The Creativity, Innovation and Ingenuity Languishing in US Prisons | Brittany K. Barnett | TED

Transcriber:

About two years ago, I answered my doorbell

to find a postal worker holding a large, heavy box.

It was a package from my client, Chris Young.

Chris was being transferred from a federal prison in Kentucky

to one hundreds of miles away in Texas.

When I slid open the box, the handwritten note from Chris fell out.

"Please take care of these for me, Brittany.

I don't want them messed up in the move.

They're all I've got."

At the time I received the package,

Chris was nearly 10 years into serving a life without parole sentence

from an arrest for drug dealing at the young age of 22.

Chris and I have a lot in common, as I do with many of my clients.

We both have big dreams.

We both have mothers who suffer from drug addiction

that led to their incarceration,

a devastating result of the war on drugs.

Like many people unjustly sentenced for drugs,

Chris was no kingpin.

Long before steel dug into the skin of his wrist,

he was handcuffed by a suffocating level of poverty,

selling drugs on the corner by the age of 12

to help put food on the table for him and his brother Robert.

Ultimately, Chris was sentenced to life as a result of two drug priors,

and with the combined drug quantity weighing less than three pennies.

Inside Chris's package were some of his favorite books.

The topics ranged from quantum physics to philosophy to history

to computer programming.

In prison, Chris had taught himself how to code

without access to a single computer.

His young mind stimulated by artificial intelligence and economics.

His cell may have been small, but his dreams were huge.

His margin notes covered almost every page of the books.

And clearly outlined were designs for Chris’s biggest dream:

a groundbreaking mental health app

to help prevent suicides like those of his brother Robert,

who took his own life at 21 when Chris was just 18.

Seeing Chris's genius laid out on the page like that,

it took my breath away.

I started to think about how I could help bring his entrepreneurial spirit to life.

A mind like Chris's was so clearly a gift.

But our society had deemed it worthless.

When we lose sight of the humanity of those we unjustly sentence,

we lose sight of all of the brilliance they might bring into the world.

By locking away the potential and ingenuity of people like Chris

and then failing to nurture it after release,

we shackle America's future.

In those margin notes,

Chris was looking forward, beyond prison walls,

towards a fully realized freedom,

which is exactly what we must do now.

Some of the most intelligent people I've ever met are my clients.

Each one of them with huge dreams despite inhumane conditions.

As an attorney, working for the freedom of people like Chris and my clients

has become my life's greatest work.

Their entrepreneurial potential is exactly what our current crisis calls for

if we imagine the possibilities.

Take, for example, one of my first clients,

Sharanda Jones.

A single mother,

talented chef, budding entrepreneur.

In the early 90s, faced with the care for a quadriplegic mother

and the growing needs of her daughter,

Sharanda made a poor decision.

On a few occasions, she transported drugs for a childhood friend.

Years later, she found herself caught in a federal drug conspiracy.

Bound and shackled and carted off to federal prison

to serve out a fundamental death sentence

for her very first conviction, felony or otherwise.

But Sharanda was so driven and talented

that even a life sentence could not keep her

from expressing herself through food.

The talent it takes to make anything edible,

let alone a delicacy,

from what's available in prison

cannot be overstated.

And with a genius for improvisation that still astounds me,

Sharanda became renowned for her culinary creations.

She ground corn chips into meal for her famous tamales,

melted the insides of Oreos to frost cakes

and whipped up a hell of a cranberry sauce from assorted jelly packets.

Her red hot chicken meatballs made with Doritos

had the women at Carswell Federal Prison

lined up around the corner just to get a taste.

Don't ask me how she did it.

When a friend asked her recently what she put in her mac and cheese,

Sharanda said,

"Cheese."

She guards her recipes with her life.

And the years I spent fighting to free people from prison,

this is one common quality I've noticed about many of my clients.

Their unjust sentence has interrupted and destroyed

their plans to bring great things in the world.

True liberation must include a vision for restoring,

investing in and nurturing those plans.

Imagine what people like Chris and Sharanda,

able to create and innovate under America's most inhumane conditions,

could do if they were put in positions to thrive

and not just survive.

One thing is absolutely clear:

we cannot keep rescuing people from prison and restoring them to poverty.

True freedom is multidimensional.

Systemic change does not only have to come from Congress

or state legislators

who move with no sense of urgency,

even when human lives are at stake.

It can also come from directly impacted people, like Chris and Sharanda.

I've been holding this vision lately of sustainable liberation.

How do we create that?

Sustainable liberation requires economic freedom,

equity and ensuring that justice-impacted people

have access to resources and capital to flourish

and create positive ripple effects in their communities.

That is true systemic change.

Here's what this idea looks like in action.

In 2015, President Barack Obama granted Sharanda Jones clemency.

After serving 16 years and nine months of her life in federal prison,

Sharanda wasted no time realizing her dream

of owning her first food truck.

I was a corporate mergers and acquisitions lawyer,

and I know a good business plan when I see it.

So I invested in Sharanda,

and I left the rest entirely up to her.

And this summer,

Sharanda launched her company called Fed Up.

As in, "Fed up with the racially biased criminal legal system

that steals lives and cages futures."

As in, "Come on through to Sharanda Jones's food truck,

where your bellies will be fed up with some amazing food."

An integral part of Sharanda's vision:

the truck will be 100 percent staffed and run by formerly incarcerated people.

And further illustrating the breadth of her vision,

Sharanda plans to invest a portion of her revenue

in the Buried Alive Project,

a nonprofit organization we cofounded together with my client, Corey Jacobs,

to help free people buried alive under outdated federal drug laws.

To date, the Buried Alive Project has helped win the freedom

of dozens of men and women,

unlocking people and potential.

After investing in Sharanda, I launched the Manifest Freedom Fund,

where we’ve deployed 300,000 dollars in non-dilutive capital

to justice-impacted entrepreneurs.

We've invested in a trucking company

run by my former client, called Trustworthy Trucking.

The company is fully employed by justice-impacted people,

and through our lease to purchase option,

each driver will eventually have the chance to own their own truck,

maximizing economic impact and independence.

From our experience in trucking, we've entered the tech startup world,

working to develop an app

that will help improve the day-to-day life of truckers

and have an immediate beneficial impact on the transportation industry

and supply chain crisis.

We want to help build smart cities,

improving life for everyone.

At the Manifest Freedom Fund,

we are building an ecosystem and partnering with investors

who share a passion for cultivating the entrepreneurial spirits

of justice-impacted people.

There are so many businesses to support,

like Corey's fintech and merchandising company that partners with HBCU's.

Or Alfred's food truck in North Carolina.

Or Corvain Cooper’s cannabis brand, 40 Tons.

And Naz's pink tea company, both in Los Angeles.

These entrepreneurs served a combined total of 75 years in prison.

But we must not let those years be the defining decades of their lives.

Their freedom journey does not end once they step out of prison gates.

In so many ways, it begins.

Businesses like Sharanda's company Fed Up

protect against recidivism.

Without employment or support for entrepreneurship,

formerly incarcerated people

are three to five times more likely to commit a crime than those with a job.

But we're not focused on just keeping our partners out of prison.

That's an incredibly low bar.

We're focused on attaining economic liberation,

on providing infrastructural support

for the achievement of their dreams and visions.

Like all of us, they want to live fulfilling, meaningful lives,

lives of purpose.

And the beauty of it is investing in their potential isn't charity.

It's an investment in all of our futures.

Let me take us back for a minute

to those notes in the margins of Chris's books.

Delivered to me at a time in Chris's life

when imagining freedom seemed to fly in the face of the impossible.

We refused to stop fighting.

In September 2020, we won a reduction of Chris's life sentence

through the court.

And earlier this year,

executive clemency further reduced his sentence to time served.

Chris Young walked out of prison a free man

and immediately put his genius to work to launch the tech startup

he dreamed would stop the rash of suicides

plaguing young Black men like his brother Robert.

Born from his own devastating loss and created with vision and purpose,

Chris's app is a profoundly innovative idea

that deserves the highest level of investment.

With capital investment and support,

we help redeem the tremendous loss to society

that Chris's incarceration represents

and position ourselves to benefit from his distinct gifts.

Instead of looking upon the release of men and women

who’ve been unjustly incarcerated as a burden on our society,

we should look upon their untapped potential as a gift

and a tremendous opportunity for societal renewal.

In order to transform the criminal legal system,

we have to transform our own beliefs

about formerly incarcerated people and their futures.

The creativity, innovation and ingenuity languishing in America's prisons

is the key to transformation

and to a better tomorrow for all of us.

By investing in the ideas and initiatives of justice-impacted people,

we manifest freedom.

Imagine the possibilities.

Thank you.

(Applause)