These are a few things I’ll never stop believing when it comes to criminal justice.
The problems in our criminal legal system are bigger than any one political party, and lasting solutions will require all of us to work together. I believe we can find common ground without compromising our values, and that some of the most meaningful change happens when people with different perspectives are willing to listen to one another and work toward a shared goal. If we want reforms to last, we need to build them together.
Accountability matters. So does public safety. But accountability does not have to mean a person spends the rest of their life behind bars. People can take responsibility for the harm they caused, make amends, grow, change, and contribute to their communities. We should have systems that recognize that people are capable of transformation and create meaningful opportunities for those who have demonstrated they are ready to safely return home.
People who have experienced incarceration, wrongful conviction, or other parts of the criminal legal system firsthand have knowledge that cannot be replicated from the outside. Their experiences should not be an afterthought in conversations about reform. They should help shape the solutions. If we’re serious about building a system that works better, we need to listen to the people who have lived its failures and understand what needs to change.
Montana’s incarceration problem will not be solved by creating more space to incarcerate people. Building more prisons may give us more beds, but it doesn’t address the policies and practices that put people behind bars and keep them there. We need to look honestly at who we incarcerate, how long we incarcerate them, and what pathways exist for people who have served meaningful time and are ready to return to their communities. We cannot build our way out of mass incarceration.
We don’t need to reinvent every part of the system. We do need to increase opportunities for community healing and restoration and strengthen existing pathways home for incarcerated individuals—to ensure they are accessible, fair, and actually achieve public safety and individual rehabilitation.
These are a few of the hills I’ll die on.
And I’ll keep working toward them—across differences, alongside impacted people, and with the belief that a more just system is possible.
— Amy Sings In The Timber
Executive Director
Montana Innocence Project