Beyond Punishment: How Marc Howard's Prisons and Justice Initiative is Transforming the American Justice System

Amelia Old (Host): [00:00:38] Welcome to Voices of Inspiration. I'm your host, Amelia Old. Thank you for joining me today. If you are new here, I share stories of people in my everyday life and those I meet along the way. I think we all have a story to tell, and it's my desire to give as many people as I can that platform so that we can connect and inspire each other on a deeper level.

So, a few years ago, I had the [00:01:00] opportunity to work on a digital media campaign in partnership with Salesforce.org and Georgetown University, which was focused on Changemakers. So, the story was telling how they created change makers on and off campus. And I spent time on campus learning about the different programs they had, sitting in on classes, and even visited the DC jail, where I learned about their Prisons and Justice Initiative.

And that is where I met today's guest, Marc Howard. Marc is a Professor of Government Law and the Founding Director of the Prisons and Justice Initiative at Georgetown University. He is also the Founder and President of the Frederick Douglass Project for Justice, which launched in 2020. His research addresses the deep challenges of contemporary democracy and the tragedy of criminal justice in prisons in America. He is the author of three books, numerous academic articles and his Prisons and Punishment courses has become one of the most sought after courses at Georgetown. He was also featured in a recent documentary alongside Kim [00:02:00] Kardashian West, who visited the DC jail with him.

And he made a short appearance on Keeping up with the Kardashians. Marc received his BA in Ethics, Politics and Economics from Yale University, his MBA, a PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley and his JD from Georgetown University. Thank you for joining me.

Marc Howard: [00:02:16] Oh, thank you for having me Amelia. It's good to be with you. 

Amelia Old (Host): [00:02:20] That’s the Short bio. You've done some really incredible things in your career. I want to thank you because the time that I spent with you and your colleagues on and off campus, you know, I was there to tell the story of change makers and to tell the story of what does it really mean to be a non-traditional learner or non-traditional student.

 Quite frankly, I was a little intimidated because I was coming into this and I didn't have a degree myself. I thought, what are these people at Georgetown going to think of me coming to tell their story? I don't have a degree and they're on this level [00:03:00] far above me.  I was really surprised and inspired once I actually got there.

 I honestly made some lifelong friendships while I was there. And it inspired me and encouraged me to maybe pull back some of my own dreams and desires from, from years past. And with that said, you know, thanks to you and your colleagues and others that I met during that campaign I'm now back in school and I'm almost done with my first semester at Penn state where I'm getting a Bachelor’s in media. So , this is something I've wanted my whole life. And so, I definitely credit you and your colleagues for kind of like giving me that little kick that I needed. 

Marc Howard: [00:03:46] I'm glad to hear that. Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, our society is set up this model of traditional college education that it's something people do roughly from 18 to 22. And that there's sort of this  [00:04:00] path that people kind of are supposed to, and I'm putting that in scare quotes go through and many do because our society is kind of set up that way. But I have to say, as someone who's taught now for 18 years at a very elite four -year college Georgetown University, that some of the best students that I've ever had are not from that model, but are actually people who I've gotten to know during their incarceration, people who made mistakes often a long time ago people who dropped out of high school or even middle school in some cases, but they came back in a very non-traditional way to discover their love of learning.

Sometimes decades later while incarcerated. And they are some of the smartest people I know, some of the most inspirational, hardest working , just some of the most wonderful students that I've ever had. And so, for me, it's been a real paradigm shift in terms of how I view education having myself come out a little bit from that more elite [00:05:00] mindset.

And now having a much broader view about the, the love of learning and coming to realize that intelligence and education are two different things. And that you know, just because someone has what's considered a prestigious education, doesn't necessarily automatically correlate with intelligence.

And then of course, vice versa that there's some incredibly intelligent people who've gone down a very nontraditional route, including in these cases my incarcerated students who are really amazing. 

Amelia Old (Host): [00:05:26] You're one of the country's leading voices and advocates for criminal justice and prison reform.

And you have a very personal connection to this issue. Can you just walk us through that and what led to this journey of yours? 

Marc Howard: [00:05:39] Yeah. So, for me, it's actually very personal and I consider this now a secondary career. If we'd talked 10 or 15 years ago, my specialty at the time was European politics. I was more of a, kind of a typical political science professor who had an area of research in a part of the world in my case, Europe.

And I'm also connected to Europe in that I'm half French. I'm a French citizen through my mother. And [00:06:00] I speak German and Russian and spent a lot of time in those countries. But I had this personal connection, which goes back to my childhood and a childhood friend named Marty Tankleff, who I've known since we were three years old. We actually went to preschool together, a place called Lovey-Dovey preschool and then elementary, middle school and high school and something terrible happened on the first day of our senior year of high school, which is that Marty woke up to find his parents brutally murdered. And this is in a town on Long Island, New York that had very low crime and it was a really shocking situation. And Marty ended up being accused of, and eventually convicted of murdering his parents. And he was sentenced to 50 years to life. I believe that he was innocent and I advocated for him at the time, but I was just a 17 year old kid you know, in high school. I was the editor of our high school newspaper.

I wrote about the presumption of innocence. I wrote about how his father's business partner was at the crime scene and was the last person to leave. He had a clear motive and then disappeared and faked his own death and was found later but was never considered a suspect because they charged Marty. But you know, [00:07:00] I was just a kid, no one listened to me.

And Marty was convicted, sentenced to 50 to life and we went our separate ways. Marty likes to joke about it now. And he says, Marc went to Yale. I went to jail. And you know, that's pretty much what happened. And I moved on with my life and I would always tell people, you know, I have a friend in prison who's innocent.

But no one really believed me. I mean I would tell the story, then they would eventually come on board, but it sounded so far- fetched at the time.  At some point, I reconnected with Marty. We started writing letters to each other. We started having phone calls and then I started to visit him in prison.

And that was a life-changing experience for me. And I made him a promise in that prison visiting room that I would do everything I could to help get him out of prison and to be his friend and support him beyond that. And I then started meeting with his attorneys on his behalf of what was his final successful appeal.

I got very, very invested. I even made the decision that I was going to go to law school to help get him out of prison. And just before I started law school, he was like, he'd served almost 18 years, [00:08:00] 17 and a half years, 6,338 days and nights in prison for a crime he didn't commit, which was the murder of his parents.

So, can you? I can't even imagine anything worse happening to somebody being orphaned at 17 and then going to prison for it, wrongfully. But so, some people thought, you know, when Marty was exonerated that I would just kind of go back to my old work on European politics. But the way I put it is that my eyes had been opened to injustice and I couldn't close them again.

And I learned through Marty's wrongful conviction that there are so many problems with our criminal justice system that it made me just want to go deeper. So, I kept going, I went to law school, I got my degree. I became a member of the New York bar. I got a joint appointment at Georgetown at the law school as well.

And ever since, all I work on is American criminal justice reform. I'm trying to get people out of prison who don't belong there, whether they're wrongfully convicted or whether they're people who've changed and who deserve a second chance. I try to support people on their journey. Towards re-entry and then I try to change the public narrative about incarceration.

So, if it hadn't been [00:09:00] for Marty and Marty's experience, I would be doing something completely different, but through what he endured I was motivated and inspired to really commit my life to criminal justice reform and supporting incarcerated and formerly incarcerated. 

Amelia Old (Host): [00:09:14] It's interesting. You, you, in a sense, found your purpose through his tragedy.

Marc Howard: [00:09:18] Yeah. I did that's right. And that's a good way to put it in me. Like I found my purpose.

Amelia Old (Host): [00:09:23] Equality and education is about opening doors that were once closed removing barriers and finding pathways that don't always look traditional with that said, can you tell us about the Prisons and justice Initiative? And what led you to creating that and what exactly it is? 

Marc Howard: [00:09:40] Yeah. So, after going to law school, which I did full-time while I was also teaching full time, so that was a crazy few years. I had started teaching a course at Georgetown called Prisons and Punishment. I think you refer to it in the intro.

It's a class that has a really long waiting list and, and has a lot of demand and the highlight of that class has always been well in addition [00:10:00] to having Marty come as a guest speaker and I can circle back to Marty after what we do now together. But I would take students out to a prison visit and it was really eye-opening and, and for some life changing, because they would get to go inside a prison tour visits he sells and so on, but then also sit down with, and talk with incarcerated people.

And I felt like those visits were waking something up in me where I wanted to interact more. And then I started to volunteer, teach in a maximum security prison where I did it initially, just to see what the experience would be like. And I just couldn't stop. I kept going every semester I would be teaching, you know, this was fully volunteer, paying my own guests.

And I started bringing in guest speakers and I started really thinking about developing a program, which a few years later I was able to do at Georgetown when I got the support from the university to start the Prisons and Justice Initiative. And then we started teaching Georgetown courses, not [00:11:00] only volunteer non-credit courses, which we've continued to do, but also credit bearing courses where we have incarcerated students who are taking real Georgetown classes, doing the real Georgetown work and getting grades and so on. And now we're actually about to launch starting this fall, a degree granting program, a Bachelor of Liberal Arts, where incarcerated residents at a prison in Maryland will be enrolled as Georgetown degree students and will over the course of a five-year program, graduate with Georgetown degrees. So, it's been a process of sort of deepening involvement for me, where initially it was like, Hey, I just want to learn more. I want to experience it a little more. And now, you know, we're offering a full foot program.

We have so many Georgetown faculty who want to teach in it. And we have a waiting list of faculty, we have so much demand. Everybody who has taught so far, I said, it's the best teaching experience they've ever had. And so, it really fills out, I think what I said earlier, and I feel personally, which is about some of my best students are people who dropped out of school in eighth grade.

But also, so many [00:12:00] of my colleagues have had this experience as well. It's really. It's really a love of learning that leads people to take our classes when they're in prison. Because when you think about it, the traditional students and I know, you know, you have a son in college and I have a daughter in college and you know, we see that traditional path, but you know, these are kids, they're young.

They're often immature, they're dealing with all these socialist things going on. They're thinking about requirements or what looks good on my resume or, you know, their grades and this, you know, they're on their phones all the time. But when you're in prison, they're there because it's the highlight of their week.

It's the best part of their day. And they want to learn and they value every minute they get with you. And so, there'd be times where I'd be going into the prison, dead, tired. You know, I don't get nearly enough sleep and I'd be thinking, I don't know how I'm going to stand up much less lecture and like carry on a class.

And then I'd walk into the room and I'd look at these eyes and I'd see how eager [00:13:00] they were to learn and to interact. And it was like a jolt of electricity where I just felt that I would come alive and it happened over and over every week. And it's been something I've been doing for years now. 

Amelia Old (Host): [00:13:11] Wow that’s incredible. And I had the opportunity to visit the DC Jail with you and meeting one of the individuals there. And Joel was a highlight of mine and I thought he was incredibly inspiring and he was so bright and devoted to change. Can you talk a little bit about him and his story?

Marc Howard: [00:13:30] Oh yeah. I'd love to and, and it might even make me emotional.

Joel is just incredible. He's, he's brilliant. He's engaging. He's always smiling. Despite what he's endured, which is almost 25 years of incarceration for something, he had a very, very limited role in. And, and I don't think deserved what, what he's been through. He always finds the positive.

He's always reading. He's always talking to people. He's always asking questions. He's always wanting to learn and [00:14:00] everybody who meets Joel says that guy's incredible. You know, if there are people who run companies, they say, I want to hire him. It's been a challenge to see him remaining in prison when I've seen a lot of other people coming home.

But just last week I got the news that he has been approved for parole. There's still a few steps that have to happen. So, I don't want to jinx anything and I want to knock on wood, but I think it's very likely he's going to be coming home this year in 2021 before the end of the year. And I will be at those Gates to welcome him, to embrace him as will many others.

And he is going to be a force for good in his community, in society. Overall, he has so many ideas. Some of them involve business, which he's very very interested in and has a really firm grounding and he's even written a book that, that deals with it. And you know, I just think Joel Castone is going to be a name that we'll be all hearing about.

And hopefully [00:15:00] you'll have him on your podcast before too long, 

Amelia Old (Host): [00:15:02] I would love that. And he he's also started a program where he was working with the young men to teach them the value of money is that correct?

Marc Howard: [00:15:12] That's right. Yeah, he's the, he's a founding mentor on a unit at the DC jail called young men emerging. YME.

And it's a model program that's based on something that several European prisons have done with great success in some American prisons have taken that on as a, as a model, including the DC jail. And the idea is that they're trying to create a different form of incarceration.

And so, they're trying to work with young people 18 to 25, and then they're taking some kind of quote unquote old timers. Although Joel, frankly looks like he's 25, but he's actually in his mid forties. But he has done a lot of time and it has a lot of experience. And so. He's a mentor along with several others who are kind of of his age.

And [00:16:00] they work with this, this, this young group that has struggled and that has made mistakes and been through challenges, but they're not that old yet. And they have, you know, many redeeming qualities. And so, they've set up and I really want to credit the department of corrections for taking this chance.

And it's been a huge success, which is to, you know, they have open cells on their housing unit, they have a computer room. They have a meditation room, they have a music room and they really are trying to provide opportunities and support for people to, to grow. And that's so different from the experience of incarceration that most people endure, which is essentially warehousing, nothing locked in cells.

Maybe get some time in the yard to lift weights or sort of mess around and get in trouble. Very few positive programming opportunities, much less education or ways to, to really learn and grow. And so, the evidence has shown and there's, I could go into detail, but I won't bore you with [00:17:00] about how positive and how great the results are from this type of program.

But we've seen it with our own eyes and Joelle is a perfect mentor. They love him at the DOC. I think frankly, they want to hire him. Everyone wants to hire Joel, but that program is a great success because it's really taking a group of, of young men, almost boys, you might say their brains are still developing and they're still going through a lot of changes who have been down a, a troubled path.

There's no mistaking it but saying there's still time to change course. There's still time to see different ways and to grow and to have someone like Joel as a role model, as a mentor is. I see it with my own eyes, how they listen to them, how they respect him. And there's several other mentors like him, and it's just a wonderful program and it's given him such a great purpose.

And I know he'll continue that type of mentoring on the outside if and when, hopefully soon he's able to come home. 

Amelia Old (Host): [00:17:57] He's so inspirational. He even gave me [00:18:00] one of the notes that they have created. They were using to, to teach the young men about the value of money. And I actually had a framed even now a couple of years later, I have it framed and have it sitting on a shelf it's really important to me.

And that was a really important moment meeting with him.  I mean, you also have a class where students are tasked with producing a documentary about the innocence of their client. Can you talk about that a little bit? 

Marc Howard: [00:18:23] Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. That, that allows me to bring back Marty into the story because Marty and I have reconnected.

I mean, we did in that prison visiting room and we've, we've never stopped being connected since then. But now we're really at another level where we co-teach a class together on wrongful convictions. It's called making an Exoneree. We have a website for the course, which is called it's www.Makinganexoneree.com . 

And the program has our students, undergraduate students working on real wrongful conviction cases. Now people always get it wrong and we've had a lot of media coverage. I'll tell you why in a second, but People [00:19:00] always think they're law students and we always have to correct them and say, no, no they're undergraduate students.

And then sometimes people think they're like mock cases or, you know, moot exercises. And we see now these are real wrongfully convicted people in prison, whose cases we're working on. We're not a legal clinic. We're not representing them or filing legal motions. Although we are trying to help them get attorneys.

They don't have them already. But what we're doing is we're reinvestigating the case from the ground up. And then our students are making documentaries that suggest that the person was innocent and wrongfully convicted. If we believe that to be the case, which in almost every single case we have. And so, and we, and we get a lot of cases that are sent to us.

We filter them very carefully and we pick cases that we really think are strong. And so through that program was started out as kind of an experiment with Marty and I teaching it for the first time in the spring of 2018 three months after that class ended. Someone named Valentino Dixon who had served 27 years in prison.

Most of them Attica, one of the worst prisons in America [00:20:00] was exonerated. Thanks to discoveries that were made by our students, reinvestigating the case. And so that was extraordinary.  Without the students, without our class, he would still be in prison. He had another 12 or more years to go on a, on a 39 year to life sentence.

And so,  it's an amazing story. He's an amazing person. He's also an artist he's drawn a lot of golf courses. It got a lot of attention from the golf world that recently was Michelle Obama bought one of his original drawings for Barack Obama, President Obama for a Christmas present and President Obama then shared an image of it on Instagram, which had over 2 million likes.

It's led to a lot of attention for Valentino. He's been the subject of a documentary for HBO and NBC and others. So. All of that, thanks to our students in this class. And we have more exonerations that are coming. So, it's something that we're incredibly proud of, but really we've just set up the process and then our students create the magic.

[00:21:00] And that's something that I think has helped to show the world that, you know, young people, even if they're, you know, 20, 21, 22, they can change the world. They can, they can get someone exonerated. And we've proven that that's possible. 

Amelia Old (Host): [00:21:14] And I highly recommend for our listeners to go check out those documentaries as well, because they are on your website, they are very powerful.

And I also had an opportunity to check out the Pivot Program, which is for individuals who are reentering. And I was really impressed at the difference being made. One gentleman shared with me that after that training, he said, Amelia, when I walk into a room now, I see a business opportunity in every corner of the room and that his life was forever changed from that.

And I thought that that was really incredible.

Marc Howard: [00:21:49] And that kind of ties a lot of my experiences teaching inside a prison and I'd always tell people, you know, you might be wearing a prison jumpsuit, but when I see you, I see [00:22:00] you in a business suit. I see your potential. I see what you can become.

And your circumstances hopefully will change so that you have that opportunity. And the pivot program was the next step. And that was a partnership program that I created with our business school. And we're really proud of that program. The first university run re-entry program, it's a  10 month program where we're providing courses and education and business and entrepreneurship, and then internships with companies in the DC area.

And then many of them are launching their own businesses are getting employed. We've had zero people in over three cohorts of about of about 15 or so people per core, we've got zero people go back to prison. It's been a real success and I think we're helping to show again, that incarcerated people that value and that when they come home, if they get the proper support, the proper TLC, you might say and attention and love that they will succeed.

And so, we're proving that with the pivot program and it's something again [00:23:00] that I'm very proud of and, and inspired by our pivot fellows. 

Amelia Old (Host): [00:23:04] As you mentioned earlier, this really has become extremely personal for you and you do spend a great deal of time with these men and women other than Joel,  Is there a specific individual who has truly made an impact on your life?

Marc Howard: [00:23:24] Yes, absolutely. Without question, there are many and I could literally spend the next five hours. Talking about dozens and dozens of people who have touched me, who have inspired me, who I think about all the time. I get calls from people from prison, probably three to five times a day. I get calls from people on death row.

I have all these different accounts on different what they call kind of prison, email systems, although it's really not real email. But I'm in touch with so many different incarcerated people. So. It's hard to mention just one, but I will tell you a little [00:24:00] bit about one person, because my connection with him goes back to the first day that I walked inside to start volunteer teaching at this prison in Maryland.

And it's someone named Orlando Jones. He goes by Trey Orlando Jones III, he went to prison when he was 16. He is now 52. He'll be turning 53 this summer. That's, he's been in for 36 years. Now it's complicated because he didn't actually commit the crime he was convicted, but he admits to having committed others because at the age of, from 13 to 16, and this is someone who grew up without a father, his father was killed by the Baltimore police when he was 18 months old, he wasn't even two years old.

He has no memory of his father. His mother was 14 when she gave birth to him. Who was severely addicted to alcohol and disappeared from his life and died on the streets when he was eight years old. Trey grew up with an aunt who had her own addiction problems and various abusive boyfriends. [00:25:00] He had to start stealing from the age of six, just to, just to feed himself, just to buy some cereal for him.

And sometimes also his two cousins, his little girls that he considers like his sisters and then went on to work for a drug dealer. And by the age of 13 was holding down a corner, dropped out of school, had a gun and was working as the quote unquote trigger man for a major drug organization, the leader of which never went to prison and would send these young boys to do all his dirty work.

And so. I don't want to ever minimize what Trey did. Although again, point out he didn't commit the one that he's actually convicted of, but we need to look at who he is today at the age of 52. He is without question one of the smartest, most well-read people I've ever met. He is a philosopher.

He has written two books. He's always reading philosophy. He has some of the most Just extraordinary grasp of [00:26:00] history of ideas. I have him speak to my class by phone every year and my students are blown away. The half hour of the phone call goes by, it feels like five minutes. And Trey, I think has a chance of coming home in the near future because he was 16 and there's a lot of rethinking of juvenile life sentences.

And Maryland, which was very slow and acting on it is in the process of passing legislation that could give him a chance at release. And I support that and would do anything for that. I am 100% certain that he will be a success that he will inspire others. That like Joel, he will be a role model. And I just hope that he has that opportunity and he's somebody I talk to regularly and write with.

We have a long correspondence and a beautiful friendship, but the friendship won't really reach fruition until he can be free. And so that's why I spent a lot of time in the background [00:27:00] working in different ways to try to help support him and giving that chance. 

Amelia Old (Host): [00:27:03] What would you say to listeners who may not believe in second chances or may not believe in these opportunities that you work so hard to help provide these opportunities?

Marc Howard: [00:27:16] Yeah, no, that's a great question. It's a tough question too, because I understand and don't ever want to minimize the pain, that victims of serious crimes feel, and for family members who lost a loved one to murder that is permanent and that person will never come back. And I, I feel what that pain is and I understand it, but I also want people to think about change and who a person is, and that someone particularly at a young age, Where there's all kinds of research on [00:28:00] brain development showing particularly that boys and young men do not have a prefrontal cortex formed until the age of 25 at the earliest are making very poor choices where they don't understand the consequences, don't understand cause and effect are incredibly susceptible to peer pressure and make decisions that can be fatal and well that decision and that action does deserve punishment and I'm not opposed to the person being sent to prison. I think we need to ask ourselves when is enough enough.  Now if the person's out there hurting other people or having violence in prison or speaking openly about, you know, happy to have committed that crime or wanting to do it again, that's another story.

I'm not saying automatically everyone should be just getting out, but I'm saying that when someone has shown serious contrition. And when someone has demonstrated through their actions that they have changed, that they are not a public safety [00:29:00] risk that we owe it, not only to ourselves as a humane society, not only to the person who in prison, but frankly also to the victims, because one of the most common types of discussions I've had when we go deep with somebody that I know and get to talk about privately is how strong their regret is and how deeply ashamed and pained they are by what they did and how they want to honor the memory of their victim.  The harm they’ve caused by leading a good life by leading a righteous life.

And frankly, even if you don't believe me and care about what I'm saying with maybe some listeners don't, the empirical evidence is overwhelming and shows that people, if they served a significant amount of time, certainly more than 15 years to 20 years. And they've [00:30:00] done good things while they're incarcerated.

And have demonstrated that they're no longer violent and no longer pose a threat. That recidivism goes essentially to zero. They don't go back to prison. They don't commit other crimes. There's a misunderstanding out there that thinks like, Oh, drug offenders, drug offenders. Everyone wants to love drug offenders because figure, okay, well, a lot of people do drugs and it is being legalized in many places and so on.

And I agree with that. But if you want it to bet on the likelihood of someone going back to prison, so when breaking the law, it's actually much more likely people with addiction problems. And, you know, frankly, I think prison is not the right place,  treatment is, but they're much more likely to recidivate than somebody who committed perhaps even a horrible, violent crime long ago.

And so empirically we've seen in, in Washington DC, there've been over 50 people who were so-called juvenile lifers who have been released over the last three years and not a single one. That's as much as a parking ticket. [00:31:00] They're leading exemplary lives. They're wonderful people. And what we need to do is go deeper in ourselves.

And I know it's hard and not everyone's ready to do that, but to be willing to reconcile the fact that someone might have been dangerous and scary and deserving of being separated from society at some point in their life when they were young, but are no longer that same person today. And I see that with my own eyes every single time I go inside.

 I've spent over 700 days now going inside of prisons. That adds up to several years. I hope if I get into a problem myself, that a judge will say, Hey, you did, you know, good time credit for the time you spend inside. But through all these experiences, I've just met amazing people and they, they inspire me and they, they have taught me to appreciate it.

Just a greater view of humanity and of second chances. 

Amelia Old (Host): [00:31:54] That's a great response. Last year, and during a pandemic, mind you, [00:32:00] you also launched the Frederick Douglass Project for Justice. Can you talk about that?

Marc Howard: [00:32:03] Yeah. So, the Frederick Douglass Projecr for Justice is really an attempt to take a lot of the work that I've been doing at Georgetown and at the DC jail and in Maryland to a broader national scale.

And one of the kind of secret sauce is that I've been able to develop, has been, and you got to experience this directly yourself Amelia is bringing people inside for the first time when they've never been to prison before, and they suddenly meet incarcerated people. And even though, probably on the way in, and you probably felt this too, a little scared you're jittery and going through doors are banging and you're getting frisked and going through the metal detector and so on.

And you're thinking, what am I getting myself into? And you go inside and you sit down with people and you realize that they're, you know, people just like you and I, and we need to think about our common humanity. So, what we're doing at the Frederick Douglass Project is we're creating [00:33:00] in-person visits in prisons and jails around the country. Where ordinary people are going to be able to go inside to visit a prison and to sit down with incarcerated people and discover our common shared humanity. 

COVID has made that difficult. So ,no one's going inside of prisons, right this moment, but it's almost over.

And we have a very ambitious plan for national growth to be able to bring in ultimately tens of thousands of people a year inside of prisons. We also have a virtual visitation program that will be starting up in May. And so hopefully some people and some listeners will be interested in that and everyone can look at the website douglasproject.org to learn more about that program, but it's really an attempt to challenge and take on and hopefully defeat mass incarceration through humanizing people.

 I always say that you know, for, for 20 years we had demonization that people, now we need to have humanization. And through that humanization, we can defeat mass incarceration.

[00:34:00] Amelia Old (Host): [00:33:59] Absolutely. What's next for you? And where can we find you and all of your incredible projects?

Marc Howard: [00:34:06] Well to find me most directly on my website, MarcMhoward.org. I am going in a lot of different places at once working on all these programs. I have a great team in all of them that allows me to keep this work growing and expanding. I will always continue going inside. In a way that's my that's my North star, my Mecca, my whatever you want to call it.

And my, my source of inspiration is getting an a in whenever I travel, which I do a lot of normally when we're not in a pandemic I always visit prisons. I visit, you know, if I have a work trip or a personal trip, I always look into where there's a prison nearby and I can go inside and talk to people.

I do it partly to share with them. My optimism that changes coming in terms of criminal justice and prison reform. But I also do it for myself, learn from them and to be inspired by them. So. Stay tuned. There are more programs that are in the [00:35:00] works there's expansion of our current programs.

There are some media opportunities that are coming up in terms of, of development of, and production of, of the work that we're doing in different media outlets. But you know, I'm just getting started and, and still. Putting all of my time and energy into this great challenge. 

Amelia Old (Host): [00:35:20] I’m excited to see what you do, and I will make sure to also link to all of your projects under the notes of this episode at VoicesofInspirationPodcast.com

Do you have any words of wisdom or a favorite quote that you would like to leave behind? 

Marc Howard: [00:35:35] I will say in terms of, of inspiration, words of wisdom that I think the pandemic has, has really made a challenging because we are so lacking in direct human connection, and we've been trying to find it in different ways.

But I think that we really need to look deep and find the humanity in everybody. I've [00:36:00] been around some people who first grew up in life circumstances that were so difficult to change.  Challenging. Like I talked about with Trey as an example that are just, just mind boggling in terms of the level of suffering.

And I've also been around people who have done some really horrible things and who deeply regret it. And in everybody that I see, I try to take them at who they are today. Where they hope to go. And I think it's important to just see the humanity in everybody, to look deep, to see and find that positive element because when you do, and when it's recognized by them, then one your connection and potentially friendship goes to a completely different level, but two, it inspires them to continue on a path.

That allows them to reach that potential, not just potential in terms of [00:37:00] accomplishments, but in terms of, of humanity and who they are and how they treat people and how they are as a parent and how they are as a neighbor. And so, I think that we need to, to continue, and it's so hard in this day and age, both with the political climate and with the pandemic, but to find our common humanity and to celebrate that and share it.

Amelia Old (Host): [00:37:21] You are working to change the narrative and stigma that surrounds those who are incarcerated. Those who never had the chance, the guidance, or simply made a bad decision at a young age. I commend you for all the work that you have done. And that I know you will continue to do, and I'm really grateful that you took time to be with me today.

And thank you for being an advocate for so many that need for you to be a voice for them and to be in their corner for them. 

Marc Howard: [00:37:48] Oh, thank you, Amelia. Thanks for having me on your podcast. And thanks for shining your spotlight on the work that we're doing and the people we're trying to support. I really appreciate it.

Amelia Old (Host): [00:37:58] Thank you to our listeners. There [00:38:00] are hundreds and thousands of podcasts out there, and I am so grateful that you have chosen to join us. My name is Amelia and I am your host of Voices of Inspiration. Everyone has a story to tell what's yours.