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accountability
Pardon Me: Ending the Stigma That Harms Generations
When we reduce people to their convictions, we fail to see their humanity, their potential, and the harm this judgment causes not just to them but to their families.
Dec 25, 2024
U.S. President Joe Biden’s recent clemency grants to 1,500 Americans sparked renewed discussions about second chances.
Yet for millions of parents—mothers and fathers—the shackles of their past legal convictions extend far beyond their time served. The collateral consequences of a criminal record don’t just haunt individuals. They ripple through families, shaping the lives of children who had no part in their parents’ mistakes.
As someone who has traversed the lasting consequences of a conviction, I know firsthand how society judges parents like me—not by the love and care we provide our children but by the labels of our past. But when we reduce people to their convictions, we fail to see their humanity, their potential, and the harm this judgment causes not just to them but to their families.
The collateral consequences of a criminal conviction aren’t just abstract statistics—they’re the missed field trips, the lost jobs, the countless times parents must tell their children, “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
Around 77 million Americans, or one in three Americans, have criminal records, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Each year, more than 600,000 Americans are released from prison and reenter society. It is a transition rife with barriers of injustice, prejudice, racism, and inequality.
The United States has more than 44,000 laws and policies that restrict people with criminal convictions from accessing basic rights and opportunities. These rules create barriers to housing, employment, education, and even parenting. For mothers and fathers, the inability to rebuild their lives post-incarceration isn’t just a personal struggle—it’s a family crisis.
One of the most painful moments after my conviction was realizing I couldn’t chaperone my 13-year-old daughter’s eighth grade field trip because of my record. Telling her I wasn’t allowed to go broke something inside me.
For parents like me, these moments happen all the time—when we can’t volunteer at school, rent an apartment near better schools, or secure a job that provides stability. To our children, it feels like rejection.
One report estimates that the number of children with incarcerated parents ranges from 1.7 to 2.7 million. Research shows these children are more likely to face emotional, behavioral, and academic challenges. They’re often treated as if their parent’s conviction is their fault. This stigma perpetuates cycles of poverty and marginalization, making it harder for families to break free from systemic barriers.
Beyond the personal pain, the statistics paint a bleak picture. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, nearly 70% of formerly incarcerated individuals are unemployed or underemployed a year after release. For parents, this means struggling to provide even the basics for their children.
Women are particularly vulnerable, with many returning to find their housing options limited because public housing policies exclude people with records. Fathers, too, often face obstacles in reestablishing their parental rights or even being present in their children’s lives due to parole restrictions and ongoing stigma.
These systemic barriers serve as a constant reminder that, in the eyes of society, those with records are defined by their convictions. It’s as though the world has dog eared a page from their worst chapter, refusing to read further.
To be sure, accountability matters. Parents who commit harm must take responsibility for their actions. But accountability must not equate to a lifetime of condemnation. Punishing parents indefinitely only compounds harm, especially for the children who depend on them for stability and love.
Parents are more than their past mistakes, just as a book is more than its cover. Judging someone solely by their record robs them of the chance to write a better chapter. It also robs their children of the opportunity to see their parents as whole people—flawed but capable of change and love.
The collateral consequences of a criminal conviction aren’t just abstract statistics—they’re the missed field trips, the lost jobs, the countless times parents must tell their children, “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
If we truly value redemption as a society, we must move beyond judging people solely by their convictions.
Every parent deserves the chance to show their children that they are more than their past. And every child deserves the opportunity to believe in second chances. Clemency relies on laws, policies, pardons, and humanity.
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Powerlessness, Violence, and the Murder of a Health Insurance CEO
People are hungry for accountability. Desperate for it. Aching for it. We don't have to condone or glorify the assassination of Brian Thompson in order to stop and listen to hear what some of the reaction to this violent and desperate act is trying to tell us.
Dec 14, 2024
The killing of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson was wrong. Vigilante justice is wrong. Dangerous. Bad. Scary. Let the record show, I was not among the people who celebrated the killing of Brian Thompson in any way whatsoever. But I have a few ideas about why some folks did celebrate it. And I have no desire to shame them for it. I want to listen. To understand. Just as I did years ago, working with the violent offenders who were court-mandated to see me.
Violence can be the language of the unheard or oppressed, a statement so “loud” it can no longer be ignored. It can be a way to try to bring balance to an imbalanced power dynamic when one feels powerless. I’d argue the gleeful memes and the posts, celebrating the horrible murder of a health insurance company CEO, come from the same place, albeit vicariously.
Many people have been horrified at the celebration: “My God, have we lost our humanity?!” But those same people don’t seem to also clutch their pearls when an unknown medical reviewer in a health insurance company keeps us or our loved ones or our friends or neighbors or co-workers from getting the care we need because it doesn’t fit their treatment algorithm, despite what the licensed medical doctor who knows us says. Some reviewers have admitted they don’t even look at a doctor’s clinical notes, solely making approval decisions based on that algorithm.
You can deeply listen in an effort to understand something and effect change without excusing it or condoning or glorifying it, and also without shaming it.
Health insurance companies market themselves as being there to help us when we need it most—when we’re sick, injured, dying, at our most vulnerable, or when we’re trying to stay healthy. But at the same time, the fact that lives are ruined or lost or our savings are drained because of denials or delays is seen as the “cost of doing business.” A private health insurance company’s reason to exist is to make money for itself. It doesn’t expand coverage, it most certainly doesn’t expedite care, and ultimately it doesn’t appear to give two shits about us. We, the collateral damage, know this. We live this.
Preventing access to timely healthcare because you’re more focused on making money for shareholders and CEOs is inhumane. Profits at the expense of people, especially in a care-based industry, are inhumane. Having to spend untold hours and days and weeks and months navigating health insurance obstacles, literally begging for care, especially when one is ill or taking care of someone who is ill, is inhumane. And when one feels so totally devalued, it’s easier to not be our best selves—or to be our shittiest selves—and devalue others in one way or another. When this human devaluation is couched in business, it’s okay, but when it’s a meme or a post, it’s not. And that double standard, that inequity, is more evident by the day, and has pushed some to their breaking point.
People are hungry for accountability. Desperate for it. Aching for it. We see what’s all around us and we know what’s coming. We want someone to fight for us.
It’s crazy-making, watching the old guard Democratic leadership not meet the moment as they work to maintain the status quo with platitudes and calls for playing nice when mere weeks ago they were calling U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and his Project 2025 fascist. We’re seeing corporate media completely fail us, continuing to describe the horrifying things Trump and his minions are saying and doing with vague euphemisms, if they cover these things at all. We’ve watched Trump’s slam-dunk court cases go away one by one. Sure, he’s an adjudicated rapist, but as I wrote here, what does it say that an adjudicated rapist can win an election to become the most powerful person on Earth after he was found liable for rape? Not exactly accountability. Corporations and their CEOs are making huge profits, often by price gouging the masses. They’re using that money to enrich themselves with staggering salaries and bonuses, and they’re buying elections in hopes of further enriching themselves. All the while they can’t seem to find the money to pay their workers a livable wage.
And so, the violent, horrible murder of a man whose company represents the literal pain and suffering and sometimes death of countless thousands, as he allegedly participated in insider trading, living the millionaire good life, represented a form of accountability for some. As perverse and skewed as it may seem, it was David defeating the bully, Goliath. It’s decidedly not how I want accountability, but as a psychotherapist I totally get where the sentiment comes from.
If we’re not going to be heel-dragging Democrats, liberals, or progressives who keep us forever stuck in a status quo that clearly isn’t working, if we truly want to help people, if we want to win elections, we need to take the energy we’re spending clutching those pearls and actually listen to the folks who are gleeful because of Brian Thompson’s death.
We need to hear the decades-in-the-making frustration, the unmet needs, the longing for a decent life, the pain, the fear, the stories of untreated illness, the loss, the profound feeling of powerlessness, the anger at the breathtaking inequality, and, most importantly, the seeming unwillingness of our leaders to do anything meaningful about it, that is bubbling just below the surface of all the gleeful memes and posts about a rich health insurance company CEOs murder.
You can deeply listen in an effort to understand something and effect change without excusing it or condoning or glorifying it, and also without shaming it. I’ve done it for decades in my psychotherapy practice.
Let’s give it a try.
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How Trump 2.0 Is Like My Recurring Prison Nightmare
Like dreaming of being back in prison, we know what we will be getting: an arrogant, narcissistic head of state who bungles incompetently through a presidency while making people comfortable with their prejudices.
Dec 09, 2024
“A country gets the leadership it deserves.”
That was my sentiment back in 2016 when Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton for the presidency of the United States. That rather morose and quite cynical sentiment came as I watched election results from the federal prison in Denver, where I had been since mid-2015 after being unjustly convicted of violating the Espionage Act as a CIA case officer. Prison tends to taint one’s perspective of the outside world. In 2016, I couldn’t help being cynical about an election I could not participate in. With Donald Trump again being president-elect after another contentious election season, I have that sentiment again, but in a more experienced and reasonable perspective.
Back then, I was rather dismayed by the campaigns of both Trump and Clinton. With Trump, I saw a mirror image of the prison where I was watching from, racial divisions stoked by unaccountable authority figures. With Clinton, I saw the status quo and the painful reminder that the criminal justice system that I was subjected to is not the same one for those in political power. It was disheartening to see her freely run for president without being called into account for proven actions similar to what I was falsely accused of (i.e. alleged unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or materials, etc.). That these were the only two candidates the nation could come up with as choices for its leadership was tragically comical. I almost felt fortunate that I couldn’t vote for either one… almost. The right and duty to vote was something I never took lightly, and being prevented from doing so, particularly under the circumstances that led to it, hurt me dearly.
So, yes, when Trump won, I felt the country deserved him as its president. I wasn’t a part of the country then, so it was easy for me to be ambivalent. Nevertheless, I didn’t feel good about it. In fact, I felt downright depressed and depression in prison is a wholly different and tragic animal. But, then again, I knew it didn’t matter who the president was or would be… I was in prison! No president has done anything to improve prison conditions. I certainly wasn’t expecting Trump, an ostensible “law and order candidate,” to do anything that would be in my or my fellow inmates’ interest.
Trump’s reelection is deserving only in the sense that it wakes us up to the reality that to have the leadership we deserve, we have to continually work for it and never cease expecting accountable and responsive government.
The next day, I couldn’t help but notice that the sun came up once again and I can recall it was a beautiful day, even viewing it from behind bars. Trump was going to be president, but the world did not end. Like every new day, I went into that new one continuing to hold on to the hope that in a few short years, I would rejoin my dear wife and be free. I went to prison knowing I would have to persevere through tough times. But, I knew I would endure because, through support and determination, I could not and would not allow prison to define me. I had work to do to fight against challenging times, and I did so because I deserved better than what American criminal justice offered me.
I was eventually released from prison in 2018. I emerged to freedom amid a Trump presidency that gave me the haunting feeling I had moved from one prison to another. His presidency was marked by the same encouraged racial discord and divisiveness as well as the lack of accountability to power that I experienced for two and a half years in prison. I couldn’t help but feel I was back to the Black-white TV room separation state of affairs that was my reality for so long.
One of the more distressing realities of prison life was the tacit acceptance of a toxic environment and broken system as being “normal.” There was nothing normal about abusive and unaccountable authority, a populace encouraged to embrace and practice its biases, and an environment of hate. I realized that, after a while, a horrible experience tends to skew one’s view of what is “normal.” The prison mindset teaches that the only solution to a terrible situation is to just fall in line and do as you’re told, even if it is wrong. That was a lesson I was slow, if not outright refused, to learn as evidenced by a stint in solitary confinement for refusing to be demeaned by an unruly prison guard. I saw nothing “normal” about being treated as less than human and chose to stand up against it, a constant for me in and out of prison. The first Trump presidency was, for comparison’s sake, that same sort of prison “normal” that we were all forced to just deal with in the best ways we could.
If the first stint in prison didn’t defeat me, I felt I had a good chance against the one I emerged into. However, as much as I did fight against it, the taint of prison is in many ways eternal. One of the most profound nightmares I have suffered through since being released was finding myself back in prison. And, a return to prison was always worse the second time around. Even though in dreams, the prison walls felt closer, the chains were tighter, and the feelings of not being in control of my own life and being in a perpetual state of persecution felt accentuated and much more desperate than what I had experienced before. I always awaken from such dreams in a cold sweat and trembling. For me, much like those recurring nightmares, a second Trump presidency is the embodiment of that oneiric return to prison that still shakes me to this day.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. On the day after this current election, even though I am not surrounded by razor wire or armed guards, there was a haunting familiarity to what I awoke to back in 2016. The same disgust I felt in 2016 has come to the fore. Instead of seeing Clinton run for president and wondering why the same criminal justice system that put me in prison didn’t treat her the same way, I now see Trump as a president-elect and similarly wonder the same thing. It is painfully ironic that Trump has been accused of similar violations as Clinton, mainly the unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or materials specifically related to Iran, a country I specialized in while at the CIA. Allegations aside, Trump clearly violated the Espionage Act and existentially violated the laws of and endangered this country, yet he won’t see a day behind bars let alone a trial. He had a judge in his pocket to ensure the indictment was dismissed; now he will have the power of the presidency to simply make the matter go away. Such is the law and order hypocrisy of Trump and his supporters.
The weeks ending this year have been a strain for me as it feels eerily similar to those last few days of freedom I had before being forced to report to prison. It will be difficult to view Inauguration Day 2025 as anything other than a return to a familiar nightmare. That I was being pathetically quixotic about prison not being that bad was borne out in hindsight—that experience was every horror I knew it was going to be. Similarly, Trump 2.0 will have no surprises other than the very real possibility of being worse than Trump 1.0. Like dreaming of being back in prison, we know what we will be getting: an arrogant, narcissistic head of state who bungles incompetently through a presidency making people comfortable with their prejudices and continuing to spew divisive, rambling rhetoric as if he’s perpetually campaigning for office. Not having to worry about reelection down the road, there will be nothing to hold Trump back from being himself to the nth degree.
But, will this be what we as a nation deserve? Unlike my mindset in 2016, my answer to myself and us is an emphatic, “No!” This country, my country, deserves better than the prisons we have created. Trump’s reelection is deserving only in the sense that it wakes us up to the reality that to have the leadership we deserve, we have to continually work for it and never cease expecting accountable and responsive government. We deserve better than the Trump “normal” that will be revisited upon us. Even the most troubling of times can present opportunities to better oneself. Without any semblance of my previous cynicism, Trump 2.0 will provide an atmosphere of opportunity to challenge unhinged authority, confront and defeat hatred, as well as find and nurture leaders who truly work in the best interests of us all.
That’s the thing about nightmares, they are over when you wake up. My prison nightmares always end the same way, I awaken to find that I am not in prison. We know what this upcoming nightmare will be like. Whether it’s worse will depend on us and what we feel we deserve.
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