From Governing:
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently made a rare governance move: He appointed Stanley Richards, who served a prison sentence for robbery in the 1980s, as commissioner of the city’s Department of Correction. The city described Richards, who previously served as a deputy commissioner with the agency, as the first formerly incarcerated person to lead it. That matters because it treats lived experience as executive competence, not as a feel-good backdrop.
Now New York and other jurisdictions should take the next step. If we truly believe that people most impacted by our criminal justice system belong in decision-making, then more formerly incarcerated people — particularly women — should be appointed to the seats that shape jails, prisons, parole, sentencing and reentry.
In research for a forthcoming book, I have interviewed women returning from prison whose expertise is policy-ready: They train peers, draft testimony, map procedural traps and build organizations that keep people alive and connected.
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