Every year, the region gets a chance to vote on who deserves recognition with a Greater Philadelphia Innovation Award - presented to organizations and people who are making a real difference to our community with their passion, energy and out-of-the-box creativity. Last year, PLSE received the Innovation Award for Community Development for demonstrating how granting more pardons, faster, should be understood as no-cost workforce development and public health policies.  

This year, the theme of the Awards was “Achieving a More Just Society.” With 5,163 people voting, our Board member (and Treasurer) Jeff Brown was named the Social Investor of the Year for “Innovative Investment Strategy leading to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.” The visionary who was first in the country to locate his grocery stores in “food deserts” (low-income neighborhoods) and who hires more returning citizens than any other employer in the state, Jeff is now sponsoring criminal record clinics in the neighborhoods his stores serve and providing free record-clearing services to his employees - the first for-profit business we know of to offer that kind of help as an employee benefit.  

Thanks for all you do for PLSE, for our clients, and for our City, Jeff – and kudos for this unquestionably well-deserved honor!   

Last month, it was all great news: the Board of Pardons had appointed Celeste Trusty as its Secretary and released the newest pardon application form which adopts the last of all the changes for which PLSE had been advocating since 2018. This month? A punch to the gut.

On February 10, the Board held its “Merit Review,” which is when they vote on which applicants “merit” a public hearing. On the list was one of PLSE’s clients – a 51 year old Black man with two marijuana convictions dating back to 2010 and 2012. Back at the Merit Review last October, his pardon application had received the support of all 5 members of the Board. As a result, he was excused from having to attend the public hearing in December. But when his name was called in December, Dr. John Williams, one of the BOP members, noted that he had not paid off the $1,186.66 in court fees and costs that had been assessed against him in the underlying prosecutions. They knew he was indigent and being represented for free by PLSE. What diff? The Board then voted 5-0 to hold his application “under advisement”.

His application came up again at this month’s Merit Review. This time it was Lt. Gov. Fetterman who asked about the unpaid fees and costs. BOP Secretary Trusty advised them that the applicant had started making payments – two of them – since December’s hearing, but that there was still a balance due. Result? 5-0 vote to keep his application suspended.

Both public votes occurred after the Board’s pay-to-play policy had drawn the vocal, strong and united opposition of the PA Bar Association, the Interbranch Commission on Racial, Gender and Ethnic Fairness, the Asian Pacific American Bar Association, the City of Philadelphia, several Pardon Projects around the state, the Philly Bar Association ....

“Put simply,” wrote PBA President Kathleen Wilkinson in her November 22, 2021 letter to the BOP, “indigency should never be used to slow, restrict, condition or deny any person the ability to present their case to any tribunal that has the power to ‘do justice’ in our Commonwealth.” Ten days later... in her face! And now again, two months later.

Let them eat cake, eh Board? For shame.

If you’ve not spent time in Chicago, you’ve probably not heard of the Chicago ЯEADER, “Chicago's alternative nonprofit newsroom.” Founded in 1971, it “pioneered the practice of free circulation...[and] developed a new kind of journalism, ignoring the news and focusing on everyday life and ordinary people” (according to Wikipedia). Today, it is published every two weeks and has a circulation of over 50,000.

PLSE launched its Marijuana Amnesty Project last October, and, two months later, was honored by Chicago-based Green Thumb Industries with one of its very first Good Green grants. This month the Chicago Reader interviewed Project Leader Andrea Lindsay as part of a series about the marijuana industry called “Growing for Good.” The interviewer noted that there isn’t anything like a pardon project in Illinois. Explaining that the PA Board of Pardons hears marijuana convictions on an expedited basis, Andrea noted the devastating impact the “war on drugs” has had on communities of color, and she identified marijuana amnesty as “a critical component of racial and economic justice.”

You can read the interview here and read about our Marijuana Amnesty Project here.

Many of us first became aware of how arbitrary and punitive the criminal justice system is when we read about how Meek Mill was sent to prison for 2-to-4 years by a Philly judge for technical violations of his probation. As NPR put it in its August 2019 story, the hip hop artist had been on probation “nearly all of his adult life” and his case became “a lightning rod for criminal justice reform.” Freed from prison by another judge, Mill then helped start the REFORM Alliance with the mission of transforming probation and parole into “a system that holds people accountable and redirects back to work and wellbeing, instead of keeping them trapped in a revolving door from probation/parole to prison.”

REFORM has legislation pending in Pennsylvania – Senate Bill 913 – that would reduce the potential for technical violations to result in imprisonment. They’re asking for you to complete a short questionnaire that will indicate whether you support the proposals in the bill.