Keith Wattley

Transcript of the Episode

Taryell Simmons: What happens after someone commits the worst mistake of their life? Do we believe people can truly change? Can healing exist inside systems built around punishment? And who gets labeled beyond saving? Because let's be honest, folks. Our society talks a lot about justice, but what we don't always talk about is humanity. Today's guest has been more than 25 years fighting for the rights of incarcerated people. And I'm especially jealous of this man because he got to meet the Obamas. And in his work, especially with those convicted and violent crimes and helping create pathways home through healing, accountability, and transformation, he's doing some great, amazing work within our communities. Welcome back to Rise Urban Nation, ladies and gentlemen, where we unite, uplift, and ignite stories that challenge narratives and expand what's possible. I'm your host, Taryell Simmons. And today we're joined by attorney, educator, Obama Foundation fellow and founder of Uncommon Law, Keith Wattley. Welcome to the show.
Keith Wattley: Hey, Terrell, thanks a lot for having me. Glad to be here.
Taryell Simmons: I'm glad to have you. Now, I just want to jump right in from psychology to prison advocacy. This is your jam. We was chopping it up in the green room and I love a lot of the work that you do. I kind of look at you as, your own version of what Bryan Stevenson has done. You've created your own pathway and lane and you do some amazing work in this space and your work sits at the intersection of like justice, healing, advocacy and humanity. Take us back to what... Let's go back to the beginning. What first drew you into this work?
Keith Wattley: Let's see, what's the... I think I've come to this work in a couple of ways. Some consciously and some, I guess I have to say subconsciously. By the time I graduated high school, I knew I was interested in understanding people's motivations for doing the things they did. And so my undergraduate degree was in psychology.
Taryell Simmons: Mm-hmm.
Keith Wattley: But when I didn't get into the graduate programs I wanted to, I decided, well, I'll work for a year or two and then I'll go to law school, which is something I wanted to do since I was a kid. I used to watch old reruns of Perry Mason and I said, you know what, that's something I think I'd like to get into. But what helped me in law school was that even though I assumed I would be a public defender, I stayed open to exploring different ways to practice law. And I got an internship at a drug and alcohol treatment facility. And then I got an internship next year in an office that was seeking to improve prison conditions. And those experiences really helped me see the intersection of the various ways in which our social safety net fails to take care of our folks, especially Black and Brown folks.
Taryell Simmons: Yeah, I'm so glad that you remained open to that too and was allowing other things to shape your consciousness around it. You know, when you were talking about those connecting the docs, was thinking because you studied psychology before law. I'm curious to know, like, did that shape your perspective on people and behavior and allowed you that further?
Keith Wattley: Yeah.
Taryell Simmons: I guess knowledge, skill, and ability to be able to connect those dots and be the therapist you needed for people at times.
Keith Wattley: Yeah, I think it's been that driving interest to understand why people do the things they do. As I said, even when I was in high school, I felt like that was a question that might drive my career, even though I didn't know what the career might look like. I just wanted to know. I wanted to know why people do the things they do, why things are the way they are. so psychology was sort of a natural way to pursue that inquiry. And as I got to working with people in prison, one of the things that I have learned over the years is that just about everybody is capable of committing serious harm under the wrong circumstances. And just about everybody is capable of healing and transformation under the right circumstances.
Taryell Simmons: Mm.
Keith Wattley: And most of the time, those who cause harm and are incarcerated were survivors of various types of trauma long before they harmed anybody else. even when that harm was like self-harm, such as drug addiction, which certainly harms other people as well, it's often rooted in childhood trauma, like it was for my sister. And so...
Taryell Simmons: Mm-hmm.
Keith Wattley: In our work at Uncommon Law, we implement strategies and programs that show how a healing focused response can make a difference. And that's definitely driven by the psychology and including like the, just the normal human sense of needing to belong and all the, when you look at the way in which trauma and childhood and adolescence impacts us. It's sending us messages that we don't belong and that we need to make up for that in some way. And so that drives a lot of our work with our clients to pinpoint those areas in their lives when they had that experience and told themselves, I don't belong or I need to overcome this or I need to prove that in order to belong, to be accepted, to be loved.
Taryell Simmons: Yeah.
Keith Wattley: That usually is the key to them developing new coping skills and a new way to see themselves in society.
Taryell Simmons: Nah. And, you know, I want to expand on that take. And because I think a lot of things when I when I hear you say that, I think of OK, all right. Now. Is that is the result of anybody being able to go down this path of result in our society or the system? Like, what is it an indictment of or is it a cocktail combination? Because I when I hear you say that, I imagine at some point in you doing this work, there's a moment where you that made you realize that, the justice system wasn't serving people the way it should. And that's why you're having adverse outcomes. But even before that, the systems sometimes the enabler or the thing that causes people to at any moment to go down this rabbit hole because there wasn't another thing in place that allowed them to heal, to grow, or navigate the situation in a different way.
Keith Wattley: Yeah, I mean, it's so important to recognize all of the missed opportunities that there have been in people's lives to offer a healing focused intervention. And I think it's because we don't think about healing. We think about correction. We think about punishment. We think about consequences. We don't think about care.
Taryell Simmons: Mm.
Keith Wattley: And if we were to shift that and think about care, if we recognize, you we've been talking lately about this, the need for healing, I think that justice includes a fundamental right to heal. And if you recognize that fundamental right, it can be transformative and it can impact really every one of the areas where we recognize that people are struggling. And I think to get there, we have to, there has to be a reckoning. We have to reckon with the fact that we've failed at all these different touch points in some consistent ways. I think we're at a critical point in our country's history where so many of the advances of past decades are being threatened and stripped away that these people want to erase us from history.
Taryell Simmons: .
Keith Wattley: We want to keep us from representing ourselves in government and put more of us in prison. But I think we need to figure out not just how to win these battles again, but how to win them in a lasting, sustainable way. I think there has to be a reckoning. We need to reckon with the fact that a lot of the root causes of crime and violence can be found in poverty and discrimination, housing and food insecurity, limited access to education, meaningful employment, health care, mental health care. So I think our future lies at the intersection of all those areas of interest. And it's going to require us to fundamentally transform them. think a fundamental right to heal is a way to do that. Because when we offer a healing response to a young person who experiences some of those problems I just identified, it would prevent them from repeating some of the negative patterns from previous generations. And it would counter this self-fulfilling practice of using the cruelty of incarceration and other state violence to choose winners and losers and to distinguish us versus them. I think a healing response really is for all of us, including survivors, whether they're currently incarcerated or not.
Taryell Simmons: Nah, that was beautifully said. you're making me think of, I had this conversation with somebody probably like two months ago and we were talking about healing. And some of the same similarities in a way that you were talking about. And we were talking about the reckoning of America itself, needs a healing, everybody.
Keith Wattley: Yeah.
Taryell Simmons: like from the indigenous people, even, you know, the white people who have ancestors who were slave owners, right? There needs to be a healing of everybody through all the traumas and atrocities that we've gone through just to get here. And that healing and reckoning will allow for a path forward. It's not just from the people who survived it, but the people who also were, who thrived in it on the other side, because there's some shame, there's some remorse, there's some, there's things that people are covering up because they can't deal with the guilt.
Keith Wattley: Yeah.
Keith Wattley: Right, well, you know what? The other thing that works that is really critically necessary in the work that we do with incarcerated folks, particularly those whose future, their future release from prison is dependent upon a parole board saying that they're satisfied the person has sufficiently changed and can safely be released. The first step towards that is accountability. You got to own what you did. And our country hasn't done that, refuses to do that officially. And whether it's individual actors or systems, we have it. That's a big part of the reckoning that we just refuse to have, I think. And so I think about how the parole board doesn't believe a person has changed if they're not willing to acknowledge the harm they caused.
Taryell Simmons: Mm-hmm.
Keith Wattley: And we're so afraid to do that. But that fear of acknowledging, especially when it comes to family stuff on an individual level, people are... unless they absolutely have to, people don't want to admit that they cause serious harm. And know, many of my clients committed murder. So, you know, among the most serious harm. And oftentimes the shame and the guilt from that prevents them from admitting that did it and then starting a real journey to come home from it. And one of the key pieces is they don't want their mother to know that they did that. And so they deny it. No, I didn't do that. That wasn't me. They got the wrong person. We need to do an appeal. We need hire all these lawyers, et cetera, et cetera. And so they may go years, decades in prison without admitting that because they're afraid of having their mother know and see that their baby was willing to do that. And the thing I tell people all the time is she already knows.
Taryell Simmons: Mm-hmm.
Keith Wattley: And she's trying to help you. She's trying to help you feel better by pretending to be going along with your story. Now, to be clear, there are a number of people, a lot of people, who didn't commit the crime for which they're incarcerated. That's not most of my clients. Most of my clients did it. They did. And most of them will admit that they did it. But oftentimes, the barrier to making that admission is, well, what does it mean for my family? Are they going to leave me? Is my partner going to leave me? Are my kids going to have nothing to do with me if they know I was capable of committing that kind of harm? And the process to rebuild those relationships is the openness and honesty. Because that allows them collectively to start exploring the why. What was going on that sent me down that path? And really, that often involves re-examining these family dynamics, including, well, what were my parents up to? What was the role of drugs and alcohol and violence in our home that had me think I needed to go behave in this way? And so many times we see that our clients who are in prison experience a whole bunch of adverse childhood and community experiences that were never resolved, never acknowledged, never addressed. And that's some of the work we do with them.
Taryell Simmons: I'm also wondering if there, so my, I think me and my racial equity justice work lens and the journey that I've been on, in there, there's healing, there's some unlearning and then relearning, right? And I imagine, you know, there might be some unlearning work in the work that you do of past behaviors or what we've known to be true, but that wasn't true and didn't serve us. Something that I often have conversations with folks about is intent versus impact, right? Because somebody might say to me, hey, I didn't intend to do that. I'm not a racist. I didn't call you racist. And I know you probably had the best intent. But what we're dealing with now is impact.
Keith Wattley: Mm-hmm.
Taryell Simmons: In owning the impact that you made, right? So that we can course correct and then lead and have the outcomes that we really want to have, right? And I think sometimes people have a hard time with owning their impact when they had good intent for whatever may have happened and unlearning.
Keith Wattley: Mm-hmm.
Taryell Simmons: What that means from their perspective and going into the foundational knowledge of the community or wherever it is that they've caused impact. Do you have some of those dynamics show up in your work?
Keith Wattley: yeah, yeah, quite a bit. And often that is one of the barriers to accountability. People say, well, I didn't mean to do that. that, yes, it certainly comes up in the context of race and racial dynamics, but it also comes up in the context of the corner store robbery where two people go in there and one of them has a gun and the other doesn't think that anybody's going to get harmed, but the person with the gun shoot somebody. They could say, I was just there to go, you know, get what we can get from the store and keep on moving. That they didn't intend for somebody to get harmed doesn't negate the fact that somebody was harmed. And so the impact of their actions agreeing to and participating in that was the same, regardless of what they intended. And I think some of what we find is that the survivors of violent crime, they need to know that the person acknowledges the impact of their actions and that they're not focused on their individual culpability and their role in the thing. That can be important from a legal standpoint and a legal culpability. But in terms of like a moral responsibility, that stuff doesn't matter. The victims want to know that you own the impact of what you cause. The other thing that comes up is people confuse, they confuse the concept of guilt with the concept of shame.
Taryell Simmons: Hmm.
Keith Wattley: You know, like, generally if you feel guilty about something, it is, I did that thing I shouldn't have done. And, you know, I regret that. And you can, I think people are more willing to acknowledge, yes, I did that thing and I shouldn't have done that. Let me make up for that. Let me try to fix that. But shame is more of a deeply personal experience of who you are. I'm a bad person.
Taryell Simmons: Mm-hmm.
Keith Wattley: is what shame is. That's the story that shame tells us. And there's not a whole lot of room around shame. Like if you get to the point where I'm a bad person, then, hey, people don't want to say that out loud and address that directly. But there's really not a lot. There's nowhere to go from there. It kind of stops things instead of starts things. And so I think it's helpful for people to not think of even the worst thing they've done like a murder to represent that they are a bad person who can't change, who can't redeem themselves. Instead, we recognize, as I said before, just about anybody is capable of committing serious harm under the wrong circumstances. So let's offer the right circumstances so people can come back from, can heal from that and help the survivors of the crime heal, which is a really important part of the journey many of our clients travel.
Taryell Simmons: Mm-hmm. So what led you from prison law? what led you from prison law office to founding uncommon law? Give me that journey.
Keith Wattley: Thank...
Keith Wattley: Um, well, when I was there at the prison law office, which I, you know, I started working there in law school, actually. Um, and I didn't usually, um, I didn't really know much about the underlying crimes for which my clients were incarcerated. My focus there was on, um, making sure they got whatever they had coming. Um, which meant adequate medical care, mental health care, protection against violence from correctional officers or from other incarcerated people, a few other things, which seem pretty fundamental in terms of the rights of human beings. But it wasn't focused on why people were in prison. The fact that they were there meant that they were entitled to certain protections. And my job at the time was to make sure that those protections were being respected. And there was one story that stands out that really painted a stark picture for me of the experience of someone serving a life sentence. Because I didn't usually even know what people's sentences were. The fact that you are here right now means you get certain protections. And I went to meet this guy who... We're trying to make sure he got the right kind of mental health treatment. And I went to meet with him and he comes in, I'm sitting down at the table in the visiting room. He comes in, he looks around, he's like, so this is the visiting room. I say, yeah, this is the visiting room. And this man had been in prison for 25 years and had never had a visit before. I was his first visit. So family's gone, lawyer's there to help him get out, none of that, none of that. And he was serving a life sentence. And I think his experience was similar to a lot of people who were just written off. if you did that thing, you can never come back from that. We're gonna move on with our lives. We've given up thinking you can change, improve yourself, et cetera.
Taryell Simmons: Wow.
Keith Wattley: So I was still, as I said, focusing on prison conditions at the time, but that definitely stuck with me. And then later I got a letter from someone who was serving a life sentence about his life sentence. Most of it was about prison conditions. This was about he had been granted parole by the parole board and I think he had been in prison for about 12 or 14 years at the time on a seven year to life sentence. So he'd started going to the parole board after about seven years and had gone several times and they finally granted him parole. But then before he was released, they sent him a letter saying that they wanted to potentially take away the parole grant they just gave him. And so I got interested in the case and said, well, see what happened. Maybe he got a rule violation or something else happened. And none of that was the case. was just a practice and policy at the time of closely scrutinizing any release decision and often reversing those decisions. And so I represented him in a, what they call a rescission hearing, a hearing to consider rescinding someone's parole grant. And I hadn't seen a rescission hearing before and just said, you know, I don't know exactly how this is supposed to go, but I think I can help him. Let's try to figure this out. So I learned the rules and helped him in his hearing and he was able to go home to keep his parole grant. He went home and I got to attend his college graduation the next year and he had a baby born that same year and got a great new job and I said this is important for me as an advocate to see the direct results of my efforts to help someone. And he did most of the work for sure, but I think through our partnership, he was able to kind of write the next chapter of his life in a way that didn't seem possible before. And I said, this just seems like an interesting kind of work. Let me learn more about this. And at the time there were like 20,000 people in California serving life sentences. Now there are 30,000 people serving life sentences, about 200,000 nationwide serving these sentences. And they have to do this really difficult introspective work to explain why they did what they did and to show how they spent their time in prison addressing those factors so they can safely be released. And I said, this just feels like how I want to show up as an advocate.
Taryell Simmons: I'm gonna thank you, Spitt.
Keith Wattley: And at the time, there wasn't space in my caseload workload to add a lot more to my plate. I was already focusing full time on prison conditions. because this is something that I encourage people all the time. Once you realize what the most authentic sense of your own self-expression is, do that. Don't let the fact that you have a job, a career, or certain pathway dictate whether you stay on that path. Once you hear that, listen to it, heed that. And that's what I did. said, well, I don't know what the practice of law is supposed to look like for me, but it's not this. It has to be something different. This is sort of where there are a lot of reasons it's called uncommon law.
Taryell Simmons: you
Keith Wattley: and there was also a different relationship. I didn't want to be the person who, would read a bunch of material and then just go speak for my client. I wanted it to be a real partnership. want, I want to help people find their own voice to tell their own story. for the first time, sometimes in their lives, right? And so that meant I needed to show up differently as an advocate. And so I said, you know, I just have to start. organization and that's what I did. I started Uncommon Law that was 20 years ago this year.
Taryell Simmons: I appreciate you starting Uncommon Log because it's definitely something that's needed in this space. And I think only you had the wherewithal and vision to bring it to fruition because this is who you are innately inside. There's something that I often say to my listeners. say, do what you love, love what you do, don't chase the money, let the money chase you. And what I mean by that is when you connect authentically to who you are innately and show up in that way, no matter what space you're in, your gift is recognized and people will gladly make a path for you. The universe will make a path for you. People will gladly pay for the unique service and ability and skill set that you bring because you are bringing something of value to them and to the world. And so thank you for everything that you do choosing to advocate for people. Most society has written off because that takes conviction and you definitely have the conviction. I know we're not towards the of this episode, like that story you told me and then everything you've done is as impactful to me. Like it almost makes me want to get up and do something.
Keith Wattley: Mm-hmm. Well, I think we all have that ability to, as I said before, stay open to what else is possible and what will appeal to us as the most genuine or authentic way that we want to show up. I think the other thing, we've built this team. started, I had one other.
Taryell Simmons: Mm-hmm.
Taryell Simmons: Mm-hmm.
Keith Wattley: when I started 20 years ago. then then for many years we had had one or two lawyers and like a legal assistant, but usually not more than four or five people. And then now we have 40 people. I have 10 other lawyers who work here. We have therapists on staff because of the enormity of the work, but also because people I think are drawn to this opportunity to show up differently. Taryell Simmons: Mm-hmm.
Taryell Simmons: Mm-hmm.
Keith Wattley: I don't think there's another organization like this that offers this opportunity to combine healing focused work with effective legal advocacy inside prisons. And one of our most exciting programs is training currently incarcerated people as peer mentors to do the same work to facilitate these conversations in the maximum security prisons.
Taryell Simmons: Mm-hmm.
Taryell Simmons: Mm-hmm.
Keith Wattley: really carving out therapeutic communities inside the prison. And when you see that happen and this community develops across racial lines and different divides that ordinarily would pit people against each other in prison, it's a powerful example of what's possible when we offer a healing focused response to violence. And we re-imagine the relationships of people who've committed that kind of harm. So I think the people who work here are drawn to that new opportunity. They're drawn to the idea that we don't write people off for forever and that we offer healing. And so as I said before, the more we sort of zoom out, we see a lot of potential intersections for healing focused responses that really have nothing to do with corrections, but everything to do with building the kind of society we want to live in.
Taryell Simmons: Mm-hmm.
Taryell Simmons: Yeah, and I think that's because you bring a level of humanity to the work. And I want to zoom out for a second with you and talk about that humanity, especially the humanity that you've been able to, not only just with the amazing staff and the organization you built, but the humanity you've been able to accomplish by building these peer mentor groups and so forth inside a system that's designed to punish people.
Keith Wattley: Yeah.
Taryell Simmons: And I want to talk about specifically the emotional and moral complexity of this work, because a lot of people say they believe in rehabilitation until the crime feels personal or uncomfortable. What has your work taught you about the people society labels as a violent offender?
Keith Wattley: Mm.
Keith Wattley: Yeah.
Keith Wattley: Well, you know, the point I made earlier about how under the worst circumstances, just about anybody is capable of causing harm and under the best circumstances, just about anyone's capable of healing and transformation. I know that because I've seen that. And that really it's across the spectrum. I've seen people who have committed serious violence including murder, who transformed themselves while in prison and become better partners to their spouses, better parents to their kids, better kids to their parents than folks who are outside because they...
Taryell Simmons: Now, say that again, because I think there's a big misconception people have that these people can't do that. And I want people to really hear that.
Keith Wattley: Yeah, well, it's true, people. When you do the work to understand yourself and to be willing to be vulnerable with the people in your life, anything is possible. You can forge really strong, powerful relationships, including those that people wrote off, we thought were lost. If somebody commits harm, we think that's all we need to know about them, but they're still in relationships with their family. They may still be married, they may still be parents, they may be children, siblings, et cetera. And so each of those touch points represents an opportunity to transform that relationship and to show the people on the other side of that relationship what else is possible, beyond the harm. What else is there? Well, there's accountability, there's healing. And the earlier we start that healing focused process and offer those responses, the earlier we interrupt and disrupt that cycle that has an intergenerational impact on our families and in our communities. So I've seen people be the best parent through a series of phone calls with their 15 minute long phone calls with their.
Taryell Simmons: Yeah.
Keith Wattley: with their kids that have the ability to transform those kids' lives. And these are kids that may have friends who see their parents every day and don't talk to them for 15 minutes. And so the power of those connections, when it's genuine, when it's insightful, when it's accountable, when it's vulnerable, it's powerful.
Taryell Simmons: Yeah.
Taryell Simmons: Yeah, because when people do the work, they show up different. And they disrupt not only these generational traumas, these patterns, these cycles, but they also disrupt systems. Because when we look at how trauma and systemic inequities show up in our lives, those people are more entombed and capable to take moments of self-reflection and hold.
Keith Wattley: Mm-hmm.
Taryell Simmons: spaces for more nuanced conversations about what this looks like and more socially, emotionally inclined and huge to navigate the world differently. You mentioned the count of.
Keith Wattley: Yeah. You know, irony is, sorry to interrupt, but the irony is oftentimes people that we work with come home from prison after 20, 30, 40 years. And they've done that work to develop emotional intelligence and these communication skills. There are folks on the outside haven't done the work. So sometimes it's difficult for them to communicate. Sometimes...
Taryell Simmons: Mm-hmm.
Keith Wattley: There's this encouragement, folks on the outside, to do some of the same work so they can build something together. But just like most of us, if we don't have to do that work, we won't do the work. And so there's this imbalance often that shows up in relationships. So the encouragement is for everyone to be asking these questions of ourselves and of each other so that we can build something together.
Taryell Simmons: Yeah. And to add on that, and it's because, you know, they come home to people who are still stuck in survival mode. So these people don't have the wherefore, the time or the want because they're stuck in survival mode. And this person has done all this work and then they come showed up, you know, more healed and so forth. And then now they're looking at them like. Listen, you don't know that I don't have time for none of that, right? Mr. Lighter, if you so blah, blah, you why you still out here? Blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, and it has nothing to do with that, right? You so Mr. Enlightened. Then we start having these these nuances. I want to go back to the accountability piece because you had mentioned it. And I want to know what does accountability actually look like in your model?
Keith Wattley: Yes, right.
Keith Wattley: Well, it's certainly one of the things I'll start with in this answer is to distinguish responsibility from accountability. Because really, responsibility is more like you're held responsible by an individual, by a system, someone being convicted and sentenced to prison.
Taryell Simmons: Mmm.
Keith Wattley: is a way of holding them responsible for the actions, for the crime. But accountability is more of about the individual person's relationship to the community around them. I'm accountable to my peers. I'm accountable to my staff. I'm accountable to the people in my family. That's a choice. Like, I choose to be a part of this community. And in exchange for being a part it, I owe them something. And that means honesty. doesn't mean I'm perfect. It means I'm honest and I'm vulnerable and I'm doing the work that I say I'm going to do. And so that's, I think for our clients, looks like starting with this recognition of there was a, there was some agreement, you know, younger in their younger years that they would show up a certain way in society and their communities and for their families. And they broke that agreement. They acted in a way that's not consistent with the love and responsibility that they owed. And so they show accountability by saying, I harmed my family, my community, that particular victim in this way, and I'm gonna make it right in whatever way I can. I can't bring back the life that I took. but I can dedicate the rest of my life to making sure I never cause any more harm, to preventing other people from committing that kind of harm. That's a way to kind of restore the integrity of that relationship that I as the individual have with the community. That's what accountability looks like. So if you're not willing to say, I messed up and I owe, I need to make up for that, that's not really being accountable. And the other thing is it's not even just about the things that you did or the things that you were convicted of. Sometimes accountability is more about who I was being. What kind of person was I being? What kind of way was I impacting or contributing to my community when I was there? If I was doing it in a way that doesn't really add to it, it doesn't build something that causes harm, then I could be accountable for that. And that can show me a pathway to change the way I show up for my community. And so that's what a lot of people are doing as they're trying to navigate the craziness and violence and cruelty of prison to become someone different so they can come home to their communities and their families in a way that's healthier, more enlightened, more insightful, more productive than they were before they went to prison.
Taryell Simmons: Yeah. What resistance have you faced from public or the system itself when advocating for second chances?
Keith Wattley: Well, people pretend that there's a difference between somebody who commits a violent crime and somebody who commits a nonviolent crime. People pretend there's a difference. mean that because while the actions in that moment may be different and maybe can be labeled, the people aren't really that different. know, in a lot of the reforms we've seen in past decades have focused on people incarcerated for nonviolent crimes, often drug-related crimes or property crimes. And those folks shouldn't be in prison. But often, they are the ones who get some relief from prison because we label their crimes as nonviolent. But I often think about the ways in which somebody who is involved in a drug deal, let's say. You say, that person has an addiction. That's a nonviolent crime. That's true. But many drug deals go badly. And often somebody gets hurt. That crime becomes violent because somebody gets shot, somebody gets harmed in some way. And if we focus on, well, are we labeling it a violent or nonviolent crime? then we miss the fact that the underlying motivation that brought those people to the drug deal is the same. And then we miss the opportunity to heal whatever's in the middle of that or under that. And so I think it's this tendency to apply labels to people, to scenarios, to places, to situations in order to quickly choose who is worthy of a path to redemption and who's not. And I think it misses some really important underlying features and dynamics that are the ones that we really need to deal with.
Taryell Simmons: Yeah, and I think it also, back to what you were stating earlier, really misses the opportunity to focus on the transformation piece, which requires more than punishment, right? And which is what you're doing, which requires that space for healing. And let's talk about that, like redefining justice through healing, because that's exactly what the work that Uncommon Law is doing. Your organization, Keith Wattley, uses a trauma-informed model for advocacy that centers healing and accountability. What would you say makes your approach different from traditional legal advocacy?
Keith Wattley: Well, one of the things I talked about before was the unique relationship between our staff and our clients. A typical legal relationship is one in which we gather the information, documents, other research data, et cetera. And we appear before court or we submit those documents making an argument on behalf of our clients, either to say, hey, they're not really responsible for this. They didn't do that or didn't go down that way you said. And here's what the outcome should be. Whereas in this context, the context of our work, we recognize a couple of things, including that most of our clients have survived some type of harm, some type of trauma, many types of trauma most of the time, long before they harmed anyone else. Also that from the time they were young, other people have been telling their story. They've talked about our clients for decades, written about, published decisions about, issued orders about. And so the... A key to a trauma-informed approach is the agency of the person who's impacted, that for them to have some say about what is said about them, that they regain some sense of control over their own narrative. That's an important part of what we do. And that means when we have a hearing, a parole hearing, can last on average two to three hours. Some last a lot longer than that. But say in a three-hour parole hearing, I'm there with my client. In that three hours, I may speak for maybe 10 minutes. All the rest of the time, the client is speaking. They are answering the parole board's questions, and they are telling their stories, sometimes for the first time. Keith Wattley in a way that is very insightful, that is showing their accountability and showing how they've used their time in prison to change their lives. I can say some of those things, but the parole board doesn't care what I think. They wanna hear this person's individual understanding of themselves. So that's what we support, whether it's through our lawyers or our therapists, we have a team of therapists who work with folks, including we have a couple of...
Taryell Simmons: .
Keith Wattley: therapists with doctorate degrees who are formerly incarcerated who represent our clients. One of them is a former client of mine who came home from a life sentence, then got his degrees and works with us as a therapist both for our clients and providing trauma therapy for our staff. So these are some of the things that make us different.
Taryell Simmons: Right? I love that. So I want to elaborate more on that self-narrative piece because that's something that's uniquely different. And why is the self-narrative so important in that transformation piece?
Keith Wattley: Well, I mean, it comes back to this idea of responsibility. Responsibility is something that's imposed on us. The state held us responsible for a crime, for an action, for a harm. But accountability is something that we generally, internally, that we choose to be accountable. And it's shifting the relationship so that you sort of own your own journey. It's not imposed upon you. And a part of that owning your journey is to own your narrative about that journey. Somebody else saying, yeah, we threw him in prison for all these years and that punished him and that taught him a lesson. But only he can say what the lesson has been. What has he learned about himself and his relationship to society, his family and community that he's transformed while he's in prison?
Taryell Simmons: Mm-hmm.
Keith Wattley: And so that's why it's so important for people to develop the tools to understand and the communication skills to explain their narrative in a way that, as I said, often it's the first time. And it's if you've been told since you were a kid that you were the problem or that you don't have anything important to say, than to feel empowered in your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, sometimes for the first time, to share your own version of your journey. It's a really powerful experience.
Taryell Simmons: How has or how do you feel your advocacy helped shift policy or policy or public understanding around incarceration and parole?
Keith Wattley: Well, I think as people are trying to figure out how we can reshape, reimagine some aspects of our prison system, oftentimes they end up asking questions about people who are serving the longest sentences and what we can learn from those dynamics. And the answers we offer are typically rooted in healing. And one example is I mentioned our programming and developing peer mentors inside the prisons. We started that program in the level four in California. has four main security levels. Level four is the highest general population setting. We started that program there because for a number of reasons, including that those are the prisons that have the highest levels of violence, the highest level of gang influence and drug activity, and the lowest levels of participation in programs, positive programs, and the lowest parole grant rates. So the hardest places in some ways. which are routinely written off by prison officials when they decide where to run a program, even by outside groups sometimes in deciding where to bring programs inside the prison. We targeted those spaces because we knew that if we can show what's possible with a healing focused response to violence in those places, then anything's possible anywhere else. Like if this is the hardest place, And we show that it works. And it works. Like we've seen that already. If we show that, then that convinces the doubters to try something new in other spaces. And we're seeing it. We're seeing people create these really strong bonds, as I said, across racial and geographic boundaries that they used to perceive and respect that don't make sense anymore because they recognize, a minute.
Taryell Simmons: I love this.
Keith Wattley: That dude over there who looks very different from me had the same background that I had. He experienced the same thing I did. He told himself the same things about himself that I told myself. So we're on the same journey. How can we help each other heal through that journey? And so creating those kinds of examples, I think demonstrates what's possible when we do that and all these other touch points and potential intersections we talked about earlier.
Taryell Simmons: I love this. I love this just because you're not just helping people get released. You're helping people rebuild identity, dignity, and purpose because justice shouldn't be just us. Justice without healing still leaves communities broken. And I think we want to heal and repair communities. And that's really the key to the transformation that we're trying to reach.
Keith Wattley: Man, I can see.
Keith Wattley: Some of our most liberated clients never get out of prison.
Taryell Simmons: Really?
Keith Wattley: For real, because the freedom they experience over all the things that they experienced and suffered from in the past and told themselves and been told in the past, the freedom they experienced from that is something they've never had before. And as I said, from that, they can transform relationships with their family members on the outside that they didn't think were possible. So having seen that happen, obviously our goal is for people to come home.
Taryell Simmons: Wow.
Keith Wattley: And we're making that happen. And because this year we expect to see our 350th client released from a life sentence. And, you know, they almost never go back. We have a 1 % recidivism rate of all those people. But some people will not make it home. Whether it's for political reasons, their case is just sort of too hot, the governor won't let them go, that's a whole other conversation we could have.
Taryell Simmons: Right.
Keith Wattley: or some other factors may come up that make it so they can never physically get out of prison. But they still have the experience of liberation once they've done this work and free themselves from those stories of the past.
Taryell Simmons: Nah.
Taryell Simmons: I would say liberation is coming home. As the late great Bob Marley say, release yourself from mental slavery. None of them can free our minds.
Keith Wattley: Mm-hmm.
Keith Wattley: Yeah. You know, our program inside is called Home After Harm.
Taryell Simmons: Home after home. Wow. Now that's a redemption song there.
Keith Wattley: Yeah, because okay, this is what I'm saying. That's I'm saying. That's what it's good. Even if you physically don't get out, you still get to come home to your original self before you were harmed, before the trauma set, before you built up layers and layers of protection from the world and change your identity to protect yourself and the world. Go back to who you were originally.
Taryell Simmons: there
Taryell Simmons: Man, I know we're at time, but can I still 15 more minutes with you just to wrap this all up? Because this is just awful. Because like what's going through my mind is the redemption song, the changing the narrative, all of those things. And so let's zoom out for a moment. What do you believe our society gets wrong about redemption?
Keith Wattley: Yeah, yeah, sure, sure.
Keith Wattley: Mm-hmm.
Keith Wattley: One is that only certain people are deserving of it. That it's only possible for certain people. Like there's this, when I sometimes tell people, I work with people in prison or I'm an attorney for people in prison, the first thing they say is, yeah, well, there's a lot of innocent people in prison. I say, that's true. Those aren't my clients. Like we're unapologetic about the fact that we represent people who cause serious harm, including murder. And we're clear that doesn't tell us that much about them. And so to think that only certain people are deserving of opportunities to program and to come home, that's a huge mistake, I think, because it writes off people in a way that's just not well thought out. It doesn't address the underlying factors, which are really similar across different labels that we might otherwise apply. That's one of issues. And also I think that the fact that we use our prisons, which are a tool of violence, that's all they are, we use them to really make things worse. We shouldn't have prisons anyway, but while we have them, we should be focused on providing pathways for people to come home in a healthier, safer way.
Taryell Simmons: Mm.
Keith Wattley: instead of sending them places where we write them off and we give them nothing but violence and control.
Taryell Simmons: Mm-hmm. I agree. How do we create safer communities while still believing in second chances?
Keith Wattley: yeah, think that idea I mentioned earlier, this fundamental right to heal, really, I think it can be transformative. It can impact all kinds of areas from poverty, housing, food insecurity, et cetera. Certainly crime, violence. mental health, it can impact all those areas. If we imagine, well, how would we respond if our first thought was how do we help that person heal from that? It would show a different intervention when a kid's parent goes to jail or prison, or when there's a divorce, or when there's domestic violence in the home, or a parent dies, or whatever it happens to be, or they experience some kind of sexual abuse. if we help them heal from that, it has the potential to disrupt that pattern that we know too often leads to them causing harm to themselves and to others down the road. So I think it's encouraging every actor in these different areas to be imagining the answer to that question. What would a healing response look like?
Taryell Simmons: Meh.
Taryell Simmons: Yeah, and I think that's a
Taryell Simmons: Right. And I think that's especially true for our black and brown communities and for those black and marginalized communities especially. Why do you think this piece of the conversation is so important?
Keith Wattley: Yeah, I mean, because we've been otherized so much and are at the impact of so many systems levels harming decisions that that's the reckoning we need to make. We are making choices as a society that disproportionately negatively impact Black and brown folks. We have been doing it for generations. We need to acknowledge that. I think we even have to be accountable to our folks, to the next generation to reverse some of those things. And I think imagining this healing first response is a way we can do that, to disrupt those patterns that we know are harmful for generations.
Taryell Simmons: Now, where has this work taught you about leadership and purpose?
Keith Wattley: I want to say that leadership doesn't look any one particular way except that it needs to be authentic. I think people who are drawn to the work that we do here or who are inspired by the story, it's certainly not because I'm particularly persuasive or charismatic, but I think it's people get that I'm driven by this, authentic connection to the work and to the people. And people want that in their careers and their lives, just rarely do we find that. And so I think that's a part of it. But as I said before, once you figure out what is the most authentic sense of your own self-expression, do that.
Taryell Simmons: Mm-hmm.
Keith Wattley: Find a way to do that and support others in doing that. think that's part of the way our team has grown is giving people a chance to show up here in places that they didn't get a chance to do that in other places.
Taryell Simmons: After 25 years in this work, what still gives you hope?
Keith Wattley: Well, I started working with people serving life sentences about 26 years ago now, and was doing that on top of my other job for several years, and then 20 years ago founded Uncommon Law. And so as I said, we're celebrating our 20th anniversary this year.
Taryell Simmons: Wow.
Keith Wattley: Having seen so many people transform their lives when they started a place that everyone had given up on them. And we had a system that had given up on them and treated them as throwaways. Have them come back from that, transform their lives, and then become people who are helping others along that journey. And that includes, we have, I think, seven people on our staff who have come home from life sentences. and they work for us full time. This is their job to create those opportunities and to see them make the most of it is a really powerful example of what's possible when we offer meaningful opportunities for engagement for people who are formerly incarcerated. But the other thing we're doing this year is
Taryell Simmons: Mm-hmm.
Keith Wattley: as part of celebrating our 20th anniversary, we're hosting a series of events that will culminate in this conference in October, on October 23rd. It's gonna be right here in Oakland, which is, as you know, is the birthplace of the Black Panther Party. We're meeting at the Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale Student Lounge at Merritt College. It's gonna be focused on lifting up the work of those who are providing healing-focused services to people inside prison.
Taryell Simmons: Nice.
Keith Wattley: We just opened up a request for proposals for those who want to present at the conference. So people need to submit those proposals by June 15th. And then we also have as part of our celebration, our annual Uncommon Heroes Award Dinner. And then the following day we're having a picnic for all the folks who come home from long and life sentences over the past 20 years. People can go to our website, uncommonlaw.org to sign up for updates, to get all the information about how to present a proposal. But it's a great way for us to show each other and broader society what's possible when we focus on healing. We're not gonna be able to bring everybody home. We're still gonna try. But in the meantime, folks are in there and we wanna provide a safe way for them to live and support each other while they're doing this time.
Taryell Simmons: Mm-hmm.
Keith Wattley: while they're doing this time.
Taryell Simmons: And so my listeners don't worry about get the links from them and put it in the chat so that you have access to that. Congratulations on 20 years and can't wait to see what that conference yields. I definitely going to try to see if I can make my way up. To my listeners who have been listening to these messages, I want to leave you with this. Who have you decided is beyond redemption? What would it look like to lead with both accountability and compassion. Because sometimes the people where it quickest to discard are the people most capable of transformation. So let that sink in for you as you listen to these words today. Keith Wattley, man, this conversation challenged us in the best way. You reminded us that justice isn't about punishment. It's about healing.
Keith Wattley: Mm-hmm.
Taryell Simmons: dignity and the possibility of becoming more than your past. The only thing I got left is where can people connect with you and support the work of uncommon law and then give people a shout out to the conference coming up again and where to submit proposals.
Keith Wattley: Yeah, well, people can always learn about what we're doing and who's doing the work by visiting our website, uncommonlaw.org. We're located right here in Oakland, but we have folks who work in Southern California as well. So we cover the state. And we also, we provide a lot of resources on our website, or if people want to write to or call us, to demystify the process of coming home from a life sentence. We provide a lot of resources to thousands of people throughout the institutions every year. And we have other ways to engage, for the public to engage the process, to directly interact with legislators. lot of ways we wanna to give people a chance to participate and to bring our folks home. And as I said, while they're still in prison support their healing journeys. So check us out at uncommonlaw.org. There's information about the upcoming conference, how to submit proposals to present, and other events we have coming up as part of our 20th anniversary celebration. Really appreciate the time you've offered, Taryell Simmons. This has been great, great conversation.
Taryell Simmons: Yeah.
Taryell Simmons: Yeah, great conversation. What date is the conference again?
Keith Wattley: October 23rd.
Taryell Simmons: October 23rd, see I'll mark y'all calendars. October 23rd is going down in Oakland. You know, the place where the Black Panthers were birthed. And there's a lot of great brothers up there doing work. And you need to show me the good food spots, because every time I come up there, Keith Wattley, I eat good. So I need to know where to eat at when I come up there. Family, if this episode moved you, if it made you think differently, share it because conversations like this matter at Rise Urban Nation. We believe in storytelling as the power to humanize, heal, and transform. Until next time, unite, uplift, and unite. Peace.