Joel Castón was incarcerated for 27 years. Then he won a seat on D.C.’s Sentencing Commission
The experience of Castón’s experience—along with those of other formerly incarcerated people.
Click here to read on Fast Company
When Joel Castón was nominated for Washington, D.C.,’s Sentencing Commission in December, he was elated. Two years after his release from prison, where he spent 27 years in and out of 16 facilities, he was looking forward to the opportunity to be a part of the conversation about how people are sentenced in the nation’s capital.
But on January 2, he got word of a letter from U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves condemning the nomination. Graves argued that “neither [Castón’s] work nor his lived experience as an incarcerated person renders him an expert in sentencing policy matters” and that his policy stances would likely align with a member of The Sentencing Project who was already on the commission.
Castón is no stranger to the discrimination faced by people who have been incarcerated, but he and his fellow advocates argue that far from being a liability, it’s precisely their experience with the criminal legal system that makes them an asset.
Castón actually won his first election—to D.C.’s Advisory Neighborhood Commission—when he was still incarcerated. He says he was astonished by how many headlines were more interested in the fact that he was convicted of murder at the age of 18 than the fact that he’d made history as the first currently incarcerated person to win office in D.C. “Folks gravitate toward [my conviction] because we have a preconceived notion of what ‘a murderer’ looks like,” he says. “It’s almost as if they’re programmed to find it problematic to speak about my accolades in a positive light without mentioning the darkest moment in my past.”
Castón is not alone. “Serving [in political office] is like walking through 1,000 microaggressions a minute,” says Washington State Representative Tarra Simmons. “Sometimes I just get outright hate, including many death threats.” Simmons became a lawyer after serving a 30-month sentence with the Federal Bureau of Prisons. But, once released, legally representing people like her wasn’t enough—she wanted to change the laws that she says criminalize things like poverty, race, and substance use while also responding to mistreatment and inequity inside facilities (like working dangerous jobs for little or no pay).
Since being elected in 2021, she has pushed for increased wages for incarcerated people (she worked for just 42 cents an hour); advocated for grants that support voting outreach inside jails; introduced a bill that will enfranchise people in Washington prisons to vote; and is working with local judges on a reform bill that would provide the opportunity for sentences to be reconsidered after 10 years. (Washington State currently does not allow parole.)
But Simmons says that while it’s been challenging, for every naysayer, there’s a growing community of supporters who see the importance of lived experience in leadership, particularly when it comes to political representation. Among those is Simmons’s former House seatmate, Senator Drew Hansen, who is fighting for free calls in prison amid heightened costs. “He called me the other day and said, ‘Tarra, this is part of your legacy—I would never have gotten into these issues but for you.’”
On February 6, the D.C. Council unanimously voted Castón onto the Sentencing Commission. The vote substantiated the many letters of support that came in following Graves’s letter—from those who had been incarcerated with and mentored by Castón to organizations like Fwd.us and The Sentencing Project. The latter’s codirector of research, Nazgol Ghandnoosh, has been on D.C.’s Sentencing Commission for a year and believes that Castón’s unique understanding of the sentencing process is a step in the right direction for the District and the larger movement for representation.
For Ghandnoosh, Castón, and others impacted by incarceration “have a level of insight that researchers, judges, police chiefs—none of us can offer: What does it mean to have lived in a community disproportionately impacted by crime? What does it mean to get a year sentence versus probation? What does it mean for someone to be in prison for 20-plus years? How destabilizing is that? What is it like to have your parents pass away while you’re incarcerated? This is critical information that would really benefit us as a city.”
In addition to introducing new legislation to support communities impacted by incarceration, it’s just as valuable to discuss what legislation those in office can prevent. Last year, a bill came across Rhode Island Representative Cherie Cruz’s desk that would limit people’s ability to challenge their conviction, called post-conviction relief, to one year after sentencing. As someone who was able to expunge her record 20 years after her wrongful conviction, this was personal. She believes the representative who sponsored the bill didn’t fully realize its impact. Knowing that post-conviction relief can “change the landscape for someone with a record,” as it did for her, she succeeded in stopping the bill.
There has long been a movement to humanize and empower those impacted by incarceration, even though our current system has, in Castón’s words, “systemically ostracized, criminalized, demonized, and disenfranchised us since slavery.” Castón, Cruz, and Simmons are a part of a growing movement of people directly impacted by incarceration who are running for office and working to change the system from the inside. They’re joined by other formerly incarcerated leaders like Councilmember Yusef Salaam and Assemblymember Eddie Gibbs in New York; Speaker Don Scott in Virginia; Representative Leonela Felix in Rhode Island; and other members on Sentencing Commissions in Minnesota and North Carolina. In fact, Simmons cocreated a political action committee called Real Justice WA to support formerly incarcerated people who want to run for office.
This coalition of political leaders is expanding, and yet it’s not a monolith; each individual brings a unique perspective. “Many believe that formerly incarcerated people all vote the same, all think the same way—we’ve been put in the same proverbial box,” Castón says. But he says the experience doesn’t preclude people’s ability to be impartial. “Being formerly incarcerated doesn’t mean that I lack the capacity or the ability to be just and equitable in my judgment. I want to prove that someone with my background can serve.”