By Ashley Mahoney for the Charlotte Post with support from the Pulitzer Center.
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan for North Carolina News Service, reporting for the Charlotte Post Media-Public News Service Collaboration

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Jail shattered Kristie Puckett-Williams' remaining sense of self-worth.

Drugs and alcohol had dulled the pain of domestic violence. Crime supported her habit, which landed Puckett-Williams in the Mecklenburg County Jail for "months," she said. Facing a cocaine trafficking charge in 2009, she took a plea deal to avoid giving birth in lockup, and twins Kade and Kaiden were born premature five days later. They spent 21 days in neonatal intensive care.

"It took a huge toll on my already fragile mental health state," Puckett-Williams said. "I entered into the system as a victim of severe domestic violence. None of the system's responses to that violence promoted any healing or transformation of that trauma. The only thing it ever did was exacerbate and compound that trauma."

Probation dominated much of Puckett-Williams' adult life, with the fear of returning to jail always hovering in the background. She participated in a mandatory 10-month treatment program as part of her plea deal, and the Department of Social Services required parenting classes in order to keep her children.

"I found myself out [of jail] with a whole lot of trauma," she said, "and a whole lot of lists of things to do in order to remain free, in order for my children to remain free. I had to focus on that list of things that I had to do."

UNC Charlotte social work professor Dante Bryant PhD describes the American criminal justice system as one designed to punish, not rehabilitate. Dehumanization of the incarcerated is a byproduct.

"Our local jail here, they've started all these different types of programs, to try to help facilitate [re-entry]," he said. "But the reality is that programs only emerge when there's a problem. A program always emerges in response to a deficiency. A criminal justice system that is designed for rehabilitation shouldn't need programs. It should be the program."

Puckett-Williams said sheer will to protect her family helped with navigating re-entry. In addition to the twins, she has an older son, Julian Aguilar, 20.

"I was determined that I was not going to allow the system to win," Puckett-Williams said. "I just made it up in my mind. They weren't getting my children. They weren't getting me."

Punishment and re-entry

Mecklenburg County's Criminal Justice Services department consists of two jails: Jail Central in Uptown and Jail North on Spector Drive. The average daily population for both facilities between January-March 2018 was 1,492, with 1,253 incarcerated at Jail Central, according to the county's latest Jail Population Trend Report.

Men made up 89% of incarcerated residents; girls and women comprised 8% and boys 3%. Black people accounted for 67% of incarcerated, followed by whites (21%) and Hispanics 11%. Sixty-four percent were held pretrial. A total of 4,927 people were released.

Mecklenburg County provides re-entry services to people returning from jails, state and federal prisons, many in collaboration with local programs such as Center for Community Transitions and City Startup Labs' ReEntry Entrepreneurship Program.

"We assess or screen for what all their needs and barriers are," county re-entry manager Hope Marshall said. "Then we have probably 100-plus partners that we can refer to help out with each of those barriers and challenges. [People at] the highest risk, highest needs, you don't want to send them to five different places all at once, you need to prioritize and kind of walk through [and] walk with them, to get all these services in places."

Wendy Sawyer, research director at the Northampton, Massachusetts-based Prison Policy Initiative, wrote in a 2019 report that re-entry programs have a gender gap that ignores the unique needs of women.

"A handful of programs have sprung up in communities around the country to meet the needs of women returning home: some founded by formerly incarcerated women themselves, some running on shoestring budgets for years, and all underscoring the need for greater capacity to meet the demand of over 81,000 releases from prison and 1.8 million releases from jail each year," Sawyer wrote. ... "While many people are released from jail within a day or so and may not need reentry support, jail releases can't be overlooked, especially for women, who are more likely than men to be incarcerated in jails as opposed to prisons."

Said Bryant: "If you want to know what a system is designed to do, look at what it produces consistently over time."

Indicting the system

Going to school was on Puckett-Williams' to-do list upon re-entry.

"When I went to Central Piedmont Community College, I found myself in a welcoming space with people who just wanted me to learn and to be the best version of myself that I could be," she said.

"As a result of being in that type of environment, I found myself in the human services program focusing on substance abuse. I learned so much about mental health and mental unwellness and wellbeing through the human service program, that I learned a lot about myself. What I learned at the end of the day was that the things that have happened to me and my behaviors, my 'criminality' was a response to trauma that had been unanswered."

Puckett-Williams took it upon herself to critique and investigate the system she was caught up in. She earned an associate's degree at CPCC, bachelor's in human services from Gardner-Webb University and a master's in addiction and recovery counseling from Liberty University.

Puckett-Williams feels called to fight for people who are still in the trenches of addiction, abusive relationships and incarceration.

"For me," she said, "it is about telling the truth, and in indicting a system that indicted me, that indicted my poverty, that indicted my trauma, and now I'm in guiding it, because instead of addressing my poverty, or my trauma, it only ... compounded those issues. The system did absolutely nothing to help.

"I had to heal before I could show up in the world as my true, authentic self. I knew the state's version of who I was, was not who I was. I had a duty to tell who I am, and not just who I am, but the value and the worth of people who have the same life experiences that I have, because society will say that we have no value, we have no worth, we have nothing to contribute. My existence in this world is a clapback to that."

Still fighting

Puckett-Williams is the statewide campaign for smart justice manager at the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina and a working scholar in mass incarceration who focuses on the treatment of women, including those who are pregnant.

She advocates for legislation like the North Carolina House Bill 608, Dignity for Women Who are Incarcerated. HB 608 was introduced in April and passed 113-0 in May.

"We know we have to legislate exactly what people need in order for it to happen," Puckett-Williams said. "That is how we approach our work. What do the people need? How will we get them what they need? Dignity for Women Who are Incarcerated is a huge example of that."

Limited use of restraints, cost of care, nutrition and body cavity searches are included in HB 608.

For instance, leg and wrist restraints, restraints connected to other incarcerated persons and waist shackles would be barred during the second and third trimester of pregnancy, during labor or delivery, as well as six weeks postpartum. Pregnant incarcerated people would receive free prenatal, labor and delivery care which Puckett-Williams did not have. She also did not have feminine hygiene products while she was incarcerated, which HB 608 would provide.

"I was incarcerated while pregnant, received no prenatal care, [was in] shackles, all the things," Puckett-Williams said. "I had been in jail before and did not have access to menstrual pads. It was bad."

Triage upon return

Re-entry comes with barriers that may push a person's mental health to the back burner. Immediate needs such as housing and employment dominate the conversation, with less consideration given to the trauma of imprisonment or what led to incarceration in the first place.

"Overall health plays a huge role in your re-entry and mental health, this is a huge component of a person's total wellness," said Puckett-Williams, who utilizes therapy and advocates for transformative healing spaces. "While you're inside of a cage languishing, your mental health is definitely at risk."

Mental health concerns for returning citizens extend beyond depression and/or anxiety. For many people, including Puckett-Williams, self-value is key in rewriting the narrative and moving forward.

"Your self-image, how you view yourself, how you view the world, how you view yourself in the world, your contribution to the world, all of those things are impacted by incarceration," she said. "How do you process this ... deep trauma that you've experienced, with no resources, when your immediate needs are an ID, someplace to live and somewhere to work? What are you going to eat, what clothes are you going to wear? Those are the most immediate needs that a person has.

"There has to be a way that we can allow people to re-enter, come home and navigate everything that they need to navigate with assistance from the community."

Ashley Mahoney wrote this article for the Charlotte Post.


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About 7,000 Nebraskans with felony convictions who thought they'd be able to register to vote, now face uncertainty.

In question is the constitutionality of Legislative Bill 20, a new law scheduled to take effect last week.

It restores voting rights without a two year waiting period for people who've served their sentences. Gov. Jim Pillen allowed it to become law without his signature.

Jane Seu, legal and policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska, said it appears Nebraska Secretary of State Robert Evnen asked Attorney General Mike Hilgers about the law, and Hilgers has concluded it is unconstitutional.

"This is a validly passed and enacted law," said Seu. "The legislature passed it through its own process with major bipartisan support. So really, I think what all the Attorney General's doing - and the Secretary of State - is really just causing confusion and doubt for voters, questioning their right to vote."

In his opinion, Hilgers points out the Nebraska Constitution grants the power to restore voting rights to the Board of Pardons.

Seu said she thinks this opinion has the potential to harm many more Nebraskans than those helped by LB-20.

That's because it also calls a 2005 law into question, which established the two-year waiting period in lieu of a Board of Pardons decision.

Seu said the speed with which Evnen acted after receiving Hilgers' opinion is noteworthy.

"So, the Attorney General released his opinion, and the Secretary of State has decided to follow that - and has directed county election officials to not register people with felony convictions to vote," said Seu. "That happened the same day, so kind of showing some coordination to keep people with felony convictions from being able to vote."

With the passage of LB-20, Nebraska became one of the 40 states that restore voting rights to people with felony convictions. Seu said this issue is far from settled.

"We want every Nebraska voter to know that their vote matters," said Seu. "They deserve a say in our democracy, and we're going to do everything we can to uphold that right. So, we're exploring every possible option."

Support for this reporting was provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.




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It's being called a historic milestone - 200 people have been exonerated after being sentenced to death since 1973, what's known as the modern era of capital punishment.

The exonerees were wrongfully convicted, because of misconduct from government officials or other factors, and then set free after being behind bars - sometimes for decades.

Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said cases like this have been devastating not just for individual families, but for the nation.

"Communities really lose confidence in the integrity of the legal system," said Maher, "and its ability to respond appropriately and keep them safe."

Half of the public now believes the U.S. unfairly applies the death penalty, according to the latest polling. But a majority of Americans still favor death sentences for those convicted of murder.

Capital punishment is illegal in West Virginia, and the state's last execution was more than 60 years ago. But there have been efforts to reinstate it this year.

And a jury recommended federal death sentences for two Mountain State residents in 2007, which were later overturned.

Nationwide, Maher said far more than 200 people have likely been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death, in part because of challenges with the legal appeal process.

"Once someone is convicted and sent to prison, that burden then shifts to them to prove that they're innocent," said Maher. "And that's very difficult to do without a good lawyer. And it's also very difficult to do because of the operation of the law."

The Death Penalty Information Center says two-thirds of those exonerated have been people of color.

President Joe Biden campaigned on abolishing the federal death penalty, but his administration has taken few steps to do so.




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The Michigan Supreme Court is set to reexamine the life without parole sentences of three men who have spent two decades in prison, convicted of murder at ages 18, 19 and 20.

The justices will consider several factors, including the age and immaturity of the individuals, their family and home environment and the circumstances of the crimes. In 2022, the Court ruled mandatory no-parole sentences for 18-year-olds convicted of murder violated the state constitution's prohibition on "cruel or unusual" punishment. It will now decide whether to extend the ruling to 19- and 20-year-olds.

Quinn Yeargain, associate professor of law at Michigan State University, supports the court's decision to review the cases.

"There's a good amount of literature out there suggesting that people who are in their late teens and even going into their early twenties, their brains are not fully developed," Yeargain pointed out. "That's sort of the basis of this constitutional challenge."

Critics of reducing life sentences for young offenders argued it is contradictory to claim individuals old enough to vote, marry and obtain abortions without parental consent should not be held fully accountable for their serious crimes.

The high court will also look at how the offenders dealt with police and prosecutors and whether they can be rehabilitated and reintegrated into society. Yeargain emphasized it is not about giving someone a "get out of jail free card." He said Michigan's parole board, which operates within the Department of Corrections, is known for being overly cautious in ensuring individuals seeking parole have genuinely undergone rehabilitation.

"We're talking about people who are still going to be serving very long prison terms, and it's just a statement that maybe they'll be eligible for parole at a certain point," Yeargain emphasized. "If they're able to make a showing that they have changed, they have demonstrated remorse -- then they may be entitled to release at that point."

In Michigan, no-parole life sentences for those 18 or younger are no longer automatic. Judges review their background and potential for rehabilitation, while prosecutors must justify the sentence. The court plans to review the cases in the fall.


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