Thank you for having me, Hitendra. It's a pleasure to be here.

Sure. When myself and the rest of our leadership team were released from incarceration, there was a transition from being people who were inside of prison, supported by the CROP organization, to people who were directing the organization. The impetus for us was to devise a program that really supported people coming out of incarceration in a holistic and supportive way. One thing we knew we needed was to help people get the right mindset.

It's also something that we had done to varying degrees of success over years, inside together, was the personal leadership development. But what we wanted to do and what we needed to do was to make sure that it was still effective out here in the community. A good friend of mine and colleague, Ken Oliver, at one point in time actually reached out to you via LinkedIn, I believe, and made the connection as one of the premier thought leaders in personal leadership development.

Yes, yes. He reached out to you and introduced you to me and the rest is history.

Well, I'm an agent of possibility, so I'll allow that as a possibility.

Sure. CROP stands for Creating Restorative Opportunities and Programs. It was actually founded in 2008 by my co-defendant, who I'm assuming will get a little bit into that story with the support of his father. My co-defendant's name is Ted Gray. He was incarcerated with me for 20 years. He was in his eighth year of incarceration, when he had an epiphany. Basically, he came to realize while sitting in the hole, which is an administrative segregation, it's a prison within a prison, was that his life shouldn't be determined by the situation in which he was in. That he had the ability to create impact no matter where he was. With the support of his dad, they founded the CROP organization. Initially the idea was that CROP can serve as a mechanism to introduce sporting equipment and music equipment onto the prison yard and help to disrupt the antisocial and race-based gang politic, which pervades most California prisons, because Ted had a very fundamental idea that it's hard to hate someone who you played baseball with or who's in a band with. That's how it started.

Over the years, me and Ted reconnected in 2010 at a different prison. There's a lot to that story which we'll unpack, but there were many programs that were provided or supported through CROP that we stewarded together and created together all the way up until the reentry program, which I currently oversee today.

I'll start by saying this, one of the things that people who are sentenced to life in prison do is, reflect and develop insight into what was the source of your thinking that resulted in that type of behavior being okay. I was in a conversation with a friend of mine on the prison yard preparing myself for the parole board. In the conversation, I was struck by this idea I had about what it meant to be impulsive or reactive or have an experience of anger and upset whenever I felt embarrassed. It came all the way back to my earliest memory, which was with my mom and my dad.

I was about 4 or 5 years old. My father was black from New Jersey. My mom is Italian from Rhode Island. It was a very loving home, but there were arguments and this argument stood out as my earliest memory, because in this argument, my mom was really upset about something my dad did, and she said a racial slur. When she said it, immediately my dad's reaction was, he jumped up from the table and chased her down a hall. She locked herself in the bathroom. There was no actual physical violence, but there was emotional trauma there. Why is that my first memory? Because it was outside of the norm and it was very traumatic to see that.

What happened at that moment, though, which I didn't realize until I was in my early 40s, was that moment was kind of a catalyst. It was something that I used to begin developing a system of beliefs about how it is, how I should react if someone ever called me a name like that or tried to embarrass me or make me seem like I was less than. Like I said, my parents were very loving. I was the only child. They did everything they could to provide me with every opportunity and because I was largely the only person of color in my elementary schools, junior highs and high schools, I chose to continue to lean into those beliefs about how I should respond or react to people who attempted to make me seem like I was less than. They did the best they could, they exposed me to all types of opportunities, sports, quality education, took me on trips, but I still had the freedom to make the choices and establish the beliefs about how I believed it was in the world.

I have five siblings who are from my dad's side and on my mother's only child.

I don't know if it's like an uncommon experience. I would assume it's very common for young men to give themselves over to this idea that masculinity is tied to sports, violence, the objectification of themselves, the objectification of young ladies. My teenage years were certainly saturated with all of that. I was intentional. However, like I was unaware above the water line, below the water line, there was a very clear intention that I wanted to associate with people who fit that paradigm, who were the tough kids, who were the ones who were out partying and being reckless. I wanted to prove that I fit in with those people, by any means necessary.

That's really where Ted and I first met. We moved from Los Angeles County to Northern California when I was 15 years old. I was a sophomore. And again, I'm going to another high school, where I'm the only person of color. Ted was a senior two years older than me to the day. We have the same birthday. He was the all American boy. He was the toughest kid in our school. All the guys wanted to be him and all the girls wanted to be with him. That was very appealing to me. He liked me for whatever reason. I'm still trying to figure out to this day. We began to hang out and we became fast friends all the way up and through criminality.

I would have to say, for me personally, it had been going wrong and it had been going wrong because of the way I was thinking about my life. I remember I had just gotten generally discharged from the Navy. A little bit more context, because of the way I was living my life, before I had graduated high school, I had already had a drug problem. I had gone to rehab. Then I joined the Navy and I washed out of the Navy because I didn't want to follow rules. I remember my parents were very concerned, always loving me, always supporting me. They took me to breakfast one day and they said, "Son, what are you doing with your life? What do you want for yourself?" I was 19 years old. I was arrogant, entitled, had a belief that I didn't have to do anything and didn't want to do anything. I responded that my ideal life is to lay in bed all day and play video games. That was my aspiration at 19 years old.

One of the things that we teach or we prospectively share with folks is, intentions plus mechanism equals results. So that intention that I spoke out, I found a mechanism and it was prison. Because in reality, in prison, you don't have to do anything. If you want to sit in bed all day, you can. That's your choice. It had been going wrong, Hitendra. When Ted was 22 years old, he and I were living together, partying, and being reckless. He was at a point, where he was in a failing marriage. We were both enabling each other with this sense of we can do what we want and it's cool to be in a thug mentality. We were playing video games with our other co-defendant who is still incarcerated to this day. There was an idea hatched that we could rob drug dealers for money. We had parties and we knew that people were selling drugs. We didn't particularly appreciate that. So we can rob them.

We began a two-week crime spree where we leveraged fear and violence on suspected drug dealers with robberies which culminated in a man being murdered in his home on December 3, 1999. I was sentenced to 26 years to life in prison for being there. In California, this law has recently changed, but if there's a felony that occurs and someone dies, you're guilty of murder. That's what I was charged with, the felony murder. Ted and my other co-defendant, Jeff, were sentenced to 40 years to life as the shooters in the crime. Ted was shot three times by our victim in the commission of the crime. It was all bad then. I remember being apprehended. We evaded the police initially, and I was apprehended at my parents' home.

When I got to my mom's house, I was on foot. I was in a ridiculous battle dress uniform with paint on my face. She's screaming like, "Tell me you weren't there" and I'm like, "I was there", and I'm trying to minimize it, "I was there, but I didn't shoot anyone. I didn't kill anyone." She just starts screaming, "You were there" because she knew, if you were there you're in a lot of trouble. My dad, he reminded me. He is very old school. I asked him "Dad, what do I do?" He's like, "Well, if you do the crime, you got to do the time. You got to turn yourself in." Which leads to my first, real transformational moment. Then I'll pause there. But I think it's an important one.

I remember my dad went out first down to the end of the driveway, and the police had called my mom and said, "We know he's inside. Tell him to come out with his hands up if he wants to live." I was 20 years old, I walked out to 5 officers with shotguns and 9 mm. I get down, I get handcuffed and as they're ushering me up the driveway, there's a throng of people, news reporters, neighbors gawking. At the edge of it all was my dad. He was crying profusely.

In my 20 years, I had never seen my father cry. He was really just an old school kind of guy. He had broken arms in horse-back riding accidents. I never saw the man shed a tear, but he was crying uncontrollably. At that moment, something hit me. I mean, I'm crying as well. I'm 20. I don't even know what's next. But I knew at that moment that my life wasn't just about me. That seems silly. Most people would probably come to that awareness earlier, I would think. But I hadn't. I thought it was all about me. But in that moment when I saw my dad, I realized it wasn't. I realized how my choices impacted the people I loved.

26. We went to county jail and that's when it hit me, okay, this is jail. Then I had my public defender tell me, "You're looking at a lot of time in prison." It wasn't registering for me because, in my mind, it was like we were outside and initially it was supposed to be a burglary and our victim came home and Ted was pressing for us to continue with the robbery. I was saying "No, we shouldn't do it. We shouldn't do it." Then I gave in. I gave in because it was more important for me to be seen as tough than it was for me to honor the sense I had inside me, like we shouldn't be here at all. But, what I didn't realize was that the law said that you are guilty of murder if you're participating in a felony and someone dies. So they sentenced me to 26 years to life. They sentenced Ted and Jeff to 40 years to life, and we went to prison. That was a real culture shock because Ted was my best friend up until that point. We entered into an atmosphere that said that because he's white and because I'm black, we couldn't spend as much time as you and I have spent on this podcast without there being some serious repercussions.

So that was shocking and jarring. Ted, initially, because he had so much time, kind of threw himself into the politics of prison, because he was determined that he didn't want other people telling him what to do. He wanted to be the one to tell people what to do. I shared with you earlier that it wasn't until 8 years later that he had his transformational moment and founded the CROP organization.

For me, I knew just from the experience of being arrested at my parents' house and seeing my dad cry that I wasn't going to continue down that road. Now, this was 1999 and at the time, the governor made a very public decree that if someone had a life term in prison, the only way they would ever go home was with a toe tag on their foot. So basically, you were consigned to die in prison. I was on level 4, which is a maximum security institution, largely because of the nature of the crime and my point level. There was a point system.

I remember the counselor saying, "This is your first offense. You've been in no trouble. In reality, you hadn't been caught for anything but you haven't been in the system and I wish I could do something for you, but because of the laws, I have to send you to the maximum security yard." But in spite of all that, the atmosphere of despair, where people were largely hopeless, I knew that I didn't want to continue to bring pain to my parents' hearts. I found a way to stay out of the way, which was education. In 2002, my dad passed away.

It bears mentioning, for the first 7 years of incarceration, my mom never missed a weekend visit. For the first 2, I think my dad only missed 2 visits before he died. But I remember my last visit with my dad, and he had come by himself. He wanted to just spend some time with me and he was doing his best to encourage his son. He was 65 at the time, and he said, "You know, son, I'm going to stick around. I'm going to hang around until you get out, and we're going to open that little bar you want together." I was like, "Dad, I've got another 24 years before they'll even think about it." He told me, he said, "Son, I don't care if it's 24 years, 24 months, 24 days. We've only got right now. So make the most right now." That stuck with me.

But then, he passed away and that was really hard on my mom and myself. I just put my head down and got to work on my education, and over the 20 years inside, as you mentioned, I earned a bachelor's degree in business. I earned a master's degree in philosophy and another master's degree in psychology, along with the state certification. But I really wasn't aware of how I had not allowed myself the permission to mourn the loss of my father until 2012, which bears mentioning because I was so focused on just like I'm going to get educated, I'm going to do what I need to do to get out of prison and make the most of this moment, that my relationships were suffering significantly.

This is another like component of what the board of prison terms called suitability. It's having remorse for your crimes and understanding the impact of the damage. I wear that every day. I get a little emotional thinking about it because I'm a father. I have a 4-year-old son and a 3-year-old son. I see them grow. I watch them learn. I get to love them. I see their eyes light up in new experiences. I realized that my victim has been robbed of all that. So that lands heavily on my heart. He, too, was a father, and he would have been a grandfather by now. I carry that with me every day in a very sacred space of appreciating what I have and mourning what I contributed to taking from another family. The wish I could have doesn't serve anyone. I can't turn back the hands of time. But what I have committed my life to is living in a way, specifically as the type of father I am that serves as a form of amends for the transgression.

I cannot turn back the hands of time and restore my victim's family, but I can ensure that I'm raising my sons in a healthy way with good values so that they can contribute to the world in a way in which I didn't.

There are very strict laws about contacting victims. Ted was offered a commutation before me, and then we were commuted together. When his commutation was first issued, a member of the victim's family actually reached out to him. But no, they haven't contacted me and I'm prohibited from contacting them. Largely, for perceived safety reasons. As far as my story and my involvement in the crime, from what I understand, because we knew our victims, the general perspective was that I was just following Ted and while they obviously were deeply wounded and irrevocably angered by my involvement, I think that the perspective was that I was less culpable.

I'll say this; real prison is not like the movies. While it can be a very dangerous and violent place, the order of the day is monotony and routine. Movement, recreation, meals, education, work is all strictly governed by bells and officers' predictability. As far as the time in which you have the permission to do things and certainty that at 5 pm every day you'll be in your cell for count and at 9:00 for count and the doors will be locked. A lot of monotony, very stark atmospheres. I served time in 3 different prisons over 20 years. I started at High Desert, went to Old Folsom and then ended my term in CTF Soledad, where I spent the last ten years with Ted. Uniformly, you can expect a context, which in my opinion, was created to invite a sense of oppression and despair. That's what the context was established to create for punishment. When you're in prison you know that you're punished. That's a powerful temptation for a lot of people, especially back when I went in, and they said, "Hey, you're going to die here." It's a powerful temptation. The atmosphere is a powerful temptation for people to tell themselves, "All I have is my gang."

Just going back to the war on crime, tough on crime, the three strikes law. There was a social movement, and it started way before that, Hitendra to be honest.

There's a book called "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander that highlights the journey from slavery to mass incarceration in America. I'm not big on all of that conversation, but it's a reality when you look at the results like the purpose of prison, and it is actually in the California penal code over 600 times. The purpose of prison is to punish.

In California, specifically with the three strikes law, there was a series of decades where it was lock them up and threw away the key. That's why we have 33 institutions in California, 33 prisons. What happened? There was an eventual shift because it was unsustainable to just keep locking people up. But when they were doing it, yes, the atmosphere was built to say, this is it for you. You've been reduced to a number. They call it a CDCR number. It was a CDC number when I first went in and you are to be treated as less than human. It's a generality, but it was a pervasive experience that many of the staff and guards had for the incarcerated population.

If your skin color was different, then you weren't friends. It's because at any given time a black guy and a white guy could have an incident on the yard and the respective races are expected to have a riot.

There's obviously history. There's a lot of history behind this. I can give you a synopsis. If you think back to the 60s, the 70s, the Civil Rights Movement. A lot of the people who were incarcerated were black. Not many people who are incarcerated were white. It was a smaller population. It's still true today. Now, when you put someone in an environment that tempts them to view themselves as less than as an animal, they're probably going to accept that invitation and behave as such. There was a lot of predatory behavior that occurred. It still occurs to this day. You strip people of their humanity. You strip people of their dignity and you say, here you go. Here's your small yard to recreate on and necessity is the mother of invention when it comes to not only the good things in life, but also the bad ones. So people are coming out of very marginalized, impoverished communities with distorted beliefs, and then they're thrown in a box and told you're an animal. So what is the natural inclination or the temptation, which most people have given themselves to in prison, is "I'm going to be with people who I grew up with on these streets from this area of this color of skin, and they are our enemy because they were our enemy out there. So they're our enemy here." Then it becomes a game of positional power.

More common than most people think. I'll say this. I've had a lot of conversations in the 3 years I've been home with folks who were like, "Oh, your story is amazing." It's not unique. It's not unique. There is an abundance of individuals inside of prison and things have progressively increased as far as the number of individuals who have decided they want something new for their lives, especially these last 10 years since the state has recognized that we can't just warehouse people and they started incentivizing programs. There's an abundance of people with a decision that I'm not going to go with the flow. I'm not going to go along to get along anymore. I'm going to move in alignment with what I say is most important in my life. If you could go to Pelican Bay today. Pelican Bay is like a level 4, it's super max. You can go to the most "criminal person" and say, "What's the most important thing in your life?" They're not going to say my reputation. They're not going to say my hood. They're not going to say my drug empire. They're going to say my kids, my freedom, possibly God, but their behavior is not in alignment with what is most important. So, what the state has done and what people are realizing is that if you provide people with resources, education programs like vocational, connecting them with reentry services like what we're doing at CROP, then that helps them make the choice to start living in alignment with what they say is really most important in their lives.

Now it's 2010, and I was a few classes away from earning my bachelor's degree and Ted transferred to my prison. I mean, it was providence to me. We started off at High Desert, and then I went to Folsom, and then my points dropped and I went to CTF, Soledad. There are 33 institutions in California. So the likelihood that me and Ted would start at one prison and end at the same prison was providence to me. He comes up to me in the yard. I'm like, "Hey, Ted, good to see you." Now, remember, I have the context of us being great friends in high school, making some terrible choices as young men, and then seven years in a yard where he was politicking and I was staying to myself. I was staying to myself and doing my education. So I was a little leery, like, what's going on? He told me what he and his dad had done as far as establishing CROP, and a couple of years before, and that they had done some stuff with sporting equipment. But he had a new idea. He said, "I really want you to work with me, because I think we can help to start a program to get people certified as alcohol and other drug counselors and provide them with a career possibility outside of prison and they can also help with the self-help that's going on inside of prisons right now."

Initially, I was like, "I don't know, I'm doing pretty good. I'm doing all right by myself and last time we were together it didn't work out so well."

He shared with me an African proverb that I use a lot to date. I find it to be very true. It's "You can either go fast alone or you can go far together." Then I was into philosophy and poetry at the time a little bit, and I was reading this poem by John Donne called 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' and the general premise is they would toll the bell when someone died and the premise was, ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. You're a part of this thing called humanity. You're wrapped up in this thing. You're a part of it. Those two experiences opened something up in me. I looked around and there's a sea of people in blue just like me who had very similar dreams to be free. Programs had started to be developed and people wanted to go home and be reunified with their loved ones. I hadn't done anything to support that. I had been locked in a cell with my nose in books trying to improve me, but not contributing to my community. Those two things were a powerful invitation for me to accept this union, this partnership between Ted and myself to do some amazing things.

We went on a very intentional journey at CTF Soledad to identify leaders in the community, people who were living in alignment with what they said was most important. In our first meeting, we had about 20 individuals in a small classroom that we convinced the Education Department to let us use. We charted out this idea. Over the course of the next 10 years with our leadership team, it came down to really four people who have been most committed, myself, Ted, Richard Morales and Matthew Braden. They affectionately call us the founders at CROP, but we successfully certified over 33 life-term individuals as alcohol and other drug counselors by the state of California. Of the 33, 31 had paroled, none have gone back.

We were exposed to and expounded upon a personal leadership curriculum, which we delivered and stewarded to a little over a 1,000 incarcerated individuals, 300 college students, who would come in periodically for seminar training. We wrote the book, "Men Built for Others," and we established a scholarship, where the incarcerated population who earned between 8 and 11 cents an hour raised a little over $32,000 in 3 years to support one young man in attending a college preparatory school. There was some amazing stuff that we were able to do in 10 years. I'll say this, the contrast between going fast alone, like my first 10 years, I was going fast alone, I was nose in the books and worried about me versus going far together, when I began working with the team is just exponentially distinct.

Most jobs in prison include working in culinary or janitorial services, and they're typically between 8 and 11 cents an hour.

Yeah. It is prison labor for sure, and I think the instructive part is that most people, and this is currently incarcerated people, formerly incarcerated people, people in general want to be a part of something good. When we came up with this idea, it was really Ted who had this amazing idea because we were in a book club. We had been serving some of the college students from a local community college and personal leadership development, and we've been attending book readings with private school students. The distinction between the two, like the kids who were going to community college, were like first generation college students. Their parents were immigrants and the kids were going to college, preparatory school were very well educated. It costs a lot to go to that school. There was an instructor who was sharing a story about sacrifice. It was from a book called "The Miracle on the River Kwai," about a prisoner of war camp, and someone who made an ultimate sacrifice for their fellow POW. Ted leaned over and he said, "Jay, we need to do that. We were the leaders of a self-help program." He said, "We need to find a way to raise money and support a young man who could not afford an education like this."

So we brought together, there were probably close to 30 self-help programs running at our prison yard. We brought all the leadership in and we pitched this idea, because we had the opportunity to do fundraisers. But typically the fundraiser looked like we would go door to door and ask people to contribute some of their hard earned pennies really to get like a thousand backpacks for students or to feed the homeless, which are all very noble causes. But what we presented was an opportunity, instead of going an inch deep and a mile wide to go an inch wide and a mile deep into someone's life and see the impact that could result. It was an amazing experience. Like I said, $32,000, the young man is now a senior, his name is Simon Green. He's a senior in college doing well, thriving. CNN thought it was important to chronicle. So Lisa Ling came in with her camera crew. This is Life with Lisa Ling and they chronicled the whole program and it was really remarkable.

Let me just backtrack just a little bit. In 2019, in January, they passed a law saying that if you didn't actually commit the murder or pull the trigger, then you shouldn't be charged with murder. I had a very strong sense that I was coming home. I've been married to my wife since 2014. God had blessed us with a son who was actually born on 11 January 2019. So I thought I was coming home, and then there was another thing that happened. The secretary of CDCR, who's like the head honcho, issued something on my behalf called the 1170D, that said basically the abundance of programming, education and value that I've contributed to community while incarcerated, deems me no longer a threat to society and he suggested to the courts that I be released.

I had those two things going, right? A law change saying I shouldn't be in prison anymore, and the head of the department said he's no longer a threat to society, let him go. They both got to the same judge in the same court, and they were both denied. Then in December or in November, I found out that my wife was pregnant with our second son. I was kind of at my wits end. It's like, "Oh, my goodness, what else?" Now, my wife is going to be out there with two babies and I have another four years until I'm supposed to sit in front of a parole board.

We were married in 2014, and at the time, lifers had no conjugal visits or family visits. But in 2017, Governor Jerry Brown made a different decision. The power of the pen. He said that if people who don't have life terms have the opportunity to be with their family, then people who do have life terms and are programming should have that opportunity. So he signed into law that people who have life, can have family visits. I was actually able to be with my wife and we conceived two children at CTF Soledad, which is very hard to do considering you only have a 48 hour visit every 3 months.

No, I was living a life of objectification.

I did know my wife. I've known my wife since I was 15 years old.

In 2019, it was an incredible blessing. My first son was born, and I had two prospects for freedom, and they both were denied. Then in December, I remember calling my good friend and brother and colleague, Richard Morales. He had been released earlier that year. I was like a mess. I didn't know what to do and he told me, "You know, you need to actually go to this group, because some directors from a show called This is Life with Lisa Ling, want to talk to you." Then in January, Lisa came in with her crew and did the episode "Prison and Prep School." The warden was involved. It was a pretty big deal. It was the first time they'd ever allowed someone who has a life term to visit a school.

They actually took me to Palmer School, which is the College Preparatory School, to address the students. It was a pretty big deal. There was a lot of pushback from the warden's administration, and he approved it anyway because he believed in the program. He believed in the vision of supporting CNN and helping the world see another version of the incarcerated population. Invariably, this got back to the governor and on 28 March, the warden came on to the yard of my institution and called me over to the fence, which is very unprecedented. You typically don't see wardens walking yards, and he said, "Jason, give me your CDCR number." I gave him my number P75550. He said, "Well I got a call this morning and I've been told to instruct you that the governor has ordered your immediate release from prison." which is really super unprecedented.

For the viewers who don't know, when you are sentenced to life in prison, the process for parole can be about a year long. Even if your sentence was commuted, if the governor were to say, "I'm going to commute your sentence instead of 2026, you can go home in 2022," you still have to go through the board process, which is like a psyche evaluation, which takes about 3 months. Then there's a governor review, which is like another 4 to 5 months. So it's a while. To hear that I was going to be an immediate release, I was in shock, I didn't even know what that meant. I said, "Well, what does that mean?" The warden said, "I don't know what it means", but his captain said, "Well, it sounds like you're going to be going home pretty immediately." I was actually home 6 days later.

We did. Ted was immediately released as well. So me and Ted were both immediately released. Now, we're the directors of CROP and we're like, okay, what's next? Myself, Ted, Richard and Matt were out and now there's 4 of us. What are we going to do? What do we know how to do? We know how to have conversations with people about personal leadership, how to empower themselves, how to not allow their circumstances to determine the impact that they can make in this world, and how to establish a vision for a future that's worth having.

Where can we do it? We should do it in prison, right? But it was Covid. This was April 2020. The world is shut down. You couldn't leave your house, much less go into a prison. Ken Oliver, that force. He served several years with us, and he paroled in 2019 as well. He had paroled to the Bay Area and he'd been having conversations with people and through his own lived experience, noticed the siloed nature of re-entry, how services were not connected for people coming home. That really what re-entry was an extension of prison, the punishment model. He said, "Hey, we can do it better." So, the five of us sat around a table. Just leaning upon our 100 combined years of incarceration. No real business experience. Just this understanding of what it feels like with the experiences of someone in prison and what they would need coming out. We devised the Ready for Life program together.

In January 2021, Ted and I had the good fortune of speaking with Governor Newsom. I really needed to thank him for his grace and his mercy, but also to share what we were doing with our re-entry program. We laid it all out for him. The four pillar program that deals with people's mindset, provides them with digital literacy and financial wellness, the skill set, provides upskilling and training in tech adjacent careers, because people coming out of incarceration have more to offer the community than just the sweat off their back. They have some intellectual capital that they can offer as well. The connection with employment and then the housing piece. He loved it. He said, "This is smart money." Investing in a program like this that really equips people for success upon re-entry versus taxpayers paying $120,000 a year to keep someone in a box.

It takes approximately $120,000 a year to keep one person in a cell for a year with only 2% of that going to their rehabilitation. 2%.

So he identified the value. He said, "I love it. If you can convince the legislature that it's something that the state needs, I'll sign it." In July of 2021, we got the news that we were partnering with the state of California for 3 years to the tune of $28.5 million to launch a reimagined re-entry program.

I'm in the third group. The third group is the people who understand that nobody wants to be judged by their worst choice.

Moreover, that we're all in this together. So when you combine the two.

So much like the John Donne poem, "Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." We are all a part of this thing called society. For me, there is a distinction between personal responsibility and societal responsibility. I am philosophically anchored in the value of personal responsibility, understanding that my choices have the power to affect results in my life and in this world. I am responsible for cultivating my own garden.

So, when I make choices that harm the community, yes, there should be accountability, which is distinct. The choices we make and the accountability that is required is distinct from the purpose that society establishes that accountability should be. Up until now, the purpose of prison has been to punish. I don't think that that is the right way forward. I think the purpose of prison should be to rehabilitate and reintegrate people.

How do we do it as a society? As society, we identify the people who are incarcerated as people. Understand that you must be held accountable for the poor choice you made, and as society has the responsibility to provide resources while you're incarcerated, to help you identify a better choice, so you can be responsibly reintegrated. So, it's both. Yes, people are responsible for their choices and society has a responsibility for creating a context that doesn't invite despair and hopelessness but invites growth and opportunity.

Oh, that's easy. It may be a little bit selfish. But when you ask about my dream, it's very simple. To watch my boys grow into men that exceed me in every way, that have a greater capacity for love, intelligence and desire to contribute to this world. My highest commitment and vision is to be a great dad for them. It starts there. Everything for me starts there.

Humbling. That was my first because I had been home for two days before I saw my mom. I was paroled, and my wife picked me up with my one-year-old son. She was pregnant and took me back to Sacramento. I didn't see my mom until 2 days later because I had to drive north. That was very humbling and kind of mournful. It was the first real reality check for me that 20 years had gone by. Everything else in the world seemed pretty normal. I'm like, "Oh, you know, okay, it's still the world. A little bit different. People are spending more time looking at their phone than they are driving or in conversation." But, when I went to my mom's house, I could see that 20 years had gone by.

It was tough. It was also, just like I said, it was mournful, I'd been gone. I've left you out here for 20 years. I'm so glad I'm home. I'm humbled to be home with you.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Hitendra.