Kim Kardashian West Helped Free 17 More People From Prison

By Christianna Silva


Kim Kardashian West has continued her work towards prison reform and has worked with the legal team she supports the fund to free 17 people who were imprisoned for non-violent drug offenses within the past three months as segment of the 90 Days of Freedom campaign, the nonprofit law firm the Decarceration Collective confirmed to MTV News.


The campaign was spearheaded by Brittany K. Barnett and MiAngel Cody, two lawyers who helped Kardashian West in her work to commute other sentences, like those of Alice Johnson and Jeffrey Stringer. Barnett co-founded the Buried Alive Project; Cody founded The Decarceration Collective. Both groups fight to free inmates who are facing long sentences for low-level drug offences. Three months back, the duo teamed up to make the 90 Days of Freedom Campaign, which Kardashian West suggested to fund.


“Our work isn't done,” Angela Wynn, media liaison at the Decarceration Collective, mentioned in a statement to MTV News. “There are so several more we aspire to save.”


The Sentencing Project reported that in 2016, 450,345 incarcerated people in the U.S. Were serving sentences related to drug offenses – more than 10 times the collection of people in the U.S. Incarcerated for the same crimes in 1980.


Their teamwork came soon after President Donald Trump signed the First Step Act, which aims to give inmates with good behavior, particularly those serving time for nonviolent drug offenses, the possibility to shorten their sentences. Kardashian West met with Trump in September to discuss prison reform, months before he signed act. The initial Step Act helped Barnett and Cody release 17 people who were reportedly the only inmates eligible “for that categorize kind of narrow provision that allowed them to go back inside the courts,” Cody told Buzzfeed News.


According to TMZ, people who were freed include Eric Balcom, who served 16 years of a life sentence; and Terrence Byrd, who served 25 years; and Jamelle Carraway, who served 11 years of a life sentence.


The team had hoped to release more people; as a result, the categorize is launching The Third Strike Project, which aims to help “the hundreds of males and ladies left beyond by The initial Step Act’s limited legislative provisions,” Wynn mentioned in a statement.


“We are thrilled that Kim Kardashian keeps it up and continues to lend her voice to this key, life-saving work,” Wynn mentioned. “We encourage each person to link arms to bring about transformative criminal justice.”


Kardashian West is also lending her voice with a two-hour documentary on Oxygen focusing on the criminal justice system, ELLE.Com reported. The film has the working title Kim Kardashian: The Justice Project; per a press release, it will document the star’s “efforts to secure freedom For people in America who she believes have been wronged by the justice system.” The star is also reportedly studying 18 hours a week for the bar exam to be a lawyer.


“It’s sort of crazy because I’m learning it all as I go,” she told People immediately following the news broke in early May. “I spend more time on this than I do anything else. It’s insane however it’s so fun to be around people that are super smart and get it and want the same thing.”


She added that she’s habitually had an interest in law. Her late father, Robert Kardashian, famously helped defend O.J. Simpson throughout his 1994 murder trial.


“I told my dad years prior that I was really into criminal justice and he was like, ‘This will stress you out so much, you never really wish to take this on,’” she mentioned. “I think right now having gotten so deep in helping Alice [Johnson], I’m really motivated to get to know the law more and fight for people who deserve a second chance like her.”