Pushing to remove legal barriers for formerly incarcerated students

Pushing to remove legal barriers for formerly incarcerated students

January 5, 2023
Ivan Natividad, UC Berkeley

Credit: Azadeh Zohrabi/UC Berkeley

Michelle Maxwell, left, a student and policy fellow at UC Berkeley’s Underground Scholars Initiative (USI) stands with other advocates for formerly incarcerated students in Sacramento’s capitol building. The USI fellowship has continued the student group’s tradition of successful California legislative work.

Michelle Maxwell got her acceptance letter to UC Berkeley while on parole and living in a San Leandro halfway house.

Maxwell had served over eight years for robbery, but took advantage of that time by taking community college courses and earning three associate’s degrees. She applied to Berkeley while still incarcerated in a Stockton jail cell, hoping to get in and prove she was more than her past convictions.

It would give her a fresh start.

“When I found out, I cried and called my mom right away,” said Maxwell, who is now a second-year legal studies major. “I was so happy. All that hard work and discipline really paid off. I felt like it was an opportunity to start over again.”

But when Maxwell was released, just months before she was slated to begin at UC Berkeley, state law dictated that she stay 500 miles away, in San Diego County, where she had committed her last crime.

To attend UC Berkeley, she agreed to live in a rule-bound halfway house in San Leandro that supported parolees with a history of substance abuse. The problem? Maxwell didn’t have a substance abuse problem, and she would have to do things most of her fellow students didn’t.

A strict curfew made late-night study sessions impossible. Travel to and from San Leandro — sometimes an hour-long drive — could otherwise be spent meeting with friends or professors. And Maxwell was required to attend group addiction counseling, even though she didn’t need it.

“I was restricted all over again,” she said. “It didn’t feel like I was truly free to take in Berkeley the way I wanted to.”

Maxwell’s experience was not much different from many formerly incarcerated students attending UC Berkeley. But that changed last fall, when the state passed California Senate Bill 990, legislation that streamlines transfer and travel requests for California parolees to go to school, work and build new lives in areas outside of the county they were paroled to.

The bill became law in large part because of advocacy from formerly incarcerated students and policy fellows at Berkeley’s Underground Scholars Initiative (USI). Working with California State Sen. Ben Hueso, Maxwell and other Berkeley USI students sat through legislative sessions and wrote to and spoke with state representatives about the educational barriers they faced when trying to transfer their supervision to Alameda County after being accepted to UC Berkeley.

Courtesy Michelle Maxwell

Michelle Maxwell

Barriers, Maxwell said, she is proud to have helped eliminate for future students.

“It is really empowering,” said Maxwell, who now lives just three blocks from campus. “Knowing how indifferent our lives and accomplishments as formerly incarcerated students can be perceived within this system, and to see our hard work come to fruition makes me excited for what more is to come.”

That legislative win is one of many that USI has won over the years through the group’s year-long policy fellowship, created in 2019 by USI Executive Director Azadeh Zohrabi, and in partnership with the Legal Services for Prisoners with Children.

Through the fellowship, formerly incarcerated students receive training in policy advocacy and statewide campaigns. Traveling to the state capitol, the students are given an opportunity to learn the ins and outs of how legislation is passed, while also building connections and sharing their stories with state legislators.

Those relationships have also garnered $4 million in ongoing funding from the state to expand staffing and resources for Underground Scholars student groups across the UC system.

“This gives us more capacity to focus on and engage in policy work even more than before,” said Zohrabi. “Work that can contribute to the implementation of prison-to-college pipeline programs that will make higher education more accessible and inclusive for our student community.”

Roots in advocacy

Ruben Lizardo, UC Berkeley’s local government and community relations director, has advised USI on policy throughout the years and said that policy advocacy has been in the group’s DNA since its inception. In 2013, when there were just a handful of students in the group, USI leaders campaigned to make Berkeley and other UC campuses more accessible and safer for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated students. In response, in 2014 Berkeley students voted for a fee referendum that provided funding to create a space for the USI program on campus.

UC Berkeley’s Stiles Hall is a space for Underground Scholars to meet, study, socialize and build community. The building is funded in part because of the advocacy efforts of USI students. Courtesy of Cal Alumni Association

In 2016, USI partnered with then-State Sen. Loni Hancock to include an allocation in the state budget to fund and develop Berkeley Underground Scholars, an academic support group on campus within USI for formerly incarcerated students and those affected by mass incarceration.

A year later, the student group also helped to “Ban the Box” on UC employment applications to make sure applicants were not discriminated against due to past criminal history.

“USI’s roots have always been in advocacy and taking action to make the lives of students on campus better,” said Lizardo. “They have pushed for resources and funding that had been necessary for years. And they continually strive to make Berkeley a more inclusive campus.”

Courtesy Erin McCall

UC Berkeley USI fellows and students, from left to right: Michael Garcia, Michelle Maxwell, Erin McCall and Kevin McCarthy.

While these campaigns were huge wins for USI, Lizardo said, it wasn’t until Zohrabi came to campus in 2018 that the legislative efforts were taken to another level.

Through the USI policy fellowship, Zohrabi has transformed the way the group approaches policy advocacy by providing weekly in-depth workshops and training on how the state legislative process works. Topics include: How many votes are needed to pass a bill? How do you work with opposition and address their concerns? How do you connect and communicate with representatives from the state? And what do you do when a state senator is not in agreement with the legislation you are backing?

That detailed approach to policy work has since led to a series of successful policy campaigns that include early parole release for students who complete college and other educational programs, a Ban the Box on all California college applications, and the campaign to pass Proposition 17 to restore voting rights to people on parole.

The USI also helped in the successful campaign to oppose Proposition 20, which would have rolled back key criminal justice reforms and returned to a ‘tough on crime’ approach to public safety.

Berkeley Underground Scholars have shared their stories at the state capitol. In 2019, USI alumna Aminah Elster called on the State Assembly to pass a constitutional amendment restoring the right to vote for Californians on parole. Courtesy of Aminah Elster

“Azadeh brings the knowledge, experience and political savvy that is needed to run successful policy campaigns,” said Lizardo. “And she imparts to USI’s leaders tangible tools they need to empower other students to advocate for themselves and the communities they come from.”

Pulling strength from struggle

For Zohrabi, her role and work with UC Berkeley’s USI program also comes from a very personal place.

As an immigrant from Iran, Zohrabi said she has been impacted by incarceration her entire life. She first experienced issues with the criminal justice system when her parents were arrested in 1982 for speaking out against the Islamic regime just a few years after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Credit: UC Berkeley

Azadeh Zohrabi is the executive director of the Berkeley Underground Scholars.

“They continued fighting against the regime for a secular democratic Iran and were incarcerated a few months after I was born,” said Zohrabi. “As a child, seeing the injustice in that really had an impact on what I wanted to do with my life. I understood early on how families are negatively affected by a system that unjustly incarcerates people. And how that struggle can impact an entire community.”

After immigrating to the United States as an adolescent, Zohrabi soon found parallels between what happened to her parents in Iran and the unjust incarceration that her friends, and her partner, experienced in America.

Finding purpose in wanting to change that system, Zohrabi earned a law degree from UC Hastings and threw herself into human rights work and advocacy, specifically for communities impacted by mass incarceration. She has served as a leader and director for notable Bay Area nonprofits such as the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC).

The USI’s policy fellowship began as a collaboration with LSPC to connect Berkeley students to the nonprofit’s resources and coalitions fighting to change policy that impacts formerly incarcerated students, in particular. Zohrabi said USI has expanded the fellowship opportunity to students outside of Berkeley and the 2023 cohort will include members of other UC campuses.

Courtesy Azadeh Zohrabi

Zohrabi as a toddler, after her mother was released in Tehran from Evin Prison, and before they escaped from Iran.

“I am passionate about working with these communities because I believe that the work that we are doing is creating the condition of possibility for a radically different world to exist,” she said. “And being a part of [USI] has really transformed my life and given me the opportunity to have a huge impact on issues — that have also impacted me — and that I care about.”

That impact is evident for USI retention chair and policy fellow Erin McCall, who, this year authored a policy brief — along with four other Underground Scholars — released in UC Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor Employment that promotes career opportunities for formerly incarcerated firefighters. Her work with the policy fellowship “enabled me to see the direct connection between original research and the implementation of policy change,” said McCall.

“Azadeh is an inspiring mentor, and I couldn’t be more grateful for her leadership,” she said. “Traveling to Sacramento with the policy fellows this spring was empowering. Working together as a team to advocate for recurring funding made me feel like I was contributing to something bigger and far more important than myself.”

Erin McCall, center, with Michelle Maxwell, giving testimony in support of California Senate Bill 990. The two have been friends for years, first meeting while still incarcerated. Courtesy Azadeh Zohrabi

Seeing the bigger picture

Danny Muñoz, a former gang member, came to UC Berkeley after being in and out of the criminal justice system for over three decades. Now, as a youth mentor in the East Bay, he uses his life experiences to uplift the communities he came from.

Muñoz said USI’s policy fellowship has given him a greater perspective on the systemic inequities that cause under-resourced communities and schools to become pipelines to prison.

Danny Muñoz, a USI policy fellow, hopes to continue his graduate studies in public policy after graduating this spring. Here he stands in front of Anthony Hall, a space on Berkeley’s campus he often frequents. Credit: Sofia Liascheva/UC Berkeley

A sociology major, Muñoz is currently working on research based around the experience of middle school students and whether wealth plays a part on the interactions they have with adults at their schools. Working with Zohrabi, Muñoz said, has given him the confidence to tackle prejudiced policy and speak to high-level legislators about challenging issues.

“Being a part of this fellowship really opened my eyes to what is possible,” said Muñoz, who is also minoring in public policy and will graduate this spring. “I always felt like I could only make an impact with individuals, only working in my community where I come from. But having a hand in shifting policy, you see the bigger picture.”

For Zohrabi, that bigger picture starts with providing USI students with the resources to realize that they can be the decision-makers and leaders in policy, and that their voices “bring great value to a system that often ignores them,” she said.

“[Azadeh] is just a powerful female force,” said Maxwell. “She really knows her stuff. And that inspires all of us to treat these campaigns with urgency, because we know how important these policies are — not just to us, but to campuses around the entire state.”

Both Things Are True: My Journey from Jail to Justice Leader

Both Things Are True: My Journey from Jail to Justice Leader

May 17, 2022

Shani Shay

This is the first in a series of essays highlighting graduates of our California Justice Leaders program, the first AmeriCorps program specifically for formerly incarcerated people. We’re excited to be co-publishing this series with the Prison Journalism Project to reach even more readers.

Leadership: The ability to inspire, motivate, guide,
and nurture others in service of a common goal;
having a vision and a pathway to achieve that vision.

If I tell people I’m a student at University of California, Berkeley, recipient of merit scholarships and awards, and an advocate for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated youth who is headed to graduate school at Harvard University, they’re likely to make certain assumptions about my life up to this point.

If I tell them I was working as a stripper in San Francisco before I was 18 years old, inducted into a fraud ring, spent more nights in jail than I can count, and managed a bottomless well of emotional pain by cutting myself, they’re almost certain to make assumptions about how the rest of my life will play out.

The thing is, both stories of my life are true.

My name is Shani Shay. I am a 33-year-old Black woman whose very existence challenges assumptions about who can go to Harvard and what someone with early life trauma and incarceration can accomplish.

Today I comfortably identify as a leader, but that wasn’t always the case.

I am originally from Hawaii, where I had a mostly sweet childhood playing in waterfalls and building sandcastles. We moved to Berkeley, Calif. when I was 15 years old and, like many young girls, came under the influence of older, abusive men. For roughly 12 years — years that I should have been safe, happy and excelling in high school and college — I experienced extreme domestic violence and was entrenched in a negative lifestyle. The only ray of light was a daughter I loved.

By the time I turned 28, I knew I had to change my life and my daughter’s life. I started by attending classes at Laney College, the largest community college in Oakland, and slowly began to see myself differently. I remember getting my first set of straight As and thinking, “Wow, Shani, you are smart.” A year later I completely quit crime and left my abuser. I packed up my belongings and moved with my daughter to my mom’s house.

It was hard to make a clean break and walk toward a future I barely knew how to believe in. Sleeping on a pull-out couch every day with a growing child in tow was not easy either, but with every passing week I had more faith in the future and more confidence in myself.

Within two years, I was enrolled at Cal Berkeley. It felt like a dream come true, especially considering the times in my life when freedom seemed out of reach. I was thrilled but also intimidated by Cal — the institution, the big campus — and I worried about fitting in. Luckily, I had the support of Berkeley Underground Scholars, an organization started nearly 20 years ago by formerly incarcerated and system-impacted Cal students that now serves nine other schools in the University of California system.

The Underground Scholars helped me find my place at Cal, in large part because the head of the program, Azadeh Zorabi, believed in me. She saw the person I was beyond the labels and traumas, and through her eyes I came to believe in myself too.

The Underground Scholars and other resources of the university also paved the way for me to work with young people confronting some of the same challenges I did. My encounters with incarcerated youth motivated me to create Incarceration to College for youth in custody, and then Pathways to College for formerly incarcerated youth.

Through weekly workshops, these programs give young people permission to imagine themselves in college and help them take the steps necessary to get there. Over the past few years, I’ve encouraged hundreds of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated youth in Contra Costa, Alameda and now San Francisco counties to set their sights on college. I have also connected many of them with Underground Scholars programs in other UC schools.

California Justice Leaders…arrived in my life at the right time, helping me grow professionally so that I’m better able to open doors for formerly incarcerated youth.

Much like the Scholars program, California Justice Leaders (CJL), a first-of-its-kind AmeriCorps initiative by Impact Justice, arrived in my life at the right time, helping me grow professionally so that I’m better able to open doors for formerly incarcerated youth.

In my year as a CJL re-entry navigator, I mastered the complex systems and rules a young person has to navigate to avoid ending up back in jail and learned how to explain it all in ways that empower young people. I learned how to use tangible incentives as a catalyst for personal growth. And I learned how to identify and connect people with resources and organizations that meet them where they are and provide support and opportunities for them to succeed, one step at a time. What a difference a re-entry navigator would have made in my own life as an 18 or 19 year old!

California Justice Leaders also taught me the importance of rigorous case management, which is essential to running an organization that actually helps people and has systems in place to do no harm. The program and people leading it modeled healthy, safe, respectful and effective ways to work with formerly incarcerated people, both as clients and as employees. I certainly felt I could bring my full self to the job.

I’ll always remember how kind and patient Azadeh was with me, especially in my first year at Berkeley. She managed to have great expectations for me without demanding anything of me, certainly nothing I wasn’t ready to do.

I try to take the same approach with the young people I mentor. Through kindness and in other ways, I’m constantly communicating that I know they are human beings capable of greatness, not defined and limited by their status in the carceral system. I’m also keenly aware of what I convey simply because of who I am — and I’m always honest about the hardships I’ve experienced, my mistakes and all that I’ve overcome.

By supporting people like me to be effective leaders, Underground Scholars and CJL are changing the narrative about formerly incarcerated and system impacted people and what we’re capable of. That’s huge — for all the young people trying to change their own lives and for all the people, institutions and systems in a position to either help them or hold them back. That’s a lesson I’ll be taking with me to Harvard.

I’m a different person today than I was just a few years ago, thanks in part to these programs. Harvard doesn’t intimidate me, and the future seems full of possibilities.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what I would change if I were secretary of education.

California Justice Leaders alumnus Shani Shay graduated this spring with a bachelor’s degree in African American Studies and a minor in education from the University of California at Berkeley and will attend Harvard’s Graduate School of Education in the fall. Shani is also the recipient of the 2019 California Women in Leadership Scholarship from the Minerva Institute, the 2019 Cal Alumni Leadership Award, and is a 2019 Firebaugh Scholar.

Note: This essay contains discussion of self-harm and domestic violence. If you would like to learn more about dealing with self-harm, you can visit the Crisis Text Line website or text HOME to 741741. For resources on domestic violence, you can visit the National Domestic Violence Hotline website or call 1-800-799-SAFE.

He Once Faced the Possibility of Life in Prison. Now he’s a UC Berkeley Graduate

He once faced the possibility of life in prison. Now he’s a UC Berkeley graduate

UC Berkeley graduate Aaron Harvey, 33, proudly stands on a corner in Lincoln Park, the southeastern San Diego neighborhood he grew up in, last week.

(Eduardo Contreras/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

BY TERI FIGUEROA

SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

JUNE 21, 2021 10:16 AM PT

SAN DIEGO — 

Aaron Harvey first heard of UC Berkeley when he saw a TV promotion for the school as he sat in jail, facing conspiracy charges stemming from nine San Diego gang-related shootings.

He didn’t even know that UC Berkeley and “Cal,” a title he knew through sports, were the same school when he saw the TV spot seven years ago. But the promo seduced the young man, whose freedom and future were in jeopardy.

He maintained he was innocent of the charges, but he was still facing 56 years to life in prison.

“From day one, I was like, ‘I am going to Berkeley,’” Harvey said. “I think I was just telling myself that to give myself something to look forward to when you are sitting in such a dark place.”

First, he had to fight the sweeping gang murder conspiracy case targeting 33 people in two southeastern San Diego neighborhoods, including his native Lincoln Park. The fight would rally the community, make headlines and clap back at prosecutors who used an untested law that critics blasted as nothing more than guilt by association.

After several months of courtroom battles, a judge dropped the charges. Harvey was freed. Now, the 33-year-old has earned a political science degree from UC Berkeley. He graduated in May.

And along the way, he said last week, he became “an accidental activist.”

In July 2014, a swarm of police arrested him near his apartment in Las Vegas, where he’d moved two years earlier and had been attending real estate school. Suddenly, he was charged in connection with a yearlong series of gang shootings that had happened through much of 2013 and into 2014 in San Diego.

He and the other defendants were charged under a gang conspiracy law: Penal Code 182.5. It was the first time the law was being used in San Diego and possibly in California. Prosecutors argued that under the law, any documented member of a gang could be held liable for its criminal actions.

There were two cases: one charging 15 alleged members of a Lincoln Park gang in nine shootings, the other charging 18 alleged members of a Southcrest-area gang with 16 shootings, four of them fatal.

Some of the defendants were accused of firing the shots or playing a role during or afterward. Some, like Harvey, were accused because they’d been documented as gang members. The evidence purportedly tying them to the gang’s activities included posts on social media or photos and rap lyrics they’d written, which prosecutors argued promoted violence and bolstered gang status during the wave of shootings.

‘Thank God we fought it’

The arrest and the charges floored Harvey. He was 26 years old. It was the first time he learned that he’d been documented as a member of a gang in his Lincoln Park neighborhood when he was 17. It had happened during stop-and-frisks by San Diego police. He doesn’t know which stops. They were common.

Harvey was not accused of shooting anyone. He was not accused of being present at any of the shootings, or of helping to make them happen.

Eventually, most of the accused pleaded guilty to lesser charges, deals that came with shorter prison sentences. Harvey and a second man, rapper Brandon “Tiny Doo” Duncan, held out.

“Everybody signed [a plea deal] — and rightfully so,” Harvey said. “We were the not-so-smart ones for not signing. ... When you are looking at life in prison, the smart thing to do would be to sign a deal, or you are gonna do life. But thank God we fought it.”

After hearings to review the evidence, Superior Court judges disagreed with how prosecutors had applied the law. In 2015, Judge Louis Hanoian found no evidence to support the charges against Duncan and Harvey, and dismissed their cases.

News of local prosecutors’ use of the controversial law brought national attention and staunch local pushback. Then-Dist. Atty. Bonnie Dumanis said later she would not bring charges under Penal Code 182.5 again.

In a 2017 interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune, as Dumanis stepped down from her 14-year stint in office, she said she’d been surprised at and frustrated by the criticism until she took a hard look at Black history.

“The history of African Americans has an impact on everything,” Dumanis said at the time. “No matter how supportive white America is, unless you have walked in those shoes, you don’t understand it. And the only way to change that is to check yourself and your implicit biases or ask for people to check you when you’re doing it.

“Because when we think we are doing something positive, like filing this case to get the people who are murdering innocent people, people within the African American community, I have done something inadvertently that [some people] view as wrong,” she said.

In 2017, Harvey and Duncan sued the city of San Diego in federal court, citing civil rights violations. Last year, the city agreed to pay nearly $1.5 million for the two men to split.

‘I went out in the car and cried’

After his release from jail in 2015, Harvey enrolled in San Diego City College.

He started working with Pillars of the Community, a nonprofit rooted in Islam and focused on social justice and lifting the southeastern San Diego community. There, he built a program to help people expunge criminal records, a program that continues. Laila Aziz, Pillars’ director of operations, calls it his “legacy.”

Three years later, he applied to several universities.

In his application essays, he wrote about being one of the “San Diego 33.” He wrote that after the criminal case against him was dropped, his transition to activism was one of the most significant challenges of his life. He said he was fighting “for the release of my friends and to change the policies that had incarcerated us.”

“I never imagined a life in social justice,” he told the universities.

He mentioned in those essays his testimony at state Assembly and Senate hearings to influence legislation targeting mass incarceration, his work leading a City College campus club focused on assisting Black community college students, and hosting panels focused on mass incarceration, police brutality and voting.

Months later, Harvey was in a meeting with fellow activists, including Aziz, when notifications started hitting his phone. Each was an acceptance email: UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Davis — and UC Berkeley.

“I went out in the car and cried,” he said. “It was just an overwhelming feeling.”

At Berkeley, Harvey found community in the Underground Scholars Initiative, which supports formerly incarcerated students in the UC system. Its website speaks of building a “prison-to university-pipeline.” He called it “an amazing group.”

For the last two years, as a part of Underground Scholars, Harvey led a program to recruit formerly incarcerated students from community colleges to apply for UC schools.

He also helped create the Black Men’s Collective to build fellowship and community on the Berkeley campus.

Aziz called Harvey “a critical thinker, a doer and a planner” who has “a whole community behind him.”

“Whatever his work is, I know it is going to be crucial and critical to our community being helped, built and empowered,” she said.

Harvey said he wanted to go to college for an education that would help him advocate for others trapped in the criminal justice system — a desire he said was born of survivor’s guilt and moral outrage against “a criminalization of culture.”

“The way you dress, the way you talk, the music you listen to — that’s all criminalized and they can use it against us in court,” he said.

He disputes the law enforcement definition of a gang member: “They get to define us and criminalize us.” Being a gang member, he said, “is not illegal.”

“If you did a crime, you do the time,” Harvey said. “That’s what the judge said. If they didn’t do the crime, you can’t take them to jail.”

New degree in hand, Harvey says his future is in activism. But it’s no longer an accident.

Underground Scholar Provides Expert Testimony on Senate Bill 575

Proposed California Senate bill to extend Cal Grant to incarcerated students

Click image to see video of Aminah’s testimony

BY LEON CHEN | STAFF

LAST UPDATED MAY 2, 2019

A bill introduced in the California State Senate on Feb. 22, which proposes extending the availability of Cal Grant funds to incarcerated students, was set aside by the Appropriations Committee on Monday, and may be heard at a later hearing.

Senate Bill 575 was introduced by Sen. Steven Bradford, D-Gardena, on Feb. 22 and would amend the current Cal Grant Program — which administers financial aid programs for students attending public and private universities, colleges and vocational schools in California — to allow incarcerated students to be considered eligible to receive the Cal Grant award.

Aminah Elster, a student leader with Berkeley Underground Scholars, has provided expert testimony in support of SB 575, according to Berkeley Underground Scholars Director Azadeh Zohrabi.

“One of the large barriers to higher education for incarcerated students (is that) they don’t have access to the funding,” Elster said. “More folks would be able to access a better future and education.”

Elster said that she took college courses while in prison, adding that they helped her get on a path to receive a higher level of education. She has since enrolled at UC Berkeley as an undergraduate student. She added that numerous colleges and organizations have voiced their support for SB 575.

Elster noted that the number of people that could benefit from the bill is “great,” citing California’s large incarcerated population. She added that the bill could help increase diversity in California’s universities.

“The money would come from the state’s general fund,” Elster said.

The Senate Committee on Education bill analysis cited a report by Corrections to College California that face-to-face community college enrollment inside the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation rose from zero in 2014 to 4,443 students in the fall of 2017. The bill analysis also noted that the UC system has on-campus support programs for formerly incarcerated students.

According to the analysis, incarcerated students are eligible for federal financial aid under the Second Chance Pell pilot program. In order to qualify, however, students must be “eligible for release into the community and must be able to complete their program post release.” The bill analysis states that SB 575 may allow individuals ineligible for release access to the Cal Grant Program.

Kevin McCarthy, who was admitted to UC Berkeley and allowed to defer his enrollment to 2020, noted in a letter the opportunities that SB 575 could open.

“Many incarcerated students are stuck idle in their educational path due to their lack of access to funding for higher education,” McCarthy said in the letter. “It is exciting to think about the contributions that many incarcerated men and women could make to their communities, if they parole with a Bachelor’s Degree.”

Contact Leon Chen at leonchen@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter at @leonwchen.

Read about Aminah Elster’s testimony for proposed Senate Bill 575 HERE. The bill proposes extending the availability of Cal Grant funds to incarcerated students.

Underground Scholars Language Guide

A Guide for Communicating About people Involved In The Carceral System

Increasing attention is being given to the language people use when discussing individual or group identities and experiences. In large part, marginalized people must demand the respect to create and amplify language that they consider more humanizing than the negative narratives imposed on us by dominant society. The late Eddie Ellis, a wrongfully convicted member of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, established the first academic think tank run by formerly incarcerated people: Center for NuLeadership. Paroling in 1994 with multiple degrees, Ellis worked to advance the dialogue around those who have been system impacted. Twenty five years later and our collective struggle to be recognized for the fullness of who we are as people remains. 

Language is not merely descriptive, it is creative. For too long we have borne the burden of having to recreate our humanity in the eyes of those who would have us permanently defined by a system that grew directly out of the the institution of American slavery, an institution that depended on the dehumanization of the people it enslaved. It is in this spirit that we, the formerly incarcerated and system-impacted academics who identify as the Underground Scholars Initiative (USI) at the University of California, Berkeley, call on the media, students, and public to utilize the following terminology when discussing our population individually or collectively. This is not about euphemisms or glossing over people's actions rather it is about reclaiming our identity as people first. It is important to note that this style guide is equally applicable when talking about similarly situated populations outside the United States.

Thank you in advance for respecting us enough to treat us as humans.

In solidarity,

Underground Scholars Initiative (USI)

Terminology Guide

• Incarcerated Person refers to anyone currently incarcerated. It makes no claim about guilt or innocence (contrary to words like “convict”), nor does it attach a permanent identity to an often temporary status (like “prisoner” etc.)

• Formerly Incarcerated Person refers to anyone who has been in a carceral setting and is now released. Prison, immigration detention centers, local jails, juvenile detention centers, etc. are included under this umbrella term. Attaching the prefix ex- to anything (ex-convict, ex-felon, etc.) is a clear indication that it, and the root word itself, are unacceptable.

• System Impacted includes those who have been incarcerated, those with arrests/convictions but no incarceration and those who have been directly impacted by a loved one being incarcerated. While those close to us, as well as the broader society are negatively impacted by our incarceration, it is often our partners, parents, children and/or siblings who face the most significant disadvantages behind our absence and thus, categorically merit this designation.

• Carceral System is far more accurate than the ubiquitous term “Criminal Justice System.” Not all who violate the law (commit a crime) are exposed to this system and justice is a relative term that most people in this country do not positively associate with our current model. In this context, Carceral System is best understood as a comprehensive network of systems that rely, at least in part, on the exercise of state sanctioned physical, emotional, spatial, economic and political violence to preserve the interests of the state. This includes formal institutions such as, law enforcement and the courts, surveillance and data mining technology, NGO / non-profit consultants, conservative criminologists, those who manifest and/or financially benefit from modern slave labor, corporate predation on incarcerated people and our communities, the counterinsurgency in communities of color through ‘soft-policing’, etc.

• People Convicted of (Drug Violations / Violent Offenses / etc.) Calling people “violent offenders”, “drug offenders” etc. continues to reduce one’s identity to a particular type of conviction. It is rarely necessary to specify the type of crime an incarcerated or formerly incarcerated person was convicted of, however, and when doing so, it should be phrased in line with this guidance.

• Gang Member is the one term on this list for which there is not a replacement. It is a subjective term that has zero probative value in discourse around communities that experience high rates of violence and/or marginalized people. If people choose to self-identify as such then that is their right. The label should never be placed on another.

• Person on Parole / Probation instead of “parolee” or “probationer.” Again, it is about articulating the person first, not whatever temporary or circumstantial qualifiers may be perceived. Be mindful to preserve the privacy of those who may be on probation or parole.

• People with No Lawful Status are those with no legal status and who are not engaged with the immigration system at this time for whatever reason.

• Undocumented People refers to people who are engaged in the asylum, DACA, etc. process but it is not complete to the point of providing guaranteed citizenship. 

• Resident should replace “citizen”, including in the phrase “returning citizen” that has been adopted by some to describe formerly incarcerated people. Citizens carry rights and responsibilities that many incarcerated, formerly incarcerated people, undocumented people, and people without status do not have. Millions of people are legally denied the right to vote, the right to serve on a jury, the right to run for an elected office, the right to travel freely, etc. Citizenship is exclusive and the word should only be used when intended to refer to people who carry all the rights of citizenship.

• Sexual Assault Survivor refers to anyone who has experienced molestation, rape, sexual assault, etc. While far too many people have experienced abuse; that does not make us a victim (a passive identity), but rather a survivor (an active identity). 

• Sex Trafficking Survivors are also sexual assault survivors, yet with the added trauma of being kidnapped and exploited for the economic gain of others. The survivors are often incarcerated for the very acts they were forced to do, exacerbating a cycle of abuse. Not all Sex Workers, most often female and LGBTQ people, have been, or are being trafficked. Caution must be taken to not conflate the two.

• Sex Workers are people voluntarily engaged in any work, whether legal or illegal, that centers around sex. This includes street prostitution, webcam workers, escorts, etc. of any gender identity. It does not include exotic dancers who choose not to engage in off-stage business as described, nor is it the proper designation for sex trafficking survivors.

• Communities that Experience High Rates of Violence is preferable to “violent communities” and its evil twin “bad/disadvantaged neighborhoods.” Labeling a community as “violent” demonizes all  people within it. It places the burden of such a disparaging label on the community itself without highlighting the systemic factors that are necessary for a community to repeatedly experience such trauma.

• Drug / Substance Use is more accurate than “abuse”. One does not abuse heroin, meth, alcohol etc., they use it to feel the anticipated effects of the substance. The classification and prohibition of substances is political, not medical, and has always been a tool to police communities of color. To misidentify users as abusers is a continuation of the strategic propaganda employed to dehumanize and vilify particular populations who use drugs. Drug and substance use among marginalized people is often a means of self-medicating for us who are denied meaningful access to local, culturally competent, and affordable mental health services by the same systems that perpetuate the abuse from which we seek relief. People who are abused cannot then be called abusers for a private, personal attempt at self-preservation. 

Topical Guide:

• Public Safety All of us are in favor of public safety even as many are rightfully critical of law enforcement. The two concepts are not synonymous, and in fact are typically in conflict, as evident when one views videos of police killing residents, destroying property and harassing people traveling by foot, car, bus or plane. We encourage those writing about police/community relations to challenge both sides on what public safety looks like, particularly in communities where many residents find the police to be a destabilizing force operating contrary to safety.

• War on Crime / Drugs / Gangs are failed policies of the US government executed here and abroad and should be exposed as such in any discourse that chooses to use this verbiage lest the public continue to believe these are efforts that deserve support.

• Violent vs. Non-Violent Crimes is a pseudo-dichotomy. Burglary can be classified as a “violent crime” while rape may be “non-violent” in the eyes of the law. Furthermore, the vast majority of people incarcerated in non-immigration detention centers are classified as violent thus, any substantive reform must include them / us. Lastly, we know the threat of incarceration is not a meaningful deterrent, and with programs like higher education for the incarcerated, people can leave prison and be successful regardless of their commitment offense.

• Good vs. Bad in any context of human beings is flawed at best and violent at worst. Juxtaposing “good immigrants” who do things the right way with “bad immigrants” who don’t, or “good people” who change their life with “bad people” who don’t, or “good girls” who appear to accept patriarchy with “bad girls” who clearly don’t, are all value judgments dependent on the perspective of the person framing the narrative. These narratives are overwhelmingly white, heterosexual, cis-gendered, middle-or upper-class, male, Protestant perspectives. Those of us who do not fit in that mold have and will find ourselves misrepresented, devalued, and differentiated.

Suggested Citation:

Michael Cerda-Jara, Steven Czifra, Abel Galindo, Joshua Mason, Christina Ricks, Azadeh Zohrabi. Language Guide for Communicating About Those Involved In The Carceral System. Berkeley, CA: Underground Scholars Initiative, UC Berkeley, 2019.

Direct inquiries to undergroundscholars@berkeley.edu