But I certainly knew that my life had changed irretrievably and that whatever was coming next I was going to have to deal with as the best I could. But I knew that whatever my life had been up until that point was not going to be the same moving forward.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for sharing that. So you end up, you're incarcerated. You referred to an extremely high bond you didn't bond out. So talk a little bit about between the time that you are arrested and incarcerated and what comes next, that pretrial period. Talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 4:Well, you know, I was in my family. I, you know, my, my father, my parents had never been arrested. We didn't have any family members that had ever kind of gone through the criminal legal system themselves. So everything that I was experiencing for the first time my family was kind of experiencing for the first time as well Hiring an attorney, going to court, understanding how to, you know, make phone calls to somebody.
Speaker 4:You know, when I had to call my parents, you know you had to set up an account that would, you know, make announcements about. Oh, you know, you're receiving a phone call from an incarcerated person. All of that stuff was something that we had to learn together and figure out. I was pre-trial for about two years before I finally got sentenced, and so I got transferred to a couple of different facilities. So when it came to visiting, my parents had to figure out exactly what the schedule was at a different facility, me understanding what it was like to be locked up, understanding how a correctional facility functioned, what the schedules would look like and just how to survive within a correctional facility First jails and then later prisons after I was sentenced. You know that was all something that I had to learn about and sort of adopt to, and my family was sort of the same way.
Speaker 2:How many years were you?
Speaker 4:incarcerated. I was locked up for eight years in total, seven and a half years initially, and then, after I got released, I got a violation of my probation. I had to go back in for six months, but eight years entirely. My full sentence, when I once I was finally sentenced, was 20 years suspended after nine years served with five years of probation. So it was 20 years suspended.
Speaker 2:After nine, after nine. So that means five years of probation, so nine years. So, according to, so, based on what you said, I'm just trying to break it down into English. So, gus, you're going to have to go into prison for nine years and then you're going to come out and have probation, and if you mess up probation, you're going to be in for 20.
Speaker 4:I have nine years of incarceration to serve and whether I got parole or I was on probation, 20 years is my total sentence and if you take away the nine years that I served, I have 11 years suspended over me. So after completing that first part of my sentence, if I screwed up or if I got in trouble, I could potentially have 11 years.
Speaker 2:So when people say things like, oh, probation, when you watch on the TV and it's like, oh, that's no big deal because you're just checking in with somebody, A quirky fun probation officer who's there to help, is there to high-five you you mentioned to us before we jumped on the discussion that there were some things that happened regarding law changes and different things that affected you while you were in.
Speaker 2:Could you go into that now, because I just I'm looking at the time and I want to make sure we get to all the highlights of your story sure I was locked up.
Speaker 4:I went in in 2006. I was sentenced in 2008. I was eligible for parole after serving 85% of my sentence, so I knew vaguely what the time would look like in terms of when I would be eligible to get released. In 2011, the state of Connecticut passed a law that created something called risk reduction earned credits. It was called like RREC, and it was sort of bringing passed a law that created something called risk reduction earned credits. It was called like RREC, and it was sort of bringing back a program that had originally existed back in the 80s and 90s called Good Time, which gave people who were sentenced and incarcerated credit towards participating in programs staying out of trouble good behavior that gave them credit off the end of their sentence, so it could make their sentences theoretically shorter.
Speaker 2:And you like structure, so you're going to participate in all these programs.
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely. After you get sentenced, you go through something called assessment, which is the Department of Corrections looks at you. They look at the length of your sentence. They look at what your needs are Do you have mental health needs, educational needs, addiction needs, vocational needs and theoretically place you in a facility. Well, you will get services that will help you get through your sentence and, ideally, come out on the other end of your sentence A rehabilitative person.
Speaker 4:It's the corrective part of the Department of Corrections and this good time policy had been eliminated by the state legislature back in the 1990s. So in 2011, the legislature brought back a altered version of that program called risk reduction, earned credits, where people could potentially get up to five days a month taken off their sentence for being involved in programs good behavior following the rules of the facility you were in. When that program became a real thing, a whole bunch of people that I was locked up with had their sentences suddenly lowered by a lot, and people realized it was like an incentive program. If I do what I'm supposed to do and I stay out of trouble, I'm going to get home, I'm going to get released earlier, I'm going to get my freedom back. I'm going to be with my family earlier, and for me personally it knocked about a year off my sentence If I thought I was going home in maybe 2015,.
Speaker 4:All of a sudden, my date got backed up until the end of 2013, something like that. So I was when I was incarcerated. I was somebody that I stuck to myself. I never got in any trouble. You know, I never got a disciplinary record. You know, over seven and a half years I never got in any kind of trouble.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you said 2015,. 13 versus 15. And if you think you know, if I ask you know people who are listening to you, to our conversation, right, think about what that. What were you doing in 2013? What were you doing and I'm not talking to you guys, I'm talking to our listeners right, what were they doing in 2013 and 14? And imagine having those days either given to you or taken away. I mean, that's a lot, you know, that's a lot of time. You know 2013, 14, 15, right To to have that time given back to you.
Speaker 3:That is something good and I could see where the incentive would be hey, let's keep doing the right thing, and I just want to highlight something that you mentioned. You said theoretically when you talked about being assessed and placed in a facility that would meet your needs. Can you expound upon why you said theoretically?
Speaker 4:Well, yeah, so you know, when you, after you get sentenced, you get sent to Walker, which is the assessment facility, and you're there for 30 days and that's where they do this assessment on you, where they determine what your needs are, and then they'll send you to one of the other 15 or so I think now we have like 12 prisons here in Connecticut, but at the time there were maybe 15 or 16 of them and that's where they figure out okay, where are you going to go to spend your time? You're assigned what's called an offender accountability plan, oap, which assigns you certain classes or programs to take. For me, they told me I had to take a thinking for change class. I had to take an anger management class and a class where I understood the crimes that I'd committed from the perspective of my victims. I say theoretically, because a lot of these programs don't actually exist in the facility that you get sent to. So you know, like the last program I mentioned understanding my crimes from the perspective of my victims it was a program called Voices.
Speaker 4:You know, to my memory, that program is only available in one facility throughout the entire state, you know. So you had 15 or 16 different correctional facilities. This program is only available in one of those facilities, and part of the idea of going through your offender accountability program is so that you make yourself eligible for parole, so that when your parole eligibility comes up, you can stand in front of a board of pardons. I've taken my programs, I've stayed out of trouble, you know. Please give me an opportunity to get released early, you know, back into the community. But then when you want to be able to take the programs and do the things that your assessment says you're supposed to do, those things aren't actually accessible to you, and what being locked up is more about is not treatment and rehabilitation, it's all about incapacitation and simply boredom, essentially passing the time, warehousing people until the end of your sentence comes.
Speaker 3:So what surprised you most like when you arrived right and spent, you know, this very significant amount of time incarcerated? What surprised you most about? I know you said you kept to yourself, but when you looked around the prison, did you feel surprised by what you saw?
Speaker 4:I mean, I would say less surprised and more in terms of like learning what it looks like. You know being incarcerated. You know once you start moving around, you understand the way the system works. So, but on my end it was a lot of learning in terms of like you know, these are what the rules are, these are what the expectations are in terms of your behavior. What I learned most was about the other guys that I was locked up with. I did stick to myself, but when you're in a block or a unit with hundreds of other people, you have to live with them and exist with them. I lived in a cell with another person, lots of people. I had dozens and dozens of cellies over the years and you would get to know them really well and you would get to know the people that you would eat with and go to recreation with and hang out with all the time. And the big thing that I realized with it was being incarcerated.
Speaker 4:Since I've been home and being involved in advocacy, I've met so many people that have been through the criminal legal system that made bad decisions and they acknowledge they made bad decisions and they paid the consequence for those bad decisions. But they are not bad people. They are incredible people. They are incredibly intelligent people, they are funny people, they are creative people. They are people with all this potential and the potential to do a lot of good and be really, really valuable, productive members of our communities.
Speaker 4:Yet, you know, when we think about people who are incarcerated, you know they're criminals and they're felons, and there are these people that have caused wrong in society and we cast them aside as being worthless and people that are, you know, quote unquote bad.
Speaker 4:And the huge realization, as I went through the criminal legal system, just the way I think about myself, you know I'm somebody that's made some bad decisions and done some bad things that I feel awful about, that's made some bad decisions and done some bad things that I feel awful about.
Speaker 4:But that is not indicative of who I am and the things that I can do in my life and that's been the thing that I learned over and over again is that people are worth so much more than the worst things that they've done. And I can't think of a single person. But everybody I met were guys that were just simply trying to get through the incarcerated portion of their sentence, thinking about the things that they could do when they get home, whether it's reconnecting with their kids or getting a job, so they can support themselves restarting their life in a way where they could kind of get through this chapter of their life which they felt awful about and just wanted to get to the other side and be able to resume their life in a way that was hopefully going to be prosperous and successful for them.
Speaker 3:Thanks, gus. I really appreciate you sharing that. You know you were trying to do programs. You had this possibility of good time. Did you take advantage of this new legislation that was available to you?
Speaker 4:Talk a little bit about that was available to you Talk a little bit about that. Yeah, so 2011,. The Connecticut state legislature passes a bill, the governor signs into the law, which starts giving people risk reduction and credits Huge deal for everybody. I was in Enfield Correctional at the time in Enfield, connecticut. You know we're trying to follow the news. We're trying to keep abreast as much as we could in terms of, like, what was going on. And once the bill was passed, there was some sort of waiting period. But then we all got new timesheets or papers that said what our sentences were being changed to. And you know, like I said, for me personally, I had almost a year knocked off my sentence, and not just knocked off the end of my sentence. I was eligible for parole at 85 percent of my sentence. So 11 months knocked off of the end of my sentence made my sentence shorter. And then the 85% portion where I was eligible for parole was a date that was even closer to where I was at the time in 2011. And that's what almost everybody who was locked up was facing. So it was a really positive thing and people were really excited about it because the potential for going home early was suddenly so much closer, let alone ever incarcerated.
Speaker 4:But the following year, in 2013, in response to that awful shooting, the legislature passed another bill that was primarily focused on gun safety and gun control and you know the capacity of gun magazines and all this stuff having to do with gun possession but also on like the 100th page of the bill you know huge, huge, huge bill and in this tiny section, at the very end, the legislature said that for people who are receiving risk reduction earned credits, those risk reduction earned credits could only apply to the end of the person's sentence and it could not be applied to the person's parole eligibility.
Speaker 4:And so what that meant was, whatever your parole date was when you were originally sentenced would not change. The end of your sentence might get shorter because you're receiving these credits, but your parole eligibility date would never change. It was set in stone. And so for me, all of a sudden, the parole date that had been moving up you know, five days a month or whatever was suddenly set back. So my parole date had moved up about a year and then, after this bill was passed, caused by somebody who had never been incarcerated, that I had no connection to in any way, my parole date was suddenly set back again by about a year.
Speaker 2:Right. So what did that do to your mental outlook?
Speaker 4:Oh, it was incredibly stressful, and, again, not just for me, you know, this was for most of the guys I was locked up with.
Speaker 4:We were kind of being yo-yoed back and forth. And shortly after the legislation was passed I remember this it was one night, a weeknight, where I and five other guys were called to the visiting room and there was a young woman from the Board of Pardons and Parole was there and we didn't know what was going on. But we were sat down and she said that because of the legislation that had just been passed, it was changing the way our eligibility was, and at the time the Board of Pardons and Parole was inundated with people who were eligible for parole. You know, it was not uncommon for people to miss their parole eligibility. There was a date that they were supposed to see the parole board and months and months and months would go by, if not years, past that date, because the parole board had so many cases in front of them they could never meet people's dates in a timely fashion. So at the time people were missing their parole dates by months and months and months.
Speaker 2:So this to underscore that, gus, I mean what you're saying is legally they were eligible, but administratively there was a bottleneck.
Speaker 4:Yeah, right. So this woman said that legislation had been passed and the Board of Pardons of Parole had identified a group of people that if you had a parole eligibility date less than a year from your end of sentence date, the parole board had determined that they did not have the capacity to give those people parole hearings. It was a small group of people, you know. At the place I was at, it was me and five other guys and some other number of people who were currently incarcerated. The woman suggested that we find alternative ways of trying to find our release.
Speaker 3:What does that mean? She's like just find another way, like OK.
Speaker 4:I mean so I had when I've been sentenced in 2008,. They said you know, do your do your offender accountability plan? You know, take the classes that we assigned to you, stay out of trouble, all with the idea that at some point in time you will have an opportunity to sit in front of the board of pardons and parole and talk about why you're eligible for release. You know you've done the things you're supposed to and you want to say I'm a rehabilitated person, I'm safe to go back into the community. And then, after doing all the things that I felt like I was supposed to be doing, that was eliminated.
Speaker 3:That was just taken away from me. So, gus, I think that's really important, because one of the things that most people don't realize unless they're experiencing it is we have these social contracts right, like, okay, you're going to be sentenced, you're adjudicated. We have all of this inclination that you know it's done fairly. But time and time again, the system changes the goalposts and people are trying to do the right thing. That were like what I really care about when I get out is to go commit more crimes. I want to get out so I can go commit more crimes. It's like I want to, you know, see my family. I want to do something good in the community. I want to get more education. I want to do like. Those are the things that people are aspiring to do.
Speaker 4:It can be very demotivating when the goalpost just keeps changing.
Speaker 4:What was most infuriating to me about that was realizing that the goalposts were changing and we had no ability to voice the impact that that was having on our lives.
Speaker 4:You know, as incarcerated people, we didn't have the ability to go to the state capitol and testify or talk to legislators about what was going on and how this was wrong in terms of how it was impacting not only like my life and my release date, but also my family, who wanted me to be back with them and miss their son, miss their brother, you know, potentially, you know, miss their, their, their parent, who was locked up. And I realized that decisions were being made at the Capitol in Hartford at this level that I had no ability to be a part of and none of the guys I was with had the ability to be a part of too. Yet they were impacting our lives. Decisions were being made, laws were being passed, policies were being changed that were impacting our lives in good ways and now in like, really negative ways. There was no one that was sort of speaking up for us. You know, there was nobody that was fighting on our behalf.
Speaker 2:So, if we go to like this film analogy, this is your origin story and this is the moment in that movie where Gus is hit by this bolt of lightning that turns him into the Gus we know today. Right, yeah. You've got that spark.
Speaker 4:I would see things on the news where they would talk about you know, whether it was this bill being passed or just other things where they talk about people who are incarcerated, and it used to like it would infuriate me when you'd hear the language that people would use. You know much different now, you know. 10, 12 years later, whatever it is, you know, I think there's certainly in the media. There's a greater awareness of the idea that we want to use people first language when we're talking about people involved in the criminal legal system. That was totally absent. You know we are all you know. We're criminals, we're offenders. So that used to drive me crazy. And then the policy side of it too, you know not having people that were directly impacted by legislation that was being passed, being involved in the discussions or the negotiations or whatever around that, you know you felt very cut off from things that were impacting you in incredibly real ways. So, yeah, that did sort of become my activation point in 2013.
Speaker 3:And so, when you have this revelation, when this deeply impacted you in the goalposts change. How do you move from incarceration and this sort of activation to being released?
Speaker 4:Tell us briefly about that talking about the unfairness of this situation, of how policies were being changed that had nothing to do with what we were doing, but were changing the way our sentencing was happening, even though we were doing everything we were supposed to be doing. So I just started churning out letters to folks. I don't know if any of those folks ever got those letters. I never got responses to any of them. But I also started writing to halfway houses too, because I realized that, even though I was not eligible for parole, you become eligible for a halfway house at some number of months before your end of sentence date. So I did become eligible to be in a halfway house and they tell you the addresses of halfway houses all over the state. So I also started writing letters asking if they had an available bed. Would they please consider me? And so I was eventually accepted into a work release program at a halfway house in Hartford While I was incarcerated.
Speaker 4:I came back from dinner one night and got called down to the property room. I had no idea what was going on. To get called down there If you're picking up a book, or maybe you're sending some stuff home, or something like that. I went down there and the CO told me that I was going to a halfway house in the morning and I needed to pack my stuff up and bring them down In the morning. In the morning, yep. So I came back from dinner around like five o'clock and I got called down to the property room and I'd been locked up at that point for like seven and a half years and no idea, because you know, when you write halfway houses they don't respond to you. So at that point I was really just writing letters because I felt like I needed to do something, in the same way that I was writing, you know, elected folks. I was so frustrated I was trying to do something to address that and not thinking necessarily I was going to get at any response, but I just I needed to like do something. I had lost my ability to be eligible for parole. All I was going to do otherwise was just wait until my sentence was over.
Speaker 4:How did you sleep that night? I did not sleep. I came down there. The CO told me you're leaving in the morning, go pack your property and bring it down to us. I didn't believe him at first. I was like you cannot be serious.
Speaker 4:I went back to my unit. I told the guy that I was living with at the time. I told the folks I'd been in that facility for about four years, so I knew a lot of people in that facility and a lot of relationships. So I had to tell people. I called my family, I said I don't know where I'm going, but they just told me that I'm leaving in the morning. We'd have to figure out the next day where I was at. I was totally unexpected, did not sleep, you know, about two o'clock in the morning I got sent down to a like sort of the way it's like a visiting, it's like the visiting area. And then eventually somebody came and got me and they drove me the following morning to a halfway house in Hartford and all of a sudden I was not incarcerated anymore and I ended up spending the next eight months at the halfway house.
Speaker 3:And I mean this just seemed like just the idea that out of the blue well, not out of the blue you're writing letters, but like you said, I can only imagine. Sometimes, even in advocacy, we're like, are we screaming into the void? Like, does anybody hear us? And then you know, something wonderful happens. So you know, the water on the boulder, sort of thing, like you're dripping, dripping, dripping, and then you're like, oh wait, dripping, dripping, dripping. And then you're like, oh wait. But oftentimes I've heard people talk about a little bittersweet right, because it's like now you have to go tell all these people who are not leaving that you're leaving and you're feeling this joy, but you also have all these relationships. Was that true for you?
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, absolutely yeah. You know, and I'd experienced to a lot of folks that I got to know really well too when they left. You know that would be bittersweet in terms of like being thrilled that they were being able to leave and also like the realization that you're losing that relationship, and then also you reflect it back on yourself too. You know you're, as you know, as happy as you are that that person is able to go home. You think about your own situation. You think about how much time you have to wait before you maybe be able to go home yourself too.
Speaker 2:And each time the dynamic of your life changes a little bit right. Every time somebody leaves, your routine might be a little different. Something you're doing so when you're in the halfway house. Are you then at that point seeing an officer for like, is there a parole officer or probation officer, or is the halfway house just your obligation at that point?
Speaker 4:I was in a work release program. There was a parole officer assigned to the halfway house, but not somebody that I saw on a regular basis. The people you interact with are the staff at the halfway house, so there's a case manager and there's residential, but the folks that are managing the halfway house letting people in and out of the building, making sure you have food, filling out your passes, things like that. I got a job working in a restaurant about a month after I got to the halfway house, so I started. That was something that was made a big deal to me, being able to work and have a job and feeling like I was sort of transitioning back into society in terms of having a function. Getting that job was a huge deal for me, and then, as I I was in the halfway house for about eight months, and the first couple of months it was thrilling to be outside of prison. You know, being back in Hartford, being able to go out and wear regular clothes and wear prison clothes and being able to see my family a little bit. You know that that was huge. After being there for about six or seven months, though, it became incredibly frustrating, because you're in this halfway setting where you know you're, there's all these restrictions and limitations on your movement and what you're allowed to do, and everything from. You can't just walk out the door. You know you have to have a pass and they have to know where you're going and you can only have so much money on you and you have to. You're paying rent to this place. You know you have to have a pass and they have to know where you're going and you can only have so much money on you and you have to. You're paying rent to this place. You know you're paying a portion of your paycheck but you're not allowed to bring food into the building and you know all these, these things that eventually, at the beginning it feels great because you have your freedom, but you don't really have your freedom and it actually feels kind of suffocating, obeying all the rules.
Speaker 4:You are supposed to become eligible for something called furloughs. Furloughs gives you the ability to spend time with your family. You earn it over time. Maybe you can get two hours and then four hours and then maybe you can do it overnight with your family. Then maybe you get a weekend with your family. And I was eligible for those, but they had to get signed off by a parole officer or someone, and I would apply for these things over and over and over again and just never get them, and it would drive me nuts because once again, I'm doing the things that I'm supposed to be doing, but the system is not responding to me in a way that you know, rewards you or not rewards you, but acknowledges like you have done these things, you have earned these things. So this is the accountability for you doing well in your good behavior.
Speaker 4:And I just want to say one other thing that was that truly, that made it also really difficult to be at the halfway house is I'd met a guy who I was living with we shared a room together who I became very close to. Guy's name was Jeremy, and Jeremy was somebody that was in recovery. He had also been locked up for a number of years and had a young son, and his son had been born while he was incarcerated and he was slowly starting to get to know his son as he was in the halfway house, because he could finally start to see his son on a pretty regular basis. His mother was bringing his son to the halfway house so they could spend time together. But Jeremy, jeremy was somebody that, like I said, was in recovery and he was probably the most successful person that was living in the halfway house. He was somebody that had been able to get his license restored. So he was working for a company that did like chimney repair and he was able to drive a truck around the state as long as he came back to the halfway house in the evening. And that was like unheard of the idea that somebody could have a license and could drive a vehicle as part of this work release program. It was something that never happened and I think some of the staff took Jeremy to the Capitol at one point to go to some sort of reception because Jeremy was doing so well.
Speaker 4:And then Jeremy left on a Friday when he was allowed to go home. His mother came to I was on a Friday morning early in the morning and on Sunday night I was at work and somebody from the halfway house called me and said that Jeremy had OD'd over the weekend and was in a coma at Hartford Hospital and a couple of days after that he passed away together with her. The Friday night he left in the morning. He got together with the mother of his son. They got a hotel room and he OD'd and the mother of his kid actually got arrested for manslaughter for providing the drugs that he OD'd on he had not used in forever, so his tolerance was really low. She did not OD, but she got arrested for manslaughter.
Speaker 4:Terrible situation I was, and what I particularly thought about was their son. So you had the son who was like maybe three or four years old, father's passed away, mother's arrested for the father's death. I'm living in the same room where this guy was just with me a couple of days before and talking about, you know, wanting to reconnect with his son and how he's so excited about leaving the halfway house and he had been doing so well when he was there. Just a terrible, terrible thing that happened and he was a guy that I think had the potential to do really well and I don't know what kind of intervention could have changed that situation. Sometimes there's nothing that can happen, but there's also sometimes where people need better services and better supports and you know an opportunity for somebody to do really well because you can see they have the potential to be a great father and a great, you know, a productive person, and obviously he wasn't. You know this is a guy that wasn't trying to. You know, he didn't have a death wish or anything. Yeah, gus.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry you went through that. You know, Amber, as Gus is telling us this story, I'm just thinking about how he you know the experiences that he's been through and the way he's able to just observe everything, internalize it and then share it, which makes him such a wonderful advocate for so many other people, because he can remember, he can recall these stories, he's had these life experiences.
Speaker 2:I'm kind of thinking we need to like have a Gus series, because we have so much to cover and I want to make sure that we cover the stories that he has with the Board of Pardons and Parole. We touched on his first experience with them while he was incarcerated and I know there's a couple more.
Speaker 3:I want to just take a moment to honor Jeremy and to thank you, gus, for sharing that story, and I think it does really illustrate how we need to be paying attention to all of the supports that are needed, because there were some supports and then after that, if you want to call a halfway house support, but who didn't have support was the mother Right, and so we have to look at all of those those things. I do want to talk about pardons and paroles and I know that we're getting short on time and also we definitely want to talk about like what you're doing now. So, also, we definitely want to talk about like what you're doing now. So after you, you know you were in that period of like being released from the halfway house. Finally, which seems towards the end, was like you were really ready for. Is there anything in reentry, just real quick, that you wanted to cover before we sort of move ahead from that?
Speaker 4:I left the halfway house after about eight months and I was on probation at that point and I spent the next five years on probation. There were a lot of things that I could say that was frustrating about being on probation and also felt kind of meaningless and did not help me in any way in terms of helping me transition out of incarceration back into the community and hopefully be a positive person. The same way that I think about being incarcerated, I'm not somebody who thinks that there is a usefulness to prisons and jails. I think that they tend to harm people far more than they help anybody and that's speaking very generally. But I think prisons and jails cause a lot of harm to people and rarely do people come out of incarceration as better versions of themselves of themselves.
Speaker 4:But I do think that when people have opportunities to work on themselves and get healthier and address some of the things that might be challenging them, they can become better people. And sometimes those settings might be in a prison or a jail, but it's not because those settings existed. It's because of how they addressed what was going on themselves. And when you hear people talk about how they got smarter or they got healthier while they're incarcerated. Typically that's because of things they did for themselves, or maybe they had assistance from volunteers or they had family support. It's rarely anything that came from the Department of Corrections.
Speaker 3:It was in spite of the system, rather than because of the system.
Speaker 4:Yes, and when I was on probation, it was very much the same way, where nothing probation gave me was beneficial and it was all stuff that I had to do on my own. And, if anything, probation put up more restrictions and barriers in terms of me moving forward with my life than they did in terms of helping me out. And there were a lot of times when I was on probation where it was kind of infuriating because of you know, whether it was like the way they talk to you or the expectations they would put on you when you would go to check in, maybe to tie this into applying for a pardon. The state of Connecticut created these things called certificates of employability at one point, which the idea was to help people get employment. You know, the state of Connecticut, there was like an application you would fill out and the state of Connecticut would, if you were approved, give you a certificate that said you know, we think you could be potentially be a good employee. And when those things first rolled out in like 2015, I was one of the first people that applied for it. The probation office that I was in had no clue about what the things were. The probation officer had no idea how to help me get one. The supervisor did not understand how to fill out an application. They were just they didn't understand what they were In part that's you know brand new program, but it was kind of crazy to me that I knew more about it than they did.
Speaker 4:I bounced around when I was in probation in Manchester and New London and in New Britain I ended up meeting with somebody at the Farmington police station for about the last year that I was on probation. I bounced around all over the place when five years of being on probation I probably had like 30 different probation officers. You know I met a lot of times. I would meet somebody for a single time and the next time I would have to check in I'd have I'd be assigned to somebody else.
Speaker 4:I would be assigned to people that like, were I was not, like they had specialties in like mental health maybe or some other area and I didn't fit, and they would be like I don't understand why you're on my caseload, I'm going to reassign you to somebody else. Then maybe I would see somebody for like a period of time and then you get to know them and then you go in and that person's gone and you've been reassigned to somebody else and so you're kind of like starting all over again. So they didn't know what your job were, they didn't know what your address was, they didn't know anything about you and they'd be instantly suspicious. Because the idea is like, well, you're, you're guilty of something in order to be in probation to begin with, so that you know are you, are you lying to me about something? You're not trustworthy, like you would have to rebuild that relationship all over again.
Speaker 3:It was not a humanizing situation.
Speaker 4:It was a frustrating time period and it felt like it was more about keeping control of me. We're not going to keep control of me, but just like making my life more difficult rather than trying to empower me.
Speaker 3:I know you have some degrees. How did those happen? Inside, outside, a little bit of both.
Speaker 4:Well, when I had an opportunity, when I left the halfway house I had a job already. I was working in a restaurant and I'd been promoted in the restaurant. But I realized quickly that the restaurant I was working in there was a pretty low ceiling in terms of what I could potentially grow into. There wasn't a lot of career growth going on. I had a bachelor's degree before I got locked up. I had a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Connecticut and I was interested in other opportunities, whether I could get into a job where there was career growth or I could earn more money.
Speaker 4:I met with somebody from the Department of Labor. There was the American Job Center in Hartford had a job program and I met with somebody and I did a job evaluation where they're trying to figure out maybe what kind of career fields you could go into. And I learned very quickly that as somebody living with a felony conviction, you can't go into the healthcare industry, you can't go into the insurance industry, you can't go into the financial industry, the educational sect, all these things are kind of cut off to you if you're somebody with a felony conviction. I remember the guy that I met with said, well, would you be interested in. How do you feel about digging snow? And that was the one job opportunity he had was during the wintertime. You know he'd go out and you could help, you know, clear off sidewalks and stuff, which I'm not above doing. You know, I spent years and years mopping floors and cleaning bathrooms and stuff like that, but I was looking for something that was actually a career opportunity for me. So I started looking around, trying to think, okay, what else could I potentially do? And I heard, you know, I was going to career fairs, open houses, and I went to an open house at the UConn School of Social Work because I thought maybe I need to go back to school and try to get a. You know, I was actually at the time. I was thinking, you know, is there some sort of vocational training that I need to do? Do I need to learn how to get into the construction field or learn a trade or something like that, because those tend to be a little bit more open to people with criminal records.
Speaker 4:I went to an open house at the UConn School of Social Work because I heard about something they had that had to do with more political social work, which was for social workers that wanted to work not necessarily at a clinical level where you're working with, like individuals or families, but actually working on more of a macro level, working on sort of policy and legislation. And that just kind of clicked with me because I thought of some of the experiences I had when I'm incarcerated and I went to an open house. I met with a couple of UConn professors. I talked to them If I'm somebody with a criminal record, if I applied to a graduate program here, would you guys actually accept me? Would I be allowed into the school? And to their credit, they were like yes, apply. I applied, they accepted me.
Speaker 4:I went through the program and two years later I graduated with a master's degree in social work. And when I was in the program I had a lot of great opportunities. I had an opportunity to kind of learn more about policymaking. I had to meet a lot of people that worked in the field commissioners, deputy commissioners, academics and that became sort of the opening the door to the work that I do now in advocacy around trying to create a better, more fair criminal legal system.
Speaker 2:And then here we are. You know you're moving along, the pandemic kind of hits, and then you're doing work with the ACLU which we'll talk about in a second but you apply for a pardon. What made you decide to go for the pardon and what was that process for you?
Speaker 4:Well, you know that, going all the way back until when you go through assessment, after you get sentenced.
Speaker 4:You know, for me it was 2008.
Speaker 4:They tell you, they give you a brochure that has to do with your eligibility for parole at some point, and they also say that you could become eligible for pardon at some point, and at that point it's just, you know, it's like in fairyland you never think that that's actual possibility. The Board of Pardons of Parole has gone through a lot of changes that I've seen, that I've experienced since I've been a part of this system, and they have gone from issuing very, very, very low numbers of pardons to people. It was almost something that you know was kind of an impossibility I didn't know anybody who ever received a pardon from the state of Connecticut To the Board of Pardons and Parole actually opening up and feeling like we need to look at our process and we need to look at how we are evaluating people and how we're issuing pardons. And the board had actually come around and had become a lot more I'm not sure what the right word is, but they'd started to grant pardons to people on a much higher rate than they had in the past.
Speaker 3:So they started doing the job that they were charged to do, Like okay.
Speaker 4:Partly that's in response to work that a lot of folks like you, amber, and myself to a degree have been involved in, where we've been really saying we know we need to change the way the criminal legal system works because people that are living with criminal records are not becoming productive members of our society. The recidivism rate is shockingly, terribly high. People can't get jobs, people can't find housing, people are really struggling and suffering because of this criminal record that is hanging over them, and the Board of Pardons of Parole had this realization that you know we have an ability here by granting people pardons, where we can help people be successful in their lives by giving them that.
Speaker 2:And when the clean slate legislation was up and they were being asked about why, you know what's actually going on behind the scenes, because it was almost like a black box, right, and people were coming forward to testify and said I was denied a pardon and I wasn't even told why. I wasn't even granted a hearing and I wasn't told why, right, that sort of stuff over and over again. And they were basically embarrassed and said look, we will be open about it, we'll tell you what's going on, right? Is that a fair characterization?
Speaker 4:Yeah, the clean slate legislation, which is automatic erasure of some people's criminal records after they have completed their sentences, and that was passed by the state legislature in 2021. And as a side effect of that, it seemed like the Board of Pardons and Parole realized that we have the ability to erase people's records. Clean slate does it automatically for a small group of people, but the Board of Pardons and Parole also has the ability to do that for folks if they go through the application process, and the board realized that we have a role to play here and we need to do a better job of looking at folks who maybe aren't eligible for Clean Slate but should be awarded the opportunity to have their record erased.
Speaker 3:Right and I think that there was a lot of conversation during that process of Clean Slate that it's fine to carve people out because they have this other release valve mechanism. So what was your process like?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, gus, when you went to apply, all you had to do was write a quick letter that said I'd like to be released from all from everything and be granted a pardon. And they just called you in the next day and said here it is right.
Speaker 4:No, no, it's much more complicated than that, from what I understand, because I'd never applied for a pardon before, but for me, now you can do it electronically. It used to be. You had to fill out a packet of papers and there was a lot of work that you had to do. That, I think, probably inhibited a lot of people from applying for pardons to begin with, just because the amount of paperwork that you have to go through. Now you can do it electronically, you know. So you can go online, you can go to the Board of Pardons, of Parole website and you can do it that way. And the reason that I applied is because I knew a lot of people who had gone through the process themselves, so I was sort of following in their footsteps. I saw that other people people that I've been incarcerated with were applying for a pardon and they were getting it and I was shocked.
Speaker 4:I never thought that getting a pardon was a possibility. I thought, well, maybe this is something that I should think about doing myself. So I took the leap. I started my application in August of 2023. You have to get police reports, you have to get things notarized. You have to get a background check, which costs a little bit of money. You know it's $75 that you have to pay to the state of Connecticut. You have to get fingerprinted. You know there's a whole bunch of hoops and hurdles you have to go through, so it takes a while to do that. The responsibility is on you. One of the things I think is crazy about getting the background check is you have to pay $75 to the state of Connecticut to get your background check and give it to the board of partners From the state of Connecticut.
Speaker 4:Exactly, which is also the state of Connecticut. So sometimes these departments, these agencies, aren't communicating with each other, but the responsibility is on you to make sure they have the information. So I finished my application and I think, in September of 2023.
Speaker 2:But finishing the application also is answering a whole bunch of questions and getting character reference letters. So there's an emotional component to filling this out because you're reliving your entire case again.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you're not retrying your case, you know. But the reality is that you are going back through a lot of the circumstances and the moments that you you had originally gone through, back when your crimes actually happened, and you're thinking about your thought process and about who you were at the time and you're imagining, you know, how things could be differently. At least you're trying to explain that. You're trying to explain how have you changed from the person that was to the person you are now and why that makes you somebody that would be eligible to have your criminal record expunged or erased by the Board of Pardons and Parole. I completed the application in September. You wait for a period of time and then they in with you and you have to wait for a longer period of time and do a phone interview and then wait. If you get through the pre-screening process, you have an actual pardon hearing. I had my pardon hearing at the beginning of April of this year Is that hearing live Because they were doing it over Zoom during the pandemic.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it was over Zoom. I can remember in the past and this is before the Board of Pardoners and Parole really changed their process but I used to go to pardon hearings with other people as sort of a supportive person, people that I knew that were applying, and I'd go and just be with them in the audience and I would watch some of the hearings and they used to be like terrible, because you'd have maybe 20 people would have a hearing and maybe eight of them would actually get the pardon and then a dozen of them would be denied a pardon. And just the way it used to work was you'd all meet somewhere in a room it might be a courtroom, they'd have pardon hearings inside courtrooms and everybody would kind of sit in front of the parole board, three members of the parole board all at once, and then the parole board members would go into executive session and then they'd'd come out and they'd be like this person gets a pardon, this person's denied this person gets.
Speaker 3:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 4:The room full of people and I went to like four or five hearings and this is the way they did it in like 2018, 19 prior to the pandemic, and so you'd have people that would be in tears because of they've received their pardon and you know the emotional work, the emotional work and they'd be there with their family and their children and they'd be so happy. And then you'd have other people there with their families who had been denied a pardon and they'd be devastated by it. It was just a really, really awful way to go about doing the process. But now, since the pandemic, they're all done by Zoom, and that's the way I did mine and they tell you as soon as you've had your opportunity with, as soon as you go through the questions and you give a personal statement, the board members ask you a few questions, trying to get into whether they think you're truly repentant and you're a changed person.
Speaker 2:Did all three of the members ask you questions?
Speaker 4:Yes, for me they did. You know, it's sort of a good cop, bad cop. You know, one person asked me about a lot of the positive things that I've been involved with and then the other person asked me more pointed questions about trying to get me to talk about the person that I was at that time and like, how am I different? Now it seems like they do that with a lot of folks that go through the process. We have somebody more friendly and then somebody that's a little bit more of like an interrogator, and then they wrap it up For me. It took me maybe less than 10 minutes, between five and 10 minutes, and they tell you they vote right. Then, rather than waiting until the end of the hearing, they say all right, do you approve? And I got three people for me.
Speaker 2:Unanimous.
Speaker 4:Because you was everybody in my group too I think it was like eight or nine guys that I was with I stayed on to watch the rest of the hearing too.
Speaker 4:I was like the third person.
Speaker 4:Everybody got their hearing, everybody got pardoned as well, and it seems that if you go through the application process, the phone interview and the pre-screening process, if you can get to that point in the full hearing, you're in a really good situation. The parole board has already done a lot of their due diligence and they think that you know you're a person that is probably pretty well situated to get a pardon. You can really only damage yourself at that point by saying something that's probably not too beneficial to your case. When I've had opportunities because I know a bunch of people now that have gone through the process and if they can get to the pardon hearing, they're in really good shape too. So not that you have it locked in, but feel confident about you know all the steps and the work that you've done to put yourself in that position to be in the hearing to get your pardon so I was able to get mine as well, and then that was in April and I didn't actually get the final, the actual certificate until the summertime.
Speaker 2:I sent you a letter that says Gus, it was voted on. You got it, but don't say anything to anybody because you didn't get it till we clear your record.
Speaker 4:I got an email from the board saying that they'd granted my pardon, and I printed up that email, and the next day I drove down to see my parents, who are getting up there in age, and I was able to show that letter from the board of pardons of parole to my parents, which was a huge deal for me, because my parents have gone through all the problems and journey that I've been on They've been right there with me and it's been really difficult for them as well as it has been for me and to be able to show them that letter from the Board of Pardons of Parole and also to show it to my sisters too.
Speaker 4:You know, when I had a chance to show it to my sisters, I think that meant a lot in terms of, like, sticking by me and continuing to love and support me, and I wanted to, in some small way, be able to show that it all meant something, and I think they knew that already though, but just, you know a little bit of, you know, seeing a big state agency like the Board of Pardons for All kind of back that up. It was very meaningful.
Speaker 2:You know, it's one thing to turn your life around, it's one thing to give back to the community like you've done, and then getting that external validation. The bar is set so high. I mean you say about getting to that point, like just getting to that hearing, the bar is set really high and the amount of work that you had to go through to even get that hearing is a tremendous amount and you deserve the highest praise and recognition for beating that bar and exceeding that bar and doing the work that you've done. So congratulations.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks for sharing that process because I think it does illustrate I know that you're humble and you sort of downplayed a little bit the struggle that it is to sort of go through that and some of the other things. And it's also important to note the different processes that happen in different states with different agencies and so on and so forth, because we do have listeners across the country and I think that Connecticut is striving to do things a little differently, is striving to do things a little differently and pardon processes and parole processes in different states might look a little different. I know they look a little different, so I just want to acknowledge that and there are many people that have gone through this process that never make it to that hearing Right. So the amount of work and diligence and emotional roller coaster that it takes to get to where and receive that part and is amazing, so you should definitely feel proud of that.
Speaker 2:Right and going through it. Like you said. You know the emotional part if you get it it's going through is emotional because you're like, well, what if I get it? Or what if I don't get it Right? It's like all those emotions going through and then when you finally you know if you don't get it that's a risk because you're going to be deflated again. But in this case it worked out. You got it and in Connecticut not only did you get the pardon but it's also an expungement Right.
Speaker 4:I mean ideally, the reason you go through the pardon process is, I'm sure there's a personal interest in having your record wiped clean, but just from a sort of a process and technical standpoint. You know we have the internet. Information is still available out there. You're somebody that's trying to get a better job or you're trying to find an apartment, you know all these things where a person's criminal history might pop up. Those things may still exist in a lot of other places. And even if you have a pardon, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're not going to continue to face rejection and discrimination based on that criminal record.
Speaker 2:Exactly. A bank could still say we know about it, it happened, even though legally it doesn't exist anymore. But my point is that legally you have no criminal record right and according to the state of Connecticut you could say you were never even arrested.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah so I mean, I think that's worth celebration, but that does not mean that we don't identify the problems with other areas where people are harmed. So now I really want to talk about all of the wonderful things that, Gus, you are doing, and full disclosure. Gus and I are co-workers at the ACLU and so I'm knowledgeable about all of the amazing ways that Gus shows up in community for people. So, Gus, talk a little bit about how did that happen. Like you just woke up one day and you're like I'm going to go work for the ACLU, did that?
Speaker 4:happen Like you just woke up one day and you're like.
Speaker 4:I'm going to go work for the ACLU. Oh, no, no. When I was at UConn, actually, I met somebody who was hired at the ACLU as their criminal justice organizer back in 2018. One of the things that appealed to me about going to the UConn School of Social Work is they had a group of students who were very interested in mass incarceration and the intersection between social work and the social work profession, and then people that also have criminal records, because you often see a lot of folks that are our clients, that are going to agencies that social workers work in, who also have issues with the criminal legal system at the same time. Yet there was not a whole lot of awareness about how people's criminal records impacted them from a social work standpoint, and what the students were trying to do was, in the classes that we took, they were trying to have there be more discussion and more studying about sort of the collateral consequences that people face when they're living with a criminal record and how social workers might do a better job of addressing those issues and those barriers that they face. So I met you know, I met a student who ended up working at the ACLU who I'd met at UConn Sometime after she started working, there was an opportunity to kind of do some part-time work with the ACLU as a 15-hour-a-week field organizer job that I applied for in the summer of 2018.
Speaker 4:Me and another guy got hired to do those 15-hour-a-week job and eventually that 15 hours a week turned into 25 hours a week and then eventually, after about a year, I got hired on as a full-time staff person. So for a long time I had another full-time job that I was working in the restaurant industry and I was also working 25 hours a week at the ACLU, and then finally was able to become valuable enough to the affiliate, where they hired me on full-time in 2019. I was originally a field organizer and then I became the campaign manager for the Smart Justice Campaign, which is the ACLU's forward-facing criminal legal system reform work that they've been doing over the last maybe five or six years. That's basically what I spend a lot of my time doing now, in addition to a lot of work around voting rights and all the other issue areas that the ACLU focuses on connected to civil rights and civil liberties.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so I do have to say that I first met Gus when I was not working for the ACLU and our lives were impacted by the criminal legal system. And so, gus, for those that don't know what is an organizer Like, what does an organizer do?
Speaker 4:We connect and move people. So you are looking to, first of all, identify the issues that people are facing in their lives. You know what are the problems that people have and how can we do an organized way of addressing them. So an organizer meets people where they're at. An organizer learns about the issues that people are facing in their lives and an organizer tries to bring people together to create change and for us at the Smart Justice Campaign, that has typically been legislative change.
Speaker 4:So we organize folks that have been directly impacted by the criminal legal system and we identify a particular issue. You know whether that's something like clean slate, the automatic erasure of a person's criminal record, housing discrimination, discrimination when it comes to occupational licenses. You know people that want to become nurses or barbers or anything that requires a license, but if you have a person with a criminal record that you don't have access to those types of employment opportunities. And we organize folks to come to the Capitol to lobby, to testify on behalf of bills, to talk to legislators about the barriers that they're facing and how we need the people that we put into positions of power to tear down those barriers and allow people to flourish and be productive members of our state.
Speaker 3:And so I want to connect this back, because this is sort of a beautiful full circle thing for me, because I'm thinking about 16 year old Gus, who went and did community service and he was like, oh, this is the part of what I'm doing that makes me see potential and see a future, and all of that, and you know, fills my soul if you will. And so here you are doing exactly that many years later. Is that? Does that feel right?
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 4:You know I think I said this earlier too, and I said this in my pardon hearing that I know that I'm the best version of myself, or I'm a better version of myself, or I'm a better version of myself when I am connected to other people, when I'm invested in the success and the well-being of other people, and you know when that gets returned to me, when other people are invested in my success and my health and my prosperity, and that's the only way I think any of us are going to ultimately be successful and thriving in our lives.
Speaker 4:You know we have to have communities around us. As much as I appreciate my solitude and just hanging out by myself and being with my dog, ultimately I know that the things that are going to make me successful are when other people around me are successful too, and that's being in community. So you know, if we can tie it all the way back to when I was 16 years old and doing community service and feeling that that was like really meaningful to me, much more so than whatever silly programs that the legal system tried to assign, ultimately it's in working in service of other people and having people cooperating with other people and allowing other people to be with you as well. That's ultimately where the solutions are.
Speaker 2:And Gus, your advocacy. You know you make a difference. You are a very impactful person. You're memorable People like you. People know you. You rally, you're everywhere For people who are listening. Gus is the guy with the camera, often taking pictures at every event, making sure that not only did the event happen, but that it's been documented, and so he's very. He's got a big social media presence. So Gus is I'm a big Gus fan. I'm really glad you're here. Amber, I think it's time for your final question.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if I had not met Gus and Anderson, I don't think that I would be doing what I do today.
Speaker 2:Anderson was a prior Amplify Voices guest too, and he's become a friend and you always see Gus and Anderson together working Anderson is my colleague.
Speaker 4:He's somebody I work closely with and somebody also that's been impacted by the criminal legal system. We talk a lot about peer support and supporting each other. We both started at the ACLU about the same time and we've now been with the organization for seven years something like that. He's a wonderful person.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 4:We love.
Speaker 3:Anderson. So, I want to ask you, gus, sort of our final question before we wrap up our time together, and that is if you had one piece of advice that you would give to someone who is at the beginning of a journey that was similar to yours. You know, thinking that 16-year-old Gus, what piece of advice would you give a person at that point in their journey?
Speaker 4:That's a hard question. I'm not sure that I ever would have thought when I was younger that I would kind of get to the point where I'm at right now, and a lot of it is just taking things day to day. It's not trying to get too far ahead of yourself and thinking you know as much as I think this is incredibly important to have a plan for yourself. It's also about making good decisions on a regular basis and trying to think about what is good for me. You know, getting a dog has been really important for me in terms of having companionship and have something that I don't have kids of my own, though, but I have. My dog is like my child and I love him to death.
Speaker 4:It's it's doing smaller things that are really about taking care of yourself and ultimately trying to put yourself, you know, little by little, in better situations and making better decisions for things that are going to be good for yourself and hopefully, over time, those things building into something that you don't even realize has happened. But suddenly you're in a better situation. Maybe you're around people that have values that are similar to your own and ultimately putting yourself in a better position where more doors are open to you. You know I'm still building towards that myself, but it's little by little and not expecting that everything's going to happen all at once. And you know, don't try to overwhelm yourself or intimidate yourself into thinking that you can suddenly make a huge leap in time, because that's not the way life works. You know, you still got to wake up in the morning and go to bed at night, and you know, take things hour by hour. So, yeah, take it slowly.
Speaker 3:Well, Gus, thank you so much for joining us on Amplified Voices today. It was really great to hear a little bit of your story and I know that our listeners will really appreciate the things that we've learned today. What's the best way that people could get in touch with you if they want to connect with your work?
Speaker 4:Well, I'm always open and love meeting folks. You can find me on all the social media stuff. I'm not on TikTok, but you can find me on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. I think all my profiles are public so folks can send me friend requests or send me DMs or, if you want to meet, by Zoom, and we can meet each other that way. A lot of the work that I do is one-on-ones with people, so I'm always happy to meet with folks and talk about where they're coming from and the work that we do, and if there's opportunities for all that to intersect, I'm happy to meet new people all the time.
Speaker 2:Thank you, gus, and you know it's been a pleasure to get to know you over the years. I hope that we continue to work together on different projects. I know I'll be seeing you out in the community, amber absolutely because she works with you, so she'll see you. But thank you so much for coming in and sharing your personal side of your story today and advancing the issues for so many people. So it was really wonderful to have you. Finally, because I know we just I don't know if Amber knows this, but Gus and I both went to a class on podcasting before Amplified Voices ever even existed. So thank you, gus and Amber, until next time.
Speaker 3:We'll see you next time.
Speaker 5:You've been listening to Amplified Voices, a podcast lifting the experiences of people and families impacted by the criminal legal system. For more information, episodes and podcast notes, visit amplifiedvoicesshow.
