Their pitches are replete with details grounded in reality, from the scarcity of tampons in prison to the hardships of visiting a parent incarcerated hundreds of miles from home.
They have written letters, appeared in videos, spoken at rallies and worked the corridors of power, sometimes at the invitation of the White House. They have visited one-on-one with powerful senators. Their lobbying helped win President Donald Trump’s endorsement for the bill, which would reduce some sentences, expand anti-recidivism programs and improve conditions for inmates. And they have pressed Sen. Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, to allow a vote.
Many of the lobbying efforts were organized by Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a nonprofit group based in Washington.
Here are three of their stories:
‘We’re actually living it’
“Imagine with me: You’re about to turn 13, and your entire life you have to live knowing you may not see your dad for a really long time,” Kendall Williams said into a microphone at a rally in July outside the Capitol, on the eve of another birthday celebrated with only one of his parents.
Kendall’s father, Keith Williams, is serving more than 22 years in prison after being accused of drug conspiracy, money laundering and gun possession. He has been imprisoned for all of Kendall’s life. An estimated 2.7 million American children have a parent in prison, a situation that is linked to higher rates of poverty, lower educational attainment and a host of other ills.
“You eventually communicate with him, and build a relationship, but the more the relationship builds, the farther apart it feels you are,” Kendall said at the rally. “And eventually, all you want to do is give him a big hug, to comfort him and let him know that you still love him. But you can’t — because you’re 500 miles apart.”
That day in Washington, traveling with his sister and his mother, Danielle Williams, was Kendall’s first visit to the capital from their home in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The family attended a session about how to lobby Congress before they went to see aides to Alabama’s senators about the criminal justice bill.
“It’s so important for us, because we’re actually living it,” Williams said Wednesday. “In no way are we saying our loved ones shouldn’t be incarcerated. We’re just asking that they have just sentencing, just treatment.”
The bill’s provisions concerning credit for good behavior could advance her husband’s release date by several months. But in a telephone interview, Danielle Williams said her husband had expressed skepticism that anything would come of the efforts in Washington.
“I think they get in this mode where it’s like nothing happens for so long that they think, ‘Will it make a difference?' ” she said of inmates like her husband.
In late November, Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., became a co-sponsor of the bill.
‘They got to see it from a very personal level’
Ron Cupp was serving 17 years for his role in a Virginia drug ring when he was diagnosed with colon cancer. He asked for compassionate release, which is supposed to allow very sick or old prisoners to die at home, but it is granted sparingly and approval can take months.
He died at age 55, still waiting for an answer.
Before his death, he extracted a vow from his wife, Debra: “Promise me, promise me that you’ll fight for this.”
“And I said, ‘All right, buddy,' ” she recalled. “That was the one thing I could do to really honor him.”
Less than two years later, Cupp, 60, of Goodview, Virginia, walked Washington’s hallways and huddled with aides to her state’s two senators, who support the bill.
“I’m not sure they really knew the impact that it makes on the families, and how much you have to go through sometimes,” Cupp said of the aides. “I just think they got to see it from a very personal level that they can’t get from reading an article.”
Under the bill, prisoners with terminal illnesses could receive an in-person family visit within seven days of receiving their diagnosis, and the Bureau of Prisons would be required to process requests for compassionate release within two weeks of receiving them.
Though Cupp said she had tried before her husband’s death to persuade lawmakers to intervene in his case, the rites and rituals of Washington lobbying were still largely new to her when she took her story to the Senate. Cupp, whose frustrations with the federal government still run deep, saw her hopes for quick legislative action fade — and then be revived again this week.
‘It had to be the lowest point in my life’
When Pamela Winn, 50, of Atlanta, was taken to a privately managed prison to await trial on medical fraud charges, she was six weeks pregnant. She was given no prenatal care, she said, and was shackled when she was being transported, which kept her from being able to break her fall when she tripped trying to climb into a van.
She said she requested medical attention, but there were significant delays, and she miscarried.
A spokesman for the Geo Group, which runs the prison, said there were no grievances or other records that would substantiate her allegations.
When Winn finally reached a hospital, she said, the nurse who treated her, unable to locate her fetus, asked for the linens that Winn had bled on — only to be told that the prison staff had discarded them.
“It had to be the lowest point in my life, to think that my child, my baby, was thrown in the trash like nothing,” Winn said.
Since serving her sentence, Winn, formerly a nurse, has become an advocate for banning the shackling of pregnant women. Though in 2008 the Bureau of Prisons greatly restricted shackling during labor and delivery, and in 2014 the use of restraints generally on pregnant inmates, those policies have not yet been enshrined in law. The criminal justice bill before Congress, known as the First Step Act, includes such a provision.
In the spring, Winn was invited to the White House by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a proponent of criminal justice reform. “I’m going to tell you exactly when it was — we were there the day before, or two days before, Kim Kardashian went,” Winn said, referring to Kardashian West’s successful request for clemency for a 63-year-old woman imprisoned for a nonviolent drug offense.
“I did speak to him directly about what had happened to me,” she said, referring to Kushner. “He said that he agreed with me, and he wasn’t aware that these things were happening — which is mostly what I get when I talk about what happened to me, that people aren’t aware that these things are going on.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.