- You don't have to throw someone's life away
because they made a bad choice at one point
in their life and that people can be rehabilitated.
So for me, I always say if someone does the crime,
they should do time, but what is fair time?
- I'm super excited to be here, talking to the great
Kim Kardashian about "The Justice Project"
which is this unbelievable documentary
that she's put so much blood, sweat, and tears into.
We are gonna be talking about the documentary
but not just the documentary, the fact that Kim Kardashian
has become such a powerful advocate for criminal justice,
why, what does her family think about it,
how does she feel about it,
how does she choose who to help?
There's so many questions, but first, let me just say,
welcome to Kim Kardashian.
How you doing?
- Hi, I'm good.
It honestly feels good to get up and put on something else
but pajamas, put on some makeup.
I miss work, you know.
It does feel good to get up.
I had to sneak out and I'm in my mom's house.
We're all not seeing each other really,
so I had to go in her back door
and come in this room.
I had to sneak away from my kids to be honest.
So I'm loving this break [laughs].
- I know.
Well, it is important that we should probably just
address that right at the very top.
We're in this age of the virus, this age of the pandemic,
the age of the quarantine.
What concerns do you have for people behind bars
in the age of the pandemic?
- Well, first of all, I wanna thank the governors
who have been releasing some people that are incarcerated
which is amazing and I really commend them.
I sent a tweet out to Governor Newsom
thanking him for that.
I think that it's really tough for visits to be canceled
because of this and I understand that the logic behind it,
but to not replace it with phone calls,
with some kind of other interaction, I think is cruel
and there has to be some kinda change with that.
That really breaks my heart that these people
just have to now not have any connection with anybody
when they really depend on that.
- Absolutely and I know you're a good friend
of Jessica Jackson and Erin Haney
who are in the documentary which we're gonna get to,
have put out from the Reform Alliance,
this whole safer plan to try to get some people out.
There are people who could come out safely,
who are well and who are not a threat to anybody.
Some of the governors have been asked
by the National Governors Association
and others, Reform Alliance and others,
to have fewer people going in.
If some petty stuff, don't put them in.
If they can come out safely and be on home confinement,
let them come out and then let's rush in medical supplies
and masks and that kinda stuff.
So there's a big effort to try to help people behind bars
and I think a lot of the consciousness that people
have about what's going on in the prisons has a lot to do
with the work that you've been doing
and many, many others.
I noticed at the top of the documentary you pointed out
that you are new to this issue and you're still learning
about criminal justice.
Why was it so important for you to say that at the top,
that you are a new comer to this cause?
- Because I am and I think sometimes the way
the media can spin something or make it seem
like I am doing this all on my own and I'm not
and I've always been really vocal
that's it a team of people.
As soon as I read a letter or hear a case,
I'll send it to Jessica and Erin,
who you introduced me to,
and they are like my girl squad team of attorneys
that we talk about every, we'll be up online
all night long texting each other
about specific cases about exactly what's going on,
what's going on with coronavirus in prisons.
Every last issue, we talk about,
and so I think one of the reasons I really wanted
to do this documentary is because I feel like it shows,
it's my journey of what I've learned
and I've never been shy to say that I started off
probably judgmental and feeling like okay, well,
Alice Johnson, nonviolent drug offender, I can handle that.
As long as there was no violence involved,
I can support that, until I started to educate myself
and visit prisons and go and speak to people
that are incarcerated and understand their backstory.
It's something that I never took the time
to even think about before.
I met with so many people that when they were a teenager,
they committed horrific crimes,
but now in their 30s, 40s, they are a completely different,
rehabilitated person and even though they did that
and made that choice and mistake to do something
really awful, doesn't mean they are that mistake
and doesn't mean that they haven't rehabilitated
and don't deserve a second chance at life.
- When you're 16 years old,
your brain isn't even really formed yet [laughs].
You can do something, you can have a bad weekend
or a bad summer and then get your act together
and then never have a problem again in life
if you grow up in the suburbs, if you have money.
But some people wind up in real trouble.
Why is it so important to you to humanize people
who have made really, really serious mistakes?
- I wanna humanize as many people as possible,
but not just in like a low level drug offense case.
I wanted it to be in a sex trafficking case,
in every situation that you could imagine
and really feel empathy.
I just want people to feel empathy
and so that they can feel that truly in their hearts,
if they were to get to know people
and hear their stories, that they would definitely feel safe
with these people reentering back into our society.
- And I think that's the great thing
about this documentary is, the people who you're showing,
the people who somebody who actually killed a man,
you say to yourself, somebody killed a man?
I don't want that person ever to come back out.
And then you understand the circumstances
of her being trafficked and abused
and all these different things.
You start to reveal and you start to think
to yourself, okay, I've not got a different perspective.
I wanna ask you about the importance of context
and that sort of stuff, but before I do that,
I still think a lot of people are just trying to get
their minds wrapped around how could Kim Kardashian,
megastar, superstar, be walking around in prisons
and jails and all this sorta stuff?
People first thought it was a publicity stunt,
now it's a couple years later,
it's obviously not, you could get publicity doing whatever
you want to, this is clearly a passion.
But what would your dad think about this?
I mean your dad was a lawyer, I mean what would your father
think about what you're doing,
this turn your life has taken?
- I think he would love it.
We have had the conversation
though about going to law school, him and I.
When I was in college and I was trying to think
of what my major would be,
I thought, okay, I can major in political science
and I can really do this and then he was like, listen,
you've seen the hard work that it puts in.
I don't doubt that you can do this,
but it's a really stressful life to be an attorney,
do you really wanna be an attorney
and then I ended up majoring in communications instead
and so we talked about a lot.
Cause he always saw me snooping in his stuff
and looking through all of his evidence books
and in the summer times when all my friends
were hanging out and he was just like, go have fun.
You can always do this later and honestly,
sometimes it is so tough and I have these assignments
that I feel like I have to succeed in
and I get really overwhelmed and I feel
like quitting sometimes, but I know
that he's right there pushing me to just be like,
you can do this, and so I always take a minute,
I stop and I'm just like, okay, I'm gonna finish my work
the next day, I need a breather.
It's like too overwhelming for me and then I get up
super energized and get back at it
and I know that's him pushing me to do that.
- You know, it's amazing.
I think for the younger generation, you're the most famous
Kardashian, they heard of you.
But my generation, it was your dad [laughs]
that was the big guy.
You're kinda like his kid coming up from our point of view
and so, we know that you got that legal beagle in your blood
because he was such an amazing attorney
and such a big deal culturally as well as legally.
But what about your kids?
You just said you're a refugee right now
in your mom's house from your kids.
You got little bitty kids.
What do they think about what you're doing?
How do you explain to them that mommy
is going into prisons to help people?
Does that even come up?
- It does!
And so, she traveled with us to Houston
when I went to go visit Rodney Reed
and she was with me but she had to stay in the car
while I went inside and I had to explain to her,
we're at a prison and we're gonna be going in
and I'm going, and she was like, well mommy,
I know you're just going to help people.
Like, I know you're not going to jail.
So she really understands, I think cause she's around
a lot when I'm studying with Jessica and Erin
and so she'll just hear all the conversation.
She'll hear me studying my flash cards.
She'll hear me talk to myself and call things out
and say definitions and stuff like that or she'll hear
me on calls when I'm dealing with different legal teams
and stuff like that.
So she's really smart, she's really aware of what's going on
and if anything, that pushes me more because I really
was the type where I didn't love school.
I didn't love college,
and high school was so much fun but then college,
it just wasn't my thing, so to know that now
that I'm almost 40 and I love it and I love going to school.
I love having that as a good example for my kids too
that no matter age, if you find something
that you're passionate about, you can absolutely go for it
and it's a really personal goal of mine.
- So one time you were talking about you got your backpack
with your books and you kids have their backpack
with their books [laughs] like doing the mommy and me
on the studying stuff,
which I think is really, really awesome.
And I think it's just so important for people
to see and hear that this is not just something
you show up for for the press conferences,
this is a daily part of your life,
learning how to become a lawyer
and dealing with all these cases.
How do you decide, I mean, when the letters come,
when you see something in the news?
I mean, what is the process that you go through
to pick who to help?
Because that's a big decision!
- Well the good thing is because Cut 50 sponsors me
in my apprenticeship, I know a lot about what goes on
in the office and what policy you guys
are working on and the team's working on,
so if I see you guys are trying to work on something
that involves a specific gun charge or something,
I'll read letters and if that pops up,
then I'll put that in that pile
and so then I'll send all of those to Jessica
and be like, I think you guys are working on this,
this might be helpful to you.
And then I have a different groups of people
that I feel like if something comes up
in the first step backs, then I know that we can help
that in that category and then the other letters
that have nothing to do with any of the policy
that anyone's working on, it's like a feeling that I get.
When I read Dawn's letter and Dawn's in the documentary
that I did, I cried right away.
She was so in depth and detailed her entire story to me
and it just broke my heart and I thought,
I have to help this woman, I don't know how
we're gonna do it, I didn't know anyone
and she's in New Jersey so it's like starting
these relationships with the governors
and figuring out what can be done
and getting her an attorney that can properly fight for her.
So every case is different.
It's usually a feeling.
There's some times I wanna help so badly
and I know that there's nothing I can do
but I'll still write them a letter back
and try to give them a little bit of peace
and just thank them for reaching out to me.
So I try to help as many people as I can
and sometimes we're successful and sometimes we're not
and that breaks my heart.
- I was a founder for Cut 50, along with Jessica Jackson
and Matt Haney and Matt Haney's big sister Erin Haney,
and Jessica still help on the Cut 50 side.
We also help to run the Reform Alliance
and I think people assume that you get some kinda special
pass because you're so famous or whatever,
but you actually work as hard or harder
than anybody we've ever had on the team
and sometimes we gotta keep up with you.
I have no reason to say it if it's not true,
just because whatever you're doing is more
than people probably expect you to do,
but I just wanna say it's been very incredible to watch
the level of dedication and discipline
that you brought to this thing.
You did mention earlier and I wanna come back to it,
this idea of context, what they call
mitigating circumstances, somebody did something
on its face, we'd say, this is just terrible,
but then you learn something behind it
and you say, oh, well that makes me see
it a little bit differently.
Can you talk about that in the context of Alexis Martin,
who's in this documentary?
- Yeah, so Alexis Martin, she was at 14
sex trafficked by someone who she felt
like was a father figure.
She had a really rough life at home,
always being passed around from place to place.
She had lived with him for a while,
I think it was a few years of this
and it would get deeper and crazier and a really rough
life for her, so she was on a text message with someone
and they said they were gonna rob him,
the home that she was in.
And that they would give her a cut of the money
and so she would be able to break free
and go live a different life now.
There was no discussion of violence,
they just knew that they were gonna come in
and rob some things, some items or cash.
She knew that cash was in the home.
So because there was that text message,
they come into the home, she at that moment,
while they got robbed,
she was being raped by her pimp's brother.
And so the guy that was raping her got killed,
I mean, sorry, got shot, but lived,
and then her pimp got killed
and none of that was in the plan
and so she was charged with his murder
and attempted murder of his brother
and she just knew that someone was gonna come in
and rob them but she knew nothing would be violent
and she was just trying to look for a way out
and try to get some money and that was her only option
and there was also a particular law that was put
into place, protecting minors from sex trafficking victims
and her lawyer at the time didn't know
that and so she has gone back for ineffective counsel
and the lawyer has even signed off
and is trying to help, saying that he knew
he was ineffective which is really rare to get
from an attorney that will admit that.
- For an attorney to admit that they did not
do a good job is unusual, so you know that attorney
must feel really bad for the fact
that this young woman is in that situation.
I just again, what I love about this documentary
and the whole approach that you have is you're going
way beyond the safe and simple and easy.
You're getting into the real complexity,
but that's real life.
Real life is messy and I always say,
if it's not paradoxical, it's not true.
I mean, there's nothing that's just super clean
or super easy, if it is, it's super phony and--
- And it also went along with my journey
of me feeling like I'm just like you.
I'm the person out there watching, I felt like I don't know
how I would be able to support this and really rally
behind this until I took the time
to educate myself and meet with numerous people,
dozens of people that were so generous
to share their stories with me and be so open
and it really changed my mind
and so I hope that this can change people's mind
and people can just have empathy
because I love crime shows.
I watch every crime show you could possibly imagine,
but I've never seen a crime show
that is from the other side.
It's always from the victim's point of view
and their family, unless it's like some intense
serial killer that wants to tell their whole story.
You never see these stories and people really admit
their wrongdoings and tell how they got there
and I think that's really important for people to hear.
- I think sometimes people hear you saying
or me saying or others saying,
well if somebody had a bad life,
then just let them out of jail.
That's not what we're saying.
We're just saying that you have to look
at the totality of the person, everything that happened
to them and also their pathway toward redemption.
If somebody makes bad choices and then they begin
to make better choices, that should count too.
- You don't have to throw someone's life away
because they made a bad choice at one point
in their life and that people can be rehabilitated.
So for me, I always say if someone does the crime,
they should do time, but what is fair time?
And that's the struggle.
- Somebody watching the documentary or hearing
the sound of your voice, what do hope that they'll do
to make a difference in this issue?
- I hope that people, if they're passionate about someone
in particular or an issue in general,
that they reach out to their governors,
they they speak up about how they feel
about people being wrongfully incarcerated
or reach out to Cut 50 or any organization
that you feel like is doing an amazing job
to push these issues and volunteer
or ask how you can be helpful.
It's usually lots of calls to the governors are helpful
and just using your voice to speak out.
Someone used their voice to speak out
about Alice and tweeted about it.
I saw it, and so we were able to really change her life,
but it was a bunch of us that made that happen.
- Yeah, Brittany Barnett, Topeka Sam,
they're all these different people, Shaka Senghor.
There's a whole community of people,
some formally incarcerated, some directly impacted,
and all of us are better off
because you've joined this cause and joined this fight
and I think this documentary's gonna open up
a lot of eyes.
I appreciate getting a chance to spend time with you.
ReformAlliance.com and Cut50.org are two places you can go
for more information.
Cut50.org and ReformAlliance.com.
Thank you Kim.
- Bye!