When Kim Kardashian West graced the cover of Vogue’s May issue, she took the opportunity to announce she was studying to become a lawyer, following a state-specific path that allows someone to apprentice with a practicing lawyer or judge before taking the bar.
It was a surprise to some, though it probably shouldn't have been, considering Kardashian's recent ventures. Last June, Kardashian West worked for the release of Alice Marie Johnson, a 63-year-old woman who was serving a life sentence for a nonviolent drug charge. Kardashian West ended up meeting with President Trump about Johnson’s case, who then granted her clemency.
From there, she teamed up with CNN commentator Van Jones and lawyer Jessica Jackson, the co-founders of the bipartisan advocacy group #cut50, which aims to cut crime and incarceration in all 50 states. Jackson, who's also the national director of #cut50, has since become one of Kardashian West’s “mentors” in her apprenticeship, helping her complete the schoolwork required to become a lawyer.
'I think she’s going to be an inspiration to a lot of people who maybe didn’t realize there were alternate paths to becoming a lawyer,' Jackson recently told ELLE.com. '[People who] didn’t realize what you can do with a law degree, and how empowering it is to be able to stand with people and help them fight for freedom.'
It makes sense that Kardashian West would want to learn from Jackson; both are passionate about changing the criminal justice system in America. And they both fell into the work through deeply personal stories: Kardashian West through Johnson's and Jackson through her own.
Initially from Alabama, Jackson moved to California as a kid. But when she moved back down south at 18, she ended up getting married, and shortly after her daughter was born, her husband went to prison for a nonviolent offence.
For Jackson, it was this experience that ignited her desire to work on criminal justice reform.
'I knew he was a good dad, a good son, an employer, a great employee with a hard work ethic,' she said. 'He’d made a bad decision, but there was so much good in him as well. I think whenever you have a loved one who’s incarcerated and you see what happens, you see how all those good things about them are just kind of thrown away, and instead they’re put inside of a prison.'
It was the same experience that allowed her to witness the unjust courtroom system up close; she says there was an initial deal that would have had her husband out within six months, but due to some bad advice from a lawyer, he ended up getting six years and serving three and a half.
The more she started to learn, the more she met with people who were incarcerated, or had loved ones incarcerated, the more she realized 'how many people’s lives were being thrown away into a system' instead of getting the help that they needed to address the underlying reasons of why they committed a crime.
Armed with this newfound passion, Jackson went to law school. She secured a job in California working on death penalty cases, an area of law she first became interested in after interning for a legal office in Florida that represented death row inmates in their appeals.
Then in 2012, Jackson was excited to see Jones, a criminal justice advocate, speak at an event in Marin County. But the talk was not what she expected. She recalled that he spent most of time talking about his work in the Obama White House and about environmental issues.
'I went up to him afterwards and I said, 'Hey, I loved your talk, but I really wish you’d talk about criminal justice issues.' He said, 'Yeah, I’m working on all of this environmental stuff.' And I said, 'Well, there are still people in cages. I hope you haven’t given up on this issue.'' He seemed taken aback—but interested—by her words, and the two planned to talk more. Those conversations led to the creation #cut50.
Through the initiative, Jackson has worked on a number of policy changes, including the FIRST STEP Act, which passed in Congress in 2018. The bill, which, among other things, allows prisoners to earn an earlier release, was called the 'the most significant criminal justice reform legislation in years' by Vox. Trump himself touted the bill during his 2019 State of the Union address, saying it would give 'nonviolent offenders the chance to reenter society as productive, law-abiding citizens.'
It was also through this work that Jackson first met Kardashian West. At the time, Kardashian West was working on Johnson’s case, and Jackson was working on the FIRST STEP Act with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump and trying to get President Trump on board.
'Kim got really interested,' Jackson said. 'I think once she passed Miss Alice’s case, she felt like she had gotten on one person out of prison, she couldn’t just stop there.'
Since the two joined forces, Jackson said Kardashian West has been involved in a number of cases, including helping people who are re-entering society, and she went to the White House for a meeting focused on the clemency process, sentencing, and prison reform. She’s also completed work on the policy side, like with the FIRST STEP Act and #cut50’s Dignity for Incarcerated Women legislation, which is meant to provide women with better treatment while in prison.
'You have some celebrities who just kind of want to know the high-level talking points,' Jackson said. 'Kim actually really wanted to understand the strategy and understand the content and understand the reforms that were needed and why the system was that way. I think Miss Alice's case, in a lot of ways, reignited her passion for law and wanting to understand the system better so she could change it.'
As for Jackson's own accomplishments, she says passing the FIRST STEP Act—during the Trump administration, no less—was 'huge.' The bill included both sentencing reform and prison reform, and since it passed, similar reforms have been introduced on the state level. (This is especially important seeing as, although there are 2.2 million people incarcerated in the United States, a majority are not incarcerated federally.) #cut50 has also been working on its Dignity for Incarcerated Women campaign. The goal is to pass 20 Dignity for Incarcerated Women bills by 2020, and #cut50 reports that 10 state legislatures have passed bills so far.
'A lot of people see us as a group working with Kim or working with other influencers or working with Trump,' Jackson said. But she emphasises that the most important component of the work is bringing together those who have been directly impacted by the criminal justice system with leaders.
'Quite frankly, Kim has been very helpful, and others have been very helpful, on the FIRST STEP Act and other legislation, but we would never be where we are with those bills, they never would have passed, if it wasn’t for the formerly incarcerated advocates who are willing to come up to the White House.'
She continued, 'It requires a lot of courage on their part and a lot of hard work. That's what I'm actually most proud of here at #cut50, our ability to really bring in and lift up directly-impacted people into the policy and solutions.'
Madison is the digital deputy editor at ELLE, where she also covers news, politics, and culture. If she’s not online, she’s probably napping or trying not to fall while rock climbing.
