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Gov. Jerry Brown commuted my sentence in December from 67 years to life to 20 years to life — a rare act of mercy. I had imagined the effects of a commutation on my life; the commutation’s effect on incarcerated people at San Quentin State Prison, though, surprised me. The night of my commutation, men cheered in their cells like the 49ers had just won the Super Bowl. It felt fantastic to hear men call out to me with joy, but I also recognized that they weren’t cheering for me. They were applauding something much more important than me.

That “something” is difficult to convey, as it showed up in emotions more than in concrete events. In their questions, I heard a thousand times: Emile, why do you take so many self-help classes? Why are you always reading? Who are you trying to impress? These questions didn’t come from everyone; but when they came, they felt loaded with judgment.

I felt like people wanted to tear me down.

I was wrong, people hadn’t wanted to tear me down. Their concerns were analogous to those of Denzel Washington’s character in the film “Fences.” He degraded his son’s sports dreams in a misguided attempt to protect his son from disappointment. Listening to them cheering for my commutation, I realized that what I’d taken as judgment was fear for me. My questioners had anticipated my “inevitable disappointment” and wanted to protect me, in their imperfect way.

Now they cheered, because they’d been wrong. And they’d never been happier to be wrong.

“They don’t give that kind of stuff to people like us, you know?” one man told me. “That kind of stuff is only for other people.” He had a thunderstruck look that reminded me of my own arrival at San Quentin. I met dozens of free people (volunteers in the prison) who wanted me to succeed — which wasn’t consistent with my internal narrative about a society that wanted me to fail. I’d found a community that wanted me, and I had never admitted to myself how desperately I wanted that. It proved an epiphany in my rehabilitation.

Six years later, I witnessed a similar moment of realization by the man who thought commutations were only for white people or rich people. His narrative, common in prison, about an “entire system” arrayed against him, was cracking.

A father spoke to a room of incarcerated journalists who work on the prison newspaper and radio news program about the effects of my commutation on him. “Before Emile, I wasn’t doing anything,” he said. “I didn’t care … I was never going home. Now, I’m going to do something.”

His sentiment isn’t isolated; I’ve watched it spread from man to man all month. I’m at the middle of how Gov. Brown’s act of mercy fuels exponential change. People who said they “didn’t care” are admitting to themselves that they both want to care and can be restorative members of their communities. They’re energized to transform their lives; and their transformations can change the lives around them, just as my transformation ripples through the world around me.

Media coverage billed me as “a more obvious choice” for clemency and a model of rehabilitation. I’m humbled. And I respectfully offer that in 20 years I learned to be this man from a lot of worthy men who don’t have my writing skills and so don’t have my visibility. Hundreds of them will file for a commutation this year. Imagine the power to spread transformation in a hundred acts of mercy.

I was walking the prison track on a sunny southern California day in 2006 when a friend I’ll call Michael joined me. He looked like he could barely hold it together. His dark complexion was ashen, and there was dried toothpaste around his mouth. When I asked him how he was doing, it took a full four seconds before he answered.

“I’m going to kill myself,” Michael said.

He said it matter-of-factly, but when I looked at him to see if he was joking, his shoulders were slumped, his head down, his eyes focused on the track immediately in front of him. I wondered if he had the same feeling I had, that any verbal misstep could end in disaster.

“Come on man,” I responded, with a lightness that I hoped hid the nervousness I felt. “Nothing could be that serious.”

“There’s a guy in my building that won’t leave me alone. He’s pressuring me to have sex with him.”

This threw me for a loop. I knew just about everybody on the Yard, and I was skeptical of his claim of abuse. I remembered that Michael had a reputation in our circle of friends for being overly dramatic. Often, he would bring up “problems” that were just attempts to get attention.

After a few minutes, we rounded the track past the handball courts and came up to a row of picnic benches on the south side of the Yard.

“Let’s have a seat,” I said.

He took it like I was trying to create some privacy for us, but in truth, I was stalling for time. In my seven years of incarceration, I had never been propositioned for sex, let alone pressured. Of course, I’d grown up hearing the stories and the “don’t drop the soap” jokes that people tossed around so freely. But I still couldn’t shake my skepticism — why would this predator pick Michael, of all people?

Yet something about Michael’s demeanor seemed sincere. If he was making this up, what did he hope to get out of such an embarrassing story?

Slowly, Michael began to tell me what had happened, starting very early on in his life. He’d grown up in an abusive household — I’m talking about one of those homes where the kid never has a fighting chance. Beatings with extension cords, whole days locked in the closet. It seemed like everybody in his life either hated him or was indifferent.

One of his mother’s boyfriends had been different, though. He would let Michael hang out with him while he ran around the hood; he’d buy Michael brand new clothes, or take him out for pizza; he’d come into Michael’s room late at night to spend time with him.

It soon became clear that the only person who’d shown Michael any attention had also sexually assaulted him.

To me, this was clearly an abusive relationship, but Michael said he didn’t see it that way. He seemed to appreciate the positive attention that his older male companion had shown him, and spoke about their relationship with an affection he didn’t bother to hide.

By this time, I realized Michael was not lying about the guy pressuring him. I also realized that Michael might be gay and therefore, according to my way of thinking at the time, shared some blame for what he was going through.

“I know what the problem is,” I said. “You have a spirit of homosexuality. So does the guy pressuring you. If you reject that spirit, I believe he’ll leave you alone.”

“The fact that I’m attracted to men has nothing to do with this. Because I’m not attracted to this guy…”

I was extremely uncomfortable at this point. For some reason, Michael could not see that this person was reacting to Michael’s homosexuality. And to top if off, he was unapologetic about it.

Still, Michael was a friend of mine. I couldn’t let him continue doing what I then felt, like many inmates do, was a sin, a weakness that made him deserving of all he got in prison.

“It doesn’t work like that,” I told him. “You can’t play around with homosexuality and just think you’ll only attract people you like. In that lifestyle, predators come after you. Especially in prison. Besides,” I said, “you’re a Christian.”

Then he said, “Is that Christianity, or just your understanding of it?”

Looking back, I now realize that, like many survivors of childhood abuse and neglect — so many of whom are in prison — Michael was well-acquainted with shame. My response, which was to blame him, was as familiar to him as his name.

Over the next few months, Michael and I had many more talks. Though I prided myself on being a compassionate Christian, I never missed a chance to subtly attack him for his sins. And since my attacks fit the ashamed self-image that he had internalized as a child, we slipped seamlessly into our new roles.

Perhaps two years after our conversation, Michael propositioned a friend of his. The guy attacked Michael in the middle of the dayroom. It took three guards and a full can of pepper spray to pull them apart. They took Michael to the hole, and he never came back.

By 2014, he was a distant memory. I was in church listening to a visiting preacher give a sermon about godliness when he spotted two gay men sitting in the pews. Without hesitation, he said, “You can’t play with God. You can’t be swishing around here trying to entice men, and thinking you can just go to heaven.”

Every eye in the room focused on the men. People were smiling with approval, loudly proclaiming “Amen, brother!”

All I could see, though, was the hurt and embarrassment on their faces.

Anger started to burn inside of me. Here I was, sitting in a room full of men who had no problem stealing from the kitchen or lying to the guards. A thought struck me: Who were the sinners here? When it comes to women, I have little choice in who I feel attracted to, and I was sure these men didn’t, either.

I also realized that I was guilty of the same hypocrisy. The question Michael had asked me long ago came to mind. Was this Christianity, or just our — or my — understanding of Christianity?

Michael and I are no longer in the same prison. From time to time, I find myself wondering how he’s doing. I believe he’s still incarcerated; I just hope he has found some friends who are wiser and kinder than I once was.

In November, 64 percent of California voters passed a proposition to allow early parole for qualifying non-violent offenders. But Proposition 57 also permits accelerating parole for prisoners who committed violent crimes by giving more good-time credits for exceptionally good behavior.

Some fear that paroling reformed violent offenders will increase violent crime rates, but the people the proposition would affect can actually reduce violence. They can reach youth caught in cycles of violence and save them.

When I was 19 years old, a violent felon saved me. He was a skeletal man in his 50’s with fingertips that were blunt and burned from hard labor and the hot glass of crack pipes. He’d been a high-ranking militant and former prison hit man decades ago.

I was a depressed teenager with father issues facing 67 years to life for two violent felonies. I would’ve made a perfect soldier. Instead of recruiting me, he spent nights in our cell convincing me to never join a prison gang. He stripped the romanticism from gang life and showed me that I would never find the love I wanted in a gang. I listened to him because he barely knew me, but he loved me.

Legislators meet this month about how Proposition 57 can cost-effectively reduce prison overcrowding while maximizing society’s safety. When they meet, they should remind themselves why Alcoholics Anonymous succeeds.

Recovering alcoholics make passionate and effective proselytizers for sobriety. Love born of empathy exists between recovering alcoholics and alcoholics who have not yet started AA. The same phenomenon operates in people sentenced to indeterminate terms, like 25 years to life — we call them lifers — who committed violent crimes in the past but have reformed.

I’ve dedicated my life to stopping violence, and I learned that dedication from violent felons. They taught me that my violence as a teenager stemmed from unresolved traumas I experienced as a child. I took classes taught by violent felons to learn how to help other incarcerated people stop their cycles of violence. And it works. Often the men who’ve found healing show the same urgency to pay it forward as I feel.

Most lifers become eligible for parole after a fixed term like 25 years. The corrections department reported that of the lifers released in the 2009- 2010 fiscal year, 0.3 percent returned to prison for new felonies. Compare this to the national recidivism rate of 60 percent. It’s clear that reformed lifers are the safest people to release.

Given that California is obligated under federal court order to stop deadly prison overcrowding, why not release people with passion and life experience to decrease violent crime? Imagine the social transformations that would be possible.

Actually, you don’t have to imagine. Several reformed lifers have been paroled and they’re changing their communities. For example, Malachi Scott was paroled in 2013, and today he’s leading restorative justice groups, teaching empathy and responsibility for one’s community in the Bay Area.

There are many lifers like Scott ready to serve. Under Prop 57, they’re eligible for 20 percent time reduction credits while other prisoners are eligible for 50 percent time credits.

I ask that legislators take steps to give these people back to their communities by making violent offenders eligible for Prop. 57’s 50 percent time reduction credits and by applying the credits retroactively. I ask that readers contact their local representatives and ask them to extend 50% time credits to people like me.

Attribution: This article originally appeared in The Mercury News on April 24, 2017.
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The first and only wedding I ever attended was in prison, when an inmate I knew only in passing invited me to serve as his best man.

Why would this virtual stranger invite me into one of the most personal moments of his life? Instinctively, I knew that his asking me suggested more about the walls inmates set up around our private lives than it did about any personal relationship I had with him. The truth is, Dee (at the time I only knew his nickname), was looking for someone who wouldn’t embarrass him in front of his family. Someone who wouldn’t talk about prison stuff all day — like who is snitching, or who owes who, or how corrupt the system is.

In fact, here in prison, family is off-limits. Many incarcerated men, when they receive mail, immediately rip off the return address and flush it down the toilet. If you see someone on the phone, the unspoken rule is that you never approach them for any reason. If you see someone you know in the visiting room, you should wait for them to make eye contact with you to see if it’s acceptable for you to approach, because they are in the presence of their family. It doesn’t matter if this is a prisoner you’ve known for 20 years. Family is off-limits.

So prison becomes a strange blend of intimacy and emotional distance. When you share a four-by-eight cell with a person, you get to know him pretty well, but only in certain ways. My cellie likes to get up about 4:30 a.m. to read while the building is still quiet; he’s passionate about politics — our most heated argument came when I made a dismissive remark about Bernie Sanders. He loves grilled-cheese sandwiches with ice-cold milk.

What I can’t tell you is if he has kids. Or if his parents are still alive.

When I arrived at Dee’s wedding, I was immediately overwhelmed — the smell of cologne in the visiting room was overpowering. The hundreds of incarcerated men in the small space had clearly attempted to drown out the stale prison odor.

The visiting room itself was bracingly loud with the squeal of children, and the joyful, foreign sound of women’s laughter.

I carefully stepped to where Dee and his family were seated.

I’d seen Dee plenty of times in the yard, but we ran in different circles and had never really conversed. He was in his mid-20s but didn’t carry himself like a lot of the other youngsters. Perhaps it was his slender build, or his state-issued glasses with the black plastic frames, or the way he always seemed to be headed somewhere.

But at the wedding, within minutes, I was learning that Dee is actually Daniel. He has a little sister who will begin her first semester of college very soon. She’s interested in social activism. Her love for her brother was clearly capable of trumping her fear of being in a prison for the first time. She adoringly caressed his hair.

And Daniel: gone was the weary, wary look and the body language that is universal to the incarcerated male. In its place was an attentive, respectful demeanor that left no doubt his mom ran a tight ship. He was polite and humble, and his eyes shone a light that you never really see in prison.

Suddenly, I realized that around the visiting room, that same, rare light was everywhere: genuine smiles, open expressions, intimacy.

The wedding itself was brief. I expected a state bureaucrat with a certain grudging efficiency, the type who is impatient with anyone who doesn’t already know the routine, to lead the ceremony with one eye on the clock. Instead, a retired military chaplain came in and within moments said something that blew me away.

“I can tell that you two really love each other,” he said, with a kind smile.

Most state employees, or free people who come into prison, can’t see past our state-issued uniforms. They rarely look us in the eye, and usually don’t say anything to us at all.

But this chaplain hung out with us as we took pictures, ate microwaved buffalo wings from the vending machine, and laughed and joked as we did. And not once was there a disapproving glance at the bride-to-be for marrying an incarcerated man.

Occasionally, as the couple said their vows, one of the incarcerated men in the room would see me gazing his way, and immediately his walls would snap back into place.

What exactly are we so on guard against, I thought? Was it that soon enough someone would be sympathizing with you, and then demanding that you help them out with a few things, like commissary? By now, didn’t we know that each of us was basically alike, a person just trying to get through the day so that one day we can get home to our family?

But that final level of trust eludes us.

As Daniel and I re-entered the yard after his marriage, he lightly touched my arm to get my attention, then looked me straight in the eyes. “Thank you,” he said. I wanted to tell him that he had given me a far greater gift than I had given him. But as I searched for the words, I felt the prison environment washing back over me.

“It was nothing,” I replied.

One of my cousins told me he could not wait to come to prison. That statement caught me off-guard, and I asked him what he meant.

He told me his friends told him that only real men go to prison and survive, and one was not considered a man if he did not go to prison. I was shocked.

I have six immediate uncles, my mother’s brothers. Four of them I heard about only from stories because they were always in prison. I met my Uncle Rodney only once, and he told me that prison was not a good place to be. A few months later, he attempted a robbery and found himself back in prison. He died right here in San Quentin.

My uncles Larry and Michael are uncles I only met a few times, and they told me about how bad prison was, and how they did not want to see me go there. So how did prison get glamorized?

There are certain books and shows, styled “urban,” that make it seem like crime and prison are rites of passage, and that only “the real” go to prison, only to get out and make it big. While it is a world of hope that success can spring from being in prison, one does not have to go to prison to be successful. Does that make sense?

One can be successful without having to hit rock bottom. It is very easy to go to prison but very difficult to come out.

I have been incarcerated nearly 10 years, and I had the idea that my manhood would be tested thoroughly. The other side of that glamorous prison life is the idea that inmates are killing and raping each other. I have seen a bit of both, but it is not a frequent thing.

I was 27 when I fell this time, and I never believed that prison was the place to be. Ever. Do not misunderstand me: Without this time, I would have been killed in the street, either by a past or present victim, or by the police. That does not mean that I could not have changed my life without going to prison. I did not have to get locked up to learn to love myself, and neither does anyone else.

One of the biggest struggles in prison is dealing with modern-day slavery. We work for pennies on the dollar, most of us doing work some people believe is beneath them. Guards talk down to us, some of them anyway, and they seem to forget that one bad choice can land them behind these walls.

Some people point to Tupac for glamorizing the “thug life,” but songs where he rapped about killing or crime, at the end of the song he was either in jail or dead. Prison sucks. It is not at all like the movies or music. Imagine watching your children grow up through pictures instead of being there with them, or your siblings growing up without you.

I’ll say this: Coming to prison saved my life, though only because I was too stubborn to listen to my parents, my family, my friends or my own instincts. I can admit that freely, and I can admit that I had to come to prison to free myself from the chains of mental slavery and to see the face of oppression and racism in a clear and present sense.

I do not recommend tearing yourself away from your loved ones in order to get your life together. As long as one has family and friends, one can succeed. Communicate. Listen. Learn.

Attribution: This article originally appeared on the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange on October 12, 2016.
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Please note that the Prison University Project became Mount Tamalpais College in September 2020.

Prison University Project graduate and community mentor Sam Vaughn recounts how a program offering radical interventions of love and support to the most violent young men has dramatically reduced the homicide rate in one of the most dangerous US cities. Sam is a TEDMED 2015 speaker and Neighborhood Change Agent in the City of Richmond, California. 

A person can have a healthy heart and diseased lungs, or a healthy brain and kidney failure. Would you consider that person healthy? Society is quite similar. Until we create a culture of health that is inclusive of all citizens, we cannot consider ourselves a healthy society. Thus, we cannot create a healthy society until we deal with issues of personal security, like crime and gun violence.

As I mention in my TEDMED talk, at the Office of Neighborhood Safety, we identify individuals who are most likely to be perpetrators or victims of gun violence. We work with them through a program called the Operation Peacemaker Fellowship, a seven-step process to help them become self- and socially-aware of their roles in society, and to affirm their God-given and Constitutional rights to happy, safe and successful lives. Perhaps most importantly, we meet and accept them where they are, with no judgement, and recognize the social, structural and strategic injustices that they have faced most of their lives. We challenge them to accept that, despite those injustices, they still have a responsibility to themselves, to their families, and to their communities to do better.

The first step of the Fellowship, and one that is vital to our success, is for us to build a relationship with these individuals. Most young people don’t care what you know until they know that you care. Once trust is established, we create a LifeMAP with them, helping them see that a different future is possible by showing the changes that others have made. We help them envision a future as bright and fulfilling as they can possibly imagine, and we connect them to resources and service providers that can help make that dream become a reality. We connect them to mentors and coaches, a group we call Elders, who are older successful men of color who have successfully made changes in their own lives, and are now reaching back to help others.

[pictured] Sam Vaughn, Devone Boggan, and Fellows on a retreat at the Teotihuacan Pyramid of the Sun, Mexico City.

Additionally, in a step riddled with great risk but even greater reward, we take the Fellows on trips around the globe, to help them see how good life can possibly be and get them addicted to living. The catch to this amazing travel opportunity is that they must travel with someone from what would be considered a “rival community.” As they begin to see themselves, and the world they live in, in a different light, they start to see each other differently as well.
Because we believe hard work should be rewarded, we provide a stipend to our Fellows, a practice that is seen as controversial by some. Critics frequently disparage this, claiming that we are paying criminals not to commit crime. Let me counter that by saying that, when I was young, my parents would give me $5 for every “A” I got on my report card. Were they paying me to go to school? Absolutely not– they were rewarding me for working so hard. We aren’t paying these young men for what they aren’t doing. We are rewarding them for what they are doing.

Our final step is to introduce our Fellows to mainstream society and the workforce through subsidized employment. In this stage, they develop a strong work ethic, effective workplace communication and the skills of being a team player. Eventually, they become employable by their own means, without subsidy.

Frankly, our goal is to provide these individuals with what every young person in this country receives when they grow up in a healthy, nurturing community. We’ve been successful. Of those who have participated in our Fellowship, 94% are alive, 84% haven’t been injured by a firearm, and 79% have not been suspects in new firearm-related crimes. During the period of our interventions with these youth, the city of Richmond, California has experienced a 66% reduction in firearm assaults and a 55% reduction in firearm related homicides between 2007 and 2015. By attending to these young men who are and have been traditionally underserved and abandoned by the mainstream services platform, the City of Richmond is creating a culture of health in a once dangerous city that is today a much more desirable place to live, learn, work and play.

You can watch Sam’s TEDMED talk here.

Please note that the Prison University Project became Mount Tamalpais College in September 2020.