Seattle Clemency Project

Helping to Grant a Second Chance at Life

Writing

Communicating effectively in written format is important to my experience because our constant communication with our volunteer attorney and reaching out to community supporters for our petitioner requires professionalism in written format. Through email communication, I’ve demonstrated and practiced clearly organizing, reflecting, and delivering my team’s intent and information we’ve obtained. Writing is a particularly important skill for this experience because we want community supporters to completely understand the message we are conveying when we ask for their support and we want the clemency hearing Board members to accurately understand our reasons for clemency. 

Collaboration

Working collaboratively with two peers and our volunteer attorney, we shared ideas and distributed responsibilities to effectively reach our objective: supporting Thomas Butler. While the attorney works on legal information, we are tasked with connecting with community support, drafting a reentry plan, and other related tasks. Our team works effectively through communicating and each taking on different responsibilities when tasks are given to us. For example, after each meeting, we will have a list of tasks, and we each work proactively to claim tasks and supplement each other’s work. One of my team members is working on connecting with supporters to get letters of support, while another teammate works on organizing and gaining access to information. I worked on analyzing past clemency hearings, writing our group paper, and conducting research on starting a business for our petitioner’s reentry plan. Together, our collaboration increased efficiency and brought different perspectives that better our outcome.

Others Perspective

Considering the perspectives of others allows new information, differing opinions, different experiences, which can lead to finding solutions to problems and learning something new. From my experience working with the Seattle Clemency Project in a team, it was important to rely on my teammates’ perspectives, my professor’s expertise, and our attorney’s experience to best approach and support our petitioner with his reentry plans and preparation for a clemency hearing. Understanding a range of perspectives, especially in preparation for a clemency hearing to discuss our petitioner's capacity for change and his impact on his community, is important in this experience. When communicating with our attorney and other supporters, we carefully draft emails and prepare for meetings by getting each other’s opinion and perspective on our email drafts and meeting agenda. In another instance, we watched past clemency hearings to better understand what the Board focused on, and we each had different perspectives from hearing the case and focused on different things discussed during the hearing.

Reflection and Application

Reflecting on my experience with this project, the seminar based class during Autumn quarter taught me and vastly expanded my knowledge on the topics of mass incarceration, accountability and reformation, sentencing reforms, and post-conviction reviews through reading academic articles, class discussions, and listening to the stories of formerly incarcerated individuals and guest speakers in this field. The experience taught me the importance of and the factors for building trust with people, especially those incarcerated have a harder time trusting others due to their history and the fact that they were incarcerated as youths, the process of accountability, which includes not only for those that committed horrendous crimes but also for any individuals to reflect on their actions, and the importance of second chances because people can improve. 

Creating Change

Creating change can start at any level, including through increasing access to justice for individuals. I believe in second chances and the goodness of people. Thus, through my participation in this year-long practicum, the experience has demonstrated how I can impact the lives of others through the Seattle Clemency Project because by working on our petitioner's case, we’re giving him hope that we are fighting against a broken criminal justice system that sentenced him to a lengthy unjust sentence. The power of redemption and the recognition of rehabilitation can work to improve the justice system, and through proving the capability of reformation our petitioner and others alike can make, I can help make an impact by setting a precedent in giving second chances.

Self Development

Leaders are always learning and engaging in self-development to achieve one’s fullest potential and benefit oneself and others. Through this project and experience, I’ve grown my skills, knowledge, and maturity; I now better understand my values, personal strengths, and interests. I care about people and understand the value in and impact of helping others. I deeply value the people and culture of my environment in any given space. Through this experience, the chance to help significantly impact an individual’s life and their community has ignited my passion for social justice but also reshaped my initial idealization of working in the public service sector, because I don’t think I have that big of a heart to only work on criminal cases for life. The petitioner’s story and our formerly incarcerated guest speakers’ story and impact on their community is the driving motivation behind my passion for this project, but as I understand the reality of the world and criminal justice system, the more disappointed I am and the less I want to work in that field.

Personal Contribution

As a group, everyone has unique individual assets that enhance the productivity and effectiveness of the group. The needs of our group and each task differ and call for unique individual assets. In our group of three students, we complement each other well through effective communication, building on each others’ strengths and abilities, and enhancing productivity. One of my group members is more extroverted, so often during our meetings with the volunteer attorney or with the class, she takes on the role of updating our progress and often serves as the initial communicator for our client’s community support. I am someone who works best with structure and organization, so I took on the main role of writing our group paper because I like to get things done early, I drafted up the reentry plan, and I conducted research on vending machine start-ups for our client. Our other group member is very organized and took on tasks that included organizing our client’s documents, note taking for meetings, and creating email templates to send to community supporters.