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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
Dr. Reece - From Surviving Harm to Drop LWOP Movement Leader - Season 5 Episode 12
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Justice shouldn’t confuse accountability with exile. That’s the heartbeat of the conversation Amber & Jason had w Dr. Reece, a survivor whose near-fatal domestic violence experience led her from theater stages to forensic psychology & into the powerful world of restorative justice circles inside prisons. Her story begins with a family divided by a decades-old case and moves through the practical realities survivors face—housing, work, safety—alongside the emotional aftermath that the legal process rarely addresses.
We dig into the shock of hearing an officer call the man who harmed her “a perfect gentleman,” the moment an ADA said she wasn’t her lawyer, and the system’s narrow notion of accountability as “as many years as we can get.” Dr. Reece wanted something different: for the harm to be named and addressed, and for the person who caused it to change. That conviction took her underground—literally—into prison basements where survivors and people who committed serious harm sit face to face, ask why, and do the hard work of repair. The result is profound: "lifers" often become stable leaders, credible messengers who interrupt violence and mentor youth more effectively than any billboard campaign.
We also discuss the explosion of life sentences and LWOP in the United States, why risk and rehabilitation get ignored for politics, and what the research actually shows about dangerousness over time. Dr. Reece shares the goals of Drop LWOP New England—creating meaningful opportunities for release through second look, parole, and commutation—and explains Connecticut’s Domestic Violence Survivor Justice Act (DVSJA), which recognizes the link between victimization and later criminalization. This isn’t softness on harm; it’s smarter public safety rooted in evidence, context, and real human change.
If you care about survivor healing, reentry, & safer communities, this conversation offers a different map: connection over separation, truth over slogans, and hope as a condition for transformation. Subscribe, share with a friend, and tell us: what does meaningful accountability look like to you?
About Dr. Brashani Reece:
It’s rare for a survivor of violent crime to become a leading advocate for the very people the system is designed to punish. But Dr. Brashani Reece's journey is far from typical.
As the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Drop LWOP New England, Dr. Reece's path to activism and commitment grew as she became a trained facilitator, working with incarcerated people and witnessing the transformative power of accountability and personal growth. She now co-leads Drop LWOP New England with her husband, Steven "Farooq" Quinlan, who is serving a life without parole sentence in Rhode Island. Her work is a testament to the belief that healing is possible and that even the most extreme sentences are not a solution.
Dr. Reece brings both a scholar’s rigor and a survivor’s empathy to the fight against extreme prison sentences.
In addition to its website, the Drop LWOP New England can be found at its website, on Blue Sky, and on Instagram.
Dr. Reece encourages people to Take the Pledge to end extreme prison sentenc
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_00:Hello, welcome to another episode of Amplified Voices. I'm your host, Jason, here with my co-host Amber. Hello, Amber. Hi, Jason. Amber, today we have Dr. Prashani Reet. Hi, Dr. Reese.
SPEAKER_03:Hey, how are you?
SPEAKER_00:Good. So, Dr. Reese, we typically start the show by asking people to tell us a little bit about their lives before the criminal legal system and what brought them into it. That doesn't quite feel right in the conversation that we're about to have with you. Could you tell us how we might better frame the question and then start answering?
SPEAKER_03:I guess maybe the way to frame the question for me would be how did the criminal justice system finally impact your life enough that you had to sit up and pay attention to it?
SPEAKER_00:So, what's going on early on in your life before it even got to that point?
SPEAKER_03:When I was a child, there was a horrible split in my family on one side. And there was a family member that was never invited to be a part of certain family activities. He had done a certain number of years in prison. And he could not be around other members of my family because the people who were on the opposing side of that case were also family members. And that story had been almost like a, it was a myth in my family, but also a taboo. I didn't really understand as a child what it meant. All I knew was that certain family members couldn't be around each other. And I hadn't even really known about his incarceration until many years later, when I started to ask questions about, hey, wait a minute, what's that about? And to this day, 35 years after the alleged crime, because it was never actually determined whether or not it happened, he pled guilty as opposed to actually being found guilty. But 35 years later, those family members still cannot interact with each other.
SPEAKER_00:And can you draw a picture of your immediate family?
SPEAKER_03:So I have a brother who's special needs. So he requires a lot of attention. And then there's my mother and my father who are working very hard to try to mitigate any sort of conflict. So in this case, it's a conflict between one of my uncles and one of my aunts.
SPEAKER_04:And so this sounds like a lot to hold. And how it could be a little bit confusing as a 12-year-old as to why can't we just all do the thing? Yes.
unknown:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:And yet so the impact to your family is your mother is caught in the middle between your uncle and your aunt.
SPEAKER_03:Yes. She's attempting to be periodically out of frustration. My mom would say to me as a child comments that let me know that she very much was on the side of my uncle, that she very much believed one side versus the other, and that the things that had happened to him in the criminal justice system, all I knew was that my aunt and my uncle couldn't be in the same room, even after my grandfather died. Yeah. Now that I have to be aware of the criminal justice system because of things that have happened to me personally and my own experiences, I can pull it all together in a way that allows me to say, listen, if the criminal justice system was supposed to solve the harm that my uncle allegedly did to my aunt, I can tell you 35 years later that it failed.
SPEAKER_04:We heard a little bit about what was going on in your family. And so that was the first interaction with the criminal legal system. So what were you into when you were younger? What did you enjoy doing? Were you a sports person?
SPEAKER_03:Did you like music? I was a theater kid in a place where being a theater kid was weird. I grew up in a really small town. My family's from the city. So I had a lot of cousins who were exposed to the challenges of an urban lifestyle. It's actually one reason that my parents relocated me and my brother up to the middle of nowhere, Maine. But for me as a child, that really isolated me. And I had a lot of trauma. So by the time I hit my teenage years, I wasn't doing so great.
SPEAKER_00:But you gravitated towards a theater.
SPEAKER_03:So the important point about theater, and I think that this comes to larger conversations about healing, is that I was a child who felt a lot. And I felt really deeply. And I was having traumatic experiences and that were out of my control. And okay, that's life. Sometimes life happens. But when I found the stage, what I found was a channel. I found that I could feel all of these emotions intensely and actually be rewarded for it as opposed to when I'm in the classroom. If I'm feeling a strong feeling and I throw my desk, which is what I did, that gets me on somebody's radar in a really bad way. But if you take that energy and you move it over to the stage, you start saying things to that kid, you have great stage presence, you have great facial expressions. Wow, you feel so deeply. And that really comes across in your performance. And that is the healing that that I think kept me from a lot of other bad things I could have gotten involved with.
SPEAKER_04:You found an outlet in theater, which is amazing. I have some similar experiences in terms of being a theater person. And I also saw that in my own daughters as a military family. We moved and they could find their people engaging in the theater. So I completely understand where that can be something that is uplifting. So you also mentioned that was your first brush with the criminal legal system. Can you expound upon that a little bit?
SPEAKER_03:And when I turned 18, I put my hands on a 17-year-old and we got into a physical altercation. And unfortunately for me, a police officer was driving by as that was unfolding. And as he separated us and then eventually came to my house because he didn't, he didn't arrest me or anything like that. He, because again, it's just a small town. We don't even have cops in the town that I grew up in. It's usually like a county sheriff situation. And when he came to see me later that afternoon to tell me that charges were being pressed, he was like, You're the 18-year-old, you should know better. And to which, of course, I'm a child. I don't know. Of course. I don't know what you're talking about. And when I went to court, the judge said, What I see in front of me is a young woman who doesn't belong here. I'm gonna advise, you know, that the defense attorney who was there helping me, again, save my life. These people save my life, right? Because this defense attorney, she told me how to plead basically no contest. I don't remember what the Latin word was for it, but I took her advice and I pled that way. And the judge was like, Yeah,$50 fine, get out of here. You don't ever want to be in a place like this ever again. Don't come back. And I took that to heart.
SPEAKER_00:You get in front of this judge and they're pretty lenient on you, and you say it was a great experience.
SPEAKER_04:Okay, so moving forward, you're in college. Tell us what happens next.
SPEAKER_03:I only make it through two years of college. And then at the end of my second year, I am informed that my financial aid falls short for the following year, and I have to leave. So that's the first big barrier that I run into in terms of trying to pursue college. Okay.
SPEAKER_04:Was your housing and everything tied to the school and all of that? So you're not only just like losing your opportunity for education, you're like, now what do I do? Where do I go? Yeah, that is right.
SPEAKER_00:So, what did you do when the funding ran out? Were you able to get back to school, or does that come way later? Uh obviously you went back to school.
SPEAKER_03:Later. Yep, much later. So I uh it's not as interesting. So the transition would be over the next like couple of years, basically, I would find my way back to my family here in Massachusetts. And I was given I basically worked full time and saved up some money, had my own apartment, but I found my way back to Boston where my roots are, and that's when things really start to get interesting, I should say. So I began, I was working full-time. Let's springboard a little bit. A few years of working and acting full-time, and my addiction is blossoming. So I'm developing an addictive personality. I'm drinking a lot, I'm partying a lot, I'm dating a lot. And as a young woman, I'm thinking, that's cool. I'm doing all of that jazz, but I'm not making great relationship choices. And I got involved with a man that I did not know very well. We had a long-distance relationship. And when we moved in together, it was the first time that we were seeing each other consistently 24-7. And otherwise, we had only seen each other in person like once a month for six or seven months. And when we moved in together, it very quickly descended into a domestic violence situation. It escalated really fast. And within a month, there's now a violent man in the same apartment as me, which we have moved in together, right? So we brought our lives together. I had left a stable roommate situation, he had left a stable job down in Pennsylvania for us to move in, only to find out that we were catastrophically mismatched.
SPEAKER_00:So I'm so sorry that as you're describing this. And if we need to take some breaks as we're talking, please let us know. And if we ask anything that's too much, so you say it escalated quickly. Can you give an example of what that looked like?
SPEAKER_03:Yes. The first time he put hands on me, it was to shove me to the ground. And the last altercation that we had was only a week later. So it went very quickly from a lot of yelling and a lot of intense heated exchanges of whatever, to okay, now he's put hands on me, to okay, now the sort of defining incident that I talk about a lot in other spaces is being a survivor of attempted murder. That situation happens like a week later.
SPEAKER_00:So can you tell us like what's going on in your mind? Like the first time he does he's he's physical in that way. And I know there's all sorts of studies, and you'll get into all that, but what's happening for you? Like disbelief? Are you dissociated? What is that?
SPEAKER_03:I was shocked when he put hands on me. We were fighting, and but I was used to conflict because I was also a volatile person. I was a traumatized, volatile person myself, and so therefore the way I handle conflict wasn't great either. But I had never actually had a man put his hands on me like that. I had that was new. And he's so much stronger than me, and he's so much bigger than me. And I I actually had a full-blown panic attack because we had just moved in together. We were only, we'd only been living together for about a month. So we had just moved in together and we had just merged our lives. And I was like, oh my God. I even said to him, I was like, I think we made a mistake.
SPEAKER_04:And so you're finding yourself in this completely new situation with someone you thought you knew well because you did spend time together. And so you're you've merged your lives. This happens, and this sort of triggers uh understandable anxiety. What do I do now? And the way you're describing is that things escalated very quickly. So you're surprised before you can even formulate what it is, you're so surprised that this is happening, and it escalates within a week. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So walk, walk us through that a little bit. I just want to say for anyone who's listening who might think, why did she stay? Because sometimes people ask that, like, why did you stay? You don't know how fast it can happen. And then when it does happen, are you prepared to take on the consequences of what has just happened? I'll walk you through what happened, and then I'll walk you through the consequences of the situation, right? For me as the survivor of attempted murder, not even him as the person who obviously was broken enough that he tried to kill his partner. That's that's a really broken place. So he put hands on me, and then the week later, it's a Saturday morning, we wake up, and already we're just gonna conflict. He's in a bad mood, I'm not in a great mood. He says something to me flippant, and I threw a coffee cup at him. And then he just gets this look. And for a person who's been in a domestic violence relationship, you know the look. Like, I shouldn't have done that, I shouldn't have said that. There's all of that sort of, oh my God. And I instantly felt this panic because he got that look on his face that I had very quickly come to realize was really bad for it was gonna be really bad for me. And so he tackled me, he put me in a headlock. So I'm on my back, and he has me in a headlock, and he's squeezing, and I can't breathe. And I'm fighting and I'm twisting and all of that as I'm losing consciousness, right? I have a vision of my own body in the Charles River, and all I'm thinking is like, please, no, please, not that way, please. I don't want to die this way. I don't know what compelled him, but he let me go. He let me go. That's why I'm alive today, because he somewhere in his brain, I thought I think he didn't actually want to kill me because he let me go. And then he went to the bedroom and he got a gun, and he came back and he hit me in the face with the gun, the pistol whip me, and then he dragged me by my hair to the bedroom where I instantly went to the worst case scenario. Right. And I remember in my brain, I remember telling myself if he rapes you, it's okay. You'll be alive after that. It'll be okay. Just don't think about it. And I was preparing myself for that. He didn't. Thank God. He didn't. But he hit me again in the face, and then he sat down on the bed and he started to cry. Now I'm totally disassociated. I'm totally disassociated. I can't, I'm not present, but he's crying, and I start comforting him. But I said to him, I said, I think we made a mistake. I think I don't think we can do this. So when that was done, he as much as he was apologetic, right? He didn't want me to leave all of that. He told me, you're not going anywhere. Like you have to stay here. And I received that message as you can't, I can't let you out of the apartment because you're gonna call the police or you're gonna tell somebody or all of that. So I was then hostage in the apartment for the next two days, attempting to take care of my neck, which at that point was bruised, and I had stranglehold marks on on me, and I also couldn't move. I couldn't turn my head in any direction. It was like three days later when I had to go to work, when I said to him, Listen, I have to go to work. I can't keep calling out, I can't keep not showing up. I went to work, but didn't really go to work. I called out and I went to see my psychiatrist at the time. And my psychiatrist told me, if you don't go to the police after you leave here, I'm calling the police. And he explained, he said, Listen, I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to harm you. He said the next time he's not gonna let go.
SPEAKER_00:So before we go further, you just told us this whole story. And we have to pause. I'm processing what you've said. I'm sure Amber is feeling it. Um the emotions came through in your voice. It came through. I'm so I'm so sorry for what you went through. It's scary, it's horrible. I'm glad that you are alive and here telling us this story. We just have to pause.
SPEAKER_04:I definitely think that it is uh not only appropriate but necessary to hold a little space for the story that you have shared with us. And something that bubbles up for me is the experience of almost every woman is that they must think in a situation of harm like that. Oh, they're thinking I okay, it might not be so bad. If he rapes me, I'll still be alive. And this is the culture that we live in. So I just want to name that as a key sort of component that is an experience that women have in the culture that we live in, while also holding space for the idea that this is not how people expect things to go when they think about if they have not experienced harm or domestic violence or community violence, they're like, I would have just done X. I would have this. How could you possibly have been the person that was comforting? All of those sort of crazy messages about people what think that they know something about something. So I just want to express extreme gratitude for you being so generous with your story in order to have the that woman who is listening or that man who is listening today say this is how violence occurs. It occurs in context and this is the experience. And unfortunately, it's oftentimes not the exception. It is people's real life experience. So thank you for sharing that.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, thank you.
SPEAKER_04:So you, when you started to move into this portion of your story, you mentioned that you wanted to walk us through sort of consequences. Are you ready to like take on what this means?
SPEAKER_03:So, working class girl, right? Grew up poor, left home young, trying to make it on her own. I've had several experiences at this point of losing housing, having to scramble, figure it out. I've been living with roommates, and now this is like a romantic partner. He was not the first romantic partner I'd lived with. Those partnerships did not also did not work out. So I think that plays a big role in it. That when my psychiatrist says, you need to go to the police, or I'm going to, the first thing that comes to my mind is I don't have another place to go. You know, that's the first thing that comes to my mind. Housing insecurity is real. The cost of housing has always just been increasing in my lifetime. I've never seen it go down. And the availability for shelter spaces and all of that jazz, like, yeah, again, just my mind just started racing, and I was like, I don't have anywhere else to go. I haven't been to my job for two days. I immediately just started thinking, not even just the emotions of it, just the logistics. And I agreed with my psychiatrist that the next time would probably be the last time because it had been so intense and he had, I had almost, I was losing consciousness. I saw a black. There's a possibility I wouldn't have woken up. And I knew I could no longer be in partnership with this man. So I knew that I needed to end it. But going to the police, it did make sense. That was the only way to do it because he had a gun. I couldn't imagine just going home after work, having a conversation of ending it and not resulting in some potential. So when I say the consequences, I'm actually talking practically, right? I've always been fortunate to have friends and people who care about me as an adult, as a young adult. And so I couldn't have imagined doing this without them. I called a friend, they came and took me to the police station. When the police went and arrested him, and that process started, that was its own emotional trajectory that we can talk about and I want to focus on. But in terms of consequences, now I have to talk to my boss. Now I have to talk to the leasing office where we literally had just signed a year lease and it's only 30 days into a lease. What are we gonna do? And I start to start thinking about the financial consequences and can I afford a new place? So those are the consequences that I talk about when I say, are you looking directly at the situation for what it is? Which is that violence has happened and violence can happen again. And this person needs to be removed from my life. But where do they go? And what's the mechanism for that?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I think those are really important points because when we talk about reducing harm and actually breaking cycles, what gets left behind in what we are currently engaged in and what we think our impulses are. Okay, this person did this horrible thing, get them out of there, throw away the key, all of those things. And then we conveniently forget about the person who has survived the harm and what they need in that moment. And often it's those logistical things that you just described. Do I need my locks changed? How am I gonna pay my rent? How do I, all of those things that somehow are left behind in the process? But what did happen swiftly was an arrest. Yes.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, and it was a very complicated just from jump. I think anyone who has had experience in the criminal justice system, I'm gonna be saying things that they're like, yep, and they're nodding along because it's unless you've had the experience, it's almost hard to believe. But first, I had to give my statement to police officers, which that was great, that was all fine and dandy. They swarmed my apartment building with six patrol cars to arrest him, to get the gun, to do all that. Okay, cool. Except then the officer who did the arresting, he made a comment to me when I was at the station where he said, he was a perfect gentleman. I think this is all just a big misunderstanding. Yep. So that was helpful, aka not. So I'm already questioning whether or not I've done the right thing. And then hearing him say that made me think, oh my God, I've made a terrible mistake. Maybe I am overplaying the situation, maybe I am being hysterical or whatever it is. But then the next thing that happened, I couldn't believe it. I asked where he was so that I could go see him. I said, where is he? So that I can go, I want to go see him. I can only imagine that he's really scared. In my mind, we're going through this situation together. And even though I already knew we weren't gonna be together romantically after this, I still thought this happened between us. I'm the person who got harmed, but I want to be a part of this process now moving forward. And the officer looked at me like I had lost my mind. And he was like, You can't go see him. Like you just accused him of trying to kill you. Like, you can't go see him. And I was like, but he doesn't have family up here, and I want to make sure he's okay. And they're just like, Yeah, no, that's not a thing. So, right from go, I was like, Oh no, I'm in foreign territory, and I don't understand how this works. How I told the story is the ADA, the assistant district attorney who was assigned to my case. We had a few different conversations. She made it really clear that she was not my attorney, which confused me. I didn't understand. What do you mean you're not my attorney? But wait, huh? And do I get an attorney? To which, of course, it was like, no, unless you want to go get one. And I was like, I don't understand any of this. Okay, I'm 24 years old at this point. And the peak of our interaction was when she was preparing me to testify. And I said, I don't want to testify. I said, I want to talk to him. There are two things that I want out of this situation. One, I want him to be held accountable, but like meaningfully held accountable. He almost took my life. I at that point had a PTSD diagnosis. I hadn't slept in weeks. I had to be on sleeping medication just to try to get some sort of relief. I almost lost my job because I'd be at work and I would break out in hysterical crying. I would just start sobbing just out of nowhere, right? But I wanted him to be held accountable. And then, two, I wanted him to change. And I wanted to know that there was going to be some sort of rehabilitation offered to him. Because as far as I was concerned, you can't just behave like that without being told you need to be a different person. And I was basically told that accountability is a cage, that the accountability that the state was offering me was quote, as many years in prison as we can get for that monster. End quote. Which I was horrified at that. I did not see him as a monster. I didn't appreciate him being characterized as a monster. I also instinctually, even as a young woman, understood that him being put in a cage would mean nothing for me. Nothing. The instinct just comes from that this violence was interpersonal. That I knew who he was, he knew who I was. As a young woman, I had already started a lot of changing of my own behavior, a lot of changing, a lot of recognizing of how my trauma was shaping the way that I moved in the world. And you can believe that this situation opened my eyes even further in terms of who were the men that I was attracted to, who were the people I was getting close to or allowing myself to be close to, and why. And so I believed inherently in a person's ability to change. And I knew that shaming somebody was not going to bring the change that we desired. And since it was interpersonal violence, let's bring in the people that matter to him. Let's bring in the, you know, the people who have his best interests in mind to say, hey, listen, like what was behind that? Why did you like you just hurt her really badly? So let's get you what you need so that you're not, excuse me, not being uh that way in relationships. So I think instinctually I already believed in rehabilitation and maybe even more importantly, redemption. Because I had made mistakes in my life that I would have given anything to take back. And I like to think at that time that maybe this was one of those for him that he would have taken it back if he could have.
SPEAKER_04:Right. So you find yourself in this situation. They won't let you see him. They're very confused as to why you would even want that. You're very confused about the system and what's happening. I hear from all the time, this is not your case. I'm not your lawyer. This is about the state. How do you think you're going to move forward at that point? What's going through your mind?
SPEAKER_03:I started to think about going back to school at this point. Because as the court cases, they take a really long time and they're working their way through the system. And I'm trying to get my life together. I was hospitalized inpatient for the first time after this situation happened. And but in that space, I was able to get an appropriate psychiatric diagnosis that was actually it's hereditary on my father's side of the family. And so that was comforting some in some ways. So I started to understand, okay, here's what's going on for me. So my job was great, but it felt really small. It felt like I was being called for something bigger. My acting career was great and I had a great time, but I also would just drink a lot. I would just perform and I'd party on the weekends and whatever. And I wanted something more. And I decided to go back to school and I found an online psychology program. UMass Lowell has a wonderful undergraduate program that is designed specifically for people who have to work and people who have families. And so I was able to do that. I started that. From there, I was pretty stable for those like four years that I worked on my degree. And the case resulted in him taking a plea deal. They had charged him with attempted murder. So he was looking at a life sentence. And they again assured me that they were working hard to get as many years as possible, even despite the fact that I had said on numerous occasions, I don't want to do this.
SPEAKER_00:Every time that there was something came up, if there was a continuance where he was going, was that re-traumatizing for you? Did that keep it alive for you, or was it just in the background for you?
SPEAKER_03:It was in the background. I actually had a really great victim advocate. He was super grounded, which I don't meet a lot of them who are like really well rounded and have a like a fuller perspective of the situation. I meet a lot of victims advocates who are just really focused on the survivor's trauma to the point that I'm I sometimes want to be like, it didn't happen to you. Can you relax for a second? The person that it happened to has some say in this, or they should have some say in this. And my victims advocate, he was great. He would just call me and give me an update and he would ask me if I was okay. He would be like, Are you okay? And I would reiterate, I don't want him to go to prison. I remember saying that over and over. I don't want him to go to prison. I want him to get help. I don't want him to go to prison. And so then I would check in with my psychiatrist for like deeper work around it. But I didn't find it re-traumatizing. But if I listened to the people around me, I would have. And what I mean by that is, and maybe this is a moment to talk about it. We have a culture of only supporting survivors as long as they are acting in a way in an alignment that we think they should be acting. And this is very crucial. I was uh ahead of my time in this regard. When I would communicate with the victim advocate, he said the same thing, which was he was surprised at how little venom I had in me about what had happened. And when I have seen, I've been in survivor spaces a lot, and I'm always really saddened for the people who maybe would be willing to move out of a victim space, but are not being supported to move through to something deeper.
SPEAKER_04:That is critical for folks to hear because I know in my experience and in working with other survivors, it seems to me, my experience has been it's just as harmful to me as a survivor to say you are broken and you can never heal as it is to say to someone who is harmed, you are a harmer and you can never heal.
SPEAKER_03:When I talk about being a survivor, one of the things I say is that if prison was supposed to bring me healing, then why did I find myself in the basement of a prison sitting with men who have committed murder, asking them to help me heal? Because that is where I started to find healing, and that jumps our timeline a little bit in terms of my education and my experiences and things, but I think it's just so important. I have seen this is gonna sound super hippie, but I wasn't really I wasn't really a spiritual person until I found these spaces. And I urge any survivor or anyone who knows survivors who are in pain, because I think, Amber, you just really brought up a very important person in this work, which is the survivor who has been living in agony for 20 years, 25 years. I urge anyone who finds themselves in that situation to look for other opportunities for healing, aside from continuing to rely on the same practices and over and over that have not brought you healing. And I think about the circles that I have sat in where I have literally watched survivors who have lost their children to street violence sit with men who killed their child. And that space is the closest thing to a spiritual experience on this planet that I have ever witnessed. And it made me a true believer in the healing power of dialogue, as opposed to just an eternal separation and a refusal to attempt to come together in some sort of way.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, that is really important. And we talk about the questions that we're asking. And so when people talk about the ideas around restorative practices, often referred to as restorative justice or any number of names, it's all about connection rather than separation. And our current way of handling things is you go to your corner, you go to your corner, nobody talks to each other because that would cause so much harm to talk to each other. But you know, what individuals often find healing is like why, like just being able to ask why did this happen? Because the narratives that you've created in your head are usually self-blame, shame, all of those things when it wasn't about the person that was harmed at all. And just that dialogue of even knowing that starts to move things forward. And call I don't think it's woo or crazy to call it a spiritual experience because I have had similar experiences myself. I really appreciate you sharing that. And for those who don't really know what you're referring to, let's go back to Dr. Reese. How did you find yourself sitting in a basement with a prison basement in a circle or a restorative space?
SPEAKER_03:So I've gone back to school. I'm in an undergrad for psychology. One semester in, I find this profession called forensic psychology. And I decided to become a forensic psychologist because I intentionally wanted to help free incarcerated people who were rehabilitated. That was my intention. Now, any forensic psychologist who's listening is gonna say, you're supposed to be a neutral party, which we'll get to in just a second. I was accepted to a doctoral program after my undergrad went right into it. And about a year into my doctoral training as a forensic psychologist, I was so deeply disappointed. I could not believe that I was being basically indoctrinated into a structure that I wanted to help tear down. The idea that I would become a professional who would be given the knowledge and the expertise on how to sort out the population from those who can come home safely and those who still need some sort of rehabilitation and maybe even focus in specific on what they need. That was my vision of the world. And I also believed as an expert, that meant when I went before the parole board and testified that somebody was safe to come home, that they would let them out. How naive I was. Because to me, it made sense. Everybody had a trauma story, everybody had committed violence for a reason. And that was a big focus of mine, right? If we work to understand the reason, then we can work to design the rehabilitation. And isn't it the goal to get everybody out? Question mark? Again, very naive.
SPEAKER_00:I know it sounds reasonable, logical, and something that any civilized society would strive to do.
SPEAKER_03:Exactly. But a year into it, I was like, wow, this sucks. A random professor who heard me say that, who was not in the forensic program. She connected me to someone who connected me to someone in California who had developed a restorative justice program in the San Quentin prison. The people inside San Quentin had developed a restorative justice program. And I went to California. Somebody gave me a scholarship so that I could go. So I went and I did two weeks of training, and that's where I sat with those men in those spaces. And I could not believe the epiphanies, just like one right after another. They were so gracious and they were so rehabilitated, these individuals. So such changed people from the young people that they, the, that they had been. I credit them because they forever changed the trajectory of my life. When I came home back to Massachusetts, by day I was being indoctrinated into the system as a forensic psychologist. And then at night I was sitting in the basement of Massachusetts prisons doing restorative justice healing work, uh, like Batman or something. Actually, I love my degree. So I have come to really embrace and love the knowledge that came with my degree. And I got a tremendous education. I had multiple clinical internships and things at like forensic inpatient units and all sorts of spaces. And I feel very confident that myself and people who are like me have a pretty good sense of what is effective in terms of treatment, rehabilitation, uh assessing dangerousness in my profession. We're pretty good at that. But I'm very disappointed at the lack of listening to experts in this way. Or the amount of politics that come into play when it comes to things like dangerousness and rehabilitation. And I just want to go on the record of saying that, just in case anyone is listening, if somebody has committed murder, they are not forever dangerous. We have come to believe that, but that's not true. And the research doesn't bear that out in any way, shape, or form.
SPEAKER_00:So what you're saying is you're an expert. You've taken the time to get a doctorate in the field. You've done the work, you've been hands-on in terms of your practice and met people and done this stuff, and then you just you have random people on the internet who just go off with their emotions, right? And say, he's a murderer, he's terrible, he's the worst of the worst, all this stuff. And you say, I'm coming with facts and figures and real information, and they just brush you off as if you got your PhD from a Cracker Jack box.
SPEAKER_03:Even worse, I'll give you a very specific example. There is an individual who I won't name just out of privacy, who's locked up in a forensic impatient unit in New England right now, who has been in there for 30 years. He's civilly committed. So he has been assessed multiple times. And I was a member of the team who did one of his more recent assessments. He is not dangerous in any way, shape, or form. There is an administrative body, because it's a civil commitment, who is in charge of whether or not that man ever sees the other side of the prison wall, of the hospital wall, excuse me. And because this individual killed a police officer, I have been told that he will never go home. So our assessments, our reports, our write-ups, our any advocacy, we were told as clinical interns, don't get your hopes up because this guy has been assessed and not and has been deemed not dangerous by all of us for like years. But he killed a police officer. You get my point. You can't see my face, but for those of you who are listening, I hope you can hear it in my voice. I'm disgusted by the politics of such a thing.
SPEAKER_04:Right. And so we see this sort of across the board when it comes to a lot of different things, but when it comes to the criminal legal system and the way that we talk about it in our society, the way that we cover it in the media, the way that we interact with people, even medically within the system. We create a situation where things don't need to be based on people's humanity. It's based on the perception of their dangerousness, not the actual facts.
SPEAKER_03:Yes. So when I was doing restorative justice work, there was something I noticed, and I actually think every correctional officer would agree with the statement, which is the lifers, meaning the people who are serving life sentences, they are the stable part of the inside community. They're also the ones who are the most invested in their own rehabilitation. And there's this thing called life without the possibility of parole, known as LWAP in our circles. I did not know that this existed. And when I was inside, I just happened to notice that most of the amazing people that I met, men and women, were serving life sentences, many of them serving life without. Again, life without the possibility of parole means that you will never ever see a parole board. That is what that means. It did not always used to mean that in the United States, but starting in the late 1970s, when truth and sentencing came along, it started to mean that. And I think that's really important for people to know historically that this is relatively new over these last 40 years, that we never give people an opportunity to come home. It's been referred to as the walking death penalty. And you don't have to be serving a life without parole sentence to expect to die in prison. We have this other type of life sentence called virtual life, which is defined as 50 years or more, with the idea that a human being probably can't survive 50 years in prison because prison ages you twice as fast as being on the outside. So even if you went in at 20, 50 years, like you're probably gonna die in prison. We wanted to be dedicated to these particular sentences because in the advocacy world, these sentences are often not addressed. And they are often the bartering chip for politicians to do any sort of work. Meaning if a bill gets proposed that would allow somebody to get good time, for instance, on their sentence, or would allow somebody an opportunity to see parole board sooner because they were young, right, when they committed their crime, those types of things. The thing, the typical carve out, if you will, are some form of life sentences, usually life without the possibility of parole. And that word monster has come up more times than I can count in my story. Because when I do this work, I hear legislators continuously they're monsters. If you're serving life without parole, that means you're the monster who should never get an opportunity to come home. And that is the farthest thing from the truth, especially when you look at how the prisons, if the prisons are stable, it's because the lifers are stable. And if the lifers are stable, don't they deserve an opportunity to come home? Or are we just gonna leave them there to die?
SPEAKER_04:That's a really important point. And you referred to natural or virtual life. Sometimes people call it natural life. You referred to life without parole, and that being a fairly new concept. Can you talk a little bit about like why you think that might have happened after the over the last 40 years?
SPEAKER_03:In 1984, I was two years old. The total number of life sentences being served in this country, as in all forms of life with parole, virtual life, and life without parole was 33,000 people. Today, all forms of life sentences are over 205,000 people. So we have increased our use of life sentences dramatically in the last 40 years. It perfectly lines up with our tough-on-crime policies and our continued political usage of criminal justice as a wedge issue that can pull voters away from, shall we say, like more liberal-minded or democratic-minded leaders and pull voters through fear over into these very draconian, typically conservative Republican perspectives of the criminal justice system. And we have, over our tough on crime policies, we have allowed the myth of the superpredator to continue, even though we all know that's been debunked, including the people who purpose said it in the first place. They have even said it's not a real thing anymore. But we just have had a massive societal shift in our way of thinking about harm and who quote unquote deserves opportunities to come home. It's staggering to me the level of black and white thinking and the level of polarization that our society has been engaging in. It's pretty straightforward when you think of it from that perspective of, well, don't do the crime unless you can do the time. And why would a murderer ever be given a chance to come home? Like you took a life, you pay with your life. And that's just not the way that we used to think prior to 1980.
SPEAKER_04:And so your experience in working with individuals, you said like these are the folks who are the most stable, they're the most invested in their rehabilitation. So when I'm thinking about that, we want less violence. And so who better to bring into our communities in order to disrupt those violence, this violence than individuals who clearly understand why it happens in the first place. People that you've worked with and the people that you've met, are those the people that you think have some solutions?
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. And the evidence has borne that out. People may not realize it, but there are people who have committed homicide back in your community. You just don't know them. Some of them are literally doing the work of violence interruption. You can find those cases. Those individuals usually are pretty like front and center with their work. They're pretty open about their past and what they've done. Second look legislation, which is a type of legislation allowing for a judge to review somebody's sentence after a given time period and then either reduce their sentence or release them or give them the ability to see a parole board. That legislation alone has allowed for hundreds of people in various states to come home. We have Miller v. Alabama, where if you were a juvenile serving life without the possibility of parole, you have been released. We even have former life without parolers, I think in California, it might have reached over 600 people who have either had their sentences commuted by Governor Brown or now Governor Newsom, who just commuted another five people this past week. They come home to the community and they do really amazing work. And there's only one person that I could think of in my personal life that I would want talking to a young gang member. And that's because he was a gang member and he committed his homicide in the context of a gang context. And when he sits with young men who just came into the prison and they are also either actively gang members or they have been gang members, and he talks to them for the first time, maybe, they feel understood. They don't feel judged, they don't feel ashamed. And when he talks them through the mistakes that he made and the good work that he's doing now and how he came to see the world after restorative justice and all of that, he is probably preventing more homicides than you could imagine. Because those young kids are probably going back, right? They maybe they committed an assault, maybe they carried a gun, maybe they did something else. Maybe that interaction will prevent a homicide.
SPEAKER_00:So let me ask you this a couple things. First is what are the big goals that you've set for your organization? And then for people who are listening to our conversation, how can they support you? How can they get involved?
SPEAKER_03:Well, first they can sign up for our mailing list. If you go to drop LWAP New England, that's L W O P dot org. You can see on our website how to sign up. We have that same name on all of our socials, so we're pretty easy to find. You can donate to support our cause. We always need donations, especially in these very difficult political times. Volunteering. We're looking, we are currently actually looking for some volunteers too to help us with some graphic design. We would be grateful for any help. Our goal is for all incarcerated people of New England specifically at this moment to have meaningful opportunities for release. That is our big goal. We are not attached to any particular mechanism, but we think that hope is it's essential. And for anyone who's thinking about other countries, for instance, I will say that life without parole is not allowed in the European Union. It's not allowed in Zimbabwe. And as of 2000, Canada got rid of any life without parole sentences. And the judges in those situations who made that decision said that it is cruel and unusual to deny a human being hope.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, the evidence bears it out in every single instance that human beings need connection and hope. Dr. Reese, we appreciate you spending time with us today and sharing your story because we have worked on some things together and there are some different initiatives that you're doing in different states. I want you to just briefly, if you could, just tell us a little bit about the Connecticut effort for domestic violence survivors. And I know that's something that we'll be working on together in the upcoming session. There was some work done last session. So briefly, could you just tell us a little bit about that effort and what it's meant to do?
SPEAKER_03:The effort in Connecticut is called the Domestic Violence Survivor Justice Act. The acronym is DVSJA. And DVSJA is a type of second look legislation which would allow for a judge to review a sentence if the circumstances under which a person was incarcerated were related to domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, andor human trafficking. It would also apply to somebody who's applying for a commutation or for somebody who's being newly charged with a crime. The intention of it is to get those factors recognized formally as mitigating factors in somebody's crime.
SPEAKER_04:So for those who don't speak legalese. Sorry. Basically, no, I'm like, we all speak a little bit of it because we do this work, but essentially what we're trying to get is recognition that there are cycles here. And so oftentimes somebody will survive some sort of trauma, some sort of crime. They will find themselves impacted by the system, convicted because they've committed some sort of violence, or they have been convicted by any number of factors because they were defending themselves and they were disproportionately affected by the system because of socioeconomics or race or disability or all of those things. And the idea that someone that that humanity and that part of someone who has survived a crime and it was directly related to them then going on to commit a crime should be considered in the system when you're talking about how it's dealt with. So again, as you mentioned, you're talking about sentencing, you're talking about at the beginning of the system, you're talking about when people are being reviewed for parole and parole decisions. So the system should take into account that cycle and that trauma that somebody has experienced. Absolutely. Yeah. Description. Okay. We're very excited to be working with you on that effort. How do people find out about that coalition?
SPEAKER_03:In this instance right now, we have social media for the Connecticut DVSJA. If you look for that separately, you can find us on Instagram and Facebook and Blue Sky. But also, if all of that is too confusing, if If you drop me a message through our drop elwopnewengland.org website, feel free to just let me know that you want to be connected to the Connecticut campaign specifically, and I will add you onto that mailing list. Perfect.
SPEAKER_04:Okay. So finally we come to Dr. Reese. If you had the opportunity to speak with someone who was like at the beginning of a journey similar to your own, what is one piece of advice that you might give them?
SPEAKER_03:Your intuition is spot on. And it should be feel free to embrace it as your North Star. And find the people who will support you in what it is that you think you need in this moment now. And maybe a few days from now, a couple years from now. I allowed myself to second guess my intuition too many times, and it caused me a lot of psychic and mental pain. But I knew what I wanted. When I look back now, I knew what I wanted and I knew what I felt. And it actually turns out that's what all survivors, that's what I would recommend to all survivors. Because maybe right now you are angry. And I want to make sure we hold space for that. Anger, rage, if your loved one has been killed, for instance, I never recommend restorative justice prior to several years after that. It's not a thing you try to do up front. You would I unless somebody really wants it, but again, unless someone really wanted it. So that's the advice that I would give is that when you sit with yourself and you listen to that inside voice, what does it tell you? And that's your North Star.
SPEAKER_04:Wow. I just love that so much. And I hope that someone listening to this show is able to critically think about these issues in a way that feels meaningful to them. Jason, do you have any last thoughts before we wrap up?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'll just say, Dr. Reese, it was so good to have you join us today and this discussion to open about everything you've been through and where it's taken you. Amazing. I'm in awe of the story and how you were able to take some of those negative things that happened early on and wrap them into something that's so positive and bring such humanity into your work and not only into your work, but to share that with others so that other people could hopefully come along and we can all be better off as a result. Those are my thoughts. And with that, until next time.
SPEAKER_02: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 amplifiedvoices.show.
