Tufts University Prison Initiative of Tisch College hosted a panel discussion titled “Ending Excessive Sentencing & Mass Incarceration” on Wednesday. The panel featured activist and writer Kenneth Hartman, MyTERN graduate Swinks Laporte, civil rights lawyer Michael Meltsner and TUPIT bachelor’s student Kentel Weaver.
The death penalty is currently legal in 27 U.S. states and life without parole sentences are legal in all U.S. states. Approximately 14% of inmates incarcerated in Massachusetts are serving life without parole sentences.
The panelists who were formerly incarcerated each talked about the impact excessive sentencing had on their lives.
Weaver shared his experience of being incarcerated at 16 and sentenced to life without parole at 18. In 2013, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled life sentences for juveniles as unconstitutional and he became eligible to work towards parole. Weaver received an associate’s degree in liberal arts from Bunker Hill and is currently completing his bachelor’s degree in civic studies at Tufts.
“I didn’t feel like I was a person that was eligible for parole, but the one thing I knew I did have to do was at least try because I had my mother and I had my sister in my corner that whole time while I was in there,” Weaver said.
At the age of 17, Swinks Laporte also was sentenced to life without parole. Laporte found a pathway to education through the help of the TUPIT inside-outside program.
He recalled thinking, “If you’re going to take my crime that personally, I’m going to take it personally to show you that I will do a lot of things with my life while I’m incarcerated.”
Michael Meltsner, former first assistant counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and law professor at Northeastern, spent his career fighting for civil rights and against capital punishment on many occasions before the United States Supreme Court.
He stressed that while efforts had succeeded in passing bills to address reduced employment opportunities and other forms of discrimination faced by formerly incarcerated people, the legislation often comes up short of its intended impact.
Hartman was convicted of murder at 19 years old and was sentenced to life without parole until his sentence was commuted by Governor Jerry Brown after serving 38 years in prison.
“I was one of the first two people who got out having been sentenced as an adult to life without the possibility of parole. That was after 38 years, and it was a really long time in prison. I came in when I was 19 [and] got out when I was 57. In the time that I was [incarcerated], the world completely changed” Hartman said.
In his prison reform work for California, Hartman toured corrections facilities in Norway, Finland and Germany, learning what has worked for global leaders in modern corrections.
“They believe that the people in prisons are human beings,” Hartman said. “They treat the people in their prisons as if they’re human beings and like they’re going to get out of prison and become their neighbors. And we have a weird system in this country that believes that people go to prison to work with their humanity, and they should be treated like animals for the rest of their lives.”
Hartman explained two pieces of legislation that are part of a long-term strategy to improve the incarceration system in California. Providing Access to Healing simplifies the process for volunteers to work with programs inside prisons. The importance of the first legislation, AB 1104, Hartman said, is that it states that the punishment for a conviction of a felony is the deprivation of liberty while the purpose of imprisonment is rehabilitation, education and preparation for re-entry.
“It makes it very clear to the Department of Corrections: Your job is not to make any suffering. The suffering is being here; you don’t have to make it worse,” he said.
“What [these international prisons] proved is, if you treat people like they’re human beings, they’ll act like them.” He stressed that while these facilities are still prisons because inmates cannot leave, corrections officials adopt an attitude of “you work with us, we’ll work with you.”
Programs like TUPIT, which offer education to incarcerated individuals, exist “in every prison in Norway,” Hartman explained.
After the panel, state Sen. Jamie Eldridge spoke briefly, expressing his support for prison reform and his concern that the issue does not get sufficient attention in the legislature. He expressed optimism that it would see more daylight in the next legislative session, which begins in January.
